Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative February 2026 news and views between Feb. 1 and Feb. 4. See Feb. News 2026 (Pt. 2) for February news after Feb. 14.
Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this. Nearly all excerpts are drawn from news sources for which the Justice Integrity Project pays a subscription. Readers here are encouraged also to subscribe to these outlets also to receive their full coverage and to support their work.
Feb. 14
Top Stories
European leaders expressed relief at the tone of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks, but they made it clear that the trans-Atlantic rift remained. Here’s the latest.More on Epstein Files, Cover-up, Reactions
New York Times, The Mutually Beneficial Ties Between Jeffrey Epstein and ‘Mr. Human Rights,’ Lynsey Chutel and Henrik Pryser Libell, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who led the Nobel Committee, promised influence, and the disgraced financier had gifts to give, new emails show.More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
Feb. 14, 2026. Trump is lashing out at Republican allies in the Senate, the fallout from the Epstein files is intensifying, and the Department of Homeland Security has entered a shutdown. The stakes are high, and the pressure on those in power is mounting. U.S. Courts, Crime, Free Press, Civil Rights, Religious Freedom
Pam Bondi’s DOJ has a longer rap sheet of misconduct than anything that journalists Don Lemon or Georgia Fort are described to have done in the indictment. On Tuesday, February 10, Joe Thompson filed a notice of appearance to defend Lemon, right, against Klan and FACE Act charges in Minnesota. As I wrote here, until January 13, Thompson had been Minnesota’s top public corruption prosecutor and the number two in the US Attorney’s Office; he stepped down because of all the corrupt bullshit that Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dhillon were engaged in in Minnesota.More On U.S. Immigration, Detentions, Civil Rights
At midnight tonight, most of the agencies and services in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will run out of funding, as popular fury over the violence and lawlessness of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol made Senate Democrats refuse to agree to fund DHS without reforms.More Global News
Top Stories
New York Times, Live Updates: In Munich, Rubio Calls Europe a Friend but Says It Must Change, Jim Tankersley, Edward Wong and Steven Erlanger, Feb. 14, 2026. European leaders expressed relief at the tone of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks, but they made it clear that the trans-Atlantic rift remained. Here’s the latest.
Europe and America “belong together,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, said on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, in a speech that underlined the deep ties between the United States and the continent but also echoed the Trump administration’s talking points about the threat of Western decline.
“We want Europe to be strong,” Mr. Rubio said, adding that the two world wars of the 20th century were a reminder that “our destiny is and always will be intertwined with yours.”
Mr. Rubio’s speech had a different tone than the one given by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich conference last year, when Mr. Vance scolded Europeans for sidelining far-right parties and accused them of limiting free speech. While Mr. Vance’s speech was met with stony silence, Mr. Rubio’s address prompted bouts of applause and laughter, and drew a brief standing ovation.
But as Mr. Vance did last year, Mr. Rubio issued warnings about the threat the Trump administration says mass migration poses to European civilization and the need to reform post-World War II institutions like the United Nations.
“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West‘s managed decline,” he said.
European leaders expressed relief at Mr. Rubio’s speech, but they also said it changed little about what they see as Europe’s need to rebalance its relationship with the United States, becoming more independent militarily.
After the address, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said it would be a “mistake” to “get in the warm bath of complacency.” In his own speech, he said: “As Europe, we must stand on our own two feet.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, said she was “reassured” by Mr. Rubio’s speech but insisted in her own address that “Europe must become more independent — there is no other choice.”
Here’s what else to know:
Ukraine: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told the conference his country would hold elections after a cease-fire — not before, despite American calls for elections. Mr. Zelensky has been president since 2019, and elections have not been held since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. He also repeated that Ukraine needed strong security guarantees before agreeing to any end to the war. “We hope President Trump hears us,” he said. Read more ›
The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: DOJ Releases Letter of "Politically Exposed Persons" in Epstein Files to Muddy the Waters as Europe Embraces Democratic Leaders, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 14, 2026. I have spent the past several hours working a major scoop. I obtained the letter the DOJ is required to send to Congress under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, outlining a list of “politically exposed persons” referenced in the files. There is one glaring problem: the list that was publicly released appears designed to muddy the waters and further confuse the public about who is actually connected to the documents.
At the same time, Democrats are being embraced in Europe as the transatlantic alliance scrambles for stable partners while Trump distances the United States from longstanding allies.
Yes, it is Valentine’s Day, and I am about to spend the evening with my wife. But getting you this breaking news mattered. If you believe in independent journalism that follows the evidence wherever it leads and refuses to look away, please subscribe today. Your support directly funds the document review and the countless hours required to uncover what others would rather keep buried, especially as the threats only get more serious.Subscribed
Here’s the news:
The Department of Justice has sent over a letter to Congress outlining why it made redactions to the Epstein files. The six-page letter also includes a list of all “government officials and politically exposed persons” in the files. I reported on this first and broke the story. The full letter is below, starting with the first two pages:
The DOJ continues to muddy the waters by combining names in the files of “politically exposed persons” who were actually involved with Epstein with random individuals who were mentioned in unrelated ways. The next two pages are below:
The final two pages are below:
One Epstein survivor tells me this evening that this letter released by the Department of Justice is "missing a few names......"
A limited US government shutdown—the third of Donald Trump’s second term—has begun after talks collapsed over Democratic demands to impose new restrictions on federal immigration agents following fatal shootings in Minneapolis, affecting about 13% of the federal civilian workforce within the Department of Homeland Security (including TSA screeners working without pay and potential airport delays), while core immigration enforcement operations continue due to prior funding and Congress remains in recess for 10 days, likely prolonging the standoff.
U.S. Democrats attending the Munich Security Conference—including Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ruben Gallego and Gretchen Whitmer—urged European leaders to resist Donald Trump’s “wrecking ball” foreign policy, as Europe remains divided between confronting his coercive diplomacy on issues such as Ukraine and Greenland or maintaining U.S. goodwill for security, with leaders like Emmanuel Macron calling for greater European strategic independence while others, including NATO chief Mark Rutte, warn the continent cannot defend itself without America.
At the Munich Security Conference, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told European leaders that “the rest of the world sees America as a wrecking ball” and “unreliable” under Donald Trump, but stressed that “Trump is temporary” while states like California are “permanent,” portraying them as stable, reliable, long-term partners despite turbulence in U.S. federal leadership.
Senator Ruben Gallego called out the perceived double standards in how the United States applies the rule of law.
At a key moment during the Munich Security Conference, bipartisan U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal called for supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles and intensifying secondary sanctions on Russia, prompting Ukraine’s ambassador to Sweden to respond that similar promises were made the previous year even as U.S. aid to Ukraine has since been reduced by 99%.
Paris prosecutors have formed a special magistrates’ team to analyse newly released Epstein files for evidence implicating French nationals, reopen and reassess the case of Jean-Luc Brunel (a close Epstein associate who died in custody in 2022 after being charged with raping minors), and examine new allegations involving a senior diplomat, model recruiter Daniel Siad (accused of rape in France in 1990), and conductor Frédéric Chaslin, while separate financial crime authorities investigate former minister Jack Lang over suspected tax fraud and money laundering following his appearance in the documents.
Following Republican complaints that Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show contained uncensored explicit lyrics, the FCC reportedly reviewed the performance for indecency violations and found that sexually explicit references in songs such as “Tití Me Preguntó,” “Monaco,” and “Safaera” had been removed for the broadcast, leading the agency to shelve further investigation absent new evidence, even as some GOP lawmakers—despite not speaking Spanish—continued to criticize the show, which drew over 128 million TV viewers and billions of social media views.
Newly released Justice Department files show that Steve Bannon communicated with Jeffrey Epstein in 2018 and 2019 about efforts to undermine Pope Francis, with Bannon writing that he would “take down” the pontiff and discussing broader opposition to figures including the EU and China. The messages suggest Epstein engaged with Bannon as the former Trump adviser worked to build a nationalist-populist movement in Europe and explored turning a controversial book critical of the Vatican into a film project, though it is unclear how serious that proposal was. Full file here.
Donald Trump posted a lengthy, angry Valentine’s Day message attacking Bill Maher on Truth Social, calling a recent dinner with the comedian “a total waste of time” and signaling escalating personal animosity despite Maher’s previous statements that he harbored no ill will toward the president.
Barack Obama publicly backed anti-ICE demonstrators in Minneapolis, condemning what he called the “unprecedented” and intimidating tactics of federal immigration agents following fatal shootings by ICE officers, arguing that public protests helped prompt the Trump administration to scale back operations in Minnesota and urging Americans to defend democratic values and accountability in law enforcement.
Ahead of Lent, Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics to “disarm” their language by avoiding harsh words, slander, and rash judgment—remarks widely viewed as a pointed moral rebuke amid tensions with the Trump administration and following criticism of its policies—encouraging the faithful to cultivate kindness and restraint in public discourse.
South Texas home builders and GOP lawmakers are warning the White House that aggressive immigration raids at construction sites are driving away workers, raising housing costs, and eroding Hispanic voter support in once-Republican-leaning areas, with industry leaders urging targeted enforcement and expanded legal visa programs while cautioning that continued crackdowns could jeopardize Republican electoral gains in regions that shifted toward Trump in 2024.
Sen. Mark Kelly’s lawyer has urged the Justice Department not to seek a second indictment against him and five other Democratic lawmakers over a video advising service members to refuse “illegal orders,” arguing that a prior grand jury already declined to indict, that any renewed effort would be an abuse of power, and that a recent federal court ruling affirming Kelly’s First Amendment protections undermines any legal basis for criminal prosecution.
Four astronauts—NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot, and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev—arrived at the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket, restoring full crew capacity after a January medical emergency forced the early return of four astronauts, prompted NASA’s first in-orbit medical evacuation in 65 years, and led to paused spacewalks and reduced research, with the agency declining to disclose details of the illness for privacy reasons.
Lindsey Vonn, 41, is set to be released from an Italian hospital after a successful third surgery to repair a complex tibia fracture sustained in a crash 13 seconds into her Olympic downhill race in Milan Cortina, just days after rupturing her ACL in another fall; despite multiple injuries and her father’s doubts about her returning to competition, Vonn said she knowingly accepted the risks and remains determined to race again.
More explosive stuff on Epstein and cohorts from Sibel Edmonds. Let me know if you’d like me to copy and paste the full article.
Talking Feds with Harry Litman, JAW DROPPING Filing Could CHANGE EVERYTHING FOR JACK SMITH, Feb. 14, 2026. Harry Litman and MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas report on an extraordinary move in the case of special counsel Jack Smith's report.
The roundtable discussion brings together prominent former government officials, journalists, and special guests for a dynamic and in-depth analysis of the most pressing questions in law and politics.
The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary, Trump Lashes Out as Epstein Files Fallout Grows and the Department of Homeland Security Shuts Down, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 14, 2026. Trump is lashing out at Republican allies in the Senate, the fallout from the Epstein files is intensifying, and the Department of Homeland Security has entered a shutdown. The stakes are high, and the pressure on those in power is mounting.
Here’s the news:
In a recently unearthed BBC News interview segment, two individuals identified as witnesses allege that teenage girls, some appearing to be as young as 14 or 15, were present at parties where Donald Trump was in attendance. One witness, Barbara Pilling, says many of the girls looked younger than she was at 17 and estimates some were 14 or 15, while a male witness claims most attendees were between 14 and 19 years old and states he saw Trump with girls he believed to be that young.
The Epstein files fallout is growing fast today. Casey Wasserman, left, a prominent entertainment executive and chair of the 2028 Los Angeles 
Olympics organizing committee, announced he is selling his talent agency after facing backlash over past email exchanges with Ghislaine Maxwell that were recently disclosed in Justice Department documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. In a memo to staff, Wasserman said he has “become a distraction” and wants to ensure clients continue receiving top representation.
The Guardian is now reporting that despite internal backlash, CBS News appears poised to retain longevity expert and on-air contributor Peter Attia, above, after Justice Department files revealed extensive and inappropriate email communications between him and Jeffrey Epstein, including graphic language and references to staying at Epstein’s property. This is a significant reversal from weeks ago where all reporting suggested that he would be losing his job. Bari Weiss, whose wife is also listed in the files, has decided to keep Attia on board.
Joe Rogan, right, questioned the redaction of names in the Epstein files, arguing that if someone is not a victim there should be no reason to withhold their identity, and saying the situation reflects poorly on the Trump administration. Rogan added that dismissing the controversy as a “hoax” makes the optics worse for Trump, asserting that the matter is serious and damaging rather than fabricated.
Newly released Justice Department files suggest that David Stern, a close associate of both Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, advised Epstein in 2012 to omit his prior child sexual abuse conviction and previous visa denial on a China visa application, recommending he apply through the Chinese embassy in Paris and “not tick the boxes” referencing criminal charges. The documents also detail discussions between Stern and Epstein about potential business ventures in Asia that could involve Andrew, including plans to use Stern’s firm, Asia Gateway, to attract Chinese investment to the UK, with references to leveraging the royal’s “aura and access.”
Newly released Justice Department files show that Steve Bannon communicated with Jeffrey Epstein in 2018 and 2019 about efforts to 
undermine Pope Francis, right, with Bannon writing that he would “take down” the pontiff and discussing broader opposition to figures including the EU and China. The messages suggest Epstein engaged with Bannon as the former Trump adviser worked to build a nationalist-populist movement in Europe and explored turning a controversial book critical of the Vatican into a film project, though it is unclear how serious that proposal was. Full file here.
Thomas Massie made clear that he was not “suicidal” as his office gets significant new threats following his push to release the Epstein files:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) entered a partial shutdown after Congress failed to pass a funding bill, as the White House and Senate Democrats continue negotiations over changes to immigration enforcement following the fatal shooting of two American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis. Although DHS funding lapsed at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, most employees at agencies such as FEMA, TSA, and the Coast Guard will continue working without pay because their roles are considered essential.
The New York Times has confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to tech companies including Google, Meta, Reddit and Discord seeking identifying information behind anonymous social media accounts that track, criticize or publicize the locations of ICE agents, significantly expanding its use of subpoena powers without judicial approval and prompting legal challenges from civil liberties groups who argue the effort targets protected speech rather than criminal activity.
The Department of Homeland Security is now arguing in court that because of the government shutdown, it is not required to allow lawmakers into ICE facilities who visit unannounced.
NBC News is reporting that the Department of Homeland Security has no immediate plans to conduct new sweeping, city-specific immigration enforcement operations after ending its large-scale “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, which deployed more than 3,000 federal agents, led to thousands of arrests, and drew national scrutiny following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens.
At the Munich Security Conference, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, accusing him of ushering in an “age of authoritarianism,” weakening the transatlantic alliance and pursuing a nationalist agenda that includes support for Israel’s war in Gaza, the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and threats to annex Greenland.
President Donald Trump privately lashed out at Republican lawmakers who publicly condemned a racist video posted to his Truth Social account that depicted the Obamas as apes, questioning their loyalty and reportedly vowing political consequences, even as the White House eventually removed the video and blamed a staffer for posting it. Sources told CNN that Trump was particularly angry with Sen. Tim Scott and Sen. Katie Britt for criticizing the post, though both maintain strong support for the president, and the White House insists Trump remains the party’s leader.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleaded not guilty to federal charges stemming from his involvement in covering a Jan. 18 protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota, church, where demonstrators disrupted a service over allegations that a pastor worked with ICE; Lemon, who was arrested Jan. 30 and indicted alongside eight others, is charged with conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with worshippers’ rights.
Police activity intensified near the Tucson, Arizona, home of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “TODAY” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, who has been missing for two weeks since family members last saw her after dropping her off at her residence. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that law enforcement activity took place both in her immediate neighborhood and later at a residence about two miles away, though officials declined to provide detailed information at the FBI’s request.
The UK government, alongside France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, has formally concluded that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, left, was poisoned with epibatidine — a powerful neurotoxin found in South American dart frogs — and said it is “highly likely” the poisoning directly caused his death in a Siberian penal colony, blaming the Russian state as the only actor with the “means, motive and opportunity.”
The US military’s Southern Command carried out its second deadly strike in a week against an alleged drug-trafficking vessel, killing three suspected smugglers in the Caribbean, following an earlier strike in the Pacific that left two dead. The latest attack brings the reported total to at least 133 deaths across 39 boat strikes, most of which have occurred in the Pacific, as the Pentagon frames the operations as part of a campaign against “narco-terrorism.”
New York Times, Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren, Christina Jewett, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Proponents of vaccines warn that the efforts will further dismantle the immunization infrastructure and lead to more outbreaks of disease.
Longtime allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, have launched a new effort to repeal laws that for decades have required children to be vaccinated against measles, polio and other diseases before they enter day care or kindergarten.
A newly formed coalition of vaccine activists is targeting laws that are considered the linchpin of protection from deadly diseases. States have long mandated childhood immunizations before children can start day care or school, though some exemptions are available.
“What we need to do is freaking burst the dam open,” Leslie Manookian, the backer of a law that banned medical mandates in Idaho, told supporters on a recent call. “And that is what this year is all about, bursting the dam open in the states where we think it can happen first.”
Ms. Manookian is a leader of the Medical Freedom Act Coalition, a new umbrella group of at least 15 nonprofit organizations advocating an end to state laws that codify what they call medical mandates, which largely pertain to vaccines.
So far, bills have been introduced in at least nine states that would eliminate all or nearly all school requirements, including Democratic states like New York where there is no chance of passage, to states such as New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa and Idaho where the proposals have gained some traction.
Many vaccine proponents view the state-level push as a second stage in the dismantling of the nation’s vaccine infrastructure, building on Mr. Kennedy’s significant reduction of federally recommended vaccines.
While not entirely new, the strategy demonstrates a sophisticated grasp of how to try to unravel more than 100 years of progress in protecting children from deadly pathogens, said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law professor emerita at George Washington University and former Clinton administration health official.
“They’re drunk on their apparent power, because they have one of their own sitting in the secretarial office of H.H.S.,” Ms. Rosenbaum said, referring to Mr. Kennedy’s position at the Department of Health and Human Services. “They think this is the time for them to go for broke and just simply make the default no requirements at all.”
Groups in the new coalition include Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit that Mr. Kennedy co-founded, and two others created to support his MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, initiative. One of them, the MAHA Institute, works on state policy and said it is hiring people to support the agenda.
Mr. Kennedy’s retreat from longstanding federal vaccine advice has prompted a flurry of activity at the state level. As his policies take hold, some Democratic leaning states have created their own alliances to reject the new federal vaccine guidance, while some Republican-led states have moved to enshrine it.How Are Health Care Costs Affecting You?
At a Heritage Foundation event featuring Mr. Kennedy this month, Kim Mack Rosenberg, general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said a high priority would be undoing state requirements.
“Ultimately, the goal is to remove mandates,” Ms. Mack Rosenberg said.
“Particularly when you tie those mandates to school attendance, that creates an incredibly difficult situation for families,” she added.
Asked at an event in Tennessee earlier this month about the push to repeal school-entry requirements, Mr. Kennedy said he was not involved in the effort. But he added, “I believe in freedom of choice,” drawing applause from the audience. He said he supported allowing people to make vaccine decisions with their families and physicians.
Ms. Manookian said the coalition’s effort is meant to end what she considered coercion related to all medical interventions. “It’s about putting the power back in the hands of the individual,” she said in an interview.
Trump-appointed Federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson is shown at center, flanked by Apple CEO Timothy Cook at right, whom Ferguson threatened for not including enough conservative and pro-Trump news and commentary on the "Apple News" platform.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Trump’s FTC strong-arms Apple towards pumping out right-wing garbage as “news” as his war on free speech dramatically escalates, Staff and Wire Reports, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.)..
The Trump administration just opened a new front in its culture war — and this time, it’s coming for your iPhone.
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent a sharply worded letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, warning that Apple News could be violating federal consumer protection law if it’s “suppressing” conservative viewpoints.
Yes — the FTC is now floating legal action over news curation.Ferguson cited a study from the conservative Media Research Center claiming Apple News has promoted left-leaning outlets while allegedly sidelining conservative sources. He argued that if Apple’s content decisions contradict its terms of service or “reasonable consumer expectations,” it could run afoul of Section 5 of the FTC Act — the same law used to crack down on deceptive business practices.
Let’s be clear: the FTC is not accusing Apple of fraud — yet. But it is signaling that political “bias” could be treated as a consumer protection violation.That’s a stunning expansion of federal power.
The letter insists the agency isn’t acting as “speech police.”
But at the same time, it warns that ideological favoritism in a news feed could amount to a “material omission” if not disclosed.
In other words, if Apple’s algorithm doesn’t pass a political balance test, the government may investigate.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Under Trump-appointed leadership, federal agencies have increasingly leaned on regulatory tools to confront tech companies over perceived anti-conservative bias. Earlier this year, the FTC launched an inquiry into “tech censorship.”
The FCC even threatened broadcast licenses over late-night comedy.
Now Apple — one of the most powerful companies in the world — is in the crosshairs.
Supporters argue that consumers deserve transparency. Critics warn this is a dangerous precedent: using consumer law to pressure private platforms over editorial choices.
The First Amendment protects speech — including how companies curate it. Courts have long held that the government can’t dictate editorial decisions. But Ferguson’s letter makes clear the administration believes “reasonable expectations” could open a legal door.
Apple hasn’t responded publicly. but one thing is certain: the battle over who controls the digital public square just got a lot hotter.
More on Epstein Files, Cover-up, Reactions
A group of Jeffrey Epstein sex assault and trafficking survivors raise their hands to signal they’ve been ignored by Trump’s DOJ as Attorney General Pam Bondi, shown at right front wearing a gold crucifix as a neck ornament and backed by youthful Justice Department personnel seated to hear rear, refuses to look at the victims during a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 11, 2026. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt for AFP via Getty Images and Bluesky).
New York Times, Editorial: Bondi’s Incompetence Is the Latest Insult for Epstein’s Victims,The Editorial Board, Feb. 14, 2026. The hearing in the House Judiciary Committee room this week offered a grim tableau of the state of American justice.
Sitting in the gallery were victims of Jeffrey Epstein, women who have waited decades for clarity and accountability. Sitting before them was Attorney General Pam Bondi. When offered the opportunity to apologize to these women for the Department of Justice’s disastrous handling of the Epstein files, Ms. Bondi didn’t just decline; she sneered. Instead, she demanded that Democrats apologize to President Trump.
She proceeded to subject committee members from both parties to schoolyard taunts. She called the ranking member a “washed-up, loser lawyer.” She derided Thomas Massie — a Kentucky Republican who helped force the release of the Epstein documents after Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi had kept them hidden — as a “failed politician.” And at one point, in a bizarre non sequitur, she responded to a question she did not like by boasting that the Dow Jones industrial average had surpassed 50,000 points.
Ms. Bondi’s performance was more than just political theater. It was a final indignity in a process that has victimized Mr. Epstein’s victims all over again. Under the guise of transparency, the Justice Department has managed to expose the victims to further humiliation while shielding the powerful behind a wall of redactions.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
The department’s release of these files has been dominated by incompetence. Ms. Bondi has long had the authority to make them public, but she spent months refusing and yielded only after Congress forced her hand. Her department was then tasked with a clear mandate: release the information while protecting the victims’ privacy, national security and active investigations. Instead, in a grotesque failure, the D.O.J. uploaded dozens of unredacted images to its website, including nude photographs of young women and possibly teenagers. As Annie Farmer, a survivor who testified against Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s partner and associate, noted, it is “hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims.” Ms. Bondi’s department shattered the trust of women who had already been betrayed by the legal system once before.
Yet observe the Justice Department’s selective efficiency: While it was careless with the dignity of survivors, it has been more fastidious about protecting the reputations of some members of the elite. Mr. Massie and Representative Ro Khanna, the Californian who has also been central to the release of the documents, have reviewed the unredacted files, and they report that nearly 80 percent of the material remains hidden, including the identities of six wealthy, powerful men. The Justice Department has not even offered a convincing public explanation for these redactions. The Trump administration’s history of disingenuousness around the Epstein files — and its use of the Justice Department to protect political allies and investigate perceived enemies — offers ample reason to be skeptical. This appears to be a weaponized document dump disguised as a reckoning.
A close reading of the released emails suggests that what is being protected is the comfort of a class of people who believed they were untouchable. The files released reveal a merito-aristocracy that traded favors, influence and access. They depict a transactional world where Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel for Barack Obama, could joke with a registered sex offender, strategize about her career prospects and accept gifts of designer bags. Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s commerce secretary, claimed he “barely had anything to do” with Mr. Epstein but in fact visited his private island. We read of elites seeking entry to golf clubs, advice on dating, introductions to celebrities and college admission for their children. 
Occupy Democrats, “I FELT LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT!” Unearthed BBC documentary footage shows models describing Trump’s creepy “sex slave ring”-vibed parties! Staff and wire reports, Feb.14, 2026. The freshly resurfaced accounts expose Donald Trump’s creepy obsession with teen models at parties in the ‘80s and ‘90s parties, another damning piece in the alleged rapist and pedophile’s predator puzzle.
Barbara Pilling was a young model in New York who first saw Donald Trump at a party in the late ‘80s. She’s never spoken publicly about it until she told the BBC in a 2018 investigation.
“He asked ‘How old are you?’ and I said, ‘17’. He goes, ‘Oh, great. So you're not too old, not too young’.”
When Heather Braden saw Donald Trump at model parties in the ‘90s, she was surprised that at 23 she seemed the oldest woman there. “At one particular party, there were four men and probably 50 models. I felt like I could have been very well being auctioned off in some sort of a sex slave ring. I felt like a piece of meat in a meat market.”
These chilling first-hand accounts from former Elite models paint these sordid soirees as a magnet for underage exploitation, with middle-aged Trump approvingly eyeing 17-year-olds, while parties overflowed with young women (some as young as 14, reports say) and a handful of powerful, perverse men.
If all this, like Epstein ties, pageant walk-ins on teens, “grab ‘em” boasts don’t scream PATTERN, nothing does.
We demand the truth.
Only a full investigation into these predator playgrounds, release of the unredacted Epstein files, subpoenaed guest lists, security footage, and every witness, will expose this repeated alleged child exploitation and hold the pedo-in-chief accountable.
New York Times, Dubai Ports Boss Resigns Amid Fallout From Epstein Files, Abdi Latif Dahir, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem was credited with turning the state-backed DP World into a global logistics powerhouse. He was recently identified in correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein.
The head of the Dubai-based ports giant DP World resigned on Friday, the company said, amid mounting scrutiny of his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a notable business figure in the Middle East, was named this week in a trove of files related to Mr. Epstein that was released by the Justice Department.
In a statement, DP World announced the appointment of a new group chairman and a new chief executive, positions that were held by Mr. bin Sulayem. He was widely credited with transforming DP World — which is owned by the government of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates — from a regional ports and terminals operator into a global logistics powerhouse.
Mr. bin Sulayem could not be reached for comment. DP World did not immediately respond to questions about the resignation.
Correspondence between Mr. Epstein and Mr. bin Sulayem surfaced last year in documents showing the disgraced financier’s far-reaching network of influential figures across politics, finance and academia.
Documents released in January offered further insight into their relationship, including apparent attempts by the two men to arrange business opportunities for each other and how they exchanged messages about women.
In a 2009 email, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. bin Sulayem, “Where are you? are you ok , I loved the torture video.” It was unclear which video he referred to.
When the documents were first released, the Emirati executive’s name was redacted, but he was identified on Wednesday during a House hearing on the Epstein files.
The files also indicate that the two men maintained a close association for years after Mr. Epstein’s 2008 conviction on charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
“All I know for sure,” Mr. Epstein wrote in an email in 2013, “is that you are one of my most trusted friends.”
Mr. bin Sulayem wrote back thanking Mr. Epstein and made reference to “a fresh 100% female Russian at my yacht.”ImageTwo men stand in a modern kitchen. One is stirring food in a shiny metal bowl.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, Repulican of Kentucky, a key figure in exposing sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's relationships with such global financiers as Sultan Sulayem, shown in an inset (Photo grahic via investigator Sibel Edmonds)
Sibel Edmonds via Patreon, Investigative Report on Sultan’s Value for Epstein: “The” Cargo Business, Sibel Edmonds, Feb. 14, 2026. Last fall, my investigation of Kushner’s Satan Island Project with his UAE partner investors took me directly to Albania’s Cocaine and human-trafficking network. From there, I found myself with Epstein and his UAE network, and a big majority of Epstein’s trafficked victims who were from the Balkans and several Eastern European countries.
I began publishing my reports and podcasts on this series last December. I kept emphasizing one Epstein client and co-conspirator from the UAE. A criminal with a massive global ports and cargo business network linking the Balkans-Eastern Europe with the UAE, Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador: A strategic and common denominator for both cocaine and human trafficking around the world. Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem.
I kept pounding Sultan Sulayem's name as one of the top and key people, not only as Epstein’s client but also his valuable co-conspirators, with ports, transportation network, and hubs crucial for Epstein’s global child sex trafficking. All this was exposed before the recent select Epstein releases and the sham congressional hearings. Here’s a list of some of the reports in my series:
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the CEO of the mega trade and logistics company DP World, has resigned from his position after he was named in documents of Jeffrey Epstein, who referred to the Dubai businessman as a “close personal friend.”
Epstein and bin Sulayem appeared to have a decades-long relationship—often discussing lewd topics, including sex, intimate massages and escorts—with Epstein telling him in a 2013 email, “You are one of my most trusted friends in (every) sense of the word. You have never let me down.”
Pay attention to the relationship being described as decades-long. Based on information provided to me, the two were involved in the late 90s, and had get-togethers in Dubai, England, and the Balkans.
The UAE tycoon has longstanding business ties to President Donald Trump through Dubai’s state-owned real estate developer Nakheel, which he chaired and which signed a licensing agreement in 2008 to build Trump-branded properties in the emirate. Companies linked to bin Sulayem have intersected with Trump’s private business interests, including DP World’s sponsorship of the DP World Tour, which has hosted tournaments at Trump’s golf courses in Scotland. He has also commented on Trump’s trade policies, reflecting his proximity to global business networks connected to Trump’s administration and private enterprises.
Remember my expose on Sultan-Epstein's “Mini Dubai” Project? In 2014, they picked Albania’s Sazan Island as the best option to franchise Epstein’s Satan Island Operations. After Epstein was jailed, the project was pitched to Trump’s Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, who made the project a reality with the purchase of Albania’s Sazan Island.
The Miami Herald first reported that bin Sulayem was listed as the beneficial owner in Epstein’s acquisition of Great St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Epstein had struggled to purchase the island directly because of his criminal history, but completed the $22.5 million acquisition through companies tied to Sulayem’s name. Emails and records show Epstein sought Sulayem’s assistance in promoting plans to develop the island into a private resort, reflecting Epstein’s efforts to leverage relationships with powerful global executives to finance and commercialize his properties.
After Epstein picked Sazan Island as the best option for the Child Sex and Trafficking Operations center in Europe, Bin Sulayem went to Albania to pitch proposals:
DP World Chairman, HE Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, has met the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, to discuss areas of future cooperation and to strengthen the existing warm relations between Albania and the UAE. The Albanian Prime Minister welcomed the delegation from DP World and Dubai Customs, praising DP World’s expertise in developing and managing ports and marine terminals around the world and the role it plays in developing the communities in which it operates. He said this was a model to follow in the maritime sector.
…
“The country has been launching major reforms to encourage growth with foreign investors, provide employment for a young workforce and is promoting specific industries. It was a pleasure to share our experiences in these areas,” Bin Sulayem said. He praised the strong development in trade relations between Dubai and Albania, highlighting the fact that trade between Dubai and Albania grew 130 per cent in the first half of 2014 compared with 39 per cent in the same period of 2013.
Sultan’s DP World happens to own and manage the most strategic ports, cargo transport and warehouses in Colombia, where the cocaine operations are 80+% under the control of the Albanian Mafia.
At the crossroads of the Americas, DP World Colombia connects the country’s industrial base with global markets through advanced technology and integrated logistics. With high-speed operations, dependable marine services, and value-added solutions close to cargo, we keep your goods moving efficiently across Latin America and worldwide.
DP World locations across Colombia streamline supply chain operations through integrated air and ocean logistics that connect the country’s industrial base with global markets. By combining modern terminals, advanced technology, and value-added logistics solutions, we ensure fast, reliable cargo movement across Latin America and beyond.
Further, the Albanian mafia is Colombia’s top operator in transporting Colombian women and young girls for sex trafficking.
ICE, Colombian authorities rescue 55 sex trafficking victims, all minors
An international undercover law enforcement operation culminated Saturday with the arrests of 12 individuals involved in sex trafficking and the rescue of 55 sex trafficking victims, all minors.
The rescued victims are all Colombian minors, some as young as 11 years old. They are in the care of Bienestar Familiar (Colombia's Child Protective Services). Eighty-five percent of those rescued were females. Some of the victims were allegedly drugged with ecstasy and cocaine.During the takedown, one 11-year-old girl broke down in tears thanking the officials who rescued her. She was allegedly sold for $1,000 in U.S. currency since she was a virgin.
Here's another report on Colombia-Albania Sex Trafficking Network:
Albanian clans, specializing in human trafficking and heroin smuggling, capitalized on an alliance with the Calabrian mafia "to spread prostitutes on the streets of Milan and its region", he said.
Since branching into cocaine supply in the 2000s, the Albanian mafia has been well established in Latin America, he said. Maria, 38, is among a growing number of women drawn by international criminal networks into the Balkan nation from impoverished countries on the promise of lucrative sex work and a potential gateway to Europe. She is just one victim of a criminal web that spans continents.
Earlier this week, international police busted a "highly organised" network that exploited over 50 women similar to Maria, whose name AFP has changed to protect her.According to Europol, police arrested 17 alleged traffickers on Wednesday, who had brought women from Latin America to Albania and Croatia. The women were either trapped in illegal sex work in Albania or exploited in other European countries.
…
DP World has been very active in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. It has operated in Romania for over 20 years. It manages ports, transportation, and terminals in Serbia. It manages and invests in warehouses in Slovakia. In Poland, it has a large presence in the freight/transport sectors. Just like Cocaine, Human Trafficking on a mass scale requires warehousing and transportation.
And let’s not forget, Dubai happens to be the top center for Human Traffickers’ money laundering, and the safest hideout spot when needed.
Dubai, the epicenter of the Camorra and Albanian mafia bosses wanted by SPAK/ Renowned Italian criminologist: They live in 'unbridled' luxury, here's why we can't extradite them
'Arab Investments', the global laundromat where Edi Rama launders the money of crime and corruption
Dubai's dark side targeted by international finance police
Money laundering: Drug lords are turning Tirana into Dubai
Per my previous report, nearly 80% of Epstein Network’s child trafficking victims were from the Balkans and Eastern Europe- an operation dating back to the late 90s. Also, important to note, is the fact that Women from Eastern Europe and the Balkans are among the majority of victims who have been, and continue to be, subjected to sex trafficking in the United Arab Emirates(mostly Dubai and Sharjah).
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem was far more than a client for Epstein. He was Epstein’s business partner in the lucrative business of trafficking. He was Epstein’s global ‘Cargo and Transportation’ guy for kidnapped and or recruited victims from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Colombia.
Currently, the coverage of Epstein and Sultan Sulayem’s relationship is limited to a few emails (torture video email) and meaningless photos—the style and depth of media coverage reeks of tabloid favor and repetitive stenography. No surprise there- this has been just the usual when it comes to the sorry state of journalism and media operations in the United States. As for the Justice Department’s strategic and selective document release, it’s nothing but blackout and omission when it comes to real incriminating Epstein documents. That too does not come as a surprise.
The real telling behavior and actions on pertinent Sultan Sulayem documents and known facts come from the US Congress, specifically, the House Judiciary Committee, and its sham hearings and PR. In my recent breaking story, I reported on how the House Judiciary Committee, despite its full knowledge, has secretly partnered with the Executive Branch to cover up the most damning documents and wiretaps on Epstein’s Network, Operations, and Coconspirators:
Millions of Epstein-Related Wiretap Evidence from the FBI Washington Field Office Withheld from the US Congress & Court(s)
Since the publication of the above report, I have confirmed that the House Judiciary Committee has refused to request that the FBI-WFO supply them with these documents and wiretaps. Further, despite dozens of phone calls and attempts, Rep. Thomas Massie and his office have refused to establish contact with the FBI insiders (To-Be Whistleblowers) and receive a briefing on these wiretap files dating back to late 1996. I’ve been told of a hushed deal between Trump Admin officials and certain House Judiciary Committee members heading the Epstein Investigations. It is due to this agreement (deal) that we have NOT heard about Epstein’s international Travels (1997-2003), Epstein’s Balkans and Eastern European Sex Trafficking Operations and Network, and his victims from the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Sham. That’s what the public has been witnessing. A sham tabloid hearing. A sham congressional investigation. A sham Documents Release.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: India, South Africa, Brazil and Epstein fallout, Wayne Madsen, left, Feb. 16, 2026. China is the only BRICS nation not implicated thus far in Epstein scandal.
Four of the five BRICS core partners — Brazil, India, South Africa, and Russia — are dealing with the fallout from the Epstein files. In India, opposition parties are demanding the resignation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri over his close links to international underage sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. On February 13, opposition MPs staged a walkout from parliament after demanding that Puri resign. Indian National Congress (INC) Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi stated that Puri’s friendship with Epstein, referenced in the released Epstein files, has been verified.
Gandhi said, “There is a businessman Anil Ambani, I want to ask why is he not in jail? The reason is that his name is in the Epstein Files. I would also like to ask Hardeep Puri, who introduced him to Epstein. I know who introduced him, and Hardeep Puri knows who introduced him.” Ambani is the billionaire chairman of Reliance Group and is a major donor to Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Gandhi held open the possibility that Modi is being blackmailed by the Trump administration over his party’s links to Epstein, stating, “There is direct pressure on the Prime Minister. The main thing is that no PM would do this in a normal situation. In a normal situation, no PM would do what has happened in terms of data, farmers, energy security, and defense. Someone would do this only when there is a certain grip on them.”
Puri acknowledged that he had met Epstein “several times” while serving as India’s ambassador to the UN in New York, but only in a “professional capacity.” Another INC leader, Pawan Khera, picked apart Puri’s defense of his interactions with Epstein, questioning why Puri referred to Epstein as a “friend” in a 2014 email and sought “advice” from Epstein. Khera also slammed Puri for trivializing Epstein’s crime as merely “soliciting favors of a woman who was underage.”
So far, Modi is defending Puri, claiming that there is no evidence of wrongdoing. The situation is similar to Trump’s defense of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is also under pressure to resign over lying about his close friendship of and business ties to Epstein.
There are also demands in Brazil for an investigation of former President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right friend of Trump who was convicted of launching an insurrection in 2022 after losing the presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence, is praised in a 2018 email from Epstein to Steve Bannon. Epstein wrote, “Bolsonaro mudou o jogo . . . MASSIVO.” (“Bolsonaro changed the game . . . MASSIVE.”). Epstein also wrote: “Bolsonaro é o cara.” (“Bolsonaro is the guy.”), adding, “No refugee wants to enter. Brussels isn’t telling him what to do. He just needs to reactivate the economy. MASSIVELY.” Epstein and Bannon agreed that Bolsonaro was part of a broader far‑right political realignment.
The Epstein files have also turned into a political headache for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The Epstein files have revealed that Ramaphosa’s African National Congress predecessor, Jacob Zuma, was a guest at an intimate March 2010 London Ritz Hotel dinner arranged by Epstein and his associate, Mark Lloyd. The dinner was also attended by a Russian model named “Vera.” Zuma was the incumbent president at the time. The dinner followed Zuma’s final official event at South Africa House in London.
The Jacob Zuma Foundation has strongly rejected any relationship with Epstein. It said reports on the dinner are “speculative narrative‑building disguised as investigative journalism.” Categorical denials have become a hallmark for those implicated by the released files in Epstein’s circle of businessmen, academics, politicians, and celebrities.
Vladimir Putin’s name appears over a thousand times in the Epstein files. Without a functioning independent media in Russia, there is little that Russia’s opposition can do to expose the Putin-Epstein links. The released files show that Epstein attempted to arrange a meeting with Putin as early as 2013. Epstein lobbied high‑level contacts to arrange an introduction with Putin. Epstein wrote to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak about using Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland, now criminally charged with corruption in Norway, as an intermediary. Epstein wanted any meeting with Putin to last “a minimum of two to three hours.”
The files show Epstein pitching himself as someone who could explain U.S. political dynamics to Putin, especially the rise of Donald Trump. Epstein also sought to facilitate Western investment in Russia. Although the Kremlin has dismissed any connection to Epstein, the government of Poland has announced an investigation into Russia–Epstein links.
The Epstein files contain a number of references to Russian young women and girls, as well as Russian modeling agencies, including Shtorm in Krasnodar. There are indications in the Epstein files that he did maintain relationships with individuals close to Russian intelligence, including the FSB (Federal Security Service). Sergei Belyakov, a former deputy minister of economic development and graduate of the FSB Academy in Moscow. In 2015, Epstein contacted Belyakov asking for help in collecting information on a Russian woman who was operating from the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. Epstein claimed that the Russian woman was blackmailing and extorting his business colleagues. Using his FSB contacts, Belyakov informed Epstein that the woman in question was in the “sex and escort” business. Belyakov later became the chairman at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a Russian rival to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Epstein arranged for Belyakov to meet billionaire businessmen Peter Thiel and Hyatt Corporation heir Thomas Pritzker. The Four Seasons woman later became an FBI informant on Epstein’s trafficking network. She claimed that she had been trafficked from Russia by convicted sexual assaulter Harvey Weinstein and Leon Black, chairman of Apollo Global Management. 57. 57th Street 🇺🇸 Four Seasons New ...
As far as the fifth BRICS partner — China — is involved, Xi Jinping is only mentioned with regard to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew. The files show Andrew met Xi formally in 2016 and 2018. Epstein tried to leverage Andrew’s China ties for business introductions, however, there is no evidence that Epstein was ever successful in meeting or establishing contact with Xi.
CNN, Steve Bannon courted Epstein in his efforts to ‘take down’ Pope Francis, Christopher Lamb, Feb. 14, 2026. Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.
Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.
Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.
“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”
Pope Francis was a significant obstacle to Bannon’s brand of nationalist populism. In 2018, the former Trump aide described Francis to The Spectator as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of siding with “globalist elites” and, according to “SourceMaterial,” urged Matteo Salvini, now Italy’s deputy prime minister, to “attack” the pontiff. For his part, Salvini has used Christian iconography and language when pursuing his anti-immigrant agenda.
Rome and the Vatican have been important for Bannon. He set up a Rome bureau when he ran Breitbart News and has been involved in trying to establish a political training “gladiator school” to defend Judaeo-Christian values not far from the Eternal City.
The recently released DOJ files reveal Bannon messaged Epstein on several occasions in his efforts to undermine the late pope.
In his messages with Epstein, Bannon references “In the Closet of the Vatican,” a 2019 book by French journalist Frédéric Martel that lifted a lid on secrecy and hypocrisy at high levels of the church. Martel created a storm with his book by claiming 80% of the clergy working in the Vatican are gay, while exploring how they keep their sexuality secret.
The whole question of homosexuality in the church has been a lightning rod for some conservatives, who see it as evidence of a deeper, systemic crisis in the church, with some linking it to the wider sexual abuse scandals. Most experts and researchers view any conflating of sexual orientation with abuse as scientifically inaccurate.
Bannon showed an interest in turning Martel’s book into a film after meeting the author in Paris at a five-star hotel. In the messages, Bannon appears to suggest that Epstein could be the film’s executive producer. “You are now exec producer of ‘ITCOTV’ (In the closet of the Vatican),” Bannon wrote.
It is not clear how serious the proposal from Bannon to Epstein was, and, in the exchange, Epstein doesn’t mention the offer and asks about Bannon filming Noam Chomsky, the philosopher and public intellectual. Martel said when he met Bannon at the Hotel Le Bristol he told him that he could not agree to any film deal as his publishers controlled the film rights and had already signed a deal with another corporation. He told CNN that he thinks Bannon wanted to “instrumentalize” the book in his efforts against Pope Francis.Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein in a handout image from the estate of the late financier and convicted sex offender, released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in Washington, DC, on December 12, 2025.
Silicon Valley financier John Brockman, left, portrayed in a photo collage with his friend Jeffrey Epstein and their email exchange about a party featuring what were described as attractive girls.
SFGate, Man who held 'Billionaires' Dinner' invited Epstein, Musk, Zuckerberg to Napa, Ariana Bindman, News Features Reporter, Feb. 10, 2026. The event brought together influential figures in tech, science and media.
In the summer of 2010, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and some of the most powerful tech executives in the world were invited to gather in the rolling hills of Napa as part of an exclusive retreat that discussed proteomics, a niche scientific field adjacent to the study of genetics.
The event, which was scheduled to take place in St. Helena, was called “EDGE Master Break” and hosted by John Brockman, a prominent science writer who established an esoteric nonprofit called Edge.org. Danny Hillis, an entrepreneur, was scheduled to appear that year, along with author Stewart Brand. The invitees included Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin and several other high-profile guests, documents released by the Justice Department as part of the Epstein files show. Though it’s not clear whether Epstein attended the 2010 event, he did end up meeting with some of its invitees eventually; he emailed himself a photo of Musk, Zuckerberg and several other guests dining together in 2015.
Since 1999, Edge has hosted several “Billionaires’ Dinner” events, which brought together influential figures in tech, science and media. Photos from the 2010 Billionaires’ Dinner include guests like Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Arianna Huffington. Brockman, Edge’s founder, compared the organization to a 17th century precursor to the Royal Society, describing it as a gathering place for the world’s most “sophisticated minds.” That year, the tech CEOs were scheduled to discuss fusion, democracy and proteomics, an emerging field of study that analyzes protein structures and functions in living organisms, potentially decoding the mysteries of biology as we know it.
Emails show that Brockman maintained consistent contact with Epstein long after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008.
According to a 2018 email, Epstein promised to send Brockman $60,000 but gave him only $25,000. “He is hoping it was just an error,” the redacted email to Richard Kahn, Epstein’s former accountant, says. Brockman’s name appears over 2,000 times in the Epstein files database, and it’s still unclear what the money was used for and why.
New York Times, The Mutually Beneficial Ties Between Jeffrey Epstein and ‘Mr. Human Rights,’ Lynsey Chutel and Henrik Pryser Libell, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who led the Nobel Committee, promised influence, and the disgraced financier had gifts to give, new emails show.
One owned apartments in New York and Paris, and a private island in the Caribbean, acquired through financial wizardry and a fat Rolodex of politicians and investors.
The other handed out the Nobel Peace Prize, governed Norway and then led the Council of Europe, all while amassing the sort of diplomatic stature that gave him access to world leaders like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Together, Jeffrey Epstein and Thorbjorn Jagland, right, built a relationship that was beneficial to each other. A recently released tranche of emails reveals how friendly, and transactional, that relationship was, even after Mr. Epstein became a convicted sex offender and Mr. Jagland a champion of gender rights.
The new revelations have stunned Norway, a society that has prided itself on the integrity of its officials, and they could lead to a steep fall from grace for one Europe’s most prominent diplomatic figures.
On Thursday, the Norwegian police charged Mr. Jagland with “gross corruption” over his relationship with Mr. Epstein. If convicted, the top diplomat could face up to 10 years in prison, according to Norwegian law.
Norway’s economic crimes unit is investigating whether Mr. Jagland misused his positions to receive gifts, travel and loans from Mr. Epstein. The charges came after an investigation and a search of Mr. Jagland’s home in Oslo and his properties on the coast and in the countryside in Norway. Until now, Mr. Jagland had diplomatic immunity, but on Wednesday, the European Council waived his protection at the request of the Norwegian authorities.
It is the first time in Norway since the end of World War II that a former prime minister has faced criminal charges. The scenes of police carrying computers and boxes of documents out of Mr. Jagland’s Oslo home left the country questioning how it had become caught up in a global scandal.
“One is money. The other is that contacts, influence and proximity give access to wide-ranging decisions,” Jonas Gahr Store, the current prime minister, told Norway’s national broadcaster, NRK, in comments published on Friday. “And if you have a position of trust, whether it is on behalf of the Norwegian state or in the Council of Europe, then there are very clear rules for such things.”
Mr. Jagland, 75, is among several prominent Norwegians named in the documents released by the United States Justice Department in recent weeks, exposing how Mr. Epstein courted decision makers in the wealthy oil-producing nation.
The others include Norway’s future queen, Crown Princess Mette-Marit; Borge Brende, Norway’s former foreign minister and current head of the World Economic Forum; and the high-flying diplomatic couple who inspired the Broadway play “Oslo,” Terje Rod-Larsen and Mona Juul. All, onetime friends of Mr. Epstein, are facing scandals that could upend their careers and their hard-earned international stature.
U.S. Courts, Crime, Free Press, Civil Rights, Religious Freedom
Emptywheel, Analysis: Pam Bondi’s Rap Sheet, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, 
Feb. 14, 2026.Pam Bondi’s DOJ has a longer rap sheet of misconduct than anything that journalists Don Lemon or Georgia Fort are described to have done in the indictment.
On Tuesday, February 10, Joe Thompson filed a notice of appearance to defend Don Lemon,left, against Klan and FACE Act charges in Minnesota. As I wrote here, until January 13, Thompson had been Minnesota’s top public corruption prosecutor and the number two in the US Attorney’s Office; he stepped down because of all the corrupt bullshit that Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dhillon were engaged in in Minnesota.
According to the motion for grand jury transcripts that Lemon and Georgia Fort (the other journalist charged in the case) filed yesterday, also on Tuesday, their attorneys had a video meeting with whoever plans to prosecute this case, at which DOJ opposed the bid to get transcripts.
On February 10, 2026, counsel for Mr. Lemon and Ms. Fort met and conferred by video with government counsel and advised of their intent to file this joint motion. The government, through counsel, indicated they oppose this motion.
That explains something I noticed during Pam Bondi’s testimony, which was the following day, February 11: each time she addressed the Don Lemon indictment in the hearing, even when responding to a planned, softball question from Jim Jordan (and more aggressively later in response to someone else), she described that she was limiting herself to the “four corners” of the indictment in a voice just as contemptuous as when she attacked Democrats.
Bondi had exercised no such discretion, limiting her statements to what appeared in public filings, before Wednesday’s hearing. In the interim, I suspected and this seems to confirm, she had been admonished for violating DOJ rules on extrajudicial statements, and she was just as pissy about that as she was about having to respond to questions from Democrats and Tom Massie.
It’s as if Bondi never imagined that DOJ’s conduct — her conduct, and especially, Harmeet Dhillon’s misconduct (who continues to violate DOJ rules on extrajudicial statements) — would be on trial as much as Don Lemon by bringing this indictment.Harmeet Dhillion’s big mouth
As I noted in that post on Thompson joining the team, it was always going to be the case that Abbe Lowell would demand grand jury transcripts 
to find out what a lawyer reporting to Harmeet, right, said to the grand jury to get it to indict after two judges refused to charge Lemon. It was always going to be the case that Harmeet’s big mouth, in particular, would become an issue.
And parts of this filing track what I expected, with a recitation of that process by which two judges asserted there was no probable cause, as well as a very abbreviated list of public comments from Trump, Bondi, Todd Blanche, and Harmeet, all in the period before Harmeet’s office got an indictment without any line prosecutor.
Perhaps most notably, President Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Harmeet Dhillon, sat for an extensive interview to discuss the matter, while the Eighth Circuit was considering the Emergency Petition for Mandamus. In relevant part, AAG Dhillon explained:
[Don Lemon] is not out of legal jeopardy, and he has lawyered up . . . . We’re gonna pursue this to the ends of the earth. 9 . . .
The attorney general herself was there on the ground and managing this process with my principal deputy, a brilliant young lawyer. And so you know we are not giving up the fight here at all[.]10 . . .
Abbe Lowell, his lawyer, had nothing to do with the magistrate judge refusing to sign off on arresting Don Lemon. So you have to understand that we at the Department of Justice, these days, in the most aggressive and important fights that we’re facing, we’re kind of out-manned two against one. You know, he didn’t even need a lawyer. The magistrate judge was kind of standing in as judge and jury.11
In yet another statement, AAG Dhillon denounced Mr. Lemon’s reporting as “pseudo journalism” unworthy of First Amendment protection.12
9 The DOJ WILL Continue Pushing For Criminal Charges Against Don Lemon, Reveals Harmeet Dhillon, The Megyn Kelly Show (Jan. 23, 2026), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i5xhWd2o2w, at 1:54–2:06.
10 Id. at 5:06–5:18.
11 Don Lemon’s Outrageous “N Word Treatment” Comment and Promises WAY More Arrests, w/ Harmeet Dhillon, The Megyn Kelly Show (Jan. 23, 2026), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylRbkf2umF8, at 1:57–2:23.
12 @AAGDhillon, X (Jan. 18, 2026, 7:21 PM), https://x.com/AAGDhillon/status/2013044166062936417.
The filing argues that includes one misstatement of the law from Harmeet.
AAG Dhillon, in interview discussing the indictment in this case, wholly mischaracterized the law as it relates to journalistic activities:
[I]n my opinion, in a private property house of God, church, synagogue, mosque, whatever, there is only one paramount First Amendment right there, and that’s the right to freely worship. The right to assemble, the right to protest, freedom of the press, etcetera—those have time, place, and manner restrictions on them—you can’t just do anything you want anywhere, even on public property. So here, it’s just like doing it in somebody’s house or in somebody’s business. It’s not protected by the law. If you wear the badge “journalist” or you claim, “I’ve got a microphone, I’m a journalist,” that is legally irrelevant in the statute. 18
Rather than being “legally irrelevant in the statute,” Congress expressly limited the FACE Act so that protected First Amendment expression cannot form the basis of criminal liability. The FACE Act’s rules of statutory construction in 18 U.S.C. § 248, subsection (d) are clear: “[n]othing in this section shall be construed” “to prohibit any expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) protected from legal prohibition by the First Amendment to the Constitution,” or “to create new remedies for interference with activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution, occurring outside a facility, regardless of the point of view expressed, or to limit any existing legal remedies for such interference.”
18 @AAGDhillon, X (Feb. 3, 2026), https://x.com/AAGDhillon/status/2018710583290315193, at 0:04–0:42 (emphasis added).
Nevertheless, there are several notable things about this filing.
The timing
Start with the timing. When Abbe Lowell, right, asked for grand jury transcripts in the Letitia James case, he did so on the same day as he submitted a 
motion to dismiss for outrageous government conduct (largely based on Ed Martin and Bill Pulte’s fishing expedition) and ten days after he filed a vindictive and selective prosecution challenge. Here, he (and Thompson and Fort’s attorneys, which include another former public corruption AUSA, Matthew Ebert, though he quit last summer) are starting with the grand jury transcripts. I would be shocked if they don’t eventually file some kind of motion to dismiss based on misconduct.
But first they’re going to attempt to learn how this case ever got charged.
The District
The filing references how things are normally done in the District, capital-D, more than eleven times. It starts in the first paragraph, which describes the circumstances of this prosecution as “never before seen in this District.” [my emphasis throughout this section]
Its conduct has been highly unusual, nakedly political, and inconsistent with practice in this District. Multiple judges considered the government’s “evidence” against Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and declined charges. Undeterred, the government took the prosecution President Trump demanded to a grand jury and obtained an indictment. These circumstances—never before seen in this District, and for good reason—raise serious concerns about the government’s presentation to the grand jury.
Several references describe DOJ’s treatment of Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz: his conclusion, following that of Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko, that there was no probable cause against Lemon, DOJ’s appeal of Micko’s decision to Schiltz and his survey of other judges about DOJ’s attempt to bully him into approving a complaint, followed by DOJ seeking a writ of mandamus without telling Schiltz. [The following are not in the order they appear in the filing.]
This case has an extraordinary and singular procedural history, which includes two judges (including the Chief Judge) in the District of Minnesota reaching the same conclusion: no probable cause existed to charge Mr. Lemon and Ms. Fort with the exact same charges as those brought in the indictment. See supra at 3–5.
[snip]
Unsatisfied, the government took the unprecedented step of asking the district court to review this Court’s no-probable-cause determination. Id., Pet. at 4. Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz was randomly assigned to the matter. See id., First Letter from Chief Judge Schiltz to Chief Judge Colloton (Jan. 23, 2026) (“First Letter”). Chief Judge Schiltz surveyed every judge in the District of Minnesota and all Chief Judges of the Eighth Circuit and failed to identify a single instance where a district court judge reviewed the decision of a magistrate judge to deny an arrest warrant. See id. at 2; Id., Second Letter from Chief Judge Schiltz at 1 (Jan. 23, 2026) (“Second Letter”).
[snip]
To the contrary, the record before this Court paints a picture of stunning and unremitting irregularity in this case. As described by Chief Judge Schiltz, when the government sought the extraordinary remedy of a writ of mandamus to order the District of Minnesota to issue arrest warrants the Court had previously rejected for lack of probable cause, Chief Judge Schiltz characterized the government’s request as “unheard of in our district or, as best I can tell, any other district in the Eighth Circuit.” First Letter at 2. Chief Judge Schiltz noted that the government had not even granted him “the courtesy to tell me that they would be filing such a petition, nor did the United States serve the petition on” him, and further that the arguments advanced by the government were tantamount to stating that the Court “must accept [its] as true because they said it, and they are the government.” Id. at 1, 3.
There’s the description of DOJ obtaining an indictment with no line prosecutor involvement anyway, along with a footnote cataloging all the times when DOJ’s Civil Rights Division partnered with MN USAO, during the past three Administrations, including the first Trump Administration.
The resulting two-count felony indictment, returned on January 29, does not bear the name of a single line prosecutor from this District’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. That is irregular and represents an unusual departure from the many years’ collaboration between the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Civil Rights Division throughout multiple administrations, particularly in civil rights cases and cases that are notable in the Minnesota community. 15
15 See, e.g., Press Release, Joint Statement of the United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota Andrew M. Luger, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Vanita Gupta and Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis Division of the FBI Richard T. Thornton (Nov. 17, 2015), https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/joint-statement-united-states-attorneydistrict-minnesota-andrew-m-luger-assistant; Press Release, Three Illinois Men Indicted On Federal Civil Rights And Hate Crime Violations In The Bombing Of Bloomington, Minnesota, Islamic Center (June 12, 2018), https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/threeillinois-men-indicted-federal-civil-rights-and-hate-crime-violations-bombing; Press Release, Justice Department Files Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Against Owners Of Minneapolis Area Rental Properties (Sept. 16, 2020), https://www.justice.gov/usaomn/pr/justice-department-files-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-against-owners-minneapolisarea-rental; Press Release, Three Former Minneapolis Police Officers Convicted of Federal Civil Rights Violations for Death of George Floyd (Feb. 24, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/three-former-minneapolis-police-officersconvicted-federal-civil-rights-violations-death; Press Release, Justice Department Finds Civil Rights Violations by the Minneapolis Police Department and the City of Minneapolis (June 16, 2023), https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-civilrights-violations-minneapolis-police-department-and-city; Press Release, Justice Department Secures Landmark Agreement with City of Anoka, Minnesota, to End Disability Discrimination in “Crime-Free” Housing Program (May 21, 2024), https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-landmark-agreementcity-anoka-minnesota-end-disability.
There’s a curious reference to this op-ed, written on February 10 (and so after the Lemon indictment) by two guys who quit as AUSAs years ago, referencing chatter they have been hearing about statements made to grand juries.
Two former federal prosecutors with nearly forty years’ combined experience in this District recently framed these mounting concerns about the grand jury process well, saying:
Unfortunately, recent actions by the DOJ demonstrate that the DOJ is wrongfully using the grand jury as a tool in its campaign of retribution and intimidation. We are particularly concerned about reports that federal prosecutors may be intentionally misrepresenting the correct legal standards and circumventing legal procedures, stripping the grand jury of its deliberative function . . . The American public must have confidence that the grand jury remains an independent body of citizens, not an “illegitimate” extension of the executive branch, seeking to gloss over unconstitutional actions by government actors. It is the duty of any person summoned to serve on a grand jury to preserve the grand jury’s independence by applying the law, not rubber-stamping government overreach.21
21 John Marti & Hank Shea, The last line of defense: We the people as a check on government power, Minn. Star Trib. (Feb. 10, 2026), https://www.startribune.com/constitution-democracy-founding-fathers-governmentamendment-jury/601579837.
If Marti and Shea have heard specific allegations, it’s likely that Thompson and Fort’s former AUSA attorney, Matthew Ebert, have too. Possibly even about this grand jury. That is, they may be starting with the grand jury transcripts because they have some very specific reason to do so.
The filing also described several local judgements ruling that DOJ had squandered any presumption of regularity, the normal rule that DOJ is entitled to great deference even when it makes bullshit claims.
Just last week, in this District, a court concluded that “Plaintiffs rebutted the ‘presumption of regularity’ that ordinarily attends public officials’ actions” in a case against federal agencies possessing evidence collected from the scene of Alex Pretti’s death. Minn. Bureau of Crim. Apprehension v. Noem et al., 2026 WL 266463, at *7 (D. Minn. Feb. 2, 2026). And in the wake of Operation Metro Surge, courts in this District have increasingly signaled that the government, under the direction of this Administration, is no longer operating in a manner entitled to any presumption of regularity.
And, finally, it described other irregular practices the Trump Administration has conducted in Minnesota.
More broadly, federal judges in this District are facing a growing onslaught of unlawful and irregular practices wrought by the senior levels of the federal government. See Patin Arevalo v. Bondi et al., No. 26-CV-0396-LMP-JFD, ECF 8 at 3 (D. Minn. Jan. 23, 2026) (“In what is fast becoming a disturbing trend, the Government has yet again violated (and is continuing to violate)” court orders.); Jin v. Noem et al., No. 25-CV-1391- PJS-DLM, ECF 13 at 6 (D. Minn. Apr. 17, 2025)
This focus on how things normally work in this District emphasizes the degree to which DOJ has invaded Minnesota to serve Trump’s demands, rather than guarding rule of law to serve Minnesotans.
It was two days after that meeting before a local attorney, Flavio De’ Abreu — a guy who prosecuted misdemeanors for Minneapolis — joined the team as a Special AUSA.The rap sheet
The last two references to the District appear in a 6-page rap sheet arguing that, “the government is not entitled to the presumption of regularity” that would normally shield grand jury transcripts.
That rap sheet includes:
A page reviewing the treatment of Chief Judge Schiltz and the misconduct of Trump, Bondi, Blanche, and Harmeet The ruling that MN had rebutted the FBI’s presumption of regularity in the wake of the Alex Pretti murder and Schiltz’s ruling cataloging all the rulings ICE ignored Four more MN judges’ rulings that the government has ignored rules A 2-page footnote replicating the list of orders identified in this Paul Friedman opinion An Oregon opinion rejecting one of Harmeet’s efforts to obtain state voting records William Fitzpatrick’s order granting Jim Comey access to his grand jury transcripts A Zia Faruqui order complaining about Jeanine Pirro’s gaming of Federal and Superior grand juries in DC
Several of these abuses point to Bondi’s weaponization of DOJ against Trump’s enemies; others condemn Harmeet’s misconduct, including the intervention in the Alex Pretti case that followed Harmeet’s intervention into the Renee Good case which led to Thompson’s resignation.
But they make it clear — in one of the first documents filed in this case — that Pam Bondi’s DOJ has a longer rap sheet of misconduct than anything that Lemon or Fort are described to have done in the indictment.
New York Times, A ‘Facebook Warrior’ Retreats After a Charlie Kirk Post Got Him Jailed, Rick Rojas, Feb. 14, 2026. Larry Bushart’s arrest in Tennessee was condemned as dangerous overreach. Nonetheless, he is no longer arguing about politics online. Larry Bushart was charged with recklessly threatening mass violence at a school, a felony offense and spent 37 days in jail before being released in October.
Not that long ago, Larry Bushart, a 61-year-old retired police officer, would somewhat jokingly describe himself as a warrior. His weapon was a keyboard and the trenches were on Facebook. Most days, he would spend hours posting political memes and jumping into comment threads, airing left-leaning views that were not widely shared in his patch of Tennessee.
In this war of his, he was not trying to win hearts and minds. The victory he sought was the sweet satisfaction that came from believing he had debated his adversaries into a corner. If they lashed out, used talking points that he considered misinformed or retreated, he had won.
When a gunman killed the conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last September, Mr. Bushart logged onto Facebook and leaped into the fray.
He was by no means alone. The killing set off an avalanche of social media commentary that, in turn, led to firings, resignations, broken friendships and a national discourse about the tone of political debate and the boundaries of free speech.
That said, Mr. Bushart was quite possibly the only person who was hauled off by police officers, charged with a felony and jailed on $2 million bail after weighing in on Mr. Kirk’s assassination. A sheriff in a county near his home said that a meme Mr. Bushart had reposted on a community Facebook page could be perceived as a violent threat.
“I played on Facebook,” he told an officer after he was taken into custody. “I threatened no one.”
He was released in October after 37 days, when the charge against him was dropped.
Mr. Bushart’s arrest and detention were widely condemned as overreach. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy organization, has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff on his behalf.
Meidas Touch Podcast, TOP DOJ Lawyer SUDDENLY RESIGNS as EVERYONE QUITS!! Ben Meiselas, Feb. 14, 2026. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas and Talking Feds host Harry Litman report on Donald Trump’s on Donald Trump’s top antitrust lawyer at the Department of Justice Gail Slater suddenly quitting as the entire anti-trust department is now gutted and as 8,000 other DOJ lawyers and staff have abruptly left.
More On U.S. Immigration, Detentions, Civil Rights
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 2, 2026 [ICE Operations Continue Despite Midnight Shutdown], Heather Cox Richardson, right, 
Feb. 14, 2026. At midnight tonight, most of the agencies and services in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will run out of funding, as popular fury over the violence and lawlessness of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol made Senate Democrats refuse to agree to fund DHS without reforms.
And yet, because the Republicans lavished money on ICE and Border Patrol in their July 2025 budget reconciliation bill—the one they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—those agencies will continue to operate. The 260,000 federal employees affected by the partial shutdown will come from other agencies in DHS, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), and the Coast Guard.
A measure to fund DHS passed the House by a majority vote, but in the Senate, the filibuster allows the Democrats, who are in the minority, to make demands before the measure can pass. On February 4, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sent Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) a letter outlining demands Democrats want incorporated into a measure to appropriate more funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Those demands are pretty straightforward. The Democrats want federal agents to enter private homes only with a judicial warrant (as was policy until the administration produced a secret memo saying that DHS officials themselves could sign off on raids, a decision that runs afoul of legal interpretations of the Fourth Amendment). They want agents to stop wearing masks and to have their names, agencies, and unique ID numbers visible on their uniforms, as law enforcement officers do. They want an end to racial profiling—that is, agents detaining individuals on the basis of their skin color, place of employment, or language—and to raids of so-called sensitive sites: medical facilities, schools, childcare facilities, churches, polling places, and courts.
They want agents to be required to have a reasonable policy for use of force and to be removed during an investigation if they violate it. They want federal agents to coordinate with local and state governments and for those governments to have jurisdiction over federal agents who break the law. They want DHS detention facilities to have the same standards as any detention facility and for detainees to have access to their lawyers. They want states to be able to sue if those conditions are not met, and they want Congress members to have unscheduled access to the centers to oversee them.
They want body cameras to be used for accountability but prohibited for gathering and storing information about protesters. And they want federal agents to have standardized uniforms like those of regular law enforcement, not paramilitaries.
As Schumer and Jeffries wrote, these are commonsense measures that protect Americans’ constitutional rights and ensure responsible law enforcement, and should apply to all federal activity even without Democrats demanding them. Democrats said White House offers were insufficient to address their concerns, although the White House did not make its position public. Before they left Washington yesterday for a ten-day break, senators refused to fund DHS in its current state.
Before the vote, administration officials appeared to try to soften the image of the federal agents who have terrorized Americans, arrested citizens and legal immigrants as well as undocumented immigrants, and shot people. Trump’s immigration advisor Tom Homan, who took over in Minneapolis after Border Patrol agents acting under the leadership of then-commander Greg Bovino shot and killed a second American citizen in that city, told reporters yesterday that that administration will end its surge of federal agents into Minneapolis, saying it had achieved “successful results” including 4,000 people arrested. Agents will remain in the city, he said, but the surge of thousands of agents will end. Torey Van Oot of Axios adds that more than a dozen federal prosecutors resigned after the Department of Justice declined to investigate the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and support for Trump’s handling of deportations cratered as Americans saw children tear-gassed and citizens shot.
Acting director of ICE Todd Lyons told the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday that the agency is training agents adequately before they go into the field and that once there, they are properly enforcing U.S. immigration laws. “And,” he added, “we are only getting started.”
But Lyons’s claim that federal agents are adequately trained was belied on Wednesday when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) abruptly closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas, for what it initially said would be ten days. Such a closure would shut down all flights below 18,000 feet, including medical helicopters, and is rare enough that the comparison media used was to the closure of airspace after 9/11. Confusion reigned, since no one had notified even the mayor of El Paso, a city of 700,000 people. Shortly afterward, the FAA reopened the airspace.
Administration officials immediately said the problem was drones flown into the area by drug cartels, though such drone flights are common. Then the media reported that the Defense Department had been testing out a new antidrone defense system without signoff from the FAA on danger to civilian planes. Then it turned out that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had permitted U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of Border Patrol, to use an antidrone laser near Fort Bliss, where detainees are housed at Camp East Montana. Someone then used the laser without informing the FAA. And then it turned out that the “drones” agents used the laser to shoot down were actually party balloons.
That the Defense Department is loaning a military weapon to CBP is itself concerning, but that a weapon powerful enough to cause the closure of El Paso’s airspace was in the hands of someone who mistook balloons for cartel drones is also a problem. So, too, of course, is that the administration’s initial impulse was to lie about what happened.
In his testimony, Lyons maintained that ICE is indeed prioritizing the removal of undocumented immigrants with records of violent crime, enabling Republicans to claim that Democrats who want to rein ICE in are deliberately endangering public safety. Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News reported this week that documents from DHS itself show that fewer than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested in Trump’s first year had either convictions or charges for violent crimes, with fewer than 2% either charged with or convicted of homicide or sexual assault.
Leah Feiger of Wired reported today that ICE has been quietly and aggressively expanding across the United States in the past months. It has bought or leased new facilities in nearly every state, many of them outside of the country’s largest cities, although they are concentrated in Texas. Feiger reports that DHS asked the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages government properties, to ignore competitive bidding rules and hide lease listings out of “national security concerns.”
Douglas MacMillan and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported today that ICE officials are planning to spend $38.3 billion to buy warehouses across the country. ICE will retrofit sixteen of them to become processing centers that can hold 1,000 to 1,500 detainees at a time before funneling them into eight megacenters that can hold up to 10,000 detainees each.
The administration has dramatically changed ICE policy to assert the right to imprison noncitizens until they are deported, even if they are applicants for asylum. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) made an unannounced oversight visit to the ICE field facility in Baltimore, Maryland, yesterday. He saw “60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets.” Mike Hixenbaugh at NBC News today narrated the life of a Russian family in the U.S. seeking asylum. For four months, they have been incarcerated at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where there is little medical care and the food is often spoiled with mold or worms.
In a statement, a spokesperson for DHS accused the media of “peddling hoaxes” about poor conditions in detention centers.
But DHS has lied about so many things that no one should take their words seriously. In January, when an ICE agent shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minneapolis, DHS claimed that he had driven away from a “targeted traffic stop,” crashed into a parked car, and run. When an ICE agent caught up with him and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, DHS said, the men had attacked the agent with a snow shovel and a broom handle. DHS said an agent had then fired on the men “to defend his life.” The men escaped but were later captured and charged with assault.
Yesterday, the Justice Department dropped the charges, saying “newly discovered evidence” suggested the allegations were false. Aljorna’s lawyer explained: “It is my understanding that the video surveillance evidence that captured the incident was materially inconsistent with the federal agent's claims of what happened.”
Last night, in a deep expose of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her advisor Corey Lewandowski, Wall Street Journal reporters Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Parti described a department in chaos. Noem and Lewandowski—who the authors say are having an affair and essentially run the department together—are using DHS for their own aggrandizement with an eye to elevating Noem to the presidency. The reporters detailed the focus on image, the decimation of ICE by firing or demoting 80% of the career field leadership that was in place when they arrived, the apparent steering of contracts to allies, and Noem and Lewandowski's excessive demands, including “a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country.” DHS is currently leasing the $70 million plane but is in the process of buying it.
DHS and the violence of federal agents have exacerbated rather than silenced opposition to the Trump administration, causing a crisis for it as the American people increasingly turn against it. Trump is adamant that Republicans must win the 2026 elections and so is calling for new election laws, claiming that Democrats can win elections only through the illegal votes of undocumented immigrants.
This ties DHS and American elections together. Today Noem told reporters in Arizona that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America, measure to secure U.S. elections, lying that noncitizens are voting for Democrats and thus enabling them to win elections. This is an old saw Republicans have used since 1994, the year after the Democrats passed the Motor Voter Act, and it has been repeatedly debunked. Indeed, when reporters asked for an example of noncitizen voting, she said she couldn’t point to a case but assumed it happened. The bill not only would require voters to show either a passport or a birth certificate with the name matching theirs in order to register, but would also require states to purge their voting rolls every month. The measure passed the House Wednesday but must overcome a filibuster to pass the Senate.
Jen Fifield of ProPublica and Zach Despart of ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported today that DHS has been using an electronic tool called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), previously used to check eligibility for public benefits, to find noncitizen voters in a database made up of confidential data from different government agencies. That information includes confidential data from the Social Security Administration, accessed by the Department of Government Efficiency. Republican secretaries of state in twenty-seven states have agreed to use SAVE to check their voter rolls.
But Fifield and Despart report that the system makes "persistent mistakes,” frequently assessing naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The system automatically refers those individuals to DHS for possible criminal investigation, and in certain states, individuals have had to prove their citizenship to be reinstated as voters. “This is not ready for prime time,” county clerk Brianna Lennon of Boone County, Missouri, told the reporters. “And I’m not going to risk the security and the constitutional rights of my voters for bad data.”
And so Trump clearly thinks he must take matters into his own hands. Although the Constitution is quite clear that it is Congress, and Congress alone, that can make laws, today his social media account announced he intends to change the nation’s voting laws all by himself. The account posted: “The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple—They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired. I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
Today, ICE protesters carried a giant U.S. Constitution through the streets of Minneapolis, demanding that federal agents honor the rights the Framers established with that foundational document.
Wall Street Journal, Investigation: Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS, Michelle Hackman, Josh 
Dawsey and Tarini Parti, Feb.13, 2026 (print ed.). DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and close adviser Corey Lewandowski (both shown above) face fire for confrontational immigration crackdown and self-promotional style; White House to wind down Minnesota operations.
Summary via AI: The Wall Street Journal published an extensive investigation into "constant chaos" within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Secretary Kristi Noem and her top advisor, Corey Lewandowski. The report's key revelations include:
The "Blanket" Incident: Lewandowski reportedly fired a Coast Guard pilot for failing to transfer Noem's favorite blanket during a plane switch, only to rehire him shortly after when no other pilots were available.A DHS spokesperson dismissed the claims as "salacious, baseless gossip," maintaining that the department is focused on national security. AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses
More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
New York Times, Trump Erased a Bedrock Climate Rule. Here Come the Lawsuits, Karen Zraick, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). The battle is expected to reach the Supreme Court, which is far more conservative today than it was when the measure was established.
When the Trump administration erased one of the nation’s bedrock scientific principles on climate change this week, it set up a legal battle that’s all but certain to hinge on the Supreme Court.
And not for the first time.
The scientific principle that was killed on Thursday, the endangerment finding, which found that greenhouse gases endanger public health by heating up the world, itself resulted from a Supreme Court decision 20 years ago. The court had ordered the government to study whether greenhouse gases harm human health, and, if so, to regulate them.
But today’s Supreme Court is far more conservative.
And that, experts say, could complicate the legal strategy for the environmental groups and Democratic-led states that are already lining up to sue the Trump administration. A negative ruling at the Supreme Court could hamstring future leaders seeking to reinstate climate regulations.
“If the rule survives all-but-certain legal challenges, we reiterate that it could reshape U.S. federal climate policy by pendulum-proofing the issue against a Democrat sweep” in the 2028 general elections, Clearview Energy Partners, a consulting firm, said on Friday.
But a senior lawyer at the Sierra Club said the group was willing to take the risk that a more conservative Supreme Court might eventually uphold the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to kill the endangerment finding.
“You can’t just stand by and let E.P.A. trash its own authority because you’re scared of a potentially negative ruling” from the Supreme Court, said Andres Restrepo, the lawyer for the Sierra Club. “I think that it’s a bigger risk to do nothing.”
It comes at a time when the role of the courts in U.S. environmental policy has been growing. The Trump administration’s full-speed-ahead push to cut environmental protections, combined with Republican control of Congress, has left the courts as one of the few remaining avenues for the administration’s opponents to fight back. And Republicans see several recent rulings limiting the power of federal agencies as bolstering their prospects in the courts.
“We looked at what the highest court in the land had said, and we used a very simple metric: If Congress didn’t authorize it, E.P.A. shouldn’t be doing it,” Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said at Thursday’s announcement at the White House.Editors’ PicksReturning Home to Mississippi, a Couple Looked for a Family HeadquartersWatch Margot Robbie Take a House Tour in ‘Wuthering Heights’Champagne, Concierges and Emergency Sand: How the Ultra-Rich Travel
The endangerment finding was the foundation of American climate regulations. It gave the government authority to regulate planet-warming emissions from cars, power plants and other sources in an effort to slow climate change and protect human health.
New York Times, New U.S. Boat Strike Kills 3 in the Caribbean, Carol Rosenberg, Feb. 14, 2026. The attacks since early November had specifically targeted suspected drug smuggling boats in the Pacific Ocean.
A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Friday, the U.S. Southern Command said, raising the death toll in the Trump administration’s five-month-old campaign against suspected drug smugglers at sea to 133.
The attack was the first known strike in the Caribbean Sea since early November and the 39th disclosed by the U.S. government in the campaign, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times.
The announcement on Friday was accompanied by an 11-second video clip that appeared to show a missile striking the middle of the boat as it traversed open waters, and destroying it.
The command said, citing unspecified intelligence, that the boat had been following “known drug-trafficking routes in the Caribbean” and that it was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.
Whatever its activities may have been, a broad array of legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said that the U.S. strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings — because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of engaging in criminal acts.
More Global News
New York Times, Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Said to Have Raised First Pledges for Gaza, Adam Rasgon and Natan Odenheimer, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). The United Arab Emirates and the United States have each committed more than $1 billion to President Trump’s new international initiative, officials said.
The United Arab Emirates has pledged over $1 billion to President Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza’s postwar future, according to two officials briefed on the board’s fund-raising efforts.
The United States has also committed more than $1 billion to the board’s projects in Gaza, the two officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the details of the pledges.
The total figure is a small fraction of the funding needed for Gaza. Yet it shows that the Emirates was interested in supporting the work of the new international body, even as several American allies have viewed it with skepticism.
It has been one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to Gaza since the start of the war, which began after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In recent months, the Emirates has also been laying the groundwork for temporary housing for Palestinians in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza that was decimated during the war, according to four people who have seen plans.
No country has yet publicly committed funds for the Board of Peace’s efforts in Gaza. An announcement could come at the group’s inaugural meeting on Feb. 19 in Washington.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
By being one of the first to pledge such a sum, the Emirates is also likely to be currying favor with the Trump administration. The Board of Peace’s founding charter says that member states that contribute more than $1 billion to the group within its first year will be granted permanent membership.
.The two officials said that a large proportion of the commitments had been earmarked for humanitarian projects in the territory and an international stabilization force to be deployed there, and that the board was pressing for more pledges.
They also said Kuwait was in discussions with the board about contributing. An official at the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the country had yet to make a decision.Editors’ PicksDo You Need a Prenup for Your Paint Colors?An Elephant Is Blind Without Its WhiskersI Had Buyer’s Remorse. It Almost Ended My Marriage.
The Emirati foreign ministry said in a statement that the country “remains committed to scaling up its humanitarian efforts to support Palestinians in Gaza and to advancing a durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.” It said it would do that in part through its membership on the Board of Peace.
Feb. 13
Top Stories
New York Times, Live Updates: German Leader Says International Order ‘No Longer Exists,’ Aurelien Breeden and Jim Tankersley, Feb. 13, 2026. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, criticized President Trump’s rapid reorientation of American foreign policy. He also warned that the U.S. could not “go it alone.”The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary, Epstein Fallout Explodes as World Leader Criminally Charged and Sultan Ousted, Aaron Parnas, right,Feb. 13, 2026. Kristi Noem Faces Bipartisan Resignation Calls. Feb. 13, 2026. In a ceremony at the White House yesterday, surrounded by coal industry leaders, lawmakers, and miners, President Donald J. Trump was presented with a trophy that calls him “the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal.”More On U.S. Immigration, Detentions, Civil Rights
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Feb. 13, 2026. Americans aren’t buying Trumpist gaslighting about the economy. More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
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New York Times, Live Updates: German Leader Says International Order ‘No Longer Exists,’ Aurelien Breeden and Jim Tankersley, Feb. 13, 2026. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, criticized President Trump’s rapid reorientation of American foreign policy. He also warned that the U.S. could not “go it alone.”
Here’s the latest.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany criticized President Trump’s rapid reorientation of American foreign policy, saying in Munich on Friday that the rules-based international order had collapsed. But he also extended an olive branch to Mr. Trump, switching to speaking English from German to address Americans as “friends” and warn that the United States could not “go it alone.”
“The international order based on rights and rules is currently being destroyed,” Mr. Merz said at the opening of Europe’s largest annual security conference. He added, “This order, as flawed as it has been even in its heyday, no longer exists in that form.”
Mr. Merz, left, suggested the Trump administration’s actions over the past year meant that the United States’ claim to global leadership “has been challenged, and possibly squandered.”
But Mr. Merz also criticized Europe for not doing enough to bolster its security and to grow its economies independently of America, and he insisted that the two needed to continue working together, including through NATO.
“In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” he said, speaking in English.
Mr. Merz’s speech at the Munich Security Conference came at a critical moment for the continent. Europe is still hurting from Mr. Trump’s relentless, blunt-force diplomacy and is wary of what to expect next. But many are also hoping to mend relations and to stabilize the trans-Atlantic relationship after a chaotic year.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the chairman of the conference, said in his opening remarks that he hoped the event would help build a “constructive trans-Atlantic reset.”
But, he asked, “does the Trump administration believe, truly believe, that it needs allies and partners?” He added: “If so — this is what we hope — is Washington actually prepared to treat allies as partners?”
In an aggressive speech at last year’s conference, Vice President JD Vance shocked attendees by castigating Europe’s migration policies and calling on its leaders to end the isolation of far-right parties across the continent.
Mr. Vance is not expected in Munich this year; nor is Mr. Trump. The highest-ranking American official set to attend the three-day conference is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, who is scheduled to speak on Saturday morning.
Elbridge Colby, the U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, suggested in Munich on Friday that 2025 was intended to “reframe” and “reorient” the trans-Atlantic relationship.
Now, he said, there is a “transition period” — away from the post-Cold War era, where Europe and the United States based their collaboration on shared values, and into one where it is based on shared interests.
“You can’t base an alliance on sentiment alone,” Mr. Colby said.
Here’s what else to know:
The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary, Epstein Fallout Explodes as World Leader Criminally Charged and Sultan Ousted, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 13, 2026. Kristi Noem Faces Bipartisan Resignation Calls.
The fallout from the Epstein files is intensifying as a world leader now faces criminal charges, a powerful Gulf executive has been forced out, and a top Wall Street lawyer has resigned. Accountability is moving across the globe, and I am working relentlessly to ensure that same scrutiny reaches those in the American government.
At the same time, serious questions are mounting around Kristi Noem and a senior aide after reports that a Coast Guard pilot was fired in what appears to have been an attempt to conceal a relationship described by insiders as far closer than previously acknowledged.
I am heading to New York for a day trip to film a television episode, but the news cycle does not pause. In the past 24 hours alone, the attacks over my Epstein reporting have escalated, including attempts to hack several of my social media accounts. That will not deter me. I will not stop. The truth, accountability, and justice matter too much. I answer to you and to the facts.
A Wall Street Journal investigation describes an unusually close dynamic between Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski—both married and publicly denying affair rumors—though colleagues say they make little effort to conceal their relationship inside DHS; the report recounts Lewandowski allegedly firing a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left on a plane (with the pilot later reinstated due to lack of alternatives), and claims that Noem closely monitored her television appearances relative to border official Tom Homan, berating staff if she felt overshadowed and insisting on maintaining greater media visibility.
Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, left, resigned after Justice Department documents revealed a yearslong, personal friendship with Jeffrey Epstein—including advising him on handling sex-crime allegations, exchanging intimate messages, and receiving gifts—contradicting prior claims that their relationship was strictly professional and prompting mounting internal and public pressure despite the firm’s initial defense of her.
Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem stepped down as CEO and chairman of Dubai-based logistics giant DP World after newly released U.S. Justice Department documents revealed explicit 2015 emails he sent to Jeffrey Epstein describing a sexual relationship with a young woman; the company announced that Yuvraj Narayan will serve as CEO and Essa Kazim as chairman as leadership changes take effect.
Norway’s former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been charged with aggravated corruption following a police investigation into alleged ties 
to Jeffrey Epstein, including scrutiny over gifts, travel and loans connected to his official roles; Jagland denies wrongdoing as authorities conduct searches and questioning, amid broader fallout in Norway involving members of the royal family over past Epstein contacts.
The fallout is growing from the Epstein files, and this morning, World Without Exploitation has launched this petition to send to members of Congress to take further action.
In 2016, one month before Trump’s inauguration, Epstein emails Bill Gates telling him “new administration people” were visiting the island.
Another horrific email from the Epstein files revealed:
The Department of Homeland Security is set to shut down as Congress left Washington without a funding deal, with Democrats blocking Republican proposals unless the White House agrees to stricter limits on ICE and immigration enforcement following the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota—while most frontline agencies like ICE and Border Patrol will continue operating and being paid due to prior funding, and negotiations remain ongoing but unresolved.
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have moved to dismiss felony assault charges with prejudice against two Venezuelan men accused of attacking an ICE officer—one of whom was shot in the leg—after newly discovered evidence and video testimony materially contradicted the officer’s account that he was assaulted with a shovel and broom.
The case, stemming from a January traffic stop and foot chase, had relied largely on the agent’s testimony, but inconsistencies revealed in court and lack of corroborating evidence prompted the Justice Department to seek dismissal, adding to growing scrutiny of recent immigration enforcement incidents.
President Trump refused to discipline any staffer or apologize after a racist video posted to his Truth Social account depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, dismissing the backlash as overblown, claiming he hadn’t watched the full clip before it was shared, and insisting the controversy was not a real issue despite bipartisan condemnation.
Trump’s approval rating is underwater today.
President Trump nominated hospitality executive Scott Socha, whose company previously sued over trademark rights to the name “Yosemite National Park,” to lead the National Park Service, drawing criticism from conservation groups who argue he lacks public service experience and represents corporate interests at a time of staffing cuts and political pressure on the agency.
The Trump administration reached a trade agreement with Taiwan in which Taipei will remove or reduce 99% of its tariff barriers and invest up to $250 billion in U.S. industries—particularly semiconductors and AI—while most Taiwanese exports to the U.S. will face a 15% tariff, signaling deepened economic ties ahead of Trump’s planned China visit and aimed at boosting U.S. chip manufacturing and reducing the trade imbalance.
An analysis of EPA records finds that under Trump (2025–2026), enforcement actions against major polluters have sharply declined— with far fewer consent decrees under key environmental laws—amid staffing cuts, increased political oversight, and a shift from punitive enforcement to voluntary compliance, raising concerns about increased pollution and reduced corporate accountability.
According to NBC News, Britain’s High Court ruled that the government acted unlawfully and disproportionately in designating the protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization after activists targeted a Royal Air Force base, finding the group’s activities did not meet the threshold for proscription—though the ban will temporarily remain in place pending appeal, even as thousands have been arrested under the designation.
The FDA declined to review Moderna’s new mRNA-based flu vaccine, citing concerns about the design of its clinical trial for older adults, but outside experts argue the move reflects a broader anti-vaccine stance within the Trump administration and warn it could deter future vaccine development.
Wayne Madsen Report, Ireland and Vatican pursuing Epstein perps, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 28 books and former Navy intelligence officer, Feb. 13, 2026. Only in the U.S. are the rich and powerful evading justice.
As the Trump regime ensures that rich and powerful Americans involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s global underage sex trafficking ring go unpunished, Ireland and Vatican City, two states that have had to deal with the scourge of pedophilia, are opening investigations of criminal activity involving Epstein perpetrators.
Irish opposition Labor Party MP Duncan Smith is calling on the government to “fully explore” the witness statements and emails in the Epstein 
files that reference Ireland, including one from a woman who claims she was sex trafficked to Ireland. Smith read into the Dáil the witness’s statement claiming that when she was 13, she was trafficked through Ireland for “politicians and notable men for the purposes of sex.” He argued that this alone requires immediate State action. Smith highlighted an email sent to Ghislaine Maxwell asking: “Are you going to send me the name and numbers of people to play with in Ireland?” Smith demanded that such material be investigated proactively and not ignored.
The Irish government has urged anyone in Ireland with knowledge of Ireland’s use as a location or transit point for Epstein’s trafficking victims to contact the Gardaí or national police. Vatican City is providing weight to the old adage to never piss off the Pope.
According to the Religion News Service out of Vatican City, a series of email exchanges between Epstein and Steve Bannon in 2018 and 2019 point to a plot to undermine Pope Francis I, right.
This has resulted in the Vatican Intelligence Service (Servizio di Intelligence Vaticano (SIV)) or The Entity (Il Entità) to alert trusted archbishops, bishops, priests, and nuncios (ambassadors) around the world to collect and forward to the Vatican evidence on ties between Epstein and Bannon and those still present in the Catholic Church hierarchy that were linked to the Epstein influence operations network who were involved with Bannon’s plot to overthrow the Francis papacy.Epstein and Bannon discussed using Catholic charities as entry points in order to finance a revolt against Francis.
Former Trump Campaign Manager Steve Bannon, left, and onetime close Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein during a meeting in an Epstein office recorded in a photo released by the U.S. Justice Department.
The Epstein-Bannon exchange indicated that Epstein may have agreed to be the executive producer of an anti-Francis documentary based on the 2019 book by French author Frédéric Martel titled, “In the Closet of the Vatican.”
In an email to Epstein, Bannon wrote that the documentary “Will take down Francis . . . The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU — come on brother.”
Bannon met Martel in the pricey penthouse suite of the Hôtel Bristol in Paris, where Bannon suggested the book be adapted to film. Bannon conspired with the far-right Dignitatis Humanae Institute to mount a conservative revolt against Francis.
Bannon’s anti-Francis cabal included Cardinal Raymond Burke, Vatican nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, and, covertly, ex-Pope Benedict XVI, who was forced to resign as Pope in 2013 over his involvement in a pedophile scandal. The Bannon clique issued a rare dubia — or challenge — against Francis’s liberal policies. Bannon continues to plot against Francis’s chosen successor, Pope Leo XIV, below, and the continuation of Francis’s liberal policies.
A cropped version of the official portrait of Pope Leo XIV, published by the Vatican on May 10, 2025.
Epstein was ambivalent about Vatican theological stances and more interested in using the sovereign status of Vatican City, in addition to Monaco, the advance the use of blockchain and digital currency as the monetary units of both states.
The Epstein files include a reference to an Italian cybersecurity specialist, dubbed “Epstein’s Hacker,” who may have possessed a Vatican passport. In other nations, governments are under pressure to initiate criminal investigations of alleged perpetrators named in the Epstein files. Germany’s reaction to the Epstein files has been focused almost entirely on Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, and the response has been 
institutional, reputational, and regulatory.
The recent release of the files has reignited criticism of Deutsche Bank’s long relationship with Epstein, who held around 40 accounts with the bank. German and international reporting emphasizes that Deutsche Bank managed a large portion of Epstein’s assets, allowed large cash withdrawals and unusual transactions, continued servicing some accounts even after his 2019 arrest, and only fully severed ties after July 2019.
Germany has not opened a new investigation in response to the files, although there are calls from the opposition Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) to do so. One party that continues to support Trump and others in his circle is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which, like Britain’s Reform Party, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s League, maintained their own links with Epstein, mostly via Bannon.
The major legal action involving Deutsche Bank remains the $75 million settlement Deutsche Bank paid to Epstein victims in the U.S., resolving claims that the bank knowingly facilitated Epstein’s trafficking operations, profited from the relationship, and ignored red flags and suspicious transactions.
Irene Mihalic, Bundestag spokesperson for the Greens, publicly criticized the German government’s “dangerous ignorance.” She demanded that the government proactively investigate whether German officials or citizens appear in the files and called for a systematic evaluation of the publicly available material.
Konstantin von Notz, deputy Leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, urged the government to determine whether German intelligence or security agencies were aware of Epstein’s networks. He also called for a thorough domestic inquiry and for German authorities to request further information from the U.S. if needed. Sergey Lagodinsky, the Greens’s Vice Chair in the European Parliament, advocated for a broader European level inquiry, emphasizing cross border crime, money laundering, and political influence.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) domestic policy spokesman Sebastian Fiedler commented on the geopolitical implications (Esptein’s Russia angle) but did not call for a formal investigation of that link as has been initiated in Poland. The SPD is the junior coalition partner of the governing Christian Democratic government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, left, is shown with U.S. Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, and Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Republican Congressman Thomas Massie exposes the secret dinner with Pam Bondi where he first realized that she was going to cover up the Epstein files, Staff and wire reports, Feb. 12-13, 2026. This woman's pro-pedophile legacy is now etched in stone....
"It really happened back at the DOJ when Pam Bondi invited Jim Jordan and all the other Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to come over for dinner," Massie stated in a newly resurfaced conversation with the "Free the People" podcast.
The congressman explained that the dinner even had Justice Department China that hadn't been used in ages because it had been decades since the DOJ had invited Congress to come and have a "cordial" dinner.
Clearly, the Trump administration was hoping to get Congress on board before they proceeded full speed with their total politicization and corruption of the DOJ.
"And before I went [to the dinner], it was actually my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, suggested— I said, 'Jim Jordan told us we each get to ask one question of Pam Bondi, that she'll take questions,'" said Massie.
"And I said, 'What do you think I should ask?'
And she said, ask her when the next phase of those binders is coming out."
"And I said, 'I'm not going to do that. This is a cordial dinner,'" Massie continued. "It's to kind of, to you know, associate names with faces and develop a basis for cordial correspondence and whatnot, as the administration goes on."
"But as the day got nearer, I decided that is what I should do, as I started looking at what wasn't getting released and she was making more and more statements in the public... And so I asked him, Jordan, I said, 'Do you care? I want to let you know, this is the question I want to ask her.'
And he said, 'You do you, Massie. I'm not going to tell you what to do.'"
When Massie arrived for the dinner, he was seated "very near" to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche."
And I chatted with them too, before we sat down," said Massie. "There were some other people who were there that I don't want to disparage by mentioning them, because they didn't have anything to do with the Epstein files.
In any case, I asked the question, I asked Pam Bondi, 'When could we expect to see the next tranche of these files?' And she told me that all that was left was child porn and it was really disgusting. And nobody wanted to see that kind of stuff."
"And, you know, if I were you, if I were a reporter, there would have been a follow up question," said Massie. "But this was a cordial dinner. And I just like, at that point, I realized she has no intention of ever releasing any more files. And so I had to go back and tell my girlfriend the next day, 'Guess what? She said there's nothing left.'"
"After having said there was, you know, tons of this stuff on her desk that she had found. So that was the seed that eventually germinated later that summer that became the Epstein Files Transparency Act," explained Massie.
As we know now, there was far more left in the files than just images of child sex abuse. Bondi is still hiding the names of many of Epstein's associates and co-conspirators.
At the time of that dinner, she still had not released a large trove of documents implicating Trump and other top administration officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
.Pam Bondi has lied about the Epstein files every step of the way because she decided that her duty is not to the truth or to the American people, but to Trump personally and the powerful men surrounding him. We cannot rest until the rest of the documents are released and everyone implicated in them is investigated and prosecuted.
Please ❤️ and share to thank Massie for speaking out!
Redacted documents showing email chains from Jeffrey Epstein released by the Justice Department (Associated Press photo by Jon Elswick).
New York Times, The Epstein Files and the Hidden World of an Unaccountable Elite, Robert Draper, Feb. 13, 2026 (print ed.). The search continues in the documents for ironclad criminal conduct, but the story of a sexual predator given a free ride by the ruling class has already emerged.
Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged.
In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex.
That story of impunity is all the more outrageous now in the midst of rising populist anger and ever-growing inequality. The Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends occurred over two decades that saw the decline of America’s manufacturing sector and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which millions of Americans lost their homes.
If Mr. Epstein’s goal was to build a wall of protection around his abuse by surrounding himself with the well connected, he failed in the end. But both before and after he was first prosecuted for abusing girls, his correspondence described a network of people whose high-flying lives belied the struggles of ordinary Americans. And at the center of that network was a sexual predator seemingly on top of the world.
“We’ve heard so much about the Epstein scandal over the past several years,” said Nicole Hemmer, a history professor at Vanderbilt University who writes frequently about political culture. “And yet people do seem shocked by the scope of elite complicity in his world. It’s a level of corruption that the public is now getting a full view of.”
In 2002, Mr. Epstein hosted former President Bill Clinton and the actor Kevin Spacey on a tour of African countries aboard his private jet.ImageJeffrey Epstein, wearing a white dress shirt and jeans, stands next to Bill Clinton, who is wearing a dark suit.Former President Bill Clinton’s name appears in the Epstein files.Credit...U.S. Department of Justice
His talent for entertaining attracted interest from one of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk, who emailed Mr. Epstein in 2012 to ask, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” (Mr. Musk has said on social media that he “had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island.”)
There was of course his friendship with Donald J. Trump.
And he dispensed favors to, and rubbed elbows with, Woody Allen; Noam Chomsky, the linguist and intellectual; Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel in the Clinton investigation; Kathryn Ruemmler, a former Obama White House counsel who on Thursday night resigned as general counsel of Goldman Sachs amid scrutiny of her ties to Mr. Epstein; Stephen K. Bannon, one of President Trump’s top political allies; Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru; the film producer Barry Josephson; Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard and former Treasury secretary; Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew; Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York; Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway; and a cavalcade of financial titans.ImageStephen K. Bannon sits across a desk from Jeffrey Epstein in an ornate, wood-paneled office.Stephen K. Bannon was among the powerful and well-connected people who associated with Mr. Epstein.Credit...U.S. Department of Justice
James E. Staley, who recently stepped down as the chief executive of Barclay’s in the wake of allegations involving his ties to Mr. Epstein, emailed Mr. Epstein in 2014 to suggest that upper-caste Americans like themselves were unlikely to ever face a populist uprising like the protests taking place in Brazil at the time.
Pointing to Super Bowl ads that year, Mr. Staley wrote: “Its all about hip blacks in hip cars with white women. The group that should be in the streets, has been bought off. By Jay-Z.”ImageA man in a dark suit and blue tie walks outside.James E. Staley stepped down as the chief executive of Barclay’s in the wake of allegations involving his ties to Mr. Epstein.Credit...Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
The shocking nature of some of the revelations, combined with the prominence and status of those in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, has done nothing to quiet the conspiracy theories that his behavior spawned and that both the right and the left have sought to weaponize for political advantage. If anything, the raft of new details has spiraled into feverish new speculation with little or no factual basis.
In 2014, Mr. Epstein received an email from an associate whose name has been redacted that said in full, “Thank you for a fun night … your littlest girl was a little naughty.” In another email, Mr. Epstein instructed a recipient whose name is also redacted to buy several sex toys, adding: “I want you to talk as nasty, vulgar, imaginative as you can … It will free your mind. Its like a mental sneeze.”
Mr. Epstein wrote to another undisclosed recipient in 2009, who was identified on Wednesday in a House hearing as Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a powerful Emirati businessman: “where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video.”
Lacking context, such messages are subject to speculation about their meaning and provide fresh opportunities for those intent on drawing attention to themselves and their views.
An assistant to Mr. Epstein wrote to him in 2011: “I ordered sweet young coconuts from Thailand for you and they just arrived … just so you don’t have to drink juices from old hairy things.”
Underscoring how even the apparently mundane can be stretched into the potentially conspiratorial, frequent references to pizza have given fresh life to the discredited 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which prominent Democrats were said to be torturing and raping children in the basement of a Washington restaurant. That the places and characters in Pizzagate are almost entirely different from the ones appearing in the Epstein files has not stopped some from insisting that there is a connection.
In an email exchange in 2018, Mr. Epstein’s urologist, Dr. Harry Fisch, informed him that “You have refills available” and that “after you use them, wash your hands and lets go get pizza and grape soda” — a peculiar combination used in several emails between the two men that, Dr. Fisch wrote, “No one else can understand.” (Dr. Fisch did not respond to an email request for comment.)
“It was this exchange,” the right wing podcaster Tucker Carlson said on his show on Friday, “that made us think, ‘Whoa, wait a second. Maybe the long-debunked conspiracy about Pizzagate wasn’t actually debunked, and maybe someone should take a closer look at this.’”
Ms. Hemmer, the Vanderbilt professor, said that the shadowy nature of Mr. Epstein’s life, coupled with the Trump administration’s haphazard production of the documents, was “bound to beef up a ton of conspiracy theories.”
Newly released video logs of the prison wing where Mr. Epstein was found dead, for example, suggest that a human figure not previously accounted for in the records was moving in the general direction of Mr. Epstein’s cell late that evening.
This has led some internet sleuths to conclude that Mr. Epstein, whose death in federal custody in 2019 was ruled a suicide, might have been killed. Others have speculated that he might not be dead at all, given that Mr. Epstein testified in a deposition in 2017 that he had a barbed-wire tattoo on his left biceps, but no such tattoo is visible in the recently released photo of his body.
Representative Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who worked with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican congresswoman, and Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, to pass legislation compelling the release of the documents, dismissed the conspiracy theories.
But, he said in an interview, “we must ask ourselves how we have produced an elite that is so immature, reckless and arrogant.”
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 12, 2026 [Gutting Climate Change, Environmental Protections], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 13, 2026. In a ceremony at the White House yesterday, surrounded by coal industry leaders, lawmakers, and miners, President Donald J. Trump was presented with a trophy that calls him “the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal.”
At the event, Trump signed an executive order directing the Defense Department to buy billions of dollars of power produced by coal and decried “the Radical Left’s war on the industry.” Anna Betts of The Guardian noted that Trump also announced the Department of Energy will spend $175 million to “modernize, retrofit, and extend” the life of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky.
As Lisa Friedman pointed out in the New York Times last month, the United States has been the largest polluter since the start of the industrial era, but emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, have been declining since 2007. Trump maintains that climate change is a “hoax” and has withdrawn the U.S. from the main global climate treaty. Since he took office in January 2025, U.S. emissions have increased 1.9% largely because of the renewed use of coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked the scientific finding that has been the basis for regulating emissions from cars and power plants since 2009. That finding, called the endangerment finding, reflects the consensus of scientists that greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas endanger the health and general welfare of the American people.
The Trump administration says scientists are wrong about the dangers of climate change and that the regulations hurt industry and slow the economy. It claims ending the rule will save Americans $1.3 trillion, primarily through cheaper cars and trucks, but it did not factor in the costs of extreme weather caused by climate change or the costs of pollution-related health issues.
Last year, Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post reported that at a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago in April 2024, then-candidate Trump told oil executives they should raise $1 billion for his campaign. In exchange, Trump promised he would get rid of Biden-era regulations and make sure no more such regulations went into effect, in addition to lowering taxes. Trump told them $1 billion would be a “deal,” considering how much money they would make if he were in the White House.
Tyler Pager and Matina Stevis-Gridneff of the New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump’s threats to stop the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, came just hours after billionaire Matthew Moroun, whose family operates a competing bridge, called Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Moroun has tried to stop the construction of the new bridge for decades.
The $4.7 billion construction cost of the Gordie Howe bridge has been fully funded by Canada although the bridge is partly owned by Michigan and will be operated jointly by Canada and Michigan. The new bridge will compete with the Ambassador Bridge—the one the Moroun family operates—for about $300 million in trade crossing the border daily.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “This is just another example of President Trump putting America’s interest first.”
This afternoon, Dustin Volz, Josh Dawsey, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal reported that the whistleblower complaint of last May involved another country’s interception of a conversation between two foreign nationals who were discussing Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, issues related to Iran, and perhaps other issues. Kushner runs Affinity Partners, an investment fund that has taken billions of dollars in funds from Arab monarchies. He does not have an official role in the U.S. government but appears to be acting in foreign affairs as a volunteer.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the existence of the whistleblower complaint on February 2, 2026, reporting that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had bottled it up for political reasons, taking it not to Congress but to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. On February 3, Gabbard released a highly redacted version of the complaint to the Gang of Eight, the top member of each party in the House and Senate and the top member of each party on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
It may or may not be related that in early April 2025, the administration abruptly fired National Security Agency director General Timothy Haugh and his deputy, hours after dismissing several staffers at the National Security Council. At the time, conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who is close to Trump, posted on social media that Haugh and his deputy “have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired.”
In Talking Points Memo, editor Josh Marshall has been exploring the contours of what he calls the Authoritarian International, which he identifies as “a host of authoritarian governments around the world, the princelings of the Gulf monarchies, the sprinkling of European right-ravanchist governments, the rightward portion of Silicon Valley (which accounts for a larger and larger percentage of the top owners if not the larger community), the Israeli private intel sector, various post-Soviet oligarchs and, increasingly, the world’s billionaire class.”
Marshall notes that those in this world are not just antidemocratic. They are constructing a private world in which deals are done secretly without any democratic accountability, mixing national interest with individual financial interest. The model operates in part by maintaining control over key figures thanks to compromising material on them. Marshall points out that the system can be oddly stable if everyone has something on everyone else.
Marshall’s description dovetails neatly with former Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller’s 2011 explanation of the evolving organized crime threat. Organized crime had become multinational, he said, “making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement [and] cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder.” He explained: “These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”
To protect this system, transparency must be prevented at all costs.
The administration seems to be illustrating this principle as it denies the right and duty of Congress to conduct oversight of the government. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has refused to release all the Epstein files to the public as Congress required when it passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Yesterday Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee, but it was clear she was not there to answer lawmakers’ questions or explain why she had not released the files.
Nor did she acknowledge the survivors of Epstein’s sexual assaults and sex trafficking, many of whom were in the audience and noted that she had not met with them. When Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) urged her to apologize to the survivors for the sloppiness of the release that had left many survivors’s names, identifying information, and even sexually explicit photos unredacted while covering the names of perpetrators, Bondi accused Jayapal of theatrics and, as Glenn Thrush of the New York Times reported, of dragging the hearing “into the gutter.”
Instead, she came prepared with a book of insults to aim at Democrats and met questions with attacks on the questioners and praise for Trump. Republican Thomas Massie (R-KY), who has been instrumental in pressuring the White House over the Epstein files, posted on social media: “A funny thing about Bondi’s insults to members of Congress who had serious questions: Staff literally gave her flash cards with individualized insults, but she couldn’t memorize them, so you can see her shuffle through them to find the flash-cards-insult that matches the member.”
Bondi was not only stonewalling but also demonstrating the tactics of authoritarian power, turning her own shortcomings into an attack on those trying to enforce rules. Even more ominously, Kent Nishimura of Reuters captured a photograph of a page of the book with a printout titled: “Jayapal Pramila Search History.” It appeared to be the files Representative Jayapal accessed after the DOJ made some of the Epstein files available at DOJ offices earlier this week.
This is a shocking intrusion of the executive branch into surveilling members of the legislative branch and weaponizing that information. The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), said he will ask for an investigation of this “outrageous abuse of power.”
Bondi’s performance drew widespread condemnation from outside the administration, and even Republicans seemed to realize she was toxic: Scott MacFarlane of CBS News noted that in the committee hearing, Republicans didn’t use all their time to question her but simply yielded their time allotted to ask questions back to the committee.
But Bondi appeared to be playing to Trump, as she made clear when she veered into the bizarre claim that what the committee should be talking about was not the Epstein files but rather the booming stock market. Last month, Josh Dawsey, Sadie Gurman, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was complaining to aides that Bondi is weak and ineffective. Yesterday’s performance pleased him.
This morning, Trump’s social media account posted: “AG Pam Bondi, under intense fire from the Trump Deranged Radical Left Lunatics, was fantastic at yesterday’s Hearing on the never ending saga of Jeffrey Epstein, where the one thing that has been proven conclusively, much to their chagrin, was that President Donald J. Trump has been 100% exonerated of their ridiculous Russia, Russia, Russia type charges…. Nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive, they only cared about him when they thought he could create Political Harm to a very popular President who has brought our Country back from the brink of extinction, and very quickly, at that!”
An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday shows that 85% of U.S. adults agree with the statement “There are powerful elites who helped Epstein target and abuse young girls. They protected him and need to be investigated.” Only 3% of American adults disagree. Fifty percent of American adults think Trump “was involved in crimes allegedly committed by Jeffrey Epstein,” while only 29% think he wasn’t.
New York Times, Worse Than the Pandemic’: Restaurants Say ICE Presence Imperils Business, Priya Krishna, Feb. 13, 2026. In several cities where immigrants are being detained, owners say they’re struggling to stay open as fear keeps customers and workers from leaving home.
Even as the Covid pandemic shut down every dining room across the country in April 2020, Americans were still ordering takeout, and millions of restaurant employees were getting paychecks funded by government assistance.
Now, as that same government is rounding up immigrants it believes to be in the country illegally — about 70,000 are currently in detention — Cecelia Lizotte, the owner of two Nigerian restaurants called Suya Joint, in Boston and Providence, R.I., says many of her customers are afraid to come in. She can’t even get people in her neighborhood to pick up free meals.
Several of her employees are nervous about coming to work, though Ms. Lizotte says they are in the country lawfully. Her brother, Paul Dama, a Nigerian immigrant who is the restaurant’s manager and was in the process of applying for asylum, was detained on the way to church by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June and held for three months at a detention center in New Hampshire.ImageCecelia Lizotte, in a bright orange and yellow patterned outfit, stands in a room. Dark tables, chairs, and a colorful mural are behind her.Cecelia Lizotte, who runs Suya Joint locations in Boston and Providence, R.I., nearly closed them after her brother, Paul Dama, was detained by ICE last June.Credit...Tony Luong for The New York Times
He has since been granted asylum and returned to work, but the job has changed drastically. Sales are down more than 20 percent at the restaurant’s Boston location since the raids began, and 50 percent in Providence, Ms Lizotte said. The streets of her Boston neighborhood, Roxbury, which has a sizable foreign-born population, are often deserted.
“I wake up every day thinking, ‘Should I just close and wait to see if everything settles down?’” Ms. Lizotte said.
In interviews over the past few weeks, restaurant owners in several cities where ICE agents are out on the streets echoed that sentiment: Their businesses are not only teetering on insolvency, they said, but feel even more vulnerable than during the pandemic.
Some of that plight is the result of other forces that have hit restaurants hard, like rising ingredient prices, the growing cost of food delivery and this winter’s brutal weather. None of these businesses have been raided by ICE agents, who need a judicial warrant to enter private areas of a business, like a kitchen or office.ImageA white T-shirt reads: "No one stands alone, we stand together. Community."Ms. Lizotte received an outpouring of support from customers, who wore T-shirts in solidarity with her brother.Credit...Tony Luong for The New York TimesImagePaul Dama, in glasses, sits in a restaurant booth, an exit sign visible behind him.Mr. Dama was detained while in the process of seeking asylum, which has since been granted. He recently returned to work.Credit...Tony Luong for The New York Times
But most of the owners said that ICE has become a constant and alarming presence in their neighborhoods. The fear of detention among customers and employees — in an industry in which more than one-fifth of the work force nationwide was born abroad — has taken a toll.
That fallout is felt especially in immigrant neighborhoods that have been targeted for ICE enforcement. In the Little Village area of Chicago, known as the “Mexico of the Midwest,” a spokeswoman for the neighborhood Chamber of Commerce estimated that local business sales have fallen 50 to 70 percent since 2024.
“No one is coming out in the daytime because of the continued visuals of seeing the arrests and protesters,” said Christina Gonzalez, who runs Los Comales, a taqueria with 19 locations in the Chicago area, including Little Village, where her business is hardest hit. “We have always had 30 to 40 percent of our sales from foot traffic. We don’t have any foot traffic.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Resistance Gains Momentum, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger, Cathy Young and Jim Swift, Feb. 13, 2026. Trump had a bad week.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sure has a way with words. During an appearance on Theo Von’s podcast This Past Weekend yesterday, Kennedy described why he had been determined to keep going to in-person addiction-recovery meetings during the COVID pandemic: “I’m not scared of a germ. You know, I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.” Happy Friday.
More On U.S. Immigration, Detentions, Civil Rights
New York Times, ‘I Just Want to Get Out of Here’: ICE Is Detaining Hundreds of Children, Miriam Jordan, Sarah Mervosh and Allison McCann, Feb. 14, 2026 (print ed.). The number of children in immigration detention has spiked since last year. Families describe poor conditions and little education.
A 7-year-old in Oregon was seeking treatment for a nosebleed last month when immigration agents detained her and her parents outside a hospital emergency room. They were taken to a federal detention center in Texas for three weeks.
In Chicago, a 5-year-old was at a laundromat with her mother last fall when they were surrounded by agents and flown to Texas.
And a teenager who had been living in the United States for a decade was getting ready for school one morning last year when the police showed up at his family’s door. He, too, ended up confined in Texas with his mother, even though she had begged for him to be allowed to stay with family members who are American citizens, according to court records.
The number of children in federal custody has climbed sharply since President Trump revived the practice of detaining families last year, as part of his promise to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally. The most prominent example came last month, when 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, still wearing his Spider-Man backpack, was detained along with his father on their way home from school in suburban Minneapolis.
Under the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, hundreds of children have been detained, usually with a parent. Nearly all pass through one place: a sprawling detention center in Dilley, Texas, that is a jumble of trailers and soft-sided tents in a desolate expanse about 70 miles south of San Antonio.
Known as the Dilley Immigration Processing Center — or just Dilley — it has been the main site for family detentions since it was built in 2014 during the Obama administration, which at one point held more than 1,000 children there during a surge of migrants fleeing Central America.
The Biden administration stopped using the facility to detain families in 2021 and closed it in 2024. The Trump administration reopened it last year.
More on Epstein Files, Cover-up, Reactions
The New Republic, MAGA Senator Took Donation From Epstein Friend Before Key Vote, Edith Olmsted, Feb. 13, 2026. Ohio Senator Jon Husted received $3,500 from Les Wexner.
Ohio Senator John Husted accepted thousands of dollars in donations from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators, before voting against releasing the Department of Justice’s files on the alleged sex trafficker.
As long as Husted has been in office, he has accepted money from Les Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret whose name was inexplicably redacted out of the Epstein files until earlier this week. The Ohio Republican has raked in more than $116,000 from Wexner since 2001, when he first entered public office as a member of Ohio’s state House of Representatives.
Husted accepted $3,500 from Wexner as recently as July—only two months before he voted to block the release of the Epstein files, according to campaign finance records reviewed by TiffinOhio. In November, Husted, a steady MAGA sycophant, again voiced opposition to releasing files. But days later, the Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed through the Senate by unanimous consent.
Husted wasn’t the only one who accepted money from the Wexner: The billionaire doled out more than $250,000 in donations to Republican candidates in the past year, especially ones in his home state of Ohio, according to NOTUS.
In June, Wexner gave $3,500 to Senator Bernie Moreno, and a month later, the Republican senator claimed that the frenzy to release the Epstein files was being “fueled” by the media and Democrats—despite mounting calls from members of his own party to release the documents. In September, he joined Husted in voting against the files’ release, before ultimately agreeing to support the Epstein Files Transparency Act’s passage in November.
Wexner also gave $3,500 to Republican Representative Mike Carey, as well as one Democrat, Representative Joyce Beatty.
Wexner was among the six powerful men who had their names redacted by the DOJ, and his name appeared on a list of potential co-conspirators.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy, CONSTITUTIONAL SHOWDOWN! Trump vows to change voting laws without Congress, Staff Report, Feb. 13, 2026. Donald Trump is saying the quiet part out loud — again.
In a jaw-dropping post, the former president vowed to impose new voter ID requirements ahead of the midterm elections “whether approved by Congress or not.” Yes, you read that correctly. Not pass a law. Not persuade lawmakers. Just… do it.
Trump has long pushed for stricter voter ID rules, claiming they’re necessary to stop voter fraud — despite mountains of evidence showing that voter fraud in U.S. elections is exceedingly rare. Courts, audits, and even Trump’s own officials have repeatedly confirmed that widespread fraud simply isn’t happening.
But facts have never slowed him down.
In his latest message, Trump accused Democrats of refusing to support voter ID because they “want to continue to cheat in Elections.” He claimed he has discovered some “irrefutable” legal argument and promised there “will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not.”
That’s not policy — that’s a power grab.
The Constitution gives states the primary authority to run elections, with Congress empowered to set federal standards. The president does not get to unilaterally rewrite voting laws because he doesn’t like them.
Democrats and voting rights advocates argue that strict voter ID laws disproportionately impact minority communities, seniors, students, and low-income voters — groups less likely to have certain forms of identification. That’s why the fight over voter access has become one of the defining battles of the midterm cycle.
Trump also floated restricting mail-in voting, allowing exceptions only for the military, illness, disability, or travel — despite the fact that mail voting has been used safely for decades across red and blue states alike.
Let’s be clear: Threatening to bypass Congress to change how Americans vote isn’t about “election integrity.” It’s about control.
In a democracy, leaders don’t get to rewrite the rules mid-game. If Trump thinks he can simply will new voting laws into existence, he’s not just challenging Congress — he’s testing the limits of the Constitution itself.
Please like and share to spread the news of this latest MAJOR threat to our democracy!
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Federal Funding to Resume for Gateway Tunnel, Staff Report, Feb. 13, 2026. What We’re Covering Today.
Federal funding for the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel between New York City and New Jersey, which had been suspended for more than four months, will begin to flow again on Friday, lawyers for the Trump administration told a federal judge.
The suspension had left the government owing about $205 million to the tunnel’s planners, the Gateway Development Commission, and forced a halt to work on the project last week, as well as the layoff of about 1,000 union workers, the commission said.
After the states of New York and New Jersey sued the U.S. Department of Transportation, Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York ordered an end to the suspension by 5 p.m. on Feb. 12. But the commission and Democratic elected officials complained that the funding had not resumed by midday Friday.
Government lawyers told Judge Vargas on Friday that some of the overdue payments were on their way to the commission and the rest should be paid by early next week.
The commission said in a statement: “We still anticipate receiving the $205 million in reimbursement funds from the federal government, but construction will remain paused until we receive this funding. We are working with our contractors to plan how to deploy these funds in the most effective way and get workers back on the job to resume some construction as soon as possible.”
The Department of Homeland Security is set to run out of funding early Saturday morning, beginning a shutdown that could disrupt travelers, immigration enforcement and disaster relief.
Still, the lapse in funding is not expected to bring most of the department’s work to a halt. Department officials have said that its essential missions and functions would continue. During last fall’s government shutdown, more than 90 percent of the department’s employees were required to work.
But department officials have warned that many employees would be working without pay, posing a financial strain as their bills come due. During previous shutdowns, for instance, the Transportation Security Administration saw a spike in resignations because they were required to report to work without being paid. Work force shortages caused some screening delays at airports in Houston during last fall’s record-long shutdown.
The impending shutdown is the result of a partisan divide in Congress over new guardrails on federal immigration enforcement. Democrats have pushed for a range of new restrictions on immigration agents, such as mandating that officers remove masks during enforcement operations and that they obtain warrants from judges to make arrests in homes. Many of their demands have met resistance from Republicans.
A shutdown of the department would not derail the administration’s deportation campaign. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told lawmakers on Thursday that immigration enforcement would mostly be unaffected, in large part because of the billions in funding Congress approved for the agency last summer as part of its major tax bill. Still, Mr. Lyons said that a shutdown would affect personnel issues, such as pay and retention.
It is unclear how long a shutdown could last. Congress left Washington for a weeklong recess on Thursday. Leaders in Congress have said that negotiations would continue with lawmakers gone, and that members should be ready to return to Washington if an agreement is reached.
The Department of Homeland Security is vast and includes many agencies, such as the T.S.A., Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection.
About 95 percent of T.S.A.’s roughly 60,000 employees are required to work through a shutdown without being paid, Ha Nguyen McNeill, the agency’s acting administrator, told lawmakers this week.
Most FEMA employees are expected to continue working without pay, and agency leaders have said that its disaster relief fund has enough money for its current and anticipated emergency response activities. Still, the fund would be strained if a catastrophic disaster were to occur during a shutdown, according to agency leaders.
The Coast Guard’s uniformed personnel must also keep coming to work, and most are not expected to be paid until after a shutdown is over. Vice Adm. Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, said this week that a long shutdown would erode mission readiness and hurt morale. Certain training for pilots, aircrews and boat crews would stop, he said.
Although lawmakers had agreed to some limits on immigration enforcement when they negotiated the last funding bills of the fiscal year, Democrats pushed for more restrictions after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis last month. On Thursday, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, announced that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota would end after more than two months and thousands of arrests in the region.Michael GoldFeb. 13, 2026, 3:09 p.m. ET2 hours ago
The administration revoked deportation protections for Yemenis who fled their nation’s crisis. The Trump administration is ending deportation protections for more than a thousand migrants from Yemen, the latest blow to the decades-old humanitarian program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people fleeing crisis in their home countries to live and work in the United States.
“After reviewing conditions in the country and consulting with appropriate U.S. government agencies, I determined that Yemen no longer meets the law’s requirements to be designated for Temporary Protected Status,” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement on Friday, referring to the humanitarian program. The move comes one month after a group of separatists seized chunks of territory from the Yemeni government, escalating the conflict there.
“Allowing T.P.S. Yemen beneficiaries to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interest,” Ms. Noem said. “T.P.S. was designed to be temporary, and this administration is returning T.P.S. to its original temporary intent.”
Yemen’s removal from the program was the latest move in President Trump’s immigration crackdown as he seeks to expand the pool of migrants who could be expelled from the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security designated Yemen for the program in 2015 after conflict broke out in the country between Houthi rebels, an Iran-backed militia, and Saudi Arabia, which backs Yemen’s government.ImageRefugees fleeing the war in Yemen arriving in Djibouti in 2015.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula, has been mired ever since in a civil war that has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. More than 4 million people have been displaced because of the conflict, according to Human Rights Watch.
As of last year, about 1,380 Yemeni nationals in the United States held the protected status.
The Trump administration’s efforts to end T.P.S. for more than one million foreign nationals have prompted a wave of legal challenges.
Recently, federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration in cases pertaining to about 600,000 Venezuelans and more than 350,000 Haitians. But on Monday, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with ending protections for more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The ongoing court battles have left many T.P.S. recipients scrambling to figure out other pathways to legal residency, such as applying for asylum or work visas.
Three House Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding the Justice Department stop tracking what what members of Congress were searching for when they viewed unredacted versions of the Epstein files on the department’s computers.
When Bondi testified before a House committee on Wednesday, a photograph of her research material showed a page that contained the files that Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, viewed.
In their letter, Jayapal, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Robert Garcia of California accused the department of a “clandestine congressional surveillance operation.”
New York Times, Trump Wants Smithsonian to Create a Different Official Portrait, Zachary Small and Robin Pogrebin, Feb. 13, 2026. The painted portrait from President Trump’s first term was completed more than four years ago, but never unveiled. Now he wants the National Portrait Gallery to commission a new one.
The unveiling of an official presidential portrait is typically a ceremonial event, one that places a former president in the long line of leaders who have piloted the United States for almost 250 years. But the portrait of Donald Trump, painted just after he left office in 2021, has never been publicly seen for a number of reasons.
Now add to the list another possible cause for the delay in that portrait’s unveiling: Mr. Trump, re-elected to a second term, would like a different one.
“President Trump was appreciative of the portrait created for his 45th term, and looks forward to seeing the completion of a portrait that will encapsulate both his 45th and 47th presidential terms,” a White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, confirmed in a statement.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery typically commissions an artist to make an official portrait after a president has left office. It is often hung a year or two later in a special exhibition, “America’s Presidents.”
But the first Trump portrait it commissioned, by the artist Ronald Sherr, was never exhibited. By the time the work was accepted by the gallery in 2022, just after Mr. Sherr’s death, Mr. Trump had already announced he would run again for president. The gallery traditionally does not hang a painted portrait until a president has permanently left office.
It is unclear why exactly Mr. Trump — who had approved the use of Mr. Sherr as his portraitist — now prefers a different image to represent his presidency when he leaves office. White House officials said Mr. Trump views Mr. Sherr’s portrait — which depicts Mr. Trump at a rally with the White House in the background — as a vestige of his first term, and believes it would be more appropriate for a newly commissioned portrait to represent his entire time in office.
New York Times, Trump Says He Will Now Invite Democrats to Governors’ Meeting, Chris Cameron and Tyler Pager, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Even as he reversed course on excluding Democrats, the president repeatedly attacked a Republican governor who had planned to oversee the meeting.
Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma told Democratic governors on Wednesday that President Trump had reversed course and would now invite them to an annual gathering of the nation’s governors at the White House, after the president had previously moved to exclude Democrats from the meeting.
Hours later, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked Mr. Stitt, the chairman of the National Governors Association, as a “RINO,” Republican in name only, apparently blaming the governor for the episode after The New York Times reported last week that the president had spurned Democrats from what had traditionally been a bipartisan working meeting with the president and cabinet at the White House.
Mr. Stitt confirmed the reporting in a letter to governors on Friday and withdrew the N.G.A. as the official organizer of the event, saying that it would not pay for transportation to the gathering and that the association sought to represent all governors.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump denied that he had ever tried to exclude Democrats from the meeting — though by Tuesday night, only Republican governors had received invitations for the meeting scheduled for Friday. He did, however, confirm that he had personally blocked two Democrats, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland and Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, from a separate black-tie dinner that would take place after the meeting because he felt they were “not worthy of being there.”
In his statement, Mr. Trump said he had blocked Mr. Polis as part of his pressure campaign to release Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election in a failed effort to prove Mr. Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen from him. Mr. Trump symbolically pardoned Ms. Peters last year, but the president has no legal power to pardon state crimes, leaving Mr. Polis as the only person with the power to pardon her.
“I look forward to seeing the Republican Governors,” Mr. Trump said in his post. “And some of the Democrats Governors who were worthy of being invited, but most of whom won’t show up.”
It is unclear how many Democratic governors, if any, would accept the late invitation to the Friday meeting.
Mr. Stitt, a conservative Republican who comfortably won re-election in deep-red Oklahoma, is in his last year as governor, as he is term-limited from running again. As the chairman of the N.G.A. and a departing incumbent governor, Mr. Stitt has sought to strike a balance between projecting loyalty to Mr. Trump and defending the authority of governors within their own states. Mr. Stitt had criticized Mr. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Chicago, saying that it violated “states’ rights.”
When Mr. Stitt informed governors of Mr. Trump’s plans to block Democrats from the meeting, he pleaded with members in his letter not to “allow one divisive action to achieve its goal of dividing us.”
“The solution is not to respond in kind, but to rise above and to remain focused on our shared duty to the people we serve,” he said.
Mr. Trump unleashed a broadside of attacks against Mr. Stitt on Wednesday for trying to strike that balance in the clash over the White House meeting, calling the Oklahoma governor “very mediocre (at best!)” and saying that “as usual with him, Stitt got it WRONG!”
PoliticusUSA, White Working Class Voters Are Dumping Trump, Jason Easley, Feb. 13, 2024. Trump continues to talk about the Dow and 401(k)s, white working class voters who are concerned about the rising cost of essentials like groceries and utilities are abandoning him in droves.
Putting a billionaire back in the White House, and hoping that he would solve the economic woes of the working class, never made sense, but that is exactly what white working-class voters did in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump immediately took office and demonstrated why this was not a good idea, as within a few months, he launched a trade war and declared that inflation had been fixed, even though it definitely had not.
Most voters, when they are forced to choose between what is happening in their own finances or the sales pitch of a politician, will go with their own experiences.
The economy is an issue that Trump has not been able to gaslight his way out of. Trump keeps telling the American people that his economy is great, but people go to the grocery store, and they see otherwise.
The backbone of voters who sent Trump back to the White House were white working-class voters. Trump has been able to play into their resentments and anger for a decade.
Trump won working-class voters by 34 points in 2024. In that same election, House Republicans won working-class voters by 33 points. All of these advantages are now gone.
Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report wrote:
Trump’s huge advantage with these voters has all but evaporated today. According to The Cook Political Report PollTracker, Trump’s approval rating among this demographic is barely above water at just +4% (51% approve to 47% disapprove).
Digging into their own polling data from August to December of 2025, digital publication The Argument also found that lower-income whites are a key reason for Trump’s sagging approval rating.
In fact, writes Director of Political Data Lakshya Jain, “among the poorest white voters, Trump has lost a jaw-dropping 26 percentage points of approval relative to his 2024 margins. Among the richest, this decline is just 8 points.”
There’s a clear link between that slide and the stubborn inflation and cost-of-living issues that have plagued the president. Lower-income voters are acutely sensitive to day-to-day rises in the cost of necessities like food, rent and electricity, and they are unhappy with the lack of progress the president has made in lowering those costs.
If white working-class voters abandon Trump and the Republican Party, it would signal doom for the party in 2026 and 2028. If Republicans have to rely solely on MAGA to win elections, they are going to lose and lose badly.
Unless a person is rich, Donald Trump’s presidency has been an economic disaster. The administration can try to sell inflation coming back down to where it was eight months ago, but that is not what Trump promised. Trump promised to lower prices on day one of his term, and he has totally failed.
The administration also tries to convince Americans that falling gas prices are a sign of success, but much of the country has been traveling less due to extreme winter weather.
Let’s see those prices in the middle of the summer driving season.
White working-class voters are feeling the pinch the most from Trump’s policies, and they are the ones fleeing this president. If this continues, 2026 and 2028 could be very bad years for the Republican Party.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Epstein Feeding Frenzy, Cathy Young, Feb. 13, 2026. In the flood of revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s friends and their activities, warnings not to get caught up in a feeding frenzy can easily slide into contrarian attempts to minimize both the crimes and the sleaze—the behavior of people who knowingly associated with a rich and famous child sex abuser.
But there’s a vast middle ground between contrarianism and sensationalism—between whitewash and witch-hunt.
In the witch-hunt column: recent attacks on neuroscientist, author, and podcaster Sam Harris for his supposed Epstein connection. To wit: In 2015, after meeting Epstein at a TED event, Harris rejected an invitation to a dinner with Epstein, Noam Chomsky, and Woody Allen—and Harris blew off a couple of follow-up overtures. That’s enough for a Verge writer to brand Harris an “Epstein correspondent”—technically accurate but extremely misleading.
The Free Press’s Nellie Bowles has been assailed for her brief contacts with Epstein in 2018, after his sex-offender past had blown up in the media post-#MeToo—contacts about which, she noted, she had written in two 2019 New York Times pieces. Bowles was briefly interested in writing a feature on Epstein (but decided not to); he was clearly hoping to charm her. She sent two amicable replies to his emails—as journalists will do even with very unsympathetic potential subjects—but ignored his later efforts to draw her into his orbit.
Not surprisingly, the attacks are often about politics: in Harris’s case, his critiques of left-wing progressivism and Islamic fundamentalism; in Bowles’s case, her association with the controversial Free Press and her marriage to its founder, Bari Weiss. The innuendo-laden Verge article seeks to tie Epstein to “the ‘anti-woke’ movement.” And some leftists have taken to collectively slamming moderate and centrist Democrats—or Israel supporters—as “the Epstein class.”
The damage from all this mudslinging isn’t limited to the targets of these smears. It extends to the good-faith effort to demand accountability for the real “Epstein class”—the people who regularly hobnobbed with a convicted and unrepentant child molester, and particularly those who helped him launder his reputation and stay a persona grata in academic and intellectual institutions.
Likewise, the rush to sensationalism, such as speculation that Epstein bought sulfuric acid to dissolve the bodies of murder victims (nope, it was for desalinizing water on his island) can only hurt the effort to establish the facts of Epstein’s crimes. Still-unproven allegations that he trafficked young women—and possibly children—to other men are being far too readily dismissed by skeptics and contrarians. But embracing Pizzagate- or QAnon-level tales of baby cannibalism and buried bodies certainly won’t help get to the truth.
U.S. Inflation, Jobs, Markets, Economy, Tariffs
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: The MAGA Bubble Is Imploding, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 13, 2026. Americans aren’t buying Trumpist gaslighting about the economy.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s meltdown on Wednesday while being questioned the House Judiciary Committee was exceptional, even by this administration’s rock-bottom standards. Has any high-level official ever before shrieked at a member of Congress, “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up, loser lawyer”?
Yet what truly amazed me was her demand that Democrats stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein because the Dow was above 50,000. This plumbed new depths of moral bankruptcy, effectively saying: “How dare you complain about child rape when the stock market is up?”
There was an unmistakable stench of desperation in Bondi’s tantrum. And it fooled no one. The cracks are showing, as some congressional Republicans have now voted against Trump’s tariffs, Justice Department lawyers are quitting en masse or just plain cracking up, and attempts to weaponize prosecutions keep failing.
Now Tom Homan says that the ICE surge in Minnesota will be wound down — an ignominious retreat if true — while Democrats are standing firm on refusing further DHS funding without significant reforms. And Bondi’s yelling isn’t making Epstein go away.
But let’s examine Bondi’s demand that Americans ignore the omnishambles because stocks are up. It’s morally depraved, but what about the economics?
Yes, stock prices are up. As any economist can tell you, however, the stock market is a poor indicator of the economy’s overall health. Paul Samuelson famously quipped that the market had predicted nine of the last five recessions.
Furthermore, stock prices are up almost everywhere — and up more in other countries than they are in the United States. The chart at the top compares stock prices in the U.S. and in the euro area; since the latter is measured in euros, and the euro has risen against the dollar, Europe has substantially outperformed America.
And if we go beyond the stock market and look at what really matters to most Americans — affordability and jobs — the Trump economy isn’t delivering. Inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Despite one good month, employment growth has shriveled. And it keeps getting more difficult to find a job.
Here’s one measure I find useful, the Conference Board’s “labor market differential” — the difference between the percentage of Americans saying that jobs are plentiful and the percentage saying that jobs are hard to find: A graph with blue line AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Source: The Conference Board via Haver Analytics
This is certainly not a great economy. It’s not even a healthy economy. And Americans are not buying the administration’s lies.
MAGA types constantly bash Joe Biden while deifying Trump. Yet it took only a year for Americans outside the Republican base to decide that Biden was actually a better president. Here are results from the latest YouGov poll: A blue and black graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.
That was fast. And it belies the conventional wisdom that still sees Trump’s 1.5 percentage point popular vote margin in 2024 — smaller than Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016! — as marking a fundamental realignment of U.S. politics.
What actually happened in 2024 was that low-knowledge voters believed Trump when he promised to bring prices way down and deliver unprecedented prosperity. “Low-knowledge” isn’t a pejorative: G. Elliott Morris uses it to mean voters who don’t know which party controls the House and Senate. These voters went strongly for Trump in 2024, but their opinion of him has crashed: A graph with numbers and points AI-generated content may be incorrect.
So while people inside the MAGA bubble keep insisting that Trump is a great president, the greatest president ever, presidenting like nobody has ever seen before, their cheerleading reeks of desperation. The MAGA implosion is gathering force. Americans are mad as hell, and they won’t be gaslit anymore.
New York Times, U.S. Inflation Eased at Start of the Year, Colby Smith, Feb. 13, 2026. U.S. inflation eased by more than expected at the start of 2026, providing a reprieve to the Federal Reserve as it contends with yet another year of consumer prices rising far faster than the central bank’s target.
Here is what the latest Consumer Price Index showed on Friday. Overall inflation eased to 2.4 percent in January from the same time last year. That was down from the previous 2.7 percent annual pace.
“Core” inflation, which filters out volatile food and energy prices, ticked down to 2.5 percent on a year-over-year basis. It last stood at 2.6 percent.
The latest C.P.I. report comes amid uncertainty over the trajectory for inflation after President Trump’s tariffs began to push up some consumer prices last year.
The impact of those levies has been less than initially feared, but it is not clear if the full effects have materialized. That has left economists and policymakers to wonder how much higher inflation may rise and when it will begin to retreat.
The latest inflation data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, offered some relief to those concerned about how sticky price pressures may prove to be.What else to know
How quickly inflation eases is of crucial importance to the White House, which is trying to counteract a groundswell of concern about affordability ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly sought to dismiss worries about how Americans are faring financially and has instead declared that the economy is booming.
January’s jobs report was much stronger than expected, with 130,000 positions added for the month as the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3 percent, according to data released on Wednesday. Annual revisions to earlier data, which are routine but have been much more significant than usual in recent years, painted a much more dismal picture for 2025, however. The economy added only 181,000 jobs over the entire year, down from an earlier estimate of 584,000. That is the slowest pace since 2010, aside from 2020 when the pandemic hit.
People have grown far less confident about the economy. Data released last month by the Conference Board showed one measure of consumer confidence falling to its lowest level since 2014, as respondents flagged tariffs and elevated prices for everyday staples like groceries, among other anxieties.
More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: A Moderately Frabjous Day, William Kristol, right, 
Feb. 13, 2026.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
In Alice’s through-the-looking-glass world, it was a truly frabjous day when an unnamed but “beamish” boy killed the fearsome and villainous monster, the Jabberwock.
In the through-the-looking-glass world of America in 2026, yesterday was a good day. It wasn’t so great as to cause joyful chortling. But it was moderately frabjous, enough so as to justify some hope for the future.
On Thursday morning, Trump White House aide Tom Homan announced the end of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol assault against the intrepid residents of Minneapolis. Mayor Jacob Frey remarked that the Trump administration had launched its “catastrophic” operation with the belief that it “could break us,” but that Minnesotans had shown that “a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation.” This was a real, if limited, victory in the fight against Trump’s mass-deportation and mass-intimidation regime.
Then yesterday afternoon, Senate Democrats successfully blocked the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. For now, ICE and the Border Patrol—Trump’s paramilitary forces—will at least be deprived of additional funds on top of the huge amounts they unfortunately succeeded in securing last year. And over in the House, enough Republicans joined Democrats to succeed in reclaiming some congressional power over setting tariffs.
Also yesterday, a federal judge ordered Trump’s Defense Department to halt disciplinary proceedings against Sen. Mark Kelly. In a blistering ruling, District Judge Richard J. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, found that the administration was engaged in an attack on the retired Navy captain’s right to free speech: “This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.” This decision came two days after a federal grand jury declined to indict Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers over a video that Donald Trump disliked.
Meanwhile, aftershocks of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before Congress Wednesday continued to reverberate—especially her contemptuous dismissal of the suggestion that Trump’s Justice Department should apologize to Jeffrey Epstein survivors for its failures to even try to provide either justice or the truth.
And every day it’s become ever more undeniable that Trump’s Justice Department was in clear violation of the law passed and signed just two months ago, calling for the comprehensive release of unredacted Epstein documents (with the only redactions supposed to be of information about the victims). For example, as the New York Times noted today, the Justice Department redacted the name of an Epstein correspondent from a 2014 email that said, “Thank you for a fun night . . . your littlest girl was a little naughty.” And though his identity later became public, the name of the correspondent to whom Epstein wrote in 2009, “where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video,” was also redacted.¹
Why these redactions? And where, many well-informed experts asked, are all the other emails and documents from the FBI and Justice Department investigations that we know exist but that we haven’t seen?
The Trump administration’s coverup has been exposed if not yet overcome. So the “wall of protection” that existed around “the Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends” hasn’t yet been demolished. But we’re closer than we were a couple of months ago to a real understanding of, and reckoning with, the Epstein scandal and coverup.
Meanwhile, yesterday Trump’s approval rating hit a new low of 40 percent in the polling average compiled daily by the New York Times. His disapproval is at 56 percent. These numbers are comparable to George W. Bush’s numbers on election day in 2006, when Gallup found 38 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval. Republicans lost both Houses of Congress in that midterm election.
So things are looking up a bit. But we’re living in the real world, not Lewis Carroll’s make-believe one. At the end of Through the Looking-Glass, Alice awakens from what seems to have been a dream. The Trump years have been and remain all too real, and we’re not going suddenly to wake up and discover that all is back to normal. But yesterday offered some promise that a hard-earned awakening could lie ahead.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The El Paso Balloon Incident Could Have Been a Disaster... Shooting experimental lasers next to a major airport without telling anyone—what could go wrong? A valuable explainer from Mark Hertling.Quick Hits
A STAR IS BORN: Even in an administration with ferocious competition for the title of “most unhinged cabinet secretary,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is starting to pull away from the pack. For over a year now, she has steadily staffed DHS with sycophants who answer solely to her and her quasi-legal shadow chief of staff (and alleged boy toy) Corey Lewandowski, while running her department like a combination production shop for cutting MAGA jackboot porn and a staging ground for her own future presidential campaign, all while crucial-but-boring work like FEMA disaster-fund approvals piles up ignored on her desk. A remarkable new Wall Street Journal profile heaps up scandal after scandal to the point of absurdity: How on earth does this woman still have her job?
There are so many jaw-dropping anecdotes here it’s hard to know which to highlight, but let’s go with this one, starring Lewandowski:
In an incident last year that rankled some senior staff at the agency, Lewandowski made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued a law-enforcement badge and a federally issued gun, according to people familiar with his push. Officials are typically only issued a badge and a gun after undergoing law-enforcement training.
The administration was preparing to bring on Tom Feeley, a former top ICE official in New York, as its new director when Lewandowski asked Feeley if he would be willing to issue him and several other political officials badges and guns. Feeley declined, and he was subsequently passed over for the top job at ICE.
Lewandowski next turned to ICE’s legal office for help writing him a legal justification to be issued the badge and gun. A top ICE lawyer, Ken Padilla, also declined to sign off, and days later he was placed on administrative leave. He was later demoted and moved to FEMA, the people said. Padilla declined to comment.
Lewandowski eventually persuaded other lawyers to sign off. The ICE director’s autopen was used to sign the paperwork, the people said.
We really mean it: Read the whole thing.
THIS JUST IN—TARIFFS HAVE COSTS: Donald Trump is starting to feel some heat over affordability, and he’s decided to do something about it—reversing some of his own policies that were actively making the situation worse. The Financial Times reports that Trump is planning to scrap some of his steel and aluminum tariffs in the days ahead:
The US president hit steel and aluminium imports with tariffs of up to 50 per cent last summer, and has expanded the taxes to a range of goods made from those metals including washing machines and ovens.
But his administration is now reviewing the list of products affected by the levies and plans to exempt some items, halt the expansion of the lists and instead launch more targeted national security probes into specific goods, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The people said trade officials in the commerce department and US trade representative’s office believed the tariffs were hurting consumers by raising prices for goods such as pie tins and food and drink cans.
Wait, are you telling us that raising the costs of raw inputs is having ripple effects throughout the consumer-goods industry with economic harms that substantially outweigh the narrow benefits that have accrued to a small slice of domestic industry? Who—besides every economist on the planet—could have seen this coming?
DEATH OF A CLAREMONSTER: Until yesterday, the Claremont Institute’s Jeremy Carl—Donald Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for international organizations—looked like just one more guy with a history of wildly inflammatory posting online who was destined to sail through Senate confirmation en route to a high-level post. But after his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Carl got a shock: GOP Sen. John Curtis of Utah announced he would oppose Carl’s nomination, effectively dooming his chances of making it out of committee.
“After reviewing his record and participating in today’s hearing,” Curtis said in a statement, “I do not believe that Jeremy Carl is the right person to represent our nation’s best interests in international forums, and I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated.”
Last year, CNN reported on Carl’s history of incendiary (since-deleted) Twitter posts, which included calls for the Trump White House to ignore “illegal” court rulings, accusations that Nancy Pelosi had attempted a “military coup” on January 6th for which she should be prosecuted, and open yearning for the imprisonment of plenty of other prominent Democrats. Most common of all was Carl’s obsession with race; or, more specifically, how white people were losing a race war.
“If you’re a white person celebrating Juneteenth, you’ve already surrendered,” he wrote in 2021. “The great replacement is real,” he wrote the same year, “and they’re going to try to make you pay for it.” In this vein, there was a fair bit of performative eye-rolling about the deaths of black men killed by police: “I didn’t think I could care less about a death than I did about that of violent drug addicted felon #GeorgeFloyd but gangster #DaunteWright may change my mind,” he wrote.
In light of all this, it’s a little odd that Curtis fixated on Carl’s supposed anti-Israel rhetoric, which was comparatively tame. During his questioning, Curtis seemed most concerned about a past remark from Carl that the United States focuses too much on Israel “often to the detriment of our own national interest.” Maybe that’s false or misguided, but it’s not on quite the same level of Carl’s other posts. But hey, whatever: They got Al Capone for tax evasion.
The Contrarian, Political Opinion: Undaunted in Georgia, Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 13, 2026. A rising star looks like a winner for 2026.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) has found his voice and his moment in his reelection campaign. In a recent rip-roaring speech, he clobbered the Trump regime for its economic blunders, moral rot, and increasing inability to hide either from the American people.
His most memorable line hit the regime’s connections to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the wider lack of accountability from rich, powerful men. “Now, you remember we were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. Do you remember that? But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich,” he said. “It is the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class, ruling our country. They are the elites they pretend to hate.” The powerful analogy to Epstein goes beyond the subset of men who had direct dealings with him. It points to the billionaire class that plunders the economy, compromises institutions (e.g., news outlets), and supports a cruel, racist autocrat.
Ossoff, right, continued ticking off Trump’s domestic outrages. “So, prices are up, jobs are going away, Medicaid and school lunches are slashed, nursing homes are getting defunded. If you’re Steve Bannon and your pitch was Trump for the forgotten man and woman, how do you sell any of this?” Instead of fighting for average Americans, Trump is “literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk,” Ossoff observed.
His forcefully delineated Trump’s racism, sickness, and corruption:Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comOssoff: "You're seeing what I'm seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman."Sat, 07 Feb 2026 23:38:48 GMTView on Bluesky
On ICE he thundered: “Why are roving gangs of masked men — who look like they couldn’t pass the Army physical exam — dressed up like pretend Delta Force operators on our streets, demanding papers, dragging people from their cars, and shooting people to death?” (Though Ossoff has been a strong critic of Trump’s draconian and illegal immigration raids, he did not dismiss voters’ legitimate concerns about a secure border. “The American people demand and deserve secure borders,” Ossoff said last month. “The American people also believe every human being should be treated with dignity and respect.”)
Ossoff has also been front and center in the response to the wholly illegitimate seizure of Fulton County, Ga., ballots. In a written statement, he decried the raid as “a continuation of this sore loser’s crusade, despite repeated audits and independent reviews confirming that Donald Trump was indeed defeated.”
Critically, in his speech, he put the ballot seizure in the context of Trump’s scheming to disrupt the 2026 election:
The president said we’d never need to vote again. Then he said we shouldn’t have elections. Now, he says he wants to take over the elections. And like a scene out of some banana republic, Tulsi Gabbard, the spy chief comes to Fulton County, Georgia to oversee the seizure of ballots. Your ballots. Tulsi said the president asked her to go… which means the president is personally managing federal raids on election sites in battleground states. all in service of his obsession with overturning the 2020 election and laying the groundwork for whatever they’re plotting this year.
His warning was prescient, considering the revelation on Tuesday that the affidavit for the raid came from “a leading election denier in the Trump administration and relied heavily on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked,” as the New York Times explained. (In addition, as Joyce Vance and Andrew Weissmann pointed out in a briefing for the press, the affidavit identified no criminal suspect or source or did more than offer bizarre speculation about an outcome that has already been thoroughly litigated.)
Ossoff, like the very best communicators, frames the moment we are in as a moral and political inflection point. “I believe we will escape this moral tailspin and recommit ourselves to the values that have powered 250 years of progress,” he said in his speech. “But none of this is possible without victory this November.”
Echoing the mantra of the Civil Rights movement, Ossoff declared:
It feels like every day the depravity deepens, the chaos accelerates and deep down, maybe you fear whether our republic — now in our 250th year — can survive it all. But Atlanta, I’m here to tell you, we will overcome this together.
Ossoff was supposed to be one of the most vulnerable Democrats on the ballot. But in a blue-wave election, he seems more secure than Democrats had imagined, in part because the GOP primary is snarled in a three-way race. Ossoff, meanwhile, has demonstrated that he is a fundraising colossus. (“Ossoff, seeking his second six-year term, raised nearly $10 million during the fourth quarter of 2025,” the Georgia Recorder reported. “He starts the new year with an astonishing $25 million on hand, the most of any incumbent senator facing a competitive race this year.”)
At 38, Ossoff is the youngest member of the Senate, where the median age of Democrats is 66. He also demonstrates a mix of aggressiveness and niceness that few politicians can pull off. (James Talarico, running for the Texas Senate seat, is another.) Ossoff has strong ties to the African American community, winning over 90 percent of the Black vote in his election runoff in January 2021. (The late John Lewis was a mentor.)
In short, Ossoff will face a tough fight in November, but the combination of his strong campaign skills, solid support in the Black community, fierce opposition to the Trump regime, and a blue-wave election have given Democrats confidence he will win, perhaps comfortably, in a race crucial to potentially winning back the Senate majority. If he wins with room to spare, he will secure his position among the rising stars in the Democratic Party, part of a long-overdue transition from the stale, septuagenarian set to a generation of politicians who can connect with younger voters.
Ossoff has been undaunted, unafraid, and uncowed when it comes to denouncing the “Epstein elite” and projecting a better vision of America. Georgia voters (as well as pro-democracy voters nationwide) are fortunate to have him in the Senate, especially when his state may be the target of an unconstitutional putsch to seize ballots and defy the will of the voters this November.
More Global News
New York Times, Iran Turns to Digital Surveillance Tools to Track Down Protesters, Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur and Farnaz Fassihi, Feb. 13, 2026. As Iranian authorities restore some online services after crushing antigovernment demonstrations, they are using a technological dragnet to target attendees of the protests.
When Iranians began protesting their government in late December, an ominous text message landed in some of their phones.
Their “presence at illegal gatherings” had been noted and they were under “intelligence monitoring,” the Iranian authorities texted them. “It is advised that you refrain from attending such illegal gatherings, which are desired by the enemy.”
Iran’s government most likely tracked the protesters through location data emitting from their phones, researchers later concluded. The move was part of a new phase by the authorities to combat opposition by tapping a vast digital surveillance infrastructure to track down dissenters who participated in the recent antigovernment demonstrations, according to human rights groups, researchers and documents.
Iran, like China, has some of the world’s most expansive known surveillance abilities. Technology to monitor mobile devices, apps and web traffic has been integrated throughout communications and internet networks, along with facial recognition and other tracking methods, according to groups that have studied Iran’s capabilities.
These digital surveillance abilities have received less attention than the internet blackouts that the government imposed during the violent crackdown to end the protests last month. But as authorities slowly restore some online access, they have detained people who were believed to have attended protests and subjected them to hours of interrogation based on facial recognition and phone data, according to accounts from Iranians and a government security official in the country.
Some people who posted on social media about the protests and other political topics have had their phone SIM cards suspended — effectively shutting off access to mobile networks — while others received warning phone calls and faced banking service interruptions, according to a report that was released this week by Holistic Resilience, a digital rights group focused on Iran.
The authorities’ hope was to hunt down the “leaders of the riots” and arrest them, according to the government security official, who declined to be identified.
“They can follow you to the streets,” said Mahdi Saremifar, a researcher with Holistic Resilience. “The government ends up with a long list of names of people. They can visit every single one of those people, maybe a month later or two months later.”
Feb. 12
Top Stories
Trump appointee Kurt Olsen, second from left, on a panel at the “Election Crime Bureau Summit” in 2023, with, from left, Mike Lindell, Michael T. Flynn and Steve Bannon (Photo by Kelly Dereuck of the Springfield News-Leader via USA TODAY Network).
The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: Trump Ends Immigration Crackdown in Minnesota as MAGA Turns on Attorney General Pam Bondi, Demanding her Removal, Aaron Parnas, Feb. 12, 2026. The knives are out for Attorney General Pam Bondi after yesterday’s hearing. Ridicule is growing online, and Republican backlash is intensifying rather than fading.More On Epstein Files, Cover-up
A group of Jeffrey Epstein sex assault and trafficking survivors raise their hands to signal they’ve been ignored by Trump’s DOJ as Attorney General Pam Bondi, shown at right front wearing a gold crucifix as a neck ornament and backed by youthful Justice Department personnel seated to hear rear, refuses to look at the victims during a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 11, 2026. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt for AFP via Getty Images and Bluesky).
Analysis: Pam Bondi’s Gutter: Five Ways the Attorney General Confirmed She Is Engaged in an Epstein Cover Up, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right,Feb. 12, 2026.Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Trump knows more than he has ever let on. More On U.S. Law, Crime, Justice, Courts
Zoe Hussain, Georgia Worrell and Jared Downing, Updated Feb. 12, 2026. The frantic search for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie, has stretched into a thirteenth day.Lincoln's Birthday, Legacy
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 11, 2026 [Lincoln's Legacy Today], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 12, 2026. On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham. More On U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, DHS Shutdown
News and Commentary: Democrats To Reject Trump's Sham ICE Reform, Jason Easley, Feb. 12, 2026. The White House sent Democrats an ICE reform proposal to avoid a shutdown that contained no legislative text or guardrails to actually reform it. It was rejected and DHS is likely to shut down.U.S. National Security
More On U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, left, is shown with U.S. Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, and Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump.
U.S. Jobs, Economy, Markets
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Making America Stagnate Again, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Deportations don’t create jobs and will increase deaths of native-born Americans. Who knew?
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Bad Bunny’s dancers, Kalshi, and the insider trading problem, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, are exploding in popularity. Kalshi alone saw over $1 billion in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday.More Global News
U.S. Media, Education, Culture
Top Stories
Trump appointee Kurt Olsen, second from left, on a panel at the “Election Crime Bureau Summit” in 2023, with, from left, Mike Lindell, Michael T. Flynn and Steve Bannon (Photo by Kelly Dereuck of the Springfield News-Leader via USA TODAY Network).
New York Times, Trump’s Director of Election Security Is an Election Denier, Shawn McCreesh, Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti, Feb. 12, 2026. Even in a government full of conspiracists, Kurt Olsen stands out. He made a key referral in the Fulton County, Ga., election case.
One of the more extraordinary aspects of President Trump’s second term is this: Some of the most far-out election conspiracists who helped him spread lies about the 2020 election and then tried to overturn it are now inside the government, using the power of the state to keep Mr. Trump’s denialism alive.
This dynamic came into focus on Tuesday when an unsealed F.B.I. search warrant affidavit revealed that the recent criminal investigation into the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga., had been instigated by Kurt Olsen, a rather prominent character in Mr. Trump’s election denialism movement. Mr. Olsen, who is a lawyer, was considered by people in the first Trump administration to be a fringe menace.
In the second Trump administration, he is the director of “election security and integrity,” with the power to refer criminal investigations — criminal investigations into things that have been thoroughly debunked. No matter how many times the results of the 2020 election have been rehashed, Mr. Trump’s fixations have not abated. Mr. Olsen’s position is proof of that.
But he is not the only one. The president has installed proponents of his fraud claims all across his administration. And increasingly, he has started to cast doubts on the coming midterm elections as Republicans face potentially big losses in November.
“Kurt Olsen has a history of abusing his law license to spread lies about our elections,” said Christine P. Sun, a senior vice president at the States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit group that works with state officials to bolster confidence in their elections. “Now, he’s using his role in the administration and the power of the federal government to take actions fueled by those same lies. It’s part of a multipronged approach that threatens state power over our elections.”
Mr. Olsen has said he began his career in the 1990s at the large corporate Washington firm Kirkland & Ellis. He went to Christmas parties at the home of Jeffrey A. Rosen, a partner in the law firm at the time who would go on to become the acting attorney general during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Olsen has said. Mr. Olsen has said that he never did any election legal work.
During the frantic weeks following the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and others immediately began claiming, without evidence, a wide variety of problems with election machines. Mr. Olsen, too, came to believe that “something was not right,” he said in a legal deposition in 2023.
Through an acquaintance, he contacted the former special counsel Ken Starr, a Republican lawyer and former colleague at Kirkland & Ellis, who connected him with a group of Republican attorneys to try to get the election results overturned, according to the testimony.
That started him on a path of taking on cases that many other Republican attorneys avoided putting their names on, including one brought before the Supreme Court in December 2020 seeking to reverse Mr. Trump’s defeat at the polls. Mr. Olsen has said that the team worked “round the clock” to put the case together.
Mr. Olsen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Asked about Mr. Olsen’s role, Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said, “The president has the most talented and qualified individuals serving as part of his team, including Kurt.”
Still, in a constellation of conspiracists, Mr. Olsen stands out.
New York Times, How an F.B.I. Affidavit to Seize Ballots Relied on Debunked Election Claims, Alan Feuer, Nick Corasaniti and Richard Fausset, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Our reporters analyzed the document, which showed how a criminal inquiry into the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., stemmed from a referral from an election denier who works in the Trump administration.
The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: Trump Ends Immigration Crackdown in Minnesota as MAGA Turns on Attorney General Pam Bondi, Demanding her Removal, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 12, 2026. The knives are out for Attorney General Pam Bondi after yesterday’s hearing. Ridicule is growing online, and Republican backlash is intensifying rather than fading.
At the same time, Tom Homan has announced an official end to the federal immigration surge in Minnesota, a controversial operation that drew national outrage after two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed during enforcement actions. The announcement follows sustained public protest, political pressure, and mounting scrutiny over the tactics used.
Here’s the news:
Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing intense backlash—including from prominent conservative and far-right figures—after what was described as a chaotic and combative congressional hearing regarding her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, during which she reportedly deflected questions, promoted President Trump’s economic record, accused Democrats of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and refused to directly address concerns about Epstein-related prosecutions while survivors watched from the gallery.
The internet ridiculed her over talking about the DOW hitting 50,000 despite it not being in her purview as Attorney General:
This is the clip the ridicule is drawn from:
Critics from across the political spectrum, including Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, Kyle Rittenhouse, Erick Erickson, Tim Pool, and Nick Fuentes, called her performance evasive and inappropriate, with several demanding her resignation or impeachment.
The Justice Department acknowledged that it failed to properly redact the face of an undercover FBI employee in a newly released video tied to the Jeffrey Epstein files, prompting CNN to blur the individual’s identity after publication. The incident adds to ongoing criticism over the department’s handling of the massive document release, which has included both accidental disclosures and heavy redactions, drawing backlash from lawmakers and victims.
Here is a list of Administration officials, or Administration adjacent officials, listed in the Epstein files:
Rep. Jamie Raskin accused Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department of engaging in “Orwellian” surveillance after a photograph appeared to show that a lawmaker’s search history of the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files was being monitored during a congressional review session. Raskin argued that tracking lawmakers’ computer searches would violate the separation of powers and suggested the monitoring may have extended to all members who accessed the files.
Tom Homan has just announced that the ICE surge in Minnesota has "concluded." ICE operations will completely wind down, per Homan.
According to the New York Times, in a farewell message, “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey criticized the newsroom’s editorial climate, saying stories were being judged not only on journalistic standards but also on whether they aligned with what she described as shifting ideological expectations. Her remarks suggest concerns about internal pressures influencing coverage decisions, raising broader questions about editorial independence and newsroom culture.
A partial government shutdown is approaching as funding for much of the Department of Homeland Security is set to expire, with Democrats refusing to support a funding bill unless it includes new restrictions on federal immigration agents following a fatal ICE shooting. Negotiations between Democrats, Republicans, and the White House remain stalled, as Republicans argue the proposed limits would undermine law enforcement and instead push for protections for agents and tougher policies on sanctuary cities.
While ICE and Customs and Border Protection would continue operating due to prior funding, agencies like TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard would be affected, potentially forcing many federal employees to work without pay and marking the third shutdown in recent months.
A small group of House Republicans broke with party leadership to vote against President Trump’s Canada tariffs, triggering a series of upcoming votes that Democrats plan to use to highlight affordability concerns ahead of the midterms. While GOP leaders had long shielded vulnerable members from tough tariff votes, the recent rebellion has forced Republicans to publicly choose between supporting Trump’s trade policies and addressing economic pressures in their districts.
According to Reuters, a lawyer tied to President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort, Kurt Olsen, reportedly urged a U.S. intelligence contractor working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to search for evidence supporting claims of fraud in the 2020 election while it was examining voting machine vulnerabilities in Puerto Rico. Sources said the contractor declined to expand its probe beyond assessing future election security, and ODNI denied that Olsen was involved in its formal examination of Puerto Rico’s voting systems.
Newly released documents indicate that former Barclays CEO Jes Staley was listed as a trustee of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in 2014 and 2015, appearing to contradict his 2025 court testimony in which he said he declined the role and was not a close personal friend of Epstein. The trust documents, which include Staley’s signature, raise fresh questions about the accuracy of his statements during his unsuccessful attempt to overturn a lifetime regulatory ban tied to his relationship with Epstein.
According to The Hill, several Republican senators expressed relief after a grand jury rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, over a video urging military and intelligence personnel to refuse unlawful orders. While some GOP lawmakers criticized the video as inappropriate, many said pursuing criminal charges was excessive and potentially unconstitutional, with some warning against using the justice system for political purposes.
Cardi B blasts ICE: “if ICE come in here we’re gonna jump they asses... They ain’t taking my fans”
Leaders of a right-wing Alberta separatist movement say they have held multiple meetings with U.S. State and Treasury Department officials to discuss the possibility of Alberta becoming an independent country, including talks about currency, military development and economic cooperation, and they claim to have been encouraged by the administration’s tone. U.S. officials, however, have downplayed the significance of the meetings, saying they were routine staff-level discussions with no commitments made and no senior officials involved.
Newly released emails and text messages show that former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino praised and encouraged a federal agent who shot U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez five times during an immigration operation in Chicago, even as video evidence later undermined officials’ claims that she had tried to ram agents with her car and led to the dismissal of felony charges against her.
As the Kennedy Center prepares for a two-year closure and renovation under a plan announced by President Trump, its president, Richard Grenell, has warned staff that significant cuts will leave only “skeletal teams” operating during construction, with many departments scaled back or paused entirely.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from withholding federal education funding over a state law that limits when schools must notify parents about a student’s gender identity. The administration argues the law violates federal parental rights protections, while California officials contend the state is complying with federal law and that cutting billions in school funding would cause serious harm to students.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez declared that Nicolás Maduro remains the country’s legitimate leader despite his recent capture by U.S. forces, signaling a shift toward cooperation with the Trump administration as the two countries negotiate over Venezuela’s oil industry. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright praised the early stages of collaboration, citing major oil sales and policy changes, while noting that the United States holds significant leverage over Venezuela’s primary revenue source.
Two Israelis, including an army reservist, have been charged with serious security offenses for allegedly using classified military information to place bets on the prediction platform Polymarket regarding potential military operations. Authorities said no operational harm resulted but condemned the actions as a major ethical and security breach, warning that using secret information for personal profit endangers national security.
Russia has fully blocked WhatsApp, citing Meta’s failure to comply with local laws, and is urging citizens to switch to a state-backed messaging app called MAX as part of a broader push to establish a “sovereign” communications system. Kremlin officials framed the move as a legal enforcement action, while critics argue the government-backed alternative could enable greater surveillance.
A federal judge, Richard Leon, ruled that the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “trampled” on Sen. Mark Kelly’s First Amendment rights by attempting to demote and reduce the retirement pay of the Arizona Democrat and retired Navy officer over a video in which he and other Democratic lawmakers urged military and intelligence personnel to refuse illegal orders; the judge issued an injunction blocking the Pentagon’s action, sharply criticizing the administration’s approach to retired service members’ free speech.
Two Justice Department special counsels—a former GOP staffer and a longtime associate of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro—unsuccessfully sought to indict six Democratic lawmakers (shown above) over a social media video advising military and intelligence personnel to refuse illegal orders, but failed to convince a grand jury to bring charges.
A federal judge ordered billionaire Les Wexner, a former Ohio State trustee and alleged co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein’s, to testify within 60 days in a lawsuit by former students alleging the university ignored sexual abuse by Dr. Richard Strauss, rejecting Wexner’s attempt to quash the subpoena.
A highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard centers on an intercepted conversation last spring in which two unidentified foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner, though the substance of their remarks—reportedly touching in part on Iran—is unknown; the complaint allegedly stalled within Gabbard’s agency for eight months before being transmitted to Congress last week in heavily redacted form.
President Trump said he has not spoken with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about Lutnick’s reported lunch with family on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and reiterated, “I was never there,” while a senior adviser indicated the issue is not a concern inside the White House, saying the only opinion that matters is Trump’s and “he does not care,” suggesting the matter has not become a priority or point of internal contention for the administration.
More bad DOJ redactions. For example, they redacted the “pm” or the “am” in this fundraising announcement in the Epstein files:
Members of Congress from both parties are seeking investigations after it was revealed that the Department of Justice logged and monitored lawmakers’ searches of unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files, with photographs showing Attorney General Pam Bondi holding a document titled “Jayapal Pramila Search History” during a House hearing, detailing the specific files accessed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
A federal judge, James Boasberg, ordered the Trump administration to allow more than 130 Venezuelan men who were deported under the Alien Enemies Act to El Salvador’s CECOT megaprison to return to the United States for their immigration proceedings if they choose, ruling that the situation stemmed from the government’s failure to provide due process before their removal.
The Court, accordingly, ORDERS that: 1. Plaintiffs shall file under seal (but not ex parte) by February 20, 2026, a Notice indicating which Plaintiffs are currently in which third countries; 2. Plaintiffs shall by February 27, 2026, file a Notice noting the number of Plaintiffs who wish to travel independently to a U.S. port of entry or who wish to be flown from a third country to the United States for their court proceedings, understanding that in both scenarios they will be detained upon arrival. Plaintiffs shall simultaneously file a separate Notice under seal listing the names of such individuals; 3. Plaintiffs shall by March 9, 2026, file a Notice giving the number of Plaintiffs (in Venezuela or third countries) who wish to file supplements to their habeas class petition, including challenges to the Proclamation or their identification as TdA members. Plaintiffs shall likewise file a simultaneous Notice under seal listing those individuals’ names
RFK Jr. appeared on a podcast this past week (with Theo Von, above left) where the Trump Health and Human Services Department Secretary said: “I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”
New York Times, Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change, Lisa Friedman, Feb. 12, 2026. The Environmental Protection Agency repealed the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human life and well being. It means the agency can no longer regulate them.
President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.
Led by a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research shows it to be.
It’s a rejection of fact that had been accepted for decades by presidents of both parties, including Richard Nixon, whose top adviser warned of the dangers of climate change and the first President George Bush, who signed an international climate treaty.
And it is a knockout punch in the yearslong fight by a small group of conservative activists as well as oil, gas and coal interests to stop the country from transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward solar, wind and other nonpolluting energy.
“This is about as big as it gets,” President Trump said at the White House as a smiling Lee Zeldin, right, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, stood by. “We are officially terminating the so-called ‘endangerment finding,’ a disastrous Obama-era policy,” he said.
Mr. Trump called it a “radical rule” that became “the basis for the Green New Scam,” a label the president gives to any effort to curb emissions or develop renewable energy.
Mr. Zeldin called it “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” He accused Democrats of having launched an “ideological crusade” on climate change that “strangled entire sectors of the United States economy,” particularly the auto industry.
The administration claimed it would save auto manufacturers and other businesses an estimated $1 trillion, although it has declined to explain how it arrived at that estimate.Editors’ PicksMy Brother Wrote Me a Nasty Letter. Why Haven’t My Parents Gotten Involved?It’s a Grocery Store, but Selling Food Isn’t the PointRalph Lauren’s Not-So-Gilded Age
At issue is what’s known as the endangerment finding, a 2009 scientific conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to Americans’ health and welfare. The finding was based on more than 200 pages of research and evidence.
Mr. Trump, who has called climate scientists “stupid people,” claimed on Thursday that the finding “had no basis in fact”
For nearly 17 years, the E.P.A. had relied on the bedrock finding to justify regulations that limit carbon dioxide, methane and other pollution from oil and gas wells, tailpipes, smokestacks and other sources that burn fossil fuels. The repeal of the endangerment finding is expected to increase the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent over the next 30 years, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.
The added pollution could lead to as many as 58,000 premature deaths and an increase of 37 million asthma attacks between now and 2055, the group said.
But on Fox Business on Wednesday, Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, revived a debunked myth to sum up how the Trump administration views carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. “CO2 was never a pollutant,” he said. “When we breathe, we emit CO2. Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more CO2.”
While carbon dioxide can help plants grow, the extraordinarily high levels in the atmosphere are overwhelming natural processes and increasing the frequency and severity of drought, heat waves and other damaging events, according to scientists.
President Barack Obama wrote on social media that the repeal of the endangerment finding means, “We’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California promised a court challenge. “If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide,” he said. California “will sue to challenge this illegal action” and will continue to regulate greenhouse gases, he said.
“We will see them in court, and we will win,” said Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The science and the law are crystal clear, and E.P.A. is issuing a rushed, sloppy and unscientific determination that has no legal basis.”
In revoking the endangerment finding, the Trump administration made the legal argument that the Clean Air Act allows the government to limit only pollution that causes direct harm to Americans, and only in cases where the damage is “near the source” of the pollution.
Greenhouse gases, however, collect in the atmosphere where they form a kind of blanket around the Earth, trapping heat from the sun. That is altering the Earth’s climate and intensifying heat waves, drought, hurricanes and floods while also melting glaciers, causing sea levels to rise.
The planet has warmed on average by about 1.4 degrees Celsius, or 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, since the Industrial Age, according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The action announced on Thursday eliminates limits on greenhouse gases produced by motor vehicles. Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gases in the United States. The Biden administration had sought to tighten limits on tailpipe emissions to encourage automakers to sell more nonpolluting electric vehicles. (Restrictions on other pollutants from automobiles, such as nitrogen oxides and benzene, are still in place.)
More On Epstein Files, Cover-up
A group of Jeffrey Epstein sex assault and trafficking survivors raise their hands to signal they’ve been ignored by Trump’s DOJ as Attorney General Pam Bondi, shown at right front wearing a gold crucifix as a neck ornament and backed by youthful Justice Department personnel seated to hear rear, refuses to look at the victims during a hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 11, 2026. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt for AFP via Getty Images and Bluesky).
Emptywheel, Analysis: Pam Bondi’s Gutter: Five Ways the Attorney General Confirmed She Is Engaged in an Epstein Cover Up, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Feb. 12, 2026.
On December 26, I wrote a post mocking claims the White House had laundered through Marc Caputo that the Epstein release would only go on one more week; predictably, that claim lasted less than a day. I argued then that the seeming evidence of a cover-up in the files released to that date was instead evidence of incompetence, but that eventually we would get more direct proof of a cover-up.
Well, 47 days later, we’re there.
In yesterday’s hearing before HJC [House Judiciary committee], Pam Bondi staged one of her now-trademark contemptuous performances, repeatedly attacking Democrats (and Tom Massie, whom Jim Jordan treated worse than Democrats) rather than answer pointed questions. In the process, the Attorney General proved that she is trying to cover up the Epstein files to protect Donald Trump in at least five different ways.
Mistreatment of Survivors
Over the course of the day, members demonstrated how terribly DOJ has treated survivors. First, starting with Pramila Jayapal, several people pointed to a list, consisting almost entirely of survivors, along with one other person. It was released with just the survivors’ names unredacted, but with the other person’s name redacted, showing that it did undergo a redaction review, but someone chose to leave the names unredacted.
When Jayapal asked Bondi if she would apologize to the survivors standing behind her for the things her own DOJ had done to them by releasing their names, Bondi did not do so. First, she asked why Jayapal hadn’t asked Garland to do so, a wildly nonsensical whatabout. Then she said instead, “I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics.”
Then, over the course of the hearing (including Dan Goldman, in the video below), several members debunked a dodge that Bondi and [Deputy Attorney Gen.] Todd Blanche kept making. Every time Bondi was asked why she hasn’t prosecuted other men, she claimed that DOJ wanted to hear from victims with allegations. Repeatedly, however, victims were asked to raise their hands if they had reached out to DOJ with allegations, but not heard back. All had.
Pam Bondi thought that taking responsibility for her own actions was “get[ting] in the gutter.”
Two Rounds of Redactions
The hearing revealed something I raised last December: that the discrepancy between what FBI reviewed for back in March and what they did to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act would demonstrate DOJ’s malicious intent.
Shit, Trump will be lucky if this only goes on for another month and not twelve.
The question Welker did not ask but should have is why DOJ is stuck doing this at the last minute if the FBI conducted an even bigger review of the files back in March. Why is DOJ in a mad rush to protect survivors now? Why wasn’t DOJ protecting survivors in March?
And the answer to that question is that, obviously, that earlier review was focused not on victims but on a political calculation: would the release of pictures of Bill Clinton in a public hotel pool in Brunei (which is what got released last week) outweigh the damage of files implicating Trump and his friends (starting with Les Wexner, who was named as a potential co-conspirator in some documents already released), and that the conclusion of that earlier review, in July, was that this could not be weaponized like everything else, and so Trump and Todd Blanche, right, 
personally attempted to pressure Congress to prevent this release at all costs but failed, which is why they’re stuck doing a second last-minute review after the earlier one in March.
And eventually, all that — including whatever lists they made in March that Blanche probably hopes to shield under claims of privilege — should be ripe for release under the law. The incompetence of this first release will lead to iterative later releases.
Hank Johnson, a Georia Democrat, asked about that yesterday, but Pam Bondi dodged a question about the earlier review by addressing the most recent one.
Hank Johnson: It’s been reported that there were at one point 1,000 personnel assigned to the task of identifying and scrubbing Donald Trump’s name from the Epstein files. Were those reports accurate?
Bondi: I believe his name has appeared countless times in the documents that were released. [crosstalk] If I could finish. I’ll just read you the stats.
Johnson: I just simply asked whether or not it was true that it was 1,000 folks who were assigned that task. Were those reports accurate?
Bondi: There were more than 500 attorneys and reviewers. I cannot give you an exact number.
Johnson: I wanted to ask you about that also. That’s a different question that you’re getting to now. There were 500 DOJ lawyers and others assigned the task of redacting the appropriate information, including identities of the Epstein victim survivors, prior to their release. Is that correct?
Bondi: If I could have finished my answer. There were more than 500 attorneys and others who assisted.
Johnson: Okay, alright.
Bondi never did get cornered to address the earlier instance. But at several points, it became clear that one reason for redaction failures, particularly the continued redaction of stuff in the purportedly unredacted files at DOJ, is that earlier review.
Kash Patel’s Lies
Two people played video of Kash Patel, right,
lying to the committee last fall. One was Tom Massie, showing Patel’s laughable claim that Epstein didn’t traffic girls to other men (Zoe Lofgren mentioned that response from Kash earlier in the hearing).
The other came from Eric Swalwell. He referenced Bondi’s statement, to Johnson, that Trump’s name had appeared countless times in the publicly released files, then played video of himself asking Kash Patel how many times Trump’s name appeared.
Swalwell: So it could at least be a thousand times, is that right?
Kash: The number is a totally misleading factor. We have not released anyone’s name in the Epstein file that has not been credible. We have released every piece of legally permissible information. You can characterize the numbers however you wanted.
Swalwell: Reclaiming my time, Director. It sounds like if you don’t know the number, it could at least be a thousand times.
Kash: It’s not. It’s not.
Swalwell: Is it at least 500 times?
Kash: No.
Swalwell: Is it at least 100 times?
Kash: No.
Swalwell: Then what’s the number?
Kash: I don’t know the number.
Having overseen an earlier review of the files and joined Bondi in deciding the files could not be released, Kash lied under oath, wildly misrepresenting how often Trump’s name appears in the files.
Claiming Epstein’s Relationship with Trump Is Privileged
Close to the end of the hearing, Dan Goldman, above, raised two important issues. First he described that when he went to review the unredacted files, theprosecution memo from Florida remained classified. When Goldman asked when she would release it, Bondi claimed that was privileged.
Then Goldman pointed to an email from Epstein to Ghislaine that, in public form, is redacted. He described that the unredacted content consisted of Epstein discussing what Trump had previously said about their relationship during a quasi deposition. Goldman claims that the unredacted content shows that Trump has been lying about his relationship with the sex predator.
Of course, this was Epstein telling Ghislaine what Trump had told in that quasi deposition. It can’t be privileged. But DOJ buried it in an attempt to bury what Trump himself said about his ties to Epstein back in 2009.
Spying on Congress
Finally, after the hearing, it came out that for those members of Congress who had accessed the purportedly unredacted files, Bondi’s burn book had lists of the files the member of Congress had viewed.
DOJ is unlawfully monitoring how Members of Congress are testing whether DOJ has complied with the law or not. It’s not just that they’re finding proof that DOJ is flouting the law, but DOJ wants to know how they’re obtaining that proof (which is itself a way to monitor with which victims members of Congress have consulted).
Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, center right, joins other Trump administration officials in boasting in February 2025 outside the White House that they held in their hands "The Epstein Files" in binders that they would soon release -- a year ago.
New York Times, Bondi Faces Anger From Lawmakers Over Handling of Epstein Files, Glenn Thrush, Updated Feb. 12, 2026. Her appearance came as the Justice Department was under scrutiny over the Epstein files, its approach toward the shootings in Minneapolis and its move to prosecute six lawmakers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to apologize to survivors of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who were seated in the House Judiciary Committee room on Wednesday — and instead demanded that Democrats apologize to President Trump.
Ms. Bondi, imitating Mr. Trump’s tactic of going on the attack when facing tough questions, offered few detailed answers, no admissions of fault but many expressions of fealty and admiration for a president who has exercised direct control over the Justice Department’s actions.
The bitter back-and-forth, during a four-hour hearing before lawmakers, demonstrated the extent to which the Epstein files, once relegated to the conspiratorial outskirts of American politics, have become a defining issue for Ms. Bondi. The topic at times overshadowed her role in subordinating her department into an extension of Mr. Trump’s will and retribution agenda.
While Ms. Bondi fielded questions on an array of controversies — including about the department’s unsuccessful effort a day earlier to prosecute six Democrats lawmakers who posted a video that enraged Mr. Trump — the focus almost always snapped back to the Epstein scandal.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the panel, delivered a salvo of disgust in his opening statement. He started by criticizing Ms. Bondi’s handling of the release of the investigative files involving Mr. Epstein.
“You’re siding with the perpetrators, and you’re ignoring the victims,” said Mr. Raskin, a Maryland Democrat. “That will be your legacy, unless you act quickly to change course. You’re running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice.”
Ms. Bondi seemed unmoved. But she had a harder time evading the visuals in the hearing room, embodied by Epstein survivors who sat solemnly behind her in the gallery. She declined to apologize to them and only briefly cast eyes in their direction.
A particularly uncomfortable moment came when Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, made an emotional appeal for Ms. Bondi to tell the women she was sorry for the slapdash, sluggish release of the Epstein documents, which inadvertently included the disclosure of victims’ names that were supposed to be redacted.
Ms. Bondi appeared momentarily at a loss for words. Then something clicked, and she began to counterattack, her voice swelling to a near shout, accusing Ms. Jayapal of “theatrics” and of dragging the hearing “into the gutter.”
She fiercely defended her actions in the Epstein case from the start, and placed blame for missed opportunities in the investigation on her Biden-era predecessors.
“I’m a career prosecutor,” she said during her opening remarks, adding, “I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and will continue to do so.”
But she did not linger long on defense. Ms. Bondi taunted several of the committee’s Democrats, including Mr. Raskin and Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, for spearheading Mr. Trump’s impeachments.
“Have you apologized to President Trump?” asked Ms. Bondi, who has been eager to ingratiate herself to a White House that has been less than impressed by some of her actions, particularly on the Epstein matter.
“You sit here and you attack the president, and I am not going to have it,” added Ms. Bondi, who then pointed to the state of the stock market, eliciting derisive laughter from Democrats.
“You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up, loser lawyer. You’re not even a lawyer,” she said in one exchange with Mr. Raskin, a Harvard-trained lawyer.
The last time Ms. Bondi appeared before a congressional panel was in October, when she stonewalled Democrats for four hours and read from a list of scripted insults in response to their questioning of her conduct.
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
The Contrarian, Opinion: The Epstein Cover-up Must End Opinion: The Epstein Cover-up Must End, Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Trump knows more than he has ever let on.
Donald Trump has continually downplayed his relationship with child rapist and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied knowing anything about the pedophile operation preying on hundreds of girls and women, despite telling New York magazine in 2002, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” By 2019, Trump had changed his tune. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
Trump and his lackeys in the Justice Department have done everything possible to hinder the release of the files. Despite a law passed and signed by him, the Justice Department has not released all the files, has redacted names of conspirators and perpetrators, and has improperly released names and nude images of the victims.
Now we learn — to nobody’s surprise — that Trump apparently knew much more about Epstein far earlier than he has let on. ABC News reports:
A former Palm Beach, Florida, police chief who investigated Jeffrey Epstein in the mid-2000s told the FBI he had received a call from Donald Trump at the time to say “thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” according to an FBI account of an interview with the ex-police chief in 2019. . . .
President Trump has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said that he cut off contact with his former friend more than 20 years ago.
The report contradicts his (and other famous men’s) professed ignorance of any wrongdoing:
“TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said [GHISLAINE] MAXWELL was EPSTEIN’s operative, ‘she is evil and to focus on her,’ the report continues. “TRUMP told [Reiter] that he was around EPSTEIN once when teenagers were present and TRUMP ‘got the hell out of there.’ TRUMP was one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating EPSTEIN,” the report of Reiter’s statement said.
This should trigger an onslaught of elevated public alarm, with serious legacy media covering Trump’s involvement with the worst pedophile in history. There should be incessant calls for Trump to testify under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and who else knew what was going on. (Just one example: if he knew Maxwell was “evil” for over a decade, why did he say in 2019 he “wished her well”?) In any normal timeline, Trump, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (who has facilitated the cover-up and coddled Maxwell), would be facing demands for impeachment.Subscribed
Trump is not the only one who misled the public about his connection to Epstein. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as recently as last year, denied having any contact with Epstein after 2005. Under questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on Tuesday, however, Lutnick admitted that in 2012, he went to Epstein’s island (with his wife, kids, and nannies).
It did not end there, as the New York Times reports:
The files also contain documents showing that Mr. Epstein expressed an interest in 2013 in meeting Mr. Lutnick’s nanny and had her résumé sent to him. Mr. Lutnick said Tuesday that he did not know if the nanny had met Mr. Epstein, or if she was one of the nannies Mr. Lutnick had brought to the island, adding he “had no idea what that was about.”Van Hollen wasted no time in rightly accusing Lutnick of “totally misrepresent[ing]” his contact with Epstein. “The information recently revealed shows that you had interactions with Epstein over 13 years, including long after he was convicted of soliciting the prostitution of a minor,” Van Hollen added. “That does call into question your credibility and fitness for the job.” Democrats including Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and a single Republican, Rep. Tom Massie (KY), have called on Lutnick to quit or be fired.
Congress must get more serious about pursuing the truth. Andrew Weissmann makes the case in Just Security that Congress should take Maxwell’s bogus 5th Amendment claim off the table with a grant of immunity and compel her to testify. In addition, Weissmann argues:
Congress can use its subpoena power to track down all known email accounts of Epstein, Maxwell and their staff, for starters. It can then turn to the numerous people who enabled his crimes, wittingly or unwittingly. That investigation may reveal wrongdoing or complicity by Democrats and Republicans. That is what apolitical investigations do. …
When law enforcement obtains the contents of an email account, the emails won’t discriminate by party affiliation, unless the participants did. And we know with Epstein, he didn’t. Steve Bannon and Larry Summers, for instance, were both in his orbit. The DOJ investigation may be intended to be partisan, but it could result in revelation of bipartisan incrimination.
Fortunately, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) went to the floor on Tuesday to reveal the names of co-conspirators whose names have been redacted. It’s time for all the names of those associated with Epstein to be made public, as the law requires.
The appalling lack of action and outrage over the elite men involved with Epstein (whether they committed crimes or knew of crimes or normalized him after his plea deal) stands in dramatic contrast to European governments, which have booted out of office one politician after another. (The British government teeters on the brink of a severe crisis over the ongoing relationship between Epstein and Peter Mandelson, the former U.K. ambassador to the United States.)
Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) observed earlier this week, “People are losing their jobs in England right now, it is a huge political scandal there.” He added: “I’m just afraid that the general coarsening and degradation of American life has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should be taking it.”
Given the MAGA protection racket, the sloth of the media, and the catatonic Congress, we may not get all the facts out until there are Democratic majorities in the House and Senate willing to use their power to uncover every bit of available evidence.
In the meantime, Bondi and Blanche should not be practicing law, let alone serving in the highest ranks of a now thoroughly discredited department. Moreover, a party unwilling to pursue justice for Epstein’s survivors and boot out predators, those who facilitated or normalized his crimes, and those who lied or covered up for them, does not deserve to hold power — now or ever.
New York Times, Goldman’s Top Lawyer Departs Amid Revelations About Her Ties to Epstein, Rob Copeland, Feb. 12, 2026. Kathryn Ruemmler, a former top Obama administration lawyer, is out at Goldman Sachs after emails showed a friendship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spanning many years.
Goldman Sachs’s top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned on Thursday night in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of emails and other material that revealed her extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier.
Ms. Ruemmler, left, and representatives for Goldman said for years that she had a strictly professional relationship with Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender.
But emails, text messages and photographs released late last month showed Ms. Ruemmler requesting and accepting gifts from Mr. Epstein, advising him on how to avoid unflattering media scrutiny and discussing her dating life.
In a statement, Goldman’s chief executive, David M. Solomon, said he accepted Ms. Ruemmler’s resignation, “and I respect her decision.”
In one message to an associate, Ms. Ruemmler referred to Mr. Epstein as “Uncle Jeffrey.”
Ms. Ruemmler, in addition to being Goldman’s general counsel since 2021, was a partner and vice chair of the reputational risk committee. She earlier served as White House counsel under President Obama and as a noted white-collar defense lawyer at Latham & Watkins.
“My responsibility,” Ms. Ruemmler said in a statement Thursday evening confirming her resignation, “is to put Goldman Sachs’s interests first.”
Lincoln's Birthday, Legacy
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 11, 2026 [Lincolns Legacy Today], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 12, 2026. On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham.
Abraham Lincoln grew up to become the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves.
“Four score and seven years ago,” he told an audience at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln dated the founding of the nation from the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution, the document enslavers preferred because of that document’s protection of property. In the Declaration, the Founders wrote that they held certain “truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”
But in Lincoln’s day, fabulously wealthy enslavers had gained control over the government and had begun to argue that the Founders had gotten their worldview terribly wrong. They insisted that their system of human enslavement, which had enabled them to amass fortunes previously unimaginable, was the right one. Most men were dull drudges who must be led by their betters for their own good, southern leaders said. As South Carolina senator and enslaver James Henry Hammond put it, “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’”
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” Either people—men, in his day—were equal, or they were not. Lincoln went on, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it…where will it stop?”
Lincoln had thought deeply about the logic of equality. In his 1860 campaign biography, he permitted the biographer to identify six books that had influenced him. One was a book published in 1817 and wildly popular in the Midwest in the 1830s: Capt. Riley’s Narrative. The book was written by James Riley, and the full title of the book was “An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815, With the Sufferings of Her Surviving Officers and Crew, Who Were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs on the Great African Desart [sic], or Zahahrah.” The story was exactly what the title indicated: the tale of white men enslaved in Africa.
In the 1850s, on a fragment of paper, Lincoln figured out the logic of a world that permitted the law to sort people into different places in a hierarchy, applying the reasoning he heard around him. “If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?” Lincoln wrote. “You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”
Lincoln saw clearly that if we give up the principle of equality before the law, we have given up the whole game. We have admitted the principle that people are unequal and that some people are better than others. Once we have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, we have granted approval to the idea of rulers and ruled. At that point, all any of us can do is to hope that no one in power decides that we belong in one of the lesser groups.
In 1863, Lincoln reminded his audience at Gettysburg that the Founders had created a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” but it was no longer clear whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” During the Civil War, the people of the United States were defending that principle against those who were trying to create a new nation based, as the Confederacy’s vice president Alexander Stephens said, “upon the great truth” that men were not, in fact, created equal, that the “great physical, philosophical, and moral truth” was that there was a “superior race.”
In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln called for Americans to understand what was at stake, and to “highly resolve…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: What’s Trump’s Shame Next to Lincoln’s Glory? William Kristol, right, Feb. 12, 2026. These are challenging times. But they are also clarifying times. And they’ve provided remarkable examples of people who’ve risen to the occasion. One thinks of the intrepid Epstein survivors, of the determined citizens of Minneapolis, of the brave people of Ukraine. And today, on his birthday, one thinks of Abraham Lincoln.
There’s so much to say about Lincoln, so many passages of his one could quote. Last year I quoted his extemporaneous remarks of August 22, 1864, to the 166th Ohio Regiment, whom he’d invited to the White House as they returned home from the battlefield. And that quote is just as apt today:
I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children’s children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright—not only for one, but for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.
As it was said a year ago, so still it must be said: It can be dispiriting to see Trump temporarily occupying (and temporarily vulgarizing) that big White House. But it’s heartening to remember that when the Trump era is consigned to the ash heap of history, the example of Lincoln will remain.
More On U.S. Law, Crime, Justice, Courts
New York Post, Savannah Guthrie missing mom live updates: Chilling new ransom note has warning for Nancy Guthrie’s family, Emily Crane, Patrick Reilly, Zoe Hussain, Georgia Worrell and Jared Downing, Updated Feb. 12, 2026. The frantic search for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie, has stretched into a thirteenth day.
Investigators were seen erecting a tent outside the crime scene on Thursday morning as Savannah Guthrie posted a heartbreaking video for her missing mom.
Guthrie’s neighbors have been asked to hand over personal security footage while Arizona authorities have been flooded with nearly 20,000 tips related to the 84-year-old’s disappearance.
A chilling new ransom note regarding Nancy Guthrie was sent to TMZ Thursday morning, with the writer complaining that they are “not being taken seriously.”
Nancy was last seen at her Tucson, Ariz., home on Jan. 31, when she was dropped off by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, after she had dinner with him and her daughter, Annie.
New York Post, Ohio State professor Luke Perez suspended after allegedly attacking cameraman who was trying to interview ex-university president, Nicholas McEntyre, Feb. 12, 2026. An Ohio State professor was suspended for allegedly attacking a journalist who was trying to confront the university’s former president after footage of the assault went viral.
Luke Perez, shown above dressed in a red jacket, an assistant professor in the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, was in a Smith Laboratory hallway talking to two freelance reporters when he launched his alleged attack on February 9.
One victim, identified as Michael Neuman, shown above left, attempted to walk past Perez when the staff member snatched at the man’s phone before grabbing the journalist and dropping him to the floor, according to the footage initially shared by DJ Byrnes on Instagram.Ohio State assistant Professor Luke Perez confronts two journalists outside the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society on Feb. 9, 2026. 6Ohio State assistant professor Luke Perez confronts two journalists in a hallway on Feb. 9, 2026. D.J. Byrnes/The Rooster via Storyful
Byrnes, who runs the Rooster newsletter, claims Neuman, a documentarian, was trying to question Ohio State vice president E. Gordon Gee on student loan debt.
“I told you not to put that in my face,” Perez yells over Neuman. “Now, I’m not gonna ask you again, don’t touch me.”
“I didn’t touch you, motherf–ker, who the f–k are you,” Neuman shouts back at Perez.
The belligerent staffer claims Neuman “put his hands on me” before having a camera shoved in his face.
Perez, a 12-year Air National Guard veteran, begins to walk away down the hallway as Neuman and Byrnes threaten to call the police and have the staffer arrested.
“That’s a lawsuit for sure,” Neuman says. “Are you f–king kidding me. He hits like a bitch, too. Sucker-punching me and he can’t knock me out? What a bitch.”Perez wraps his arms around Neuman in the on camera altercation. 6Perez wraps his arms around Neuman in the on-camera altercation.
Gee, the president emeritus of Ohio State, was a guest speaker for Perez’s class for a lecture series on “profiles in American leadership,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Byrnes, a self-proclaimed political gadfly, had interviewed Gee in the hallway about his comments claiming sexual abuse survivors at Ohio State were engaging in “cancel culture,” the school’s long history with late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and privatized on-campus parking, he wrote on the Rooster.
After the questioning, Neuman had a follow-up for Gee, but Perez appeared and said they were done, leading to the violent incident.
Perez, a 12-year Air National Guard veteran, began to walk away down the hallway as Neuman and Byrnes threatened to call the police and have the staffer placed behind bars.
Perez, a 12-year Air National Guard veteran, began to walk away down the hallway as Neuman and Byrnes threatened to call the police and have the staffer arrested.
"That's a lawsuit for sure," Neuman said. "Are you f--king kidding me. He hits like a bitch too. Sucker punching me and he can't knock me out? What a bitch."
Perez was placed on paid administrative leave on Tuesday after the alleged assault as campus police look into the altercation, WSYX reported, citing a university spokesperson.
Byrnes claimed Perez had violated their First Amendment rights as Ohio State University is a public institution.
“I thought we were in a bastion of free speech only to end up with a guy physically assaulted,” Byrnes told the outlet. “There’s no other way to describe it other than assault. It was bizarre.”
Neuman has called for Perez to be charged with assault after the viral altercation.
“My client wants Perez prosecuted and terminated,” Neuman’s lawyer, Rocky Ratliff, told WSYX. “This is not the actions of an admirable professor or someone who’s professional. If the roles were reversed, he definitely would already be in jail.”
The two men claim Perez stepped into the hallway to tell them he didn’t consent to being filmed, but they weren’t looking for him, and instead wanted to speak with Gee.
The Chase Center was created following a state bill mandating that Ohio State and four other public institutions promote “intellectual diversity.”
Ohio State’s American Association of University Professors chapter condemned Perez’s actions in the video.
“Based on what we know now, this incident is a vivid illustration of a larger problem — the way the Chase Center and other so-called ‘intellectual diversity’ centers have been forcibly and unnecessarily imposed on Ohio’s universities,” the chapter said in a statement to the Columbus Dispatch.
“Unfortunately, this assault — and the embarrassing actions around it — make it clear these centers aren’t really about encouraging civil discourse and intellectual diversity. AAUP-OSU is in favor of free speech for everyone on campus, not just for the ideas that politicians want to promote.”
New York Post, NJ teacher got pregnant by student she ‘groomed’ — and broke teen’s heart by aborting the baby, Emily Crane, Feb. 12, 2026. A twisted New Jersey teacher who groomed and abused two students ended up getting pregnant by one of the teens — then broke his heart by getting an abortion, it was revealed as she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Julie Rizzitello, right, who was an English teacher at Wall Township High School, had told one of her victims that she’d gotten pregnant after convincing him to have unprotected sex with her on his birthday, it was revealed in court Wednesday, according to Jersey Shore Online.
The 37-year-old mom later informed the teenager, whom she’d groomed as a freshman, that she’d terminated the pregnancy.Photo of Julie Rizzitello, a New Jersey teacher who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting students. 3Julie Rizzitello, 37, was sentenced to a decade in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree sexual assault. wallpublicschools.org
“Not only does he have to deal with the fact that he’s groomed throughout his entire high school years, that he was preyed upon by his teacher who he loved and trusted … that he was sexually abused by this teacher,” Monmouth County Judge Jill Grace O’Malley told the hearing of the young victim.
“But now he’s struggling to come to terms with the fact that this individual had an abortion and [he] wasn’t comfortable with it. This is the psychological impact — the devastation.”
The disgraced teacher, who pleaded guilty last year to two counts of second-degree sexual assault, abused each of her victims for months at a time, prosecutors said.
The first boy — with whom she got pregnant — was a freshman when she started grooming him in 2017.
She told him she dreamed of having sex with him, which they then did multiple times in 2017 and 2018.
“This is grooming. It is traditional grooming that I see every week here in this courthouse. This is the behavior of a standard sexual predator. You’re no different,” the judge told the teacher, according to Jersey Shore Online.A handcuffed woman in a maroon shirt stands in court. 3Rizzitello broke the teen’s heart by getting an abortion, it was revealed as she was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Rizzitello also targeted another boy, an 18-year-old student, in early 2024.
The sex-pest teacher copped to having sex with both boys at her home, in parking lots and even at her family-owned bagel shop where the two victims worked.
When the teacher kept interrupting to deny being a groomer, the judge snapped: “Stop shaking your head … These are the facts.”Photo of Julie Rizzitello, a New Jersey teacher who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting students. 3Prosecutors said the sexual abuse dated back to 2017. Emmanuel Cancer Foundation/Facebook
After Rizzitello was arrested in July 2024, prosecutors said, she contacted both victims and asked that they scrub their phones and devices of any evidence.
“These crimes were not isolated incidents constituting moments of poor judgment; they were textbook cases of grooming, involving a defendant who repeatedly leveraged tactics of isolation, manipulation, and control for the sake of her own selfish purposes,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. Santiago said in a statement.
“The egregious nature of the conduct was further compounded by the plain fact that the emotional and psychological harm she inflicted came at the expense of two of the very same young minds she had been entrusted to develop and nurture.”
New York Times, U.S. Attorney Chosen to Replace Trump Pick Is Quickly Fired by White House, Jonah E. Bromwich, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Federal judges had appointed Donald Kinsella, a veteran litigator, as top prosecutor in the Northern District of New York after the Trump administration’s nominee was found to be serving unlawfully.
Federal judges in upstate New York appointed a new U.S. attorney on Wednesday only to see him abruptly fired by the White House, in the latest clash between the Trump administration and the judiciary.
Donald T. Kinsella, 79, was appointed as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York in a private ceremony on Wednesday. But just hours later, Mr. Kinsella said, he received an email from a White House official telling him that he was being removed from the post.
Reached by phone on Wednesday evening, Mr. Kinsella said that he did not yet know whether the White House email carried the force of law. He said he would discuss the matter with the district judges in the morning and go from there.
The Trump administration had previously suggested it would fire any prosecutor chosen by district judges. It is unclear whether the Northern District judges will have any recourse.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does,” said Todd Blanche, right, the deputy attorney general, in a social media post on Wednesday. “See Article II of our Constitution. You are fired, Donald Kinsella.”
Mr. Kinsella has more than 50 years of experience as a criminal and civil litigator. He is a former criminal chief of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District, which prosecutes crime in a broad swath of New York State, including Albany, Syracuse and Utica. His hiring and firing were first reported by The Times Union in Albany.
He had been set to replace John A. Sarcone III, left, whom a judge found last month was serving in the position unlawfully. This week, Mr. Sarcone dropped the title of acting U.S. attorney — his 210-day term had expired — and his office’s website now lists him as first assistant, typically the title of a U.S. attorney’s top deputy.
Federal judges have found a number of U.S. attorneys whose appointments were the result of unusual legal maneuvers by the Trump administration to be serving unlawfully.
Along with Mr. Sarcone, they include Alina Habba, who was the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and Lindsey Halligan, formerly the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as well as a handful of others.
Ms. Habba and Ms. Halligan both left their respective offices in recent months.
Mr. Sarcone has had a difficult relationship with the judges in his district, who declined to appoint him after his interim tenure expired in July.
He had no experience as a prosecutor before he was appointed. He made a series of unusual moves in office, many of which were assiduously documented by The Times Union, which Mr. Sarcone removed from his office’s press distribution list.
Legal AF After Dark, Trump DOJ CRACKS as MASS EXODUS DAMAGE Shows, Michael Popok, Feb. 12, 2026. Remove 7,000 prosecutors and staff from the once respected DOJ and what do you have?
A chaotic morally and ethically bankrupt organization that both attack Federal Judges in writing and in court, while at the same time beg these same judges for mercy when they violate 100s of court orders. The Legal AF podcast calls the DOJ out and explains what reform looks like.
More On U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, DHS Shutdown
PoliticusUSA, News and Commentary: Democrats To Reject Trump's Sham ICE Reform, Jason Easley, right, 
Feb. 12, 2026. The White House sent Democrats an ICE reform proposal to avoid a shutdown that contained no legislative text or guardrails to actually reform it. It was rejected and DHS is likely to shut down.
All administrations take on the personality and priorities of their president. If a president is a policy wonk who likes to get into the weeds and details of policy nuance, they will likely surround themselves with staff that reflects those priorities.
When a president has big, broad goals, or what some call big-picture thinking, the administration will reflect that vision and process.
Donald Trump’s second administration is an unprecedented example of what happens when an administration has no interest in governing and doesn’t care about policy.
If there is no crisis or need for action, the Trump administration can get by.
The problem comes when a situation requires leadership, action, or policy solutions.
It has been a constant theme during Trump’s second stint in office that Republicans in Congress sit around and wait for the White House to provide direction and leadership.
The Department of Homeland Security, the department that houses ICE, is about to shut down on Friday night, and Republicans needed the White House to step in and make a deal with Democrats on real reforms. Instead, the White House offered the same rough draft that Democrats turned down days ago.
We Build Progress, Advocacy: What happens if the Department of Homeland Security shuts down?, Catherine Rowland, Feb. 12, 2026. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will shut down tomorrow unless Congress can reach a funding deal—a possibility that seems increasingly remote. I’ll briefly outline what that means below. For background on how we got here, check out last week’s update. Why might DHS shut down tomorrow?
Last month, Congress funded most of the government through September 30. They only funded DHS, however, through February 13 to give lawmakers time to negotiate funding restrictions that address Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol’s tactics in the wake of Renée Good and Alex Pretti’s murders. Those talks have not yielded an agreement, without which there likely aren’t sufficient votes to extend DHS funding past tomorrow’s deadline. Without that extension, DHS will shut down. Which DHS activities continue during a shutdown?
Numerous DHS functions will continue, either because they are considered essential or are financed through fees rather than the appropriations process. This means activities like Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster responses and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security will continue. However, it does not mean the public won’t notice a difference if the shutdown drags on. Essential DHS employees will work without pay, and past prolonged shutdowns have led to unplanned employee absences—including at TSA, causing airport delays. What about immigration enforcement?
ICE and Border Patrol activities will continue unabated during a DHS shutdown because last summer’s Republican budget law allocated an extra $170 billion for immigration enforcement, paid for by cuts to health care and food assistance. As a result, ICE and Border Patrol have ample funding to tap into, even without appropriations from Congress. How does a DHS shutdown end?
Like all shutdowns end: when Congress passes and the President signs a funding bill, whether it’s another short-term patch that keeps DHS funded at current levels or a long-term deal to fund the agency through September. As things stand, that won’t happen without an agreement to rein in ICE and Border Patrol—or, at least, serious progress indicating a deal is in sight. And right now, it’s not.
More On U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, left, is shown with U.S. Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, and Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Republican Congressman Thomas Massie exposes the secret dinner with Pam Bondi where he first realized that she was going to cover up the Epstein files, Staff and wire reports, Feb. 12, 2026. This woman's pro-pedophile legacy is now etched in stone....
"It really happened back at the DOJ when Pam Bondi invited Jim Jordan and all the other Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to come over for dinner," Massie stated in a newly resurfaced conversation with the "Free the People" podcast.
The congressman explained that the dinner even had Justice Department China that hadn't been used in ages because it had been decades since the DOJ had invited Congress to come and have a "cordial" dinner.
Clearly, the Trump administration was hoping to get Congress on board before they proceeded full speed with their total politicization and corruption of the DOJ.
"And before I went [to the dinner], it was actually my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, suggested— I said, 'Jim Jordan told us we each get to ask one question of Pam Bondi, that she'll take questions,'" said Massie.
"And I said, 'What do you think I should ask?'
And she said, ask her when the next phase of those binders is coming out."
"And I said, 'I'm not going to do that. This is a cordial dinner,'" Massie continued. "It's to kind of, to you know, associate names with faces and develop a basis for cordial correspondence and whatnot, as the administration goes on."
"But as the day got nearer, I decided that is what I should do, as I started looking at what wasn't getting released and she was making more and more statements in the public... And so I asked him, Jordan, I said, 'Do you care? I want to let you know, this is the question I want to ask her.'
And he said, 'You do you, Massie. I'm not going to tell you what to do.'"
When Massie arrived for the dinner, he was seated "very near" to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche."
And I chatted with them too, before we sat down," said Massie. "There were some other people who were there that I don't want to disparage by mentioning them, because they didn't have anything to do with the Epstein files.
In any case, I asked the question, I asked Pam Bondi, 'When could we expect to see the next tranche of these files?' And she told me that all that was left was child porn and it was really disgusting. And nobody wanted to see that kind of stuff."
"And, you know, if I were you, if I were a reporter, there would have been a follow up question," said Massie. "But this was a cordial dinner. And I just like, at that point, I realized she has no intention of ever releasing any more files. And so I had to go back and tell my girlfriend the next day, 'Guess what? She said there's nothing left.'"
"After having said there was, you know, tons of this stuff on her desk that she had found. So that was the seed that eventually germinated later that summer that became the Epstein Files Transparency Act," explained Massie.
As we know now, there was far more left in the files than just images of child sex abuse. Bondi is still hiding the names of many of Epstein's associates and co-conspirators.
At the time of that dinner, she still had not released a large trove of documents implicating Trump and other top administration officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
.Pam Bondi has lied about the Epstein files every step of the way because she decided that her duty is not to the truth or to the American people, but to Trump personally and the powerful men surrounding him. We cannot rest until the rest of the documents are released and everyone implicated in them is investigated and prosecuted.
Please ❤️ and share to thank Massie for speaking out!
New York Times, In North Carolina, a Tight Primary Could Upend the Balance of Conservative Power, Eduardo Medina, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Phil Berger has led the State Senate for years with an iron grip. But in a March election, he faces a popular, horse-riding sheriff who could topple his reign.
Phil Berger entered the small auditorium at Rockingham Community College and prepared to defend his record to a crowd of MAGA-hat-wearing constituents, with just weeks to go before the primary for his North Carolina Senate seat.
On paper, his odds looked good. He had represented these voters for more than two decades in the State Senate and had led the chamber ever since Republicans took over in 2011. He had built a political machine that in many ways now runs the state. And his clamp on policy decisions, as well as his network of lobbyists and wealthy donors, had turned him into North Carolina’s most powerful politician, making his seat virtually untouchable.
But at the conservative candidates forum at the college in Wentworth, N.C., last week, there was a popular sheriff in town eager to take down Mr. Berger, representing the first time in years that the Senate leader’s reign has been threatened.
“Too many times we elect officials that forget who their bosses are, and whom they serve,” the sheriff, Sam Page of Rockingham County, N.C., told the crowd, flashing his trademark cowboy hat, gray mustache and thick glasses. Several nodded in approval.
To much of North Carolina, the most talked-about race so far this year has not been the high-profile contest for U.S. Senate nor one of the few potentially competitive races in congressional districts across the swing state. Instead, all eyes have zeroed in on a surprisingly tight Republican primary on March 3 for State Senate District 26, a rural stretch of land in the north, that could upend the balance of conservative power in North Carolina.
“North Carolina hasn’t seen a primary race like this in decades, and probably hasn’t ever seen one like this where the stakes could not be higher,” said Andrew Dunn, a G.O.P. strategist and the publisher of Longleaf Politics, a conservative newsletter. “If Senator Berger loses, that creates a gigantic power vacuum in North Carolina politics, and it’s unclear who would fill that.”
New York Times, House Passes Strict Voter ID Bill, Amplifying Trump’s Claims of Fraud, Annie Karni, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). The measure had no path forward in the Senate, where Democrats are all but certain to block it and Republicans have said they will not try to skirt filibuster rules to ram it through.
The House on Wednesday passed a strict voter identification measure that would require proof of American citizenship to vote and allow the Department of Homeland Security to seize voter rolls in any state, as Republicans muscled through a measure that is doomed in the Senate but that amplifies President Trump’s groundless charges of rigged elections.
The bill, fast-tracked through the House just days after Mr. Trump called to nationalize voting to combat what he claimed was rampant voter fraud, passed along party lines on a vote of 218 to 213, with just one Democrat, Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, voting with Republicans in favor of it.
It had no chance of passage in the Senate, where one Republican has already expressed major concerns about it and the majority leader, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, has said he will not lower the 60-vote filibuster threshold to try to ram it through that chamber on a simple majority vote over Democratic opposition.
Still, it gave Republicans an opportunity to trumpet Mr. Trump’s charges that Democrats were trying to mobilize masses of undocumented voters to sway elections in their favor. That narrative has helped sow distrust before midterm elections in which the G.O.P. is in danger of suffering significant losses.
And it may also lay the groundwork for Republicans to potentially contest closely divided congressional elections should they lose in November.
On Wednesday, Republicans argued that the legislation was more necessary than ever because of the millions of immigrants who entered the country without authorization while former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in office.
“Cheating is the only path to victory,” said Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, adding that Democrats’ “goal” was to replace the votes of citizens with those of undocumented immigrants.
Representative Chip Roy, the Texas Republican who was the lead sponsor of the bill, ticked off examples of Mexican and Salvadoran nationals indicted by the Justice Department on voter fraud charges.ImageA person with a white goatee wears a dark suit jacket and a blue checkered shirt.
But studies have consistently shown little, if any, evidence that such fraud is happening on a large scale, and even the Trump administration’s own voter verification initiative has so far turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.
Democrats said the real aim of the legislation was to discourage people from exercising their right to vote or to make it difficult for them to do so.
“This is about sowing chaos and confusion,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said on the House floor on Wednesday, where he compared the measure with Jim Crow-era laws that sought to make it impossible for Black Americans to vote. “You’re afraid you’re going to lose in November. Well, too bad.”
Republicans defended the bill, calling it a way to regain the trust of Americans. They said their bill would simply make it harder for noncitizens to vote — something that is already illegal — which they described as a broadly popular policy.
“It is racist to imply that minority communities somehow don’t have the ability to get a photo ID,” said Representative Randy Fine, Republican of Florida.
New York Times, Crypto Industry Targets Al Green, a Texas Democrat Who Voiced Concerns, Theodore Schleifer and Shane Goldmacher, Feb. 12, 2026. A crypto-backed super PAC plans to spend $1.5 million against Mr. Green, a member of the House Financial Services Committee who has expressed concerns about cryptocurrency
The cryptocurrency industry has chosen its first big target of the midterm elections.
Representative Al Green, an 11-term Democrat from Houston whose district was upended by redistricting, is being challenged by a crypto-backed super PAC in its first major negative advertising campaign of the midterm cycle. The super PAC, which is part of the industry’s main political organization, Fairshake, said it would spend $1.5 million to try to defeat Mr. Green in his Democratic primary race next month.
The effort is the opening salvo of what is expected to be heavy spending by the crypto industry in the midterms. Fairshake, which began the year armed with $193 million, is making a new push after its 2024 spending helped elect a more pro-crypto Congress, which has passed crypto-friendly legislation that President Trump signed.
Mr. Green is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees financial assets like crypto.
“As a member of the Financial Services Committee, Representative Al Green has decided to try and stop American innovation in its tracks,” said Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Fairshake. “Texas voters can no longer sit by and have representation in Congress that is actively hostile towards a growing Texas crypto community.”
Mr. Green is running against Representative Christian Menefee, who won a special election late last month for the Houston-area 18th District, replacing a lawmaker who died in office last year.
Mr. Menefee appears to have completed a questionnaire from Stand With Crypto, an industry group that gave him an “A rating.” The group gave Mr. Green an “F.”
“I’m concerned about how cryptocurrency can impact the dollar as the currency of choice,” Mr. Green said at a hearing last year, expressing worries that the rise of crypto could undermine the United States’ ability to impose financial penalties on other countries.
An aide to Mr. Green did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fairshake, which is funded by leading crypto firms, has sought to make an example of Democrats whom it sees as unfriendly in hopes of pressuring or persuading the rest of the party to line up with the industry.
In 2024, the crypto industry made its first big bet with a $10 million attack on Katie Porter, then a congresswoman running for Senate in California. She lost the primary contest to Adam Schiff, who is now a senator.Editors’ PicksBaking for Your Valentine? This Psychologist Would Like a Word.Where A-Listers and Newcomers Shine EquallyCooking Fancy Isn’t About Expensive Ingredients. It’s a Mind-Set.
Mr. Green is an outspoken progressive who has called for Mr. Trump’s impeachment. He is perhaps best known for waving his cane at Mr. Trump during the president’s national address to Congress last year and being ejected from the chamber.
Mr. Green’s current district, the Ninth Congressional, was transformed into a safely Republican seat in the party’s redistricting gambit last year. So he is running instead in the redrawn 18th District.
The race is an example of the generational clashes in Democratic primary contests across the country. Mr. Green is 78 and Mr. Menefee, the former Harris County attorney, is 37.
Fairshake and allied groups have engaged in a few special elections recently, and they announced a $5 million campaign to help Representative Barry Moore, an Alabama Republican running for the Senate.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Coalition Crackup, Andrew Egger, Feb. 12, 2026. Who’s worse for the American right: its antisemites or its Zionists?
This seemingly easy question has convulsed the online right for months, with old-school philosemite conservatives trying and mostly failing to exile the new coterie of antisemites, from Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens to Nick Fuentes, from the MAGA coalition. But the White House has largely steered clear of participating—until this week, when it found itself dragged into the fight largely by accident.
The trouble started Monday, when the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission met in D.C. for a public discussion about the rise of antisemitism. For most of the hearing, the commission stuck to the safe conversational waters of left-wing antisemitism, of the college-campus variety. But commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller—a former beauty queen, right-wing Catholic activist and influencer, and staunch Owens ally—had other plans. What’s this business of calling people like me antisemitic, she repeatedly asked, just because we don’t like Israel?
Throughout the hearing, Prejean Boller all but dared her fellow commissioners and other event participants to call her antisemitic to her face. “Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?” she asked. “If I don’t support the political state of Israel, am I an antisemite, yes or no?” When one participant asserted that Owens and Carlson were indeed antisemites, she scoffed: “There you go again. Everyone’s an antisemite, I guess.”
Commissions like these exist to further the administration’s political messaging, and kicking up intra-MAGA fights wasn’t exactly on the agenda. So it came as little surprise Wednesday when commission Chairman Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, announced that Prejean Boller was no longer a member. His stated reasons were interesting. He steered totally clear of the substance of Prejean Boller’s remarks, saying only that “no member of the commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.” He added: “This was my decision.”
Prejean Boller wasn’t having it. “You did not appoint me to the Commission, and you lack authority to remove me from it,” she replied to Patrick. “This is a gross overstepping of your role and leads me to believe you are acting in alignment with a Zionist political framework that hijacked the hearing, rather than in defense of religious liberty.”
“I look forward to next month’s hearing,” she added. “I refuse to bend the knee to Israel. I am no slave to a foreign nation, but to Christ our King.”
It would take a lot more space than we’ve got here to fully unpack the beef over antisemitism here. Prejean Boller is actually correct about at least one thing: It’s true that Republican allies of Israel have often used accusations of antisemitism as a cheap rhetorical crutch to shut down all critiques of the way the state of Israel conducts its business—a phenomenon that was on particularly painful display during Israel’s most recent lengthy, brutal occupation of the Gaza Strip.¹ Still, it’s also true that genuine bigots and traffickers in the most noxious conspiracy theories often find it useful to claim that they’re really just critics of the state of Israel. Candace Owens is the poster child for this, and I’m not sure Prejean Boller is beating the allegations either: Yesterday, for instance, she retweeted an Owens post claiming that “Zionists are naturally hostile to Catholics because we refuse to bend the knee to revisionist history and support the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children for occult Baal worshipers.”
But what’s more interesting—at least for our political-newsletter purposes—is the particular way the Trump administration has responded to all this. Patrick’s statement firing Prejean Boller, which declined to weigh in on the substance of the fight and specifically stressed that “this was my decision,” seemed like a last-ditch effort to shield the White House itself from the controversy. (When I reached out to the White House for comment, they wouldn’t even confirm on-record that Patrick’s statement had the president’s blessing—although they didn’t deny it either.) But Prejean Boller’s refusal to accept firing from anyone other than Trump himself seems to have closed off this strategic path. At some point, it seems, somebody’s going to have to say something.
For months if not years now, the White House has faced a bizarre coalition problem: how to keep a bunch of philosemites and a bunch of antisemites both happy with the administration despite their open hatred for one another. As in Trump’s first term, the White House has pursued a foreign policy broadly favorable to Israel. Just as importantly, it has abstained from the sort of moral denunciations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza that so irked many pro-Israel types during Joe Biden’s presidency. At the same time, it has routinely opposed efforts to kick right-wing antisemites out of its political coalition—while pursuing a posture of maximum political retaliation against people it accuses of antisemitism on the left. White House employees who brag in leaked texts about having a “Nazi streak” don’t even lose their administration jobs; pro-Palestinian foreign students who support boycotting Israel see their student visas canceled and get snatched off the street.
This “something for everybody” approach seems to be reaching its limit. MAGA’s philosemites and antisemites are unlikely to keep sharing a political coalition for long—and they seem unlikely to let Trump’s White House stay agnostic in their fight, either.
“Only the President can remove me, since he appointed me,” Prejean Boller proclaimed. “What will Trump do? Stand for my Catholic Religious Freedom or remove me?”
AROUND THE BULWARK
How Democrats Can Crush the Midterms… Trump has offered up the issues on a silver platter, argues MONA CHAREN.Quick Hits
WHAM BONDI RESURFACES: We’ve written before about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s astonishing demeanor during congressional testimony, her steadfast commitment to—as Stephanie McCrummen put it in the Atlantic last month—“a calculated performance that amounted to a giant middle finger to basic notions of decorum and accountability.” (Or as we put it in October: “Kash Patel is a twitchy little guy, but Bondi’s testimony made his appearances last month before a pair of congressional committees look downright professional.”)
Well, she’s still at it. Yesterday Bondi went before the House Judiciary Committee—ostensibly to answer questions about her oversight of the Justice Department, really to get some more yelling at Democrats in. (Sample statement, to Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland: “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer.” Pleasant!)
The vitriol was, of course, mostly intended to try to mask the fact that Bondi has shockingly few good answers to a whole host of reasonable questions about her job performance. The Substack the Watchdog Report assembled a good list:
And that’s just the top five! Read the whole thing.
GOOD TIMES AHEAD?: This week, the White House got one piece of good news and one piece of bad news on the jobs front. On the bright side, yesterday’s monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics popped well above expectations, with the economy adding a net 130,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate dipped down to 4.3 percent. On the less pleasant side of things, BLS dramatically revised down its jobs numbers for the whole of 2025, estimating that the labor market added only 181,000 jobs in the entirety of the last calendar year. (It always bears repeating: Any time BLS revised job numbers down during the Biden years, Trump and his GOP allies accused them of deliberately cooking the earlier rounds of numbers for political gain.)
With so much turmoil and disruption in the economy and in the world, nobody seems quite sure what good economic numbers look like anymore. In theory, continued productivity gains from AI and other factors could be keeping the economy growing at a healthy clip even if the labor force isn’t expanding much. The White House is even pitching this as a feature of the economy it’s trying to build: With the U.S. population expanding more slowly due to dramatically reduced levels of immigration, the economy doesn’t need as many new jobs to keep unemployment flat.
We can’t know yet whether January’s strong jobs numbers are an indication that the economy is turning a corner after a year of tariff-induced turmoil, or just a momentary diversion on the way to a recession. If the numbers stay good, there’s one more upside-down wrinkle to consider: An economy that’s humming along well is one in which Trump’s pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, will face strong headwinds if he tries to implement the dramatic interest-rate cuts Trump is counting on him to deliver.
NO FLIGHTS ALLOWED: Some weird stuff has been going down in El Paso, where the Federal Aviation Administration announced—and then revoked—extraordinary airspace restrictions late Tuesday night amid an apparent communications breakdown between the Pentagon and the FAA. The AP reports:
The sudden and surprising airspace closure over El Paso, Texas, stemmed from the Pentagon’s plans to test a laser for use in shooting down drones used by Mexican drug cartels, according to three people familiar with the situation who were granted anonymity to share sensitive details.
That caused friction with the Federal Aviation Administration, which wanted to ensure commercial air safety and the two agencies sought to coordinate, according to two of the people. Despite a meeting scheduled later this month to discuss the issue, the Pentagon wanted to go ahead and test it, prompting the FAA to shutter the airspace. It was not clear whether the laser was ultimately deployed.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that the response by the Defense Department and the FAA to neutralize an incursion by Mexican cartel drones had led to the airspace closure. Drone incursions are not uncommon along the U.S.-Mexico border.
U.S. Jobs, Economy, Markets
New York Times, In Kentucky, People Blame Ford More Than Trump for Lost Factory Jobs, Jack Ewing, Feb. 12, 2026. Ford Motor shut down a battery factory and laid off 1,600 workers after President Trump and Republicans gutted government support for electric vehicles.
The electric vehicle battery factory that Ford Motor and a South Korean company opened on 1,500 acres of Kentucky farmland last year was the biggest thing, economically speaking, that had ever happened in Hardin County.
Yet in December, only four months after the first batteries rolled off the line, Ford abruptly shut down production and laid off all 1,600 workers, leaving people here in the county, about 45 miles south of Louisville, stunned and angry.
The closing came after President Trump and Republicans in Congress gutted programs designed to promote electric vehicles, causing sales to plunge.
Yet few people in Hardin County, where Mr. Trump won 64 percent of the vote in 2024, place much blame on Republicans.
Many said Ford itself was the biggest culprit, raising their hopes and then dashing them. They said the company’s foray into electric vehicles was a disaster largely of its own making.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Making America Stagnate Again, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Deportations don’t create jobs and will increase deaths of native-born Americans. Who knew?
Yesterday’s employment report was widely expected to be weak. As it turned out, it was unexpectedly strong, with an estimated 130,000 jobs added. But monthly job numbers are extremely noisy. If you read the details of the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it actually said that its central estimate was 130,000 jobs, with the true number lying between 7,700 and 152,000 (the 90 percent confidence interval that accompanies all its estimates). And for technical reasons not worth going into here, the true range of uncertainty is even bigger. Basically BLS estimates the level of employment based on a sample subject to sampling error, which makes the estimated change over any given month extremely noisy.
A better indication of how the economy is doing is job gains over the past year, shown at the top of this post (dashed green line). This is a lot less noisy than the monthly number, and it also happens to cover the first year of Trump 47. Since January 2025 the economy is estimated to have added 359,000 jobs, down almost 900,000 from job growth the previous year. This indicates that the job market is very close to complete stagnation. Furthermore, the only sectors that saw large job growth were health care and social assistance (solid blue line). Employment elsewhere declined. Manufacturing employment, notably, fell. So Trump’s economy is not exactly delivering the “manly jobs” that he promised.
Oh, and while both Donald Trump and Scott Bessent have recently asserted that construction jobs are booming, employment growth in construction, which was high under Biden, has in fact fallen precipitously: A graph showing a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Now, Trump officials have been vigorously spinning weak job growth on their boss’s watch. What’s interesting is the excuse for near-stagnation offered by both Kevin Hassett, the chair of the National Economic Council, and Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade czar: Job growth has stalled because of mass deportations.
Wait, what?
Since we’re talking about Trump appointees, some of what these officials said involved flat-out lying. Navarro, in particular, declared that “we’re deporting millions of illegals out of our job market” — ICE has “only” arrested around 393,000 people. He also disparaged strong job growth during the Biden years, saying
[A]ll of the jobs we were creating in Biden years were going to illegals. Americans were going to the unemployment lines.
There aren’t good data on how many jobs are going to illegal immigrants, but we do know that unemployment among native-born Americans fell under Biden but rose last year: A graph with a line AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Compulsive lying aside, however, the fact that Trumpists are attributing stalled job growth to reduced immigration is astonishing, because it’s an admission that the fundamental economic premise behind mass deportations was always false. After all, the claim was that immigrants were taking jobs away from the native born. Now MAGA officials are saying that deporting foreign-born workers reduces employment, which implies that previous immigration was creating new jobs, not taking them away.
So what are those mass deportations about, exactly? Oh yes, we’re getting rid of violent criminals — except that very few of those being swept up by ICE have violent criminal records, and crime rates among undocumented immigrants are actually low.
But while reducing the number of foreign-born workers may not help the native-born, does it actually hurt them? Yes.
There are two big reasons mass deportations and shutting out or scaring away future immigration will hurt the native born.
First is demography. Like every advanced nation and many developing countries, the U.S. has seen fertility decline below the rate needed to keep the population from shrinking, and growth in the working-age population and hence the potential labor force has already slowed to a crawl: A graph showing a line AI-generated content may be incorrect.
However, the working-age population would already have been declining, Japan-style, without immigration — and although we don’t have reliable numbers, it seems likely that the Trumpists have effectively cut off the inflow of working-age immigrants.
Without those immigrants, who will pay the taxes that support Medicare and Social Security? True, immigrants place some demands on government services, but these are hugely outweighed by their contribution to government revenue, both through the taxes they pay directly and through their role in boosting economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office just released its latest fiscal projections; these have gotten substantially worse compared with a year ago, in part because the budget office is factoring in the negative effects of reduced immigration.
In fact, CBO’s numbers probably understate just how extreme anti-immigrant policy has become. Also, the projection only extends for the next 10 years, and the adverse fiscal effect of cutting off immigration will be even larger further in the future.
Beyond worsening our already unsustainable fiscal situation, a cutoff of immigration raises the question of who will provide essential services to our still-rapidly-growing population of senior citizens: A graph with a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.
This demographic concern about immigration interacts with the second big reason reduced immigration hurts native-born Americans: We need immigrant workers to do jobs the native-born can’t or won’t do.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, the available evidence suggests that immigrants are mainly complements, not substitutes, for native-born workers. Foreign-born workers aren’t evenly spread across the economy. They are, instead, concentrated in occupations where they make up a large share of the work force, so they aren’t really competing with non-immigrant workers, but are making some goods and services cheaper and more available than they would be without immigrants.
Examples of occupations in which immigrants play a crucial role include farm labor, meatpacking and other food processing, and construction. Foreign-born workers also play crucial roles in providing health care: A blue rectangular object with black text AI-generated content may be incorrect. With healthcare facing severe labor shortages, cutting off the supply of immigrant workers will raise the cost and reduce the availability of care — which will be especially hard on seniors, who are 19 percent of the population but account for more than 40 percent of health expenditures.
A new paper by David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber and Brian McGarry uses variation in immigration over time and across metropolitan areas to estimate the impact of immigration on the health care labor force. They find that the arrival of an extra 1000 immigrants leads to employment of an additional 28 aides, 49 nurses and 19 doctors.
This effect on the number of healthcare workers means, in turn, that increased immigration leads to lower senior mortality, and conversely that blocking immigration and deporting foreign-born workers will increase deaths among older Americans. A back of the envelope calculation using Grabowski et al’s numbers suggests that reducing the immigrant population by one million immigrants, which is what Stephen Miller wants to do every year, would lead to around 15,000 extra deaths per year among U.S. seniors.
Which brings me back to the stunning stagnation of job growth that has already taken place on Trump’s watch. Trump’s minions would have you believe that near-zero job growth is fine because immigration has plunged — even though they assured us that this wouldn’t happen. But the reality is that the war on immigrants, in addition to being a moral and civil liberties nightmare, will make native-born Americans poorer — and send thousands of us to an early grave.
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Bad Bunny’s dancers, Kalshi, and the insider trading problem, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, are exploding in popularity. Kalshi alone saw over $1 billion in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday.
Remarkably, more than $100 million was wagered on what song Bad Bunny would play first during his halftime show. That kind of market has raised concerns about insider trading. Not only is Bad Bunny in control of which song is played, but this information is also known in advance by dancers, musicians, crew, and anyone who happened to be around during rehearsals.
This is likely why, just before the big game, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour announced a laundry list of efforts to crack down on insider trading. This included partnering with a forensics lab, hiring an intelligence advisor, setting up a “surveillance audit committee,” and investing in “behavior monitoring and pattern recognition tools.”
Mansour said that “insider trading erodes trust” and when “people believe a market is unfair, they stop trading.” Serious violations, Mansour said, would be referred to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for criminal prosecution.
One issue, however, is that the CFTC is a relatively small government agency with a budget of less than $400 million and limited experience prosecuting insider trading.
More fundamentally, all of these steps depend on a functional definition of insider trading for prediction markets.
Mansour appeared on CNBC on Tuesday and was pressed on what constituted insider information in a market like Bad Bunny’s first Super Bowl halftime song. Andrew Ross Sorkin asked if Kalshi would consider it insider trading if one of Bad Bunny’s dancers, who knew the first song in advance, bet in the market.
Mansour said that the same rules applied to Kalshi bets as the stock market. He said that anyone who trades on “material non-public information” on Kalshi violates insider trading rules.
The hosts, however, point out that executives of publicly traded companies have a legal obligation not to share financially material non-public information outside of regular public disclosures. Bad Bunny and his employees do not face the same legal constraints and have nothing to do with the market set up by Kalshi.
Mansour offered a pat response: “Either this information can be public, and that’s okay, or it’s information that cannot be public beforehand.”
Mansour appears to be leaning on the CFTC’s more lenient stance toward insider trading. Under CFTC rules, trading on non-public information is permitted, as long as you didn’t obtain the information through fraudulent or illegal means:
The failure to disclose information prior to entering into a transaction, either in an anonymous market setting or in bilateral negotiations, will not, by itself, constitute a violation. However, depending on all of the facts and circumstances, trading on the basis of material nonpublic information in breach of a pre-existing duty (established by another law or rule, agreement, understanding, or some other source), or by trading on the basis of material nonpublic information that was obtained through fraud or deception, may violate final Rule 180.1.
“This has been an age-old question for all types of financial markets, right?” Mansour asked rhetorically. “Should the farmers be able to trade on grain futures, you know, because they have more information about the crops?” Farmers are allowed to trade on grain futures.
Becky Quick, the other CNBC host, noted that if that is the standard, dancers who knew the song in advance would be free to participate in the Kalshi market:
It’s not material information that can’t be shared. You’re making it that by putting it on this betting platform, but they have no obligation to say we’re not going to tell anybody our opening lineup because there might be money made on this other place that’s now betting on this… the responsibility is not on them.
Mansour conceded the point. “If that’s the position that people are taking… It’s basically, you know, it’s okay to actually talk about which song is gonna be played… then that it’s okay and it’s totally fair game, and I agree with you in that case,” he said.
“That just doesn’t seem like a fair market trade,” Quick replied. “[T]here’s an advantage to people who have this information [and] there’s no way you could go after them because it’s… this is not material information.” The discussion concluded with Mansour suggesting that Bad Bunny revealing the song in advance to people who place bets on Kalshi was “fair game” and part of “the risk in the market.”
In response to Popular Information’s request for comment, Kalshi provided the following statement:
People who participate in large commercial events, activities, etc often sign contracts or agreements not to disclose info, maintain confidentiality, etc. Where users have a legal duty not to disclose info and then they do disclose it, it can be insider trading. Of course, cases depend on specific facts and evidence.
Numerous markets offered on Kalshi carry similar risks. For example, there are individual markets on whether dozens of people will attend President Trump’s State of the Union address on February 24.
At some point before the speech, Barron Trump will know whether he’ll attend. There is nothing to stop him from telling his buddies at New York University. Barron Trump is not obligated to keep his plans secret because Kalshi has set up a market.
More Global News
National Press Club, Europe and US must adapt rapidly to counter global threats, NATO Commander Tells NPC, Zita Ballinger Fletcher, Feb. 11, 2026. The United States and Europe must make rapid military advancements to counter threats from Russia and China, Admiral Peter Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told the National Press Club at a Headliners Luncheon on Tuesday.
Vandier is one of NATO’s most senior military commanders, overseeing the alliance’s transformation headquarters based in Norfolk, Va. During a discussion moderated by former NPC President Jen Judson, Vandier shared his views on the current state of the alliance and how it must adapt for global security.
“The industry question is really a big one. I think the US, and particularly this administration, have taken the question very, very seriously. We inherit an industrial system that has not been prepared for war,” Vandier said.
He stressed that European and American military and industrial efforts combined can outpace adversaries.
“We have a collective security problem. So that means we need a collective endeavor to solve this problem,” he told reporters. “We are in a race especially with China, and so we need the skills and the knowledge of the two sides of the Atlantic to face this challenge.”
Vandier explained that drone production is profoundly changing the way that battles are being fought and will be in the future because of omnipresent surveillance.
“We’ve seen an increased lethality of the zone of contacts on the battlefield,” he said with regard to drones. “The ability to concentrate forces is very limited. Surprise is difficult. This permanent surveillance is something which is a change. We know for example that command posts are targets, even in depth. So today the way we work a command post has to change.”
He said that speedy adaptation on the battlefield and within the defense industry will be critical to NATO’s role in helping to safeguard both European countries and the United States from adversaries worldwide. To do this, Vandier said, both the military and industry “need to shortcut to adapt, to find new procedures, to break some roadblocks.”
“The most expensive commodity today is time,” he said. “Do we have time? I don’t think we have that much time.”
New York Times, Ukrainian Olympian Is Disqualified Over Helmet With Images of War Dead, Victor Mather and Tariq Panja, Feb. 12, 2026. Olympic officials had told Vladyslav Heraskevych that the helmet, featuring images of Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, violated the Games’ ban on political speech.
A Ukrainian athlete was disqualified from the Winter Olympics in Italy on Thursday because he had planned to wear a helmet commemorating countrymen killed in the war with Russia.
Olympic officials had told the athlete, Vladyslav Heraskevych, that the helmet violated the Games’ prohibition on political speech. Mr. Heraskevych, who competes in skeleton, a sledding event on an ice track, had said this week that he planned to race with the helmet anyway.
Moments before the competition on Thursday morning, Mr. Heraskevych held talks at the track in Cortina d’Ampezzo with the president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry. The meeting ended with Mr. Heraskevych barred from competing and Ms Coventry in tears following a failure to reach a compromise.
The incident is the Games’ biggest crisis, underscored by the direct and personal intervention in the matter by Ms. Coventry, who is presiding over her first Olympic Games. Questions over Mr. Heraskevych’s helmet had reverberated for days from Cortina to Milan, where the I.O.C. leadership is based during the Games, and all the way to Kyiv, where Ukrainian officials denounced Olympic officials’ decision.
At issue, the I.O.C. said, is its stated commitment to preserve what its chief spokesman Mark Adams described as “the sanctity of the field of play.”
The I.O.C.’s rulebook has long taken a firm line against forms of political protest, but in 2020 Olympic officials loosened some of those rules to allow athletes to make statements during the competition on social media or to journalists. Mr. Heraskevych had worn what he called his “remembrance helmet” during practice runs this week, but a clash had loomed for days over his use of it in the competition, where political speech is strictly banned.
Just before the races began on Thursday morning, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, the sport’s governing body, barred him because “the helmet he intended to wear was not compliant with the rules.”
U.S. Media, Education, Culture
Salon, Commentary: “Hindered by fear”: CBS producer paints picture of Bari Weiss’ “vision” in resignation letter, Alex Galbraith, Feb. 12, 2026. A producer for "CBS Evening News" said network journalists were "hindered by fear" in her farewell letter.
A producer for “CBS Evening News” worried about the direction the network is taking in a farewell letter to her colleagues, saying that the “excellence” employees “seek to sustain is hindered by fear and uncertainty.”
The letter from producer Alicia Hastey was shared on social media by New York Times reporter Ben Mullin. While Hastey never mentioned Bari Weiss or newly appointed anchor Tony Dokoupil by name, she fretted about the “sweeping new vision” of the Tiffany Network.
“There has been a sweeping new vision prioritizing a break from traditional broadcast norms to embrace what has been described as ‘heterodox’ journalism,” she said. “Stories may instead be evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”
Halsey said that the new era of CBS “pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.” She closed her letter with a nod to legendary CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, quoting his response to the idea that his news coverage leaned too liberal.
“If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism – that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased,” Cronkite said.
Weiss’ tenure has been marked by criticism from CBS employees and the network’s former stars. David Letterman raged that the network’s news division had been “eviscerated by idiots” shortly after Weiss promoted Dokoupil to lead CBS’ flagship news program.
“CBS News is a wreck, it’s just gone!” he said. “Ed Murrow would be broadcasting the blitz of London from the rooftop of buildings in London for CBS Radio. And it was that mentality that drove the integrity of CBS News that has been trampled on, pissed on, and eviscerated by these idiots that have taken it over!”
Feb. 12
Top Stories
The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: Trump Ends Immigration Crackdown in Minnesota as MAGA Turns on Attorney General Pam Bondi, Demanding her Removal, Aaron Parnas, Feb. 12, 2026. The knives are out for Attorney General Pam Bondi after yesterday’s hearing. Ridicule is growing online, and Republican backlash is intensifying rather than fading.Lincoln's Birthday, Legacy
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 11, 2026 [Lincoln's Legacy Today], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 12, 2026. On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham. More On Epstein Files, Cover-up
Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Trump knows more than he has ever let on. More On U.S. Law, Crime, Justice, Courts
More On U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, DHS Shutdown
News and Commentary: Democrats To Reject Trump's Sham ICE Reform, Jason Easley, Feb. 12, 2026. The White House sent Democrats an ICE reform proposal to avoid a shutdown that contained no legislative text or guardrails to actually reform it. It was rejected and DHS is likely to shut down.More On U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance
U.S. Jobs, Economy, Markets
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Making America Stagnate Again, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Deportations don’t create jobs and will increase deaths of native-born Americans. Who knew?Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Bad Bunny’s dancers, Kalshi, and the insider trading problem, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, are exploding in popularity. Kalshi alone saw over $1 billion in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday.More Global News
Top Stories
New York Times, Trump’s Director of Election Security Is an Election Denier, Shawn McCreesh, Alexandra Berzon and Nick Corasaniti, Feb. 12, 2026. Even in a government full of conspiracists, Kurt Olsen stands out. He made a key referral in the Fulton County, Ga., election case.
One of the more extraordinary aspects of President Trump’s second term is this: Some of the most far-out election conspiracists who helped him spread lies about the 2020 election and then tried to overturn it are now inside the government, using the power of the state to keep Mr. Trump’s denialism alive.
This dynamic came into focus on Tuesday when an unsealed F.B.I. search warrant affidavit revealed that the recent criminal investigation into the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga., had been instigated by Kurt Olsen, a rather prominent character in Mr. Trump’s election denialism movement. Mr. Olsen, who is a lawyer, was considered by people in the first Trump administration to be a fringe menace.
In the second Trump administration, he is the director of “election security and integrity,” with the power to refer criminal investigations — criminal investigations into things that have been thoroughly debunked. No matter how many times the results of the 2020 election have been rehashed, Mr. Trump’s fixations have not abated. Mr. Olsen’s position is proof of that.
But he is not the only one. The president has installed proponents of his fraud claims all across his administration. And increasingly, he has started to cast doubts on the coming midterm elections as Republicans face potentially big losses in November.
“Kurt Olsen has a history of abusing his law license to spread lies about our elections,” said Christine P. Sun, a senior vice president at the States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit group that works with state officials to bolster confidence in their elections. “Now, he’s using his role in the administration and the power of the federal government to take actions fueled by those same lies. It’s part of a multipronged approach that threatens state power over our elections.”
Mr. Olsen has said he began his career in the 1990s at the large corporate Washington firm Kirkland & Ellis. He went to Christmas parties at the home of Jeffrey A. Rosen, a partner in the law firm at the time who would go on to become the acting attorney general during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Olsen has said. Mr. Olsen has said that he never did any election legal work.
During the frantic weeks following the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and others immediately began claiming, without evidence, a wide variety of problems with election machines. Mr. Olsen, too, came to believe that “something was not right,” he said in a legal deposition in 2023.
Through an acquaintance, he contacted the former special counsel Ken Starr, a Republican lawyer and former colleague at Kirkland & Ellis, who connected him with a group of Republican attorneys to try to get the election results overturned, according to the testimony.
That started him on a path of taking on cases that many other Republican attorneys avoided putting their names on, including one brought before the Supreme Court in December 2020 seeking to reverse Mr. Trump’s defeat at the polls. Mr. Olsen has said that the team worked “round the clock” to put the case together.
Mr. Olsen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Asked about Mr. Olsen’s role, Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said, “The president has the most talented and qualified individuals serving as part of his team, including Kurt.”
Still, in a constellation of conspiracists, Mr. Olsen stands out.
New York Times, How an F.B.I. Affidavit to Seize Ballots Relied on Debunked Election Claims, Alan Feuer, Nick Corasaniti and Richard Fausset, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Our reporters analyzed the document, which showed how a criminal inquiry into the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., stemmed from a referral from an election denier who works in the Trump administration.
The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: Trump Ends Immigration Crackdown in Minnesota as MAGA Turns on Attorney General Pam Bondi, Demanding her Removal, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 12, 2026. The knives are out for Attorney General Pam Bondi after yesterday’s hearing. Ridicule is growing online, and Republican backlash is intensifying rather than fading.
At the same time, Tom Homan has announced an official end to the federal immigration surge in Minnesota, a controversial operation that drew national outrage after two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed during enforcement actions. The announcement follows sustained public protest, political pressure, and mounting scrutiny over the tactics used.
Here’s the news:
Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing intense backlash—including from prominent conservative and far-right figures—after what was described as a chaotic and combative congressional hearing regarding her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, during which she reportedly deflected questions, promoted President Trump’s economic record, accused Democrats of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and refused to directly address concerns about Epstein-related prosecutions while survivors watched from the gallery.
The internet ridiculed her over talking about the DOW hitting 50,000 despite it not being in her purview as Attorney General:
This is the clip the ridicule is drawn from:
Critics from across the political spectrum, including Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, Kyle Rittenhouse, Erick Erickson, Tim Pool, and Nick Fuentes, called her performance evasive and inappropriate, with several demanding her resignation or impeachment.
The Justice Department acknowledged that it failed to properly redact the face of an undercover FBI employee in a newly released video tied to the Jeffrey Epstein files, prompting CNN to blur the individual’s identity after publication. The incident adds to ongoing criticism over the department’s handling of the massive document release, which has included both accidental disclosures and heavy redactions, drawing backlash from lawmakers and victims.
Here is a list of Administration officials, or Administration adjacent officials, listed in the Epstein files:
Rep. Jamie Raskin accused Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department of engaging in “Orwellian” surveillance after a photograph appeared to show that a lawmaker’s search history of the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files was being monitored during a congressional review session. Raskin argued that tracking lawmakers’ computer searches would violate the separation of powers and suggested the monitoring may have extended to all members who accessed the files.
Tom Homan has just announced that the ICE surge in Minnesota has "concluded." ICE operations will completely wind down, per Homan.
According to the New York Times, in a farewell message, “CBS Evening News” producer Alicia Hastey criticized the newsroom’s editorial climate, saying stories were being judged not only on journalistic standards but also on whether they aligned with what she described as shifting ideological expectations. Her remarks suggest concerns about internal pressures influencing coverage decisions, raising broader questions about editorial independence and newsroom culture.
A partial government shutdown is approaching as funding for much of the Department of Homeland Security is set to expire, with Democrats refusing to support a funding bill unless it includes new restrictions on federal immigration agents following a fatal ICE shooting. Negotiations between Democrats, Republicans, and the White House remain stalled, as Republicans argue the proposed limits would undermine law enforcement and instead push for protections for agents and tougher policies on sanctuary cities.
While ICE and Customs and Border Protection would continue operating due to prior funding, agencies like TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard would be affected, potentially forcing many federal employees to work without pay and marking the third shutdown in recent months.
A small group of House Republicans broke with party leadership to vote against President Trump’s Canada tariffs, triggering a series of upcoming votes that Democrats plan to use to highlight affordability concerns ahead of the midterms. While GOP leaders had long shielded vulnerable members from tough tariff votes, the recent rebellion has forced Republicans to publicly choose between supporting Trump’s trade policies and addressing economic pressures in their districts.
According to Reuters, a lawyer tied to President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort, Kurt Olsen, reportedly urged a U.S. intelligence contractor working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to search for evidence supporting claims of fraud in the 2020 election while it was examining voting machine vulnerabilities in Puerto Rico. Sources said the contractor declined to expand its probe beyond assessing future election security, and ODNI denied that Olsen was involved in its formal examination of Puerto Rico’s voting systems.
Newly released documents indicate that former Barclays CEO Jes Staley was listed as a trustee of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in 2014 and 2015, appearing to contradict his 2025 court testimony in which he said he declined the role and was not a close personal friend of Epstein. The trust documents, which include Staley’s signature, raise fresh questions about the accuracy of his statements during his unsuccessful attempt to overturn a lifetime regulatory ban tied to his relationship with Epstein.
According to The Hill, several Republican senators expressed relief after a grand jury rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, over a video urging military and intelligence personnel to refuse unlawful orders. While some GOP lawmakers criticized the video as inappropriate, many said pursuing criminal charges was excessive and potentially unconstitutional, with some warning against using the justice system for political purposes.
Cardi B blasts ICE: “if ICE come in here we’re gonna jump they asses... They ain’t taking my fans”
Leaders of a right-wing Alberta separatist movement say they have held multiple meetings with U.S. State and Treasury Department officials to discuss the possibility of Alberta becoming an independent country, including talks about currency, military development and economic cooperation, and they claim to have been encouraged by the administration’s tone. U.S. officials, however, have downplayed the significance of the meetings, saying they were routine staff-level discussions with no commitments made and no senior officials involved.
Newly released emails and text messages show that former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino praised and encouraged a federal agent who shot U.S. citizen Marimar Martinez five times during an immigration operation in Chicago, even as video evidence later undermined officials’ claims that she had tried to ram agents with her car and led to the dismissal of felony charges against her.
As the Kennedy Center prepares for a two-year closure and renovation under a plan announced by President Trump, its president, Richard Grenell, has warned staff that significant cuts will leave only “skeletal teams” operating during construction, with many departments scaled back or paused entirely.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from withholding federal education funding over a state law that limits when schools must notify parents about a student’s gender identity. The administration argues the law violates federal parental rights protections, while California officials contend the state is complying with federal law and that cutting billions in school funding would cause serious harm to students.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez declared that Nicolás Maduro remains the country’s legitimate leader despite his recent capture by U.S. forces, signaling a shift toward cooperation with the Trump administration as the two countries negotiate over Venezuela’s oil industry. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright praised the early stages of collaboration, citing major oil sales and policy changes, while noting that the United States holds significant leverage over Venezuela’s primary revenue source.
Two Israelis, including an army reservist, have been charged with serious security offenses for allegedly using classified military information to place bets on the prediction platform Polymarket regarding potential military operations. Authorities said no operational harm resulted but condemned the actions as a major ethical and security breach, warning that using secret information for personal profit endangers national security.
Russia has fully blocked WhatsApp, citing Meta’s failure to comply with local laws, and is urging citizens to switch to a state-backed messaging app called MAX as part of a broader push to establish a “sovereign” communications system. Kremlin officials framed the move as a legal enforcement action, while critics argue the government-backed alternative could enable greater surveillance.
Lincoln's Birthday, Legacy
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 11, 2026 [Lincolns Legacy Today], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 12, 2026. On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham.
Abraham Lincoln grew up to become the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves.
“Four score and seven years ago,” he told an audience at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln dated the founding of the nation from the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution, the document enslavers preferred because of that document’s protection of property. In the Declaration, the Founders wrote that they held certain “truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”
But in Lincoln’s day, fabulously wealthy enslavers had gained control over the government and had begun to argue that the Founders had gotten their worldview terribly wrong. They insisted that their system of human enslavement, which had enabled them to amass fortunes previously unimaginable, was the right one. Most men were dull drudges who must be led by their betters for their own good, southern leaders said. As South Carolina senator and enslaver James Henry Hammond put it, “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’”
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” Either people—men, in his day—were equal, or they were not. Lincoln went on, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it…where will it stop?”
Lincoln had thought deeply about the logic of equality. In his 1860 campaign biography, he permitted the biographer to identify six books that had influenced him. One was a book published in 1817 and wildly popular in the Midwest in the 1830s: Capt. Riley’s Narrative. The book was written by James Riley, and the full title of the book was “An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815, With the Sufferings of Her Surviving Officers and Crew, Who Were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs on the Great African Desart [sic], or Zahahrah.” The story was exactly what the title indicated: the tale of white men enslaved in Africa.
In the 1850s, on a fragment of paper, Lincoln figured out the logic of a world that permitted the law to sort people into different places in a hierarchy, applying the reasoning he heard around him. “If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?” Lincoln wrote. “You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”
Lincoln saw clearly that if we give up the principle of equality before the law, we have given up the whole game. We have admitted the principle that people are unequal and that some people are better than others. Once we have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, we have granted approval to the idea of rulers and ruled. At that point, all any of us can do is to hope that no one in power decides that we belong in one of the lesser groups.
In 1863, Lincoln reminded his audience at Gettysburg that the Founders had created a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” but it was no longer clear whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” During the Civil War, the people of the United States were defending that principle against those who were trying to create a new nation based, as the Confederacy’s vice president Alexander Stephens said, “upon the great truth” that men were not, in fact, created equal, that the “great physical, philosophical, and moral truth” was that there was a “superior race.”
In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln called for Americans to understand what was at stake, and to “highly resolve…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: What’s Trump’s Shame Next to Lincoln’s Glory? William Kristol, right, Feb. 12, 2026. These are challenging times. But they are also clarifying times. And they’ve provided remarkable examples of people who’ve risen to the occasion. One thinks of the intrepid Epstein survivors, of the determined citizens of Minneapolis, of the brave people of Ukraine. And today, on his birthday, one thinks of Abraham Lincoln.
There’s so much to say about Lincoln, so many passages of his one could quote. Last year I quoted his extemporaneous remarks of August 22, 1864, to the 166th Ohio Regiment, whom he’d invited to the White House as they returned home from the battlefield. And that quote is just as apt today:
I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children’s children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright—not only for one, but for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.
As it was said a year ago, so still it must be said: It can be dispiriting to see Trump temporarily occupying (and temporarily vulgarizing) that big White House. But it’s heartening to remember that when the Trump era is consigned to the ash heap of history, the example of Lincoln will remain.
More On Epstein Files, Cover-up
The Contrarian, Opinion: The Epstein Cover-up Must End Opinion: The Epstein Cover-up Must End, Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Trump knows more than he has ever let on.
Donald Trump has continually downplayed his relationship with child rapist and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied knowing anything about the pedophile operation preying on hundreds of girls and women, despite telling New York magazine in 2002, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” By 2019, Trump had changed his tune. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
Trump and his lackeys in the Justice Department have done everything possible to hinder the release of the files. Despite a law passed and signed by him, the Justice Department has not released all the files, has redacted names of conspirators and perpetrators, and has improperly released names and nude images of the victims.
Now we learn — to nobody’s surprise — that Trump apparently knew much more about Epstein far earlier than he has let on. ABC News reports:
A former Palm Beach, Florida, police chief who investigated Jeffrey Epstein in the mid-2000s told the FBI he had received a call from Donald Trump at the time to say “thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” according to an FBI account of an interview with the ex-police chief in 2019. . . .
President Trump has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said that he cut off contact with his former friend more than 20 years ago.
The report contradicts his (and other famous men’s) professed ignorance of any wrongdoing:
“TRUMP told him people in New York knew EPSTEIN was disgusting. TRUMP said [GHISLAINE] MAXWELL was EPSTEIN’s operative, ‘she is evil and to focus on her,’ the report continues. “TRUMP told [Reiter] that he was around EPSTEIN once when teenagers were present and TRUMP ‘got the hell out of there.’ TRUMP was one of the very first people to call when people found out that they were investigating EPSTEIN,” the report of Reiter’s statement said.
This should trigger an onslaught of elevated public alarm, with serious legacy media covering Trump’s involvement with the worst pedophile in history. There should be incessant calls for Trump to testify under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and who else knew what was going on. (Just one example: if he knew Maxwell was “evil” for over a decade, why did he say in 2019 he “wished her well”?) In any normal timeline, Trump, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (who has facilitated the cover-up and coddled Maxwell), would be facing demands for impeachment.Subscribed
Trump is not the only one who misled the public about his connection to Epstein. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as recently as last year, denied having any contact with Epstein after 2005. Under questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) on Tuesday, however, Lutnick admitted that in 2012, he went to Epstein’s island (with his wife, kids, and nannies).
It did not end there, as the New York Times reports:
The files also contain documents showing that Mr. Epstein expressed an interest in 2013 in meeting Mr. Lutnick’s nanny and had her résumé sent to him. Mr. Lutnick said Tuesday that he did not know if the nanny had met Mr. Epstein, or if she was one of the nannies Mr. Lutnick had brought to the island, adding he “had no idea what that was about.”Van Hollen wasted no time in rightly accusing Lutnick of “totally misrepresent[ing]” his contact with Epstein. “The information recently revealed shows that you had interactions with Epstein over 13 years, including long after he was convicted of soliciting the prostitution of a minor,” Van Hollen added. “That does call into question your credibility and fitness for the job.” Democrats including Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and a single Republican, Rep. Tom Massie (KY), have called on Lutnick to quit or be fired.
Congress must get more serious about pursuing the truth. Andrew Weissmann makes the case in Just Security that Congress should take Maxwell’s bogus 5th Amendment claim off the table with a grant of immunity and compel her to testify. In addition, Weissmann argues:
Congress can use its subpoena power to track down all known email accounts of Epstein, Maxwell and their staff, for starters. It can then turn to the numerous people who enabled his crimes, wittingly or unwittingly. That investigation may reveal wrongdoing or complicity by Democrats and Republicans. That is what apolitical investigations do. …
When law enforcement obtains the contents of an email account, the emails won’t discriminate by party affiliation, unless the participants did. And we know with Epstein, he didn’t. Steve Bannon and Larry Summers, for instance, were both in his orbit. The DOJ investigation may be intended to be partisan, but it could result in revelation of bipartisan incrimination.
Fortunately, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) went to the floor on Tuesday to reveal the names of co-conspirators whose names have been redacted. It’s time for all the names of those associated with Epstein to be made public, as the law requires.
The appalling lack of action and outrage over the elite men involved with Epstein (whether they committed crimes or knew of crimes or normalized him after his plea deal) stands in dramatic contrast to European governments, which have booted out of office one politician after another. (The British government teeters on the brink of a severe crisis over the ongoing relationship between Epstein and Peter Mandelson, the former U.K. ambassador to the United States.)
Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) observed earlier this week, “People are losing their jobs in England right now, it is a huge political scandal there.” He added: “I’m just afraid that the general coarsening and degradation of American life has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should be taking it.”
Given the MAGA protection racket, the sloth of the media, and the catatonic Congress, we may not get all the facts out until there are Democratic majorities in the House and Senate willing to use their power to uncover every bit of available evidence.
In the meantime, Bondi and Blanche should not be practicing law, let alone serving in the highest ranks of a now thoroughly discredited department. Moreover, a party unwilling to pursue justice for Epstein’s survivors and boot out predators, those who facilitated or normalized his crimes, and those who lied or covered up for them, does not deserve to hold power — now or ever. More On U.S. Law, Crime, Justice, Courts
New York Times, U.S. Attorney Chosen to Replace Trump Pick Is Quickly Fired by White House, Jonah E. Bromwich, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Federal judges had appointed Donald Kinsella, a veteran litigator, as top prosecutor in the Northern District of New York after the Trump administration’s nominee was found to be serving unlawfully.
Federal judges in upstate New York appointed a new U.S. attorney on Wednesday only to see him abruptly fired by the White House, in the latest clash between the Trump administration and the judiciary.
Donald T. Kinsella, 79, was appointed as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York in a private ceremony on Wednesday. But just hours later, Mr. Kinsella said, he received an email from a White House official telling him that he was being removed from the post.
Reached by phone on Wednesday evening, Mr. Kinsella said that he did not yet know whether the White House email carried the force of law. He said he would discuss the matter with the district judges in the morning and go from there.
The Trump administration had previously suggested it would fire any prosecutor chosen by district judges. It is unclear whether the Northern District judges will have any recourse.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does,” said Todd Blanche, right, the deputy attorney general, in a social media post on Wednesday. “See Article II of our Constitution. You are fired, Donald Kinsella.”
Mr. Kinsella has more than 50 years of experience as a criminal and civil litigator. He is a former criminal chief of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District, which prosecutes crime in a broad swath of New York State, including Albany, Syracuse and Utica. His hiring and firing were first reported by The Times Union in Albany.
He had been set to replace John A. Sarcone III, left, whom a judge found last month was serving in the position unlawfully. This week, Mr. Sarcone dropped the title of acting U.S. attorney — his 210-day term had expired — and his office’s website now lists him as first assistant, typically the title of a U.S. attorney’s top deputy.
Federal judges have found a number of U.S. attorneys whose appointments were the result of unusual legal maneuvers by the Trump administration to be serving unlawfully.
Along with Mr. Sarcone, they include Alina Habba, who was the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and Lindsey Halligan, formerly the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as well as a handful of others.
Ms. Habba and Ms. Halligan both left their respective offices in recent months.
Mr. Sarcone has had a difficult relationship with the judges in his district, who declined to appoint him after his interim tenure expired in July.
He had no experience as a prosecutor before he was appointed. He made a series of unusual moves in office, many of which were assiduously documented by The Times Union, which Mr. Sarcone removed from his office’s press distribution list.
More On U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, DHS Shutdown
New York Times, Trump Administration to End Surge of Immigration Agents in Minnesota, Ernesto Londoño, Mitch Smith and Pooja Salhotra, Feb. 12, 2026. The announcement came more than two months into an operation that has led to tense protests, thousands of arrests and three shootings in the Democratic-led state.
The Trump administration said on Thursday that it was ending its deployment of immigration agents to Minnesota, unwinding an aggressive operation that has stretched for more than two months despite loud opposition from residents and local officials.
For many Minnesotans who had watched the federal government exert its will on their state — wielding law enforcement power and physical force at a scale that had no modern American precedent — the announcement signaled a welcome shift. Still, some expressed skepticism about whether the administration would follow through.
Since the immigration crackdown began late last year, federal agents have shot three people in Minneapolis, including two U.S. citizens who were killed. Officials said agents also arrested more than 4,000 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota, some of whom had been convicted of serious crimes.
The deployment of some 3,000 agents, outnumbering the police forces in Minneapolis and St. Paul, led to extraordinary clashes between residents and officers, as well as volleys of recriminations between state and federal leaders.
For weeks, protesters trailed federal agents through the streets of the Twin Cities, blowing whistles to alert people to their presence and sometimes angrily confronting them. The agents, often traveling in convoys of S.U.V.s with out-of-state license plates, their faces obscured by masks, responded regularly with force and threats of arrest. And while the Democrats who run Minnesota referred to the operation as an illegal occupation, Republicans in Washington accused local officials of obstruction and opened criminal investigations.
On Thursday, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, declared the operation a success, saying that “a significant drawdown has already been underway this week, and will continue to the next week.”
Mr. Homan said he had made arrangements for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to have more access to undocumented inmates at county jails in Minnesota, and he described conversations with state officials as productive. He did not immediately provide examples of newfound cooperation on immigration matters from local jurisdictions.
“As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Mr. Homan said.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who described the operation as “an unprecedented federal invasion in all aspects of life,” said he was “cautiously optimistic” after the announcement by Mr. Homan. Mr. Walz said there had been no change in state policy on immigration enforcement. The sheriff’s office in Hennepin County, which operates the largest jail in the state and does not coordinate with ICE, said on Thursday that its policies had also not changed.
“They left us with deep damage, generational trauma,” Mr. Walz said. “They left us with economic ruin in some cases.”
And many local leaders qualified their relief with suspicion, urging residents not to let down their guard immediately.
New York Times, Guard Troops Fully Withdraw From Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles, Chris Hippensteel, Feb. 12, 2026. President Trump initially deployed the troops in those cities to support law enforcement efforts to tamp down protests against immigration raids and protecting buildings
All National Guard troops that the Trump administration tapped to support aggressive immigration operations have left Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., according to U.S. military officials.
The demobilizations in those cities, first reported by The Washington Post, were noted on the website of the U.S. Northern Command and followed the Pentagon’s plan late last year to withdraw Guard troops.
Their departure, which according to the Northern Command occurred throughout January, signals the formal end to monthslong deployments that pitted Democratic cities against the Trump administration and tested the limits of presidential authority over the state-based military forces. By the end of the assignments, only skeleton forces of a few hundred Guard troops remained in those cities.
In Portland and Chicago, the Guard troops, who had been sent to support federal law enforcement and protect buildings, never actually operated on the streets. The move in Portland was tied up in court, and the one in Chicago was blocked by the Supreme Court.
Troops in Los Angeles were allowed on the streets despite a pending court case, but the Pentagon significantly reduced their numbers toward the end of the year.
National Guard units answer to state governors, though their troops can be placed under the president’s command. Historically, a governor’s request has almost always preceded federalization.
Mr. Trump has broken sharply from that tradition in his second term, starting with his decision to send thousands of federalized Guard troops and a contingent of Marines to counter protests against immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
President Trump federalized National Guard troops in Illinois, California and Oregon in response to contentious protests against immigration raids in major cities, at times supplementing them with other Guard troops shipped in across state lines. It was the first time a president had sent the National Guard to a state over its governor’s wishes since the civil rights era.
The deployments came amid a broader push by Mr. Trump to use the National Guard to enforce law and order.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Democrats Block Funding Bill as Homeland Security Shutdown Looms,
New York Times, Judge Ends Deportation Case for Mexican Father of 3 U.S. Marines, Miriam Jordan, Feb. 12, 2026. The arrest of Narciso Barranco, who was detained by federal agents while landscaping outside an IHOP in Southern California last June, garnered national attention.
An immigration judge has terminated the deportation case against an undocumented father of three U.S. Marines who was detained by federal agents last year while landscaping in Southern California, paving the way for him to seek legal permanent residency in the United States.
Last June, Narciso Barranco was clearing weeds outside an IHOP restaurant in Santa Ana, Calif., when immigration agents approached him from behind, pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him. Mr. Barranco, a 49-year-old Mexican national who has lived in the United States for three decades, was then transferred to a detention center and placed in deportation proceedings. He was released on a $3,000 bond in mid-July and fitted with an ankle monitor.
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security defended the agents’ aggressive arrest, saying the agents had felt threatened by Mr. Barranco and accusing him of having raised his weed trimmer at them. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the immigration judge’s ruling.
The episode garnered national attention last year, and Mr. Barranco became a symbol of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Trump administration had launched a large immigration enforcement operation in the Los Angeles area in June, touching off a wave of intense protests and clashes between residents and federal law enforcement officers.
In her order terminating the deportation case, signed on Jan. 28, Judge Kristin S. Piepmeier said that Mr. Barranco had provided evidence that he was the father of three American sons in the military, rendering him eligible to obtain lawful status. Immigration officers have since removed Mr. Barranco’s ankle monitor, and his check-ins have been discontinued, Mr. Barranco told The New York Times.
New York Times, The Homeland Security Shutdown Could Affect ICE, Travelers and the Coast Guard, Karoun Demirjian and Madeleine Ngo, Feb. 12, 2026. A lapse in funding probably won’t bring immigration enforcement operations to a screeching halt, but the department is also home to other agencies, including the Coast Guard and FEMA.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security is set to lapse early Saturday morning, barring a breakthrough in negotiations, with no clear sign of when it may be revived.
The looming shutdown of the sprawling department is the result of a bitter impasse over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in cities including Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal agents last month. Democrats do not want to fund the department unless Congress imposes rules requiring immigration officers to identify themselves during operations, remove their masks and obtain judicial warrants to make arrests on private property. Republicans have rejected those demands as overly burdensome.
But a lapse in funding is not expected to bring the department’s immigration enforcement operations to a screeching halt. And the department is also home to several agencies unrelated to immigration, including the Coast Guard and FEMA, that will be affected.
During last fall’s record-long federal shutdown, more than 90 percent of the department’s employees were required to work. The department has not updated its public guidance for funding lapses since then, but it is expected to handle a D.H.S.-focused shutdown similarly.
“D.H.S. essential missions and functions will continue as they do during every shutdown,” the department said in a statement. “However, during a shutdown, many employees will be forced to work without pay, putting strain on the frontline defenders of our nation.”
Here’s how a shutdown could affect some of the department’s most visible activities.Immigration Enforcement: ICE and Customs and Border Protection
The agencies at the heart of the dispute over D.H.S. funding would almost certainly be among the least affected by a department shutdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which employs about 22,000 officers, and Customs and Border Protection, which employs over 60,000 officials, perform work seen as essential to public safety, and employees can therefore be legally required to work, even without pay. (Under a 2019 law, they — like others employed directly by the federal government — are entitled to back pay once funding resumes.)
ICE in particular has an extra cushion: Last summer, Congress drastically expanded its operating budget as part of a sweeping domestic policy bill with an extra $75 billion, resources it can use to ride out a lapse in funding.Airport Security: The Transportation Security Administration
About 95 percent of the Transportation Security Administration’s roughly 60,000 employees are required to report to work through a shutdown without being paid, according to the agency’s acting administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill.
Still, during the fall’s shutdown, that open-ended requirement proved untenable to many workers, who found it difficult to ride out what became a 43-day shutdown without taking side jobs. T.S.A. saw a spike in resignations after that shutdown, Ms. McNeill told lawmakers this week, while she noted that the agency was trying to increase hiring before the World Cup later this year.Editors’ PicksMy Brother Wrote Me a Nasty Letter. Why Haven’t My Parents Gotten Involved?It’s a Grocery Store, but Selling Food Isn’t the PointRalph Lauren’s Not-So-Gilded Age
Staffing shortages did cause screening delays at Houston’s two airports during the later weeks of shutdown after employees had missed multiple paychecks.
The Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, awarded $10,000 bonuses to some T.S.A. officials after the shutdown ended for going “above and beyond.” It is not clear if the potential for another windfall — though Ms. Noem has not promised one — will keep more T.S.A. employees reporting to work through another shutdown.Disaster Response: Federal Emergency Management Agency
Disasters pay no heed to federal funding lapses, and for that reason, nearly 85 percent of Federal Emergency Management Agency employees are expected to work without pay through any shutdown, based on how the agency handled last fall’s lapse in funding.
FEMA’s disaster relief fund has enough money to carry out its current and anticipated emergency response activities, according to Gregg Phillips, the associate administrator for the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery. But if a catastrophic disaster were to occur during a Homeland Security Department shutdown, the fund “would be seriously strained,” he told lawmakers on Wednesday.
FEMA would find it difficult to reimburse states for disaster relief operations quickly, Mr. Phillips said. Those delays could in turn slow recovery efforts, he added.Immigration Benefits: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes green cards, naturalization and other benefit applications, is largely funded by fees it charges applicants, so most operations would typically continue during a shutdown. During the last shutdown, a vast majority of the agency’s roughly 22,000 employees continued working.
Some programs do receive appropriated funds, including E-Verify, which allows employers to check their employees’ eligibility to work in the country. During the last shutdown, the program was temporarily suspended. In a statement on Thursday, Matthew Tragesser, an agency spokesman, said the administration would “take decisive action to keep E-Verify open during a shutdown.”Coast Guard
Though the Coast Guard is part of the Homeland Security Department, it operates like any other branch of the military when it comes to government shutdowns: Uniformed personnel must keep coming to work, even though most of them will not be paid until after the shutdown is over.
Vice Admiral Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, has warned that a prolonged shutdown would erode mission readiness and hurt morale. Certain training for pilots, aircrews and boat crews would stop, Mr. Allan said. Aircraft and boats could also degrade as scheduled maintenance is deferred, he added.Cybersecurity Operations: Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Most employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps protect the country’s election system, power grids and water utilities, would be furloughed during a shutdown. The agency would require 888 of its 2,341 employees to continue working, many of them without pay. Although the agency would continue operations that are “essential to protecting life and property,” it would delay strategic planning and development of cybersecurity guidance.Secret Service
About 94 percent of the Secret Service’s work force of more than 8,000 would stay on the job, many without pay, during a shutdown. Matthew C. Quinn, the deputy director of the agency, said on Wednesday that agents would continue to protect the president and vice president, along with their families. They would also continue to protect former presidents and their spouses, in addition to visiting heads of state and other top government officials. Still, Mr. Quinn warned about fading morale “as bills come due.”
He also said critical agency priorities would be delayed, such as efforts to hire or train agents and officers.
PoliticusUSA, News and Commentary: Democrats To Reject Trump's Sham ICE Reform, Jason Easley, Feb. 12, 2026. The White House sent Democrats an ICE reform proposal to avoid a shutdown that contained no legislative text or guardrails to actually reform it. It was rejected and DHS is likely to shut down.
All administrations take on the personality and priorities of their president. If a president is a policy wonk who likes to get into the weeds and details of policy nuance, they will likely surround themselves with staff that reflects those priorities.
When a president has big, broad goals, or what some call big-picture thinking, the administration will reflect that vision and process.
Donald Trump’s second administration is an unprecedented example of what happens when an administration has no interest in governing and doesn’t care about policy.
If there is no crisis or need for action, the Trump administration can get by.
The problem comes when a situation requires leadership, action, or policy solutions.
It has been a constant theme during Trump’s second stint in office that Republicans in Congress sit around and wait for the White House to provide direction and leadership.
The Department of Homeland Security, the department that houses ICE, is about to shut down on Friday night, and Republicans needed the White House to step in and make a deal with Democrats on real reforms. Instead, the White House offered the same rough draft that Democrats turned down days ago.
U.S. Intelligence, Military, National Security
New York Times, Intelligence Dispute Centers on Kushner Reference in Intercepted Communication, Julian E. Barnes and Tyler Pager, Feb. 12, 2026. A whistle-blower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of blocking distribution of a report that Jared Kushner’s name came up in an intercepted communication about Iran
It was a discussion last year between two foreign nationals about Iran, not an unusual topic for American spies to study. But an intercept of that communication, collected by a foreign spy service and given to the United States, has now become a flashpoint within the intelligence community and between the administration and Congress. The reason is a single name that came up in the discussion: Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.
The previously unreported mention of Mr. Kushner in the discussion came after members of Congress were briefed last week about a classified report filed by a whistle-blower regarding the intercept, according to people familiar with the material. The whistle-blower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of limiting who could see the report and of blocking wider distribution among the nation’s spy agencies, people familiar with the complaint said.
The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, while the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran. At the end of June, the military bombed Iranian nuclear sites on Mr. Trump’s orders.
Mr. Kushner has subsequently helped lead negotiations between the administration and Iran over Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its sponsorship of terrorism across the Middle East. He also has business interests in the Middle East and in other parts of the world.
The episode has led to clashes over how to interpret the mention of Mr. Kushner in the discussion and whether Ms. Gabbard was improperly seeking to keep the intelligence from being distributed within the intelligence community.
Mr. Kushner’s name was redacted in the original report from the National Security Agency, but people reading it, including the whistle-blower, were able to determine that the reference was to him. The names of Americans, particularly senior U.S. officials, are usually redacted from accounts of intelligence intercepts, a process called masking.
The foreign nationals were discussing Mr. Kushner, but some officials who have read the underlying intelligence or been briefed on its contents downplayed the significance of the references to him.
The foreign nationals, they said, were commenting on Mr. Kushner’s influence with the Trump administration. At a time last year when Mr. Kushner’s role in Middle East peace talks was less public than it is now, the foreign officials were recorded saying that he was the person to speak to in order to influence the talks.
The intercept also included what officials described as “gossip” or speculation about Mr. Kushner that was not supported by other intelligence. Some senior officials said the information was demonstrably false. While the whistle-blower believed that information should be circulated, the N.S.A.’s general counsel, Ms. Gabbard and the intelligence community’s inspectors general disagreed.
Officials declined to describe the gossip, saying that revealing it would expose the source of the information.
New York Times, In Munich, Europe’s Leaders Wonder if They Can Ever Trust America Again, Steven Erlanger and Jim Tankersley, Feb. 12, 2026. Officials gather on Friday for Europe’s biggest annual security summit, where a speech by Vice President JD Vance last year started an unraveling of trans-Atlantic relations.
When Vice President JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference last year that America’s European allies were destroying themselves with immigration and unfairly barring the far-right from power, it was a shock to the trans-Atlantic alliance.
There was much more to come.
In the year that followed, President Trump imposed tariffs on European goods. He pushed to end the war in Ukraine on terms largely favorable to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and threatened to pry Greenland from Denmark by any means necessary. He mocked European leaders in a bullying speech in Switzerland, declaring Europe would be nothing without the United States.
It has been a dizzying unraveling of the friendship that bound the West together for three-quarters of a century, since World War II. That has left European leaders more wary — and in some cases, more defiant — toward America, as they prepare to meet again in Munich, starting Friday, for Europe’s largest annual gathering of politicians and security officials.
Diplomats and heads of state across the continent say they no longer expect relations with America to revert to a pre-Trump normal, even after Mr. Trump leaves office. They have accelerated efforts to reduce their military and economic dependence on the United States, even as they continue to court the president with flattery in an effort to maintain influence with him on Ukraine and other global issues.
“Trans-Atlantic relations have changed, and no one in this room says this with more regret than I do,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, who will open the Munich conference with a speech, said last week. “But nostalgia and reminiscing about bygone better times won’t help us.”
More On U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance
New York Times, In North Carolina, a Tight Primary Could Upend the Balance of Conservative Power, Eduardo Medina, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). Phil Berger has led the State Senate for years with an iron grip. But in a March election, he faces a popular, horse-riding sheriff who could topple his reign.
Phil Berger entered the small auditorium at Rockingham Community College and prepared to defend his record to a crowd of MAGA-hat-wearing constituents, with just weeks to go before the primary for his North Carolina Senate seat.
On paper, his odds looked good. He had represented these voters for more than two decades in the State Senate and had led the chamber ever since Republicans took over in 2011. He had built a political machine that in many ways now runs the state. And his clamp on policy decisions, as well as his network of lobbyists and wealthy donors, had turned him into North Carolina’s most powerful politician, making his seat virtually untouchable.
But at the conservative candidates forum at the college in Wentworth, N.C., last week, there was a popular sheriff in town eager to take down Mr. Berger, representing the first time in years that the Senate leader’s reign has been threatened.
“Too many times we elect officials that forget who their bosses are, and whom they serve,” the sheriff, Sam Page of Rockingham County, N.C., told the crowd, flashing his trademark cowboy hat, gray mustache and thick glasses. Several nodded in approval.
To much of North Carolina, the most talked-about race so far this year has not been the high-profile contest for U.S. Senate nor one of the few potentially competitive races in congressional districts across the swing state. Instead, all eyes have zeroed in on a surprisingly tight Republican primary on March 3 for State Senate District 26, a rural stretch of land in the north, that could upend the balance of conservative power in North Carolina.
“North Carolina hasn’t seen a primary race like this in decades, and probably hasn’t ever seen one like this where the stakes could not be higher,” said Andrew Dunn, a G.O.P. strategist and the publisher of Longleaf Politics, a conservative newsletter. “If Senator Berger loses, that creates a gigantic power vacuum in North Carolina politics, and it’s unclear who would fill that.”
New York Times, House Passes Strict Voter ID Bill, Amplifying Trump’s Claims of Fraud, Annie Karni, Feb. 12, 2026 (print ed.). The measure had no path forward in the Senate, where Democrats are all but certain to block it and Republicans have said they will not try to skirt filibuster rules to ram it through.
The House on Wednesday passed a strict voter identification measure that would require proof of American citizenship to vote and allow the Department of Homeland Security to seize voter rolls in any state, as Republicans muscled through a measure that is doomed in the Senate but that amplifies President Trump’s groundless charges of rigged elections.
The bill, fast-tracked through the House just days after Mr. Trump called to nationalize voting to combat what he claimed was rampant voter fraud, passed along party lines on a vote of 218 to 213, with just one Democrat, Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, voting with Republicans in favor of it.
It had no chance of passage in the Senate, where one Republican has already expressed major concerns about it and the majority leader, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, has said he will not lower the 60-vote filibuster threshold to try to ram it through that chamber on a simple majority vote over Democratic opposition.
Still, it gave Republicans an opportunity to trumpet Mr. Trump’s charges that Democrats were trying to mobilize masses of undocumented voters to sway elections in their favor. That narrative has helped sow distrust before midterm elections in which the G.O.P. is in danger of suffering significant losses.
And it may also lay the groundwork for Republicans to potentially contest closely divided congressional elections should they lose in November.
On Wednesday, Republicans argued that the legislation was more necessary than ever because of the millions of immigrants who entered the country without authorization while former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in office.
“Cheating is the only path to victory,” said Representative Mary Miller, Republican of Illinois, adding that Democrats’ “goal” was to replace the votes of citizens with those of undocumented immigrants.
Representative Chip Roy, the Texas Republican who was the lead sponsor of the bill, ticked off examples of Mexican and Salvadoran nationals indicted by the Justice Department on voter fraud charges.ImageA person with a white goatee wears a dark suit jacket and a blue checkered shirt.
But studies have consistently shown little, if any, evidence that such fraud is happening on a large scale, and even the Trump administration’s own voter verification initiative has so far turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.
Democrats said the real aim of the legislation was to discourage people from exercising their right to vote or to make it difficult for them to do so.
“This is about sowing chaos and confusion,” Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said on the House floor on Wednesday, where he compared the measure with Jim Crow-era laws that sought to make it impossible for Black Americans to vote. “You’re afraid you’re going to lose in November. Well, too bad.”
Republicans defended the bill, calling it a way to regain the trust of Americans. They said their bill would simply make it harder for noncitizens to vote — something that is already illegal — which they described as a broadly popular policy.
“It is racist to imply that minority communities somehow don’t have the ability to get a photo ID,” said Representative Randy Fine, Republican of Florida.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Coalition Crackup, Andrew Egger, Feb. 12, 2026. Who’s worse for the American right: its antisemites or its Zionists?
This seemingly easy question has convulsed the online right for months, with old-school philosemite conservatives trying and mostly failing to exile the new coterie of antisemites, from Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens to Nick Fuentes, from the MAGA coalition. But the White House has largely steered clear of participating—until this week, when it found itself dragged into the fight largely by accident.
The trouble started Monday, when the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission met in D.C. for a public discussion about the rise of antisemitism. For most of the hearing, the commission stuck to the safe conversational waters of left-wing antisemitism, of the college-campus variety. But commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller—a former beauty queen, right-wing Catholic activist and influencer, and staunch Owens ally—had other plans. What’s this business of calling people like me antisemitic, she repeatedly asked, just because we don’t like Israel?
Throughout the hearing, Prejean Boller all but dared her fellow commissioners and other event participants to call her antisemitic to her face. “Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?” she asked. “If I don’t support the political state of Israel, am I an antisemite, yes or no?” When one participant asserted that Owens and Carlson were indeed antisemites, she scoffed: “There you go again. Everyone’s an antisemite, I guess.”
Commissions like these exist to further the administration’s political messaging, and kicking up intra-MAGA fights wasn’t exactly on the agenda. So it came as little surprise Wednesday when commission Chairman Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, announced that Prejean Boller was no longer a member. His stated reasons were interesting. He steered totally clear of the substance of Prejean Boller’s remarks, saying only that “no member of the commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue.” He added: “This was my decision.”
Prejean Boller wasn’t having it. “You did not appoint me to the Commission, and you lack authority to remove me from it,” she replied to Patrick. “This is a gross overstepping of your role and leads me to believe you are acting in alignment with a Zionist political framework that hijacked the hearing, rather than in defense of religious liberty.”
“I look forward to next month’s hearing,” she added. “I refuse to bend the knee to Israel. I am no slave to a foreign nation, but to Christ our King.”
It would take a lot more space than we’ve got here to fully unpack the beef over antisemitism here. Prejean Boller is actually correct about at least one thing: It’s true that Republican allies of Israel have often used accusations of antisemitism as a cheap rhetorical crutch to shut down all critiques of the way the state of Israel conducts its business—a phenomenon that was on particularly painful display during Israel’s most recent lengthy, brutal occupation of the Gaza Strip.¹ Still, it’s also true that genuine bigots and traffickers in the most noxious conspiracy theories often find it useful to claim that they’re really just critics of the state of Israel. Candace Owens is the poster child for this, and I’m not sure Prejean Boller is beating the allegations either: Yesterday, for instance, she retweeted an Owens post claiming that “Zionists are naturally hostile to Catholics because we refuse to bend the knee to revisionist history and support the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children for occult Baal worshipers.”
But what’s more interesting—at least for our political-newsletter purposes—is the particular way the Trump administration has responded to all this. Patrick’s statement firing Prejean Boller, which declined to weigh in on the substance of the fight and specifically stressed that “this was my decision,” seemed like a last-ditch effort to shield the White House itself from the controversy. (When I reached out to the White House for comment, they wouldn’t even confirm on-record that Patrick’s statement had the president’s blessing—although they didn’t deny it either.) But Prejean Boller’s refusal to accept firing from anyone other than Trump himself seems to have closed off this strategic path. At some point, it seems, somebody’s going to have to say something.
For months if not years now, the White House has faced a bizarre coalition problem: how to keep a bunch of philosemites and a bunch of antisemites both happy with the administration despite their open hatred for one another. As in Trump’s first term, the White House has pursued a foreign policy broadly favorable to Israel. Just as importantly, it has abstained from the sort of moral denunciations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza that so irked many pro-Israel types during Joe Biden’s presidency. At the same time, it has routinely opposed efforts to kick right-wing antisemites out of its political coalition—while pursuing a posture of maximum political retaliation against people it accuses of antisemitism on the left. White House employees who brag in leaked texts about having a “Nazi streak” don’t even lose their administration jobs; pro-Palestinian foreign students who support boycotting Israel see their student visas canceled and get snatched off the street.
This “something for everybody” approach seems to be reaching its limit. MAGA’s philosemites and antisemites are unlikely to keep sharing a political coalition for long—and they seem unlikely to let Trump’s White House stay agnostic in their fight, either.
“Only the President can remove me, since he appointed me,” Prejean Boller proclaimed. “What will Trump do? Stand for my Catholic Religious Freedom or remove me?”
AROUND THE BULWARK
How Democrats Can Crush the Midterms… Trump has offered up the issues on a silver platter, argues MONA CHAREN.Quick Hits
WHAM BONDI RESURFACES: We’ve written before about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s astonishing demeanor during congressional testimony, her steadfast commitment to—as Stephanie McCrummen put it in the Atlantic last month—“a calculated performance that amounted to a giant middle finger to basic notions of decorum and accountability.” (Or as we put it in October: “Kash Patel is a twitchy little guy, but Bondi’s testimony made his appearances last month before a pair of congressional committees look downright professional.”)
Well, she’s still at it. Yesterday Bondi went before the House Judiciary Committee—ostensibly to answer questions about her oversight of the Justice Department, really to get some more yelling at Democrats in. (Sample statement, to Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland: “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up loser lawyer.” Pleasant!)
The vitriol was, of course, mostly intended to try to mask the fact that Bondi has shockingly few good answers to a whole host of reasonable questions about her job performance. The Substack the Watchdog Report assembled a good list:
And that’s just the top five! Read the whole thing.
GOOD TIMES AHEAD?: This week, the White House got one piece of good news and one piece of bad news on the jobs front. On the bright side, yesterday’s monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics popped well above expectations, with the economy adding a net 130,000 jobs in January as the unemployment rate dipped down to 4.3 percent. On the less pleasant side of things, BLS dramatically revised down its jobs numbers for the whole of 2025, estimating that the labor market added only 181,000 jobs in the entirety of the last calendar year. (It always bears repeating: Any time BLS revised job numbers down during the Biden years, Trump and his GOP allies accused them of deliberately cooking the earlier rounds of numbers for political gain.)
With so much turmoil and disruption in the economy and in the world, nobody seems quite sure what good economic numbers look like anymore. In theory, continued productivity gains from AI and other factors could be keeping the economy growing at a healthy clip even if the labor force isn’t expanding much. The White House is even pitching this as a feature of the economy it’s trying to build: With the U.S. population expanding more slowly due to dramatically reduced levels of immigration, the economy doesn’t need as many new jobs to keep unemployment flat.
We can’t know yet whether January’s strong jobs numbers are an indication that the economy is turning a corner after a year of tariff-induced turmoil, or just a momentary diversion on the way to a recession. If the numbers stay good, there’s one more upside-down wrinkle to consider: An economy that’s humming along well is one in which Trump’s pick for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, will face strong headwinds if he tries to implement the dramatic interest-rate cuts Trump is counting on him to deliver.
NO FLIGHTS ALLOWED: Some weird stuff has been going down in El Paso, where the Federal Aviation Administration announced—and then revoked—extraordinary airspace restrictions late Tuesday night amid an apparent communications breakdown between the Pentagon and the FAA. The AP reports:
The sudden and surprising airspace closure over El Paso, Texas, stemmed from the Pentagon’s plans to test a laser for use in shooting down drones used by Mexican drug cartels, according to three people familiar with the situation who were granted anonymity to share sensitive details.
That caused friction with the Federal Aviation Administration, which wanted to ensure commercial air safety and the two agencies sought to coordinate, according to two of the people. Despite a meeting scheduled later this month to discuss the issue, the Pentagon wanted to go ahead and test it, prompting the FAA to shutter the airspace. It was not clear whether the laser was ultimately deployed.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said earlier that the response by the Defense Department and the FAA to neutralize an incursion by Mexican cartel drones had led to the airspace closure. Drone incursions are not uncommon along the U.S.-Mexico border.
U.S. Jobs, Economy, Markets
New York Times, In Kentucky, People Blame Ford More Than Trump for Lost Factory Jobs, Jack Ewing, Feb. 12, 2026. Ford Motor shut down a battery factory and laid off 1,600 workers after President Trump and Republicans gutted government support for electric vehicles.
The electric vehicle battery factory that Ford Motor and a South Korean company opened on 1,500 acres of Kentucky farmland last year was the biggest thing, economically speaking, that had ever happened in Hardin County.
Yet in December, only four months after the first batteries rolled off the line, Ford abruptly shut down production and laid off all 1,600 workers, leaving people here in the county, about 45 miles south of Louisville, stunned and angry.
The closing came after President Trump and Republicans in Congress gutted programs designed to promote electric vehicles, causing sales to plunge.
Yet few people in Hardin County, where Mr. Trump won 64 percent of the vote in 2024, place much blame on Republicans.
Many said Ford itself was the biggest culprit, raising their hopes and then dashing them. They said the company’s foray into electric vehicles was a disaster largely of its own making.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Making America Stagnate Again, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Deportations don’t create jobs and will increase deaths of native-born Americans. Who knew?
Yesterday’s employment report was widely expected to be weak. As it turned out, it was unexpectedly strong, with an estimated 130,000 jobs added. But monthly job numbers are extremely noisy. If you read the details of the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it actually said that its central estimate was 130,000 jobs, with the true number lying between 7,700 and 152,000 (the 90 percent confidence interval that accompanies all its estimates). And for technical reasons not worth going into here, the true range of uncertainty is even bigger. Basically BLS estimates the level of employment based on a sample subject to sampling error, which makes the estimated change over any given month extremely noisy.
A better indication of how the economy is doing is job gains over the past year, shown at the top of this post (dashed green line). This is a lot less noisy than the monthly number, and it also happens to cover the first year of Trump 47. Since January 2025 the economy is estimated to have added 359,000 jobs, down almost 900,000 from job growth the previous year. This indicates that the job market is very close to complete stagnation. Furthermore, the only sectors that saw large job growth were health care and social assistance (solid blue line). Employment elsewhere declined. Manufacturing employment, notably, fell. So Trump’s economy is not exactly delivering the “manly jobs” that he promised.
Oh, and while both Donald Trump and Scott Bessent have recently asserted that construction jobs are booming, employment growth in construction, which was high under Biden, has in fact fallen precipitously: A graph showing a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Now, Trump officials have been vigorously spinning weak job growth on their boss’s watch. What’s interesting is the excuse for near-stagnation offered by both Kevin Hassett, the chair of the National Economic Council, and Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade czar: Job growth has stalled because of mass deportations.
Wait, what?
Since we’re talking about Trump appointees, some of what these officials said involved flat-out lying. Navarro, in particular, declared that “we’re deporting millions of illegals out of our job market” — ICE has “only” arrested around 393,000 people. He also disparaged strong job growth during the Biden years, saying
[A]ll of the jobs we were creating in Biden years were going to illegals. Americans were going to the unemployment lines.
There aren’t good data on how many jobs are going to illegal immigrants, but we do know that unemployment among native-born Americans fell under Biden but rose last year: A graph with a line AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Compulsive lying aside, however, the fact that Trumpists are attributing stalled job growth to reduced immigration is astonishing, because it’s an admission that the fundamental economic premise behind mass deportations was always false. After all, the claim was that immigrants were taking jobs away from the native born. Now MAGA officials are saying that deporting foreign-born workers reduces employment, which implies that previous immigration was creating new jobs, not taking them away.
So what are those mass deportations about, exactly? Oh yes, we’re getting rid of violent criminals — except that very few of those being swept up by ICE have violent criminal records, and crime rates among undocumented immigrants are actually low.
But while reducing the number of foreign-born workers may not help the native-born, does it actually hurt them? Yes.
There are two big reasons mass deportations and shutting out or scaring away future immigration will hurt the native born.
First is demography. Like every advanced nation and many developing countries, the U.S. has seen fertility decline below the rate needed to keep the population from shrinking, and growth in the working-age population and hence the potential labor force has already slowed to a crawl: A graph showing a line AI-generated content may be incorrect.
However, the working-age population would already have been declining, Japan-style, without immigration — and although we don’t have reliable numbers, it seems likely that the Trumpists have effectively cut off the inflow of working-age immigrants.
Without those immigrants, who will pay the taxes that support Medicare and Social Security? True, immigrants place some demands on government services, but these are hugely outweighed by their contribution to government revenue, both through the taxes they pay directly and through their role in boosting economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office just released its latest fiscal projections; these have gotten substantially worse compared with a year ago, in part because the budget office is factoring in the negative effects of reduced immigration.
In fact, CBO’s numbers probably understate just how extreme anti-immigrant policy has become. Also, the projection only extends for the next 10 years, and the adverse fiscal effect of cutting off immigration will be even larger further in the future.
Beyond worsening our already unsustainable fiscal situation, a cutoff of immigration raises the question of who will provide essential services to our still-rapidly-growing population of senior citizens: A graph with a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.
This demographic concern about immigration interacts with the second big reason reduced immigration hurts native-born Americans: We need immigrant workers to do jobs the native-born can’t or won’t do.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, the available evidence suggests that immigrants are mainly complements, not substitutes, for native-born workers. Foreign-born workers aren’t evenly spread across the economy. They are, instead, concentrated in occupations where they make up a large share of the work force, so they aren’t really competing with non-immigrant workers, but are making some goods and services cheaper and more available than they would be without immigrants.
Examples of occupations in which immigrants play a crucial role include farm labor, meatpacking and other food processing, and construction. Foreign-born workers also play crucial roles in providing health care: A blue rectangular object with black text AI-generated content may be incorrect. With healthcare facing severe labor shortages, cutting off the supply of immigrant workers will raise the cost and reduce the availability of care — which will be especially hard on seniors, who are 19 percent of the population but account for more than 40 percent of health expenditures.
A new paper by David Grabowski, Jonathan Gruber and Brian McGarry uses variation in immigration over time and across metropolitan areas to estimate the impact of immigration on the health care labor force. They find that the arrival of an extra 1000 immigrants leads to employment of an additional 28 aides, 49 nurses and 19 doctors.
This effect on the number of healthcare workers means, in turn, that increased immigration leads to lower senior mortality, and conversely that blocking immigration and deporting foreign-born workers will increase deaths among older Americans. A back of the envelope calculation using Grabowski et al’s numbers suggests that reducing the immigrant population by one million immigrants, which is what Stephen Miller wants to do every year, would lead to around 15,000 extra deaths per year among U.S. seniors.
Which brings me back to the stunning stagnation of job growth that has already taken place on Trump’s watch. Trump’s minions would have you believe that near-zero job growth is fine because immigration has plunged — even though they assured us that this wouldn’t happen. But the reality is that the war on immigrants, in addition to being a moral and civil liberties nightmare, will make native-born Americans poorer — and send thousands of us to an early grave.
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Bad Bunny’s dancers, Kalshi, and the insider trading problem, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 12, 2026. Prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, are exploding in popularity. Kalshi alone saw over $1 billion in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday.
Remarkably, more than $100 million was wagered on what song Bad Bunny would play first during his halftime show. That kind of market has raised concerns about insider trading. Not only is Bad Bunny in control of which song is played, but this information is also known in advance by dancers, musicians, crew, and anyone who happened to be around during rehearsals.
This is likely why, just before the big game, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour announced a laundry list of efforts to crack down on insider trading. This included partnering with a forensics lab, hiring an intelligence advisor, setting up a “surveillance audit committee,” and investing in “behavior monitoring and pattern recognition tools.”
Mansour said that “insider trading erodes trust” and when “people believe a market is unfair, they stop trading.” Serious violations, Mansour said, would be referred to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for criminal prosecution.
One issue, however, is that the CFTC is a relatively small government agency with a budget of less than $400 million and limited experience prosecuting insider trading.
More fundamentally, all of these steps depend on a functional definition of insider trading for prediction markets.
Mansour appeared on CNBC on Tuesday and was pressed on what constituted insider information in a market like Bad Bunny’s first Super Bowl halftime song. Andrew Ross Sorkin asked if Kalshi would consider it insider trading if one of Bad Bunny’s dancers, who knew the first song in advance, bet in the market.
Mansour said that the same rules applied to Kalshi bets as the stock market. He said that anyone who trades on “material non-public information” on Kalshi violates insider trading rules.
The hosts, however, point out that executives of publicly traded companies have a legal obligation not to share financially material non-public information outside of regular public disclosures. Bad Bunny and his employees do not face the same legal constraints and have nothing to do with the market set up by Kalshi.
Mansour offered a pat response: “Either this information can be public, and that’s okay, or it’s information that cannot be public beforehand.”
Mansour appears to be leaning on the CFTC’s more lenient stance toward insider trading. Under CFTC rules, trading on non-public information is permitted, as long as you didn’t obtain the information through fraudulent or illegal means:
The failure to disclose information prior to entering into a transaction, either in an anonymous market setting or in bilateral negotiations, will not, by itself, constitute a violation. However, depending on all of the facts and circumstances, trading on the basis of material nonpublic information in breach of a pre-existing duty (established by another law or rule, agreement, understanding, or some other source), or by trading on the basis of material nonpublic information that was obtained through fraud or deception, may violate final Rule 180.1.
“This has been an age-old question for all types of financial markets, right?” Mansour asked rhetorically. “Should the farmers be able to trade on grain futures, you know, because they have more information about the crops?” Farmers are allowed to trade on grain futures.
Becky Quick, the other CNBC host, noted that if that is the standard, dancers who knew the song in advance would be free to participate in the Kalshi market:
It’s not material information that can’t be shared. You’re making it that by putting it on this betting platform, but they have no obligation to say we’re not going to tell anybody our opening lineup because there might be money made on this other place that’s now betting on this… the responsibility is not on them.
Mansour conceded the point. “If that’s the position that people are taking… It’s basically, you know, it’s okay to actually talk about which song is gonna be played… then that it’s okay and it’s totally fair game, and I agree with you in that case,” he said.
“That just doesn’t seem like a fair market trade,” Quick replied. “[T]here’s an advantage to people who have this information [and] there’s no way you could go after them because it’s… this is not material information.” The discussion concluded with Mansour suggesting that Bad Bunny revealing the song in advance to people who place bets on Kalshi was “fair game” and part of “the risk in the market.”
In response to Popular Information’s request for comment, Kalshi provided the following statement:
People who participate in large commercial events, activities, etc often sign contracts or agreements not to disclose info, maintain confidentiality, etc. Where users have a legal duty not to disclose info and then they do disclose it, it can be insider trading. Of course, cases depend on specific facts and evidence.
Numerous markets offered on Kalshi carry similar risks. For example, there are individual markets on whether dozens of people will attend President Trump’s State of the Union address on February 24.
At some point before the speech, Barron Trump will know whether he’ll attend. There is nothing to stop him from telling his buddies at New York University. Barron Trump is not obligated to keep his plans secret because Kalshi has set up a market.
More Global News
New York Times, Ukrainian Olympian Is Disqualified Over Helmet With Images of War Dead, Victor Mather and Tariq Panja, Feb. 12, 2026. Olympic officials had told Vladyslav Heraskevych that the helmet, featuring images of Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, violated the Games’ ban on political speech.
A Ukrainian athlete was disqualified from the Winter Olympics in Italy on Thursday because he had planned to wear a helmet commemorating countrymen killed in the war with Russia.
Olympic officials had told the athlete, Vladyslav Heraskevych, that the helmet violated the Games’ prohibition on political speech. Mr. Heraskevych, who competes in skeleton, a sledding event on an ice track, had said this week that he planned to race with the helmet anyway.
Moments before the competition on Thursday morning, Mr. Heraskevych held talks at the track in Cortina d’Ampezzo with the president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry. The meeting ended with Mr. Heraskevych barred from competing and Ms Coventry in tears following a failure to reach a compromise.
The incident is the Games’ biggest crisis, underscored by the direct and personal intervention in the matter by Ms. Coventry, who is presiding over her first Olympic Games. Questions over Mr. Heraskevych’s helmet had reverberated for days from Cortina to Milan, where the I.O.C. leadership is based during the Games, and all the way to Kyiv, where Ukrainian officials denounced Olympic officials’ decision.
At issue, the I.O.C. said, is its stated commitment to preserve what its chief spokesman Mark Adams described as “the sanctity of the field of play.”
The I.O.C.’s rulebook has long taken a firm line against forms of political protest, but in 2020 Olympic officials loosened some of those rules to allow athletes to make statements during the competition on social media or to journalists. Mr. Heraskevych had worn what he called his “remembrance helmet” during practice runs this week, but a clash had loomed for days over his use of it in the competition, where political speech is strictly banned.
Just before the races began on Thursday morning, the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, the sport’s governing body, barred him because “the helmet he intended to wear was not compliant with the rules.”
Feb. 11
Top Stories
Attorney General Pam Bondi is trying to sound strong to save her job but instead she is coming off like a lunatic having a meltdown at a House Judicary Committee Oversight hearing.
Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: Trump's Terrible Week - Huge Tariff Loss In House, 2025 Jobs Revised Deeply Downward, Epstein Scandal Metastasizes, Six Patriots Escape His Wrath, Bad New Polls, Simon Rosenberg, right, Feb. 11, 2026. “This is a watershed moment for the 119th Congress” - Punchbowl on Trump's tariff loss in the House. The Parnas Perspective, News and Political Commentary, Major News: Trump Narrative on Epstein Falls Apart, House Republicans Rebuke Trump in Stunning Vote, Aaron Parnas, right,Feb. 11, 2026. Today is going to be one of the most consequential days yet. As of yesterday, members of Congress who sit on the House or Senate Judiciary Committees can see unredacted versions of the Epstein files the Department of Justice (DOJ) has already released.U.S., NATO National Security
“the obsolescence is nearly immediate,” for even the best weapons. Deterring a Russian attack depends not just on NATO's military forces, but on proof that alliance members can bring new technology to the fight as quickly as Moscow, Adm. Pierre Vandier, who leads NATO’s Allied Transformation Command, said Tuesday in Washington.U.S. Media, Propaganda, Education, Culture, Religion
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Major corporations bankroll "America First" propaganda, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 11, 2026. Mastercard, Deloitte, and ExxonMobil are spending millions to promote events supporting Trump and his divisive political agenda.U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Race
U.S. Crime, Law, Rights, Justice
More On Epstein Files
U.S. Elections, Governance, Politics
Global News
New York Times, 9 Killed and 25 Injured in Shootings at School and Home in Canada, Francesca Regalado, Vjosa Isai and Yan Zhuang, Feb. 11, 2026. The police said the suspect died of a self-inflicted injury after the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, a remote community in British Columbia.U.S. Jobs, Inflation, Economy, Markets
Top Stories
Attorney General Pam Bondi testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year (New York Times photo by Kenny Holston.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Bondi Refuses to Apologize to Epstein Survivors at Contentious Hearing, Staff Reports, Feb. 11, 2026. What We’re Covering Today
Bondi has accused the Democrats of “theatrics” in her appearance at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. But the attorney general has been, by far, the loudest voice in the room. She has insulted several Democrats and has been repeatedly, if gently, blocked by Jim Jordan, a Republican and the chairman of the committee, from shouting over her questioners.Glenn ThrushFeb. 11, 2026, 10:54 a.m. ET2 hours ago
An uncomfortable and dramatic moment. Under pressure from Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, Bondi refuses to apologize over her actions in the case to victims of Jeffrey Epstein who are in the hearing room. Bondi, who appeared caught off guard, pivoted to attack Jayapal for trying to drag her “into the gutter.”
The Epstein case, once an obsessive focus of the right, has become a political weapon wielded by Democrats in attacking President Trump and his appointees in the Justice Department and F.B.I.
Bondi defended her actions in the Epstein case. “I’m a career prosecutor,” she said, adding, “I have spent my entire career fighting for victims, and will continue to do so.”
Raskin warns Bondi not to adopt the tactic she used before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October, when she stonewalled Democrats by launching scripted attacks and answering questions with personal insults and political putdowns. “We saw your performance in the Senate, and we’re not going to accept that. This isn’t a game.”
It’s going to be a rough day for Attorney General Pam Bondi as she appears before the House Judiciary Committee. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the panel, delivered a litany of disgust in his opening statement, starting with criticism of Bondi’s actions on the Epstein files. “You’re siding with the perpetrators, and you’re ignoring the victims,” he said. “That will be your legacy, unless you act quickly to change course. You’re running a massive Epstein cover-up right out of the Department of Justice.”
Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who also participated in the illegal orders video in November, accused President Trump of weaponizing the Justice Department against his political enemies.
“This is an authoritarian playbook that many of us have watched play out abroad over and over and over again, except now we’re seeing it in the United States,” Slotkin said. She said the Trump administration was seeking to intimidate members of Congress to “get other people beyond us to think twice about speaking out.”
Politicus USA, Commentary: Pam Bondi Is Having An Epic House Hearing Meltdown, Sarah Jones and Jason Easley, right, Feb. 11, 2026. Attorney General Pam Bondi is trying to sound strong to save her job but instead she is coming off like a lunatic having a meltdown at a House Judicary Committee Oversight hearing.
Donald Trump has been frustrated with Pam Bondi for months because he doesn’t think that she is doing enough to prosecute his political enemies, and she can’t make the Epstein scandal go away.
Her job is reportedly on the line.
Given this context, the Epstein files scandal that keeps growing, the fact that ICE continues to attack the American people while the DOJ sits on the sidelines, and the only investigations they seem interested in conducting involve blaming the victims of ICE, Bondi apparently felt the need to go over the top to save her job, and boy has she ever gone over the top.
Bondi attacked Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin but came off sounding like a teen having a tantrum.
Raskin said to Chair Jim Jordan, “You can let her filibuster all day long. But not on our watch. We claim not on our time. No way.”
Raskin then turned to Bondi, “And I told you about that Attorney General before you started.”
Bondi said, “You don’t tell me anything.”
Raskin shot back, “Oh, I did tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate.”
Bondi then called Raskin a washed-up lawyer, and then added while muttering to herself, “not even a lawyer.”
Just a reminder that when Democrats take back the House, Raskin will be the committee chair who will have direct oversight over Bondi and the DOJ. Those hearings should be something.
Bondi kept melting down. At one point, Bondi began ranting about Trump and the stock market:
The Dow has shattered 50,000 for the first time. This is crazy. They said it couldn’t be done in four years yet President Trump has done it in one year. National median rents have fallen to a four-year low thanks to Donald Trump. That’s why they wanna focus on Epstein and our most transparent president in the nation’s history. The murder rate, as I said, has plummeted to 125 year low thanks to Donald Trump for an unprecedented.Unprecedented, nine straight months. There were zero illegal border crossings at the southern border. That’s what we should be focused on, all the great work that this president has done and will continue to do to keep America safe and to make Americans safe.
This was a hearing on DOJ oversight. Pam Bondi, right, is the Attorney General. She has nothing to do with economic policy. Democrats on the committee were laughing at her obvious efforts to grovel at Trump’s feet to save her job.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren asked Bondi about why the DOJ isn’t investigating the Minneapolis ICE murders, and this was Bondi’s response:
I find it interesting that she keeps going after President Trump, the greatest president in American history and I, if they could maintain their composure.This isn’t a circus, this is a hearing. I find it interesting. She keeps going after Donald Trump. She doesn’t say how much money she took from Reid Hoffman did you? None and nor Mr. Chairman regular order, please, regular order don’t. She posted nothing on her ex account lady on her Twitter account.
During the Biden years. Gentle lady, all of a sudden question she’s—-
Lofgren eventually got to respond after points of order and objections were raised, “I’m trying, I am trying to make a point of order that the witness without, and what rule are you referring to without responding to a question has attacked me personally.
I think it’s pathetic that she can’t answer the questions without attacking members.”
This attorney general has shown zero independence and made it clear that she is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by Donald Trump.
The hearing was supposed to focus on DOJ oversight, but instead, Bondi acted like a cult member who was desperately trying to avoid being kicked out.
These types of performances make Donald Trump happy, but they confirm to the nation that the administration is not interested in the problems and issues of the American people and is only concerned about making one man happy.
Bondi’s hearing confirmed why the American people need to put a check on the Trump administration in November.
Forbes Breaking News, Bondi Has Explosive Confrontation With Joe Neguse During Testimony To Judiciary Committee, Feb. 11, 2026 (video). At today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) questioned AG Pam Bondi about why she hired a Jan. pro-Trump insurrectionist convicted and then pardoned after threatening on camera to kill police trying to quell the takeover of the U.S. Capitol.
Jack Lang, a French former culture minister, and Mr. Epstein at the Louvre in Paris (Photo Department of Justice).
New York Times, Epstein Revelations Stir Chaos From Scandinavia to South Asia, Mark Landler, Feb. 11, 2026. Disclosures in documents released by the Trump administration have roiled the world, leading to resignations and the threat of legal charges far beyond American borders.
A French politician, famed as a cultural icon of the 1980s and 1990s. A Norwegian diplomat who played a role in the secret talks that yielded the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. A well-connected Slovak former minister who served as president of the United Nations General Assembly.
Three prominent officials, tripped up by their associations with Jeffrey Epstein — and they are far from the only ones.
Mr. Epstein, the financier and convicted sexual offender, collected friends and associates in an astonishing array of places. Now, several of them are being brought down by the unsavory details of their relationships — some after Mr. Epstein was convicted in 2008 — which were revealed in nearly three million pages of documents released by the Justice Department in the United States.
Jack Lang, who once served as France’s culture minister, announced on Saturday he would resign as head of the Arab World Institute, a prestigious cultural institution in Paris, after French authorities said they were investigating reports that he and his family had financial links to Mr. Epstein.
Mona Juul, who had been Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, quit after disclosures of financial dealings between her and her husband, and Mr. Epstein. Miroslav Lajcak, the national security adviser to Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, stepped down following the release of emails between him and Mr. Epstein, in which the two men appeared to banter about young women.
“Clearly, he had a very extensive system,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said this week, referring to Mr. Epstein’s vast network of contacts. “This also fuels a lot of conspiracy theories and everything else.”
Meidas Touch Network, Political Commentary: Trump Had Worst Year for Jobs in Decades According to Revised Labor Numbers, Troy Matthews, Feb. 11, 2026. Well, that's awkward.
The January jobs report was released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and while the monthly jobs numbers were a positive sign for the economy, a deeper dive into the report revealed a remarkable revision of the data from last year:
Total seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs numbers for the year 2025 were revised down from an initially reported +584,000 jobs added, to just +181,000 added for the entire year. Meaning 2025 was the worst year for jobs growth since 2003.
Since Donald Trump entered office, the economy has added only 359,000 jobs total, averaging an abysmal +30,000 jobs gained per month.
From the report:
The change in total nonfarm employment for 2025 was revised from +584,000 to +181,000 (seasonally adjusted). Table A presents revised total nonfarm employment data on a seasonally adjusted basis from January to December 2025.
"Donald Trump’s economy had the worst year for job growth since 2003, excluding recessions," DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. "Trump’s economy isn’t for working Americans taking on record debt to pay for groceries, nor for people seeking better jobs, nor for young families struggling to buy their first homes. Trump’s legacy is building an economy that works for him and his friends."
Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy: Trump's Terrible Week - Huge Tariff Loss In House, 2025 Jobs Revised Deeply Downward, Epstein Scandal Metastasizes, Six Patriots Escape His Wrath, Bad New Polls, Simon Rosenberg, right, “This is a watershed moment for the 119th Congress” - Punchbowl on Trump's tariff loss in the House.
Our leader and his allies in Congress are having a terrible, terrible week. Let’s review:
Extraordinary Rebuke On Tariffs In The House. From Punchbowl News this morning: “This is a watershed moment for the 119th Congress”:
The House is now going to have open season on President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Trump suffered a serious political blow Tuesday night when the House voted down a rule blocking members from offering resolutions to end the numerous tariffs the president has levied since returning to office.
GOP Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Kevin Kiley (Calif.) voted with all Democrats against the rule, despite heavy lobbying from Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership team and the White House’s legislative affairs operation. The White House was driving this process, mostly because Trump doesn’t want intraparty division. The GOP leadership knew it couldn’t win this vote, despite the pressure from administration officials.
With that vote, members will have effectively unfettered ability to force up or down votes on the president’s global trade agenda. This will start today.
Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) plans to offer a resolution terminating any tariffs imposed on Canada via a Trump executive order in February 2025.
These resolutions are privileged, meaning House GOP leaders must schedule a vote now that Johnson’s effort to block them has failed. Democrats need to wait 15 days from the introduction of such resolutions and forcing a floor vote. If the House approves any resolution, it gets a floor vote in the Senate due to its privileged status.
There are a few implications to consider here.
1) 
Trump’s loss was a loss for Johnson, too. The White House wanted Johnson, right, to include the tariff provision in the rule. If you align yourself that closely with Trump and he loses a vote, so do you. Also, it’s never good for a speaker to lose votes.
“This is life with a small majority,” Johnson told reporters as he left the Capitol. “I need unanimity every day, and we didn’t get it tonight.”
2) This will reignite debate over Trump’s lame-duck status. Trump acknowledged Tuesday that there won’t be a second reconciliation package, quashing the hopes of House GOP leaders in particular. “But we’ve gotten everything passed that we need for four years,” Trump told Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow. If that’s really the case — and there’s a good chance that Democrats win control of at least one chamber in 2026 — how do Johnson and his top lieutenants keep members in line for the rest of this year?
3) Many House Republicans believe Trump’s tariffs are both bad policy and politics, and they’ll be tempted to vote with Democrats to disapprove of them.
4) Democrats have a flood of resolutions on the wide variety of tariffs Trump has issued. This could clog up the floor for House Republicans.
5) As the midterms get closer, Democrats will use these votes as a cudgel against vulnerable Republicans. Economists agree that the tariffs have caused prices to increase nationally, although there’s a debate on how much. There are questions as well about how much Trump can pressure industries to “re-shore” their manufacturing operations to the United States.
Yet forcing Republicans to vote on that is politically potent. There’s no doubt that Trump will be watching to see who bucks him.
Now what? This is a watershed moment for the 119th Congress.
A small group of House Republicans told Trump’s White House and the Republican leadership that they’d had enough of being asked to cover for a policy on which they disagree. GOP lawmakers have been mostly supplicants to Trump. This trio of rank-and-file no votes on Tuesday shows that some Republicans are ready to stand up against the president on a substantive policy disagreement.
Trump has now lost big votes on his tariffs in both chambers. It’s an extraordinary rebuke of Trump on his most important - and disastrous - economic policy. And as we’ve discussed here, I think these tariffs and the way he has used them are grounds for his removal or resignation for they are the greatest abuse of Presidential power in American history. And why? He did it to help pay for the unaffordable and ruinous tax cuts for him and his oligarch buddies.
On the tariffs Trump broke the law to enrich himself; violated the Constitution to enrich himself; hurt the American economy to enrich himself; hurt working people to enrich himself; hurt our relations with the entire world to enrich himself; hurt the economic system that has made us prosperous to enrich himself; hurt farmers and small businesses to enrich himself. His greed, his corruption, his vainglorious need to feel STRONG has driven everything in this first terrible year of Trump. There is no longer what is good for America, or the American people. It is just what is good for this glutenous, venal, out of control madman.
2025 Jobs Revisions Brutal For Trump
There will be much bluster and bullshit today, but the big news in the delayed monthly jobs report is that total number of jobs created in 2025 went from an already anemic 584,000 to a pathetic 181,000.
So Trump’s year one job growth total, including the new January data, comes in at a truly awful 269,000. No matter how you cut the data his jobs track record is the worst of the last six Presidents. Forbes Breaking News, Bondi Has Explosive Confrontation With Joe Neguse During Testimony To Judiciary Committee, Feb. 11, 2026 (video). At today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO) questioned AG Pam Bondi about why she hired a Jan. pro-Trump insurrectionist convicted and then pardoned after threatening on camera to kill police trying to quell the takeover of the U.S. Capitol.
The Parnas Perspective, News and Political Commentary, Major News: Trump Narrative on Epstein Falls Apart, House Republicans Rebuke Trump in Stunning Vote, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 11, 2026. Today is going to be one of the most consequential days yet.
I am already on Capitol Hill at a press conference with more than a dozen Epstein survivors outside the Capitol. Soon I will be meeting with members of Congress and pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi during her critical hearing. This week alone, I have delivered hundreds of documents to lawmakers, directing them to the key records that must be reviewed unredacted. I am working around the clock to bring you real-time updates, especially as the Trump narrative around Epstein continues to unravel.
Last night marked a major shift. A grand jury declined to indict Democratic lawmakers, and the administration’s tariff strategy appears to be collapsing. The political ground is moving fast, and independent reporting has never been more important.
Major investigative projects are already underway for 2026. If you want this work to continue and grow, now is the time to support it.
The White House narrative concerning Jeffrey Epstein has fallen apart this morning. Over the past 24 hours, the White House has parroted the idea that Donald Trump was a whistleblower of sorts, as new documents showed that Trump called the Palm Beach County Police Chief in the mid-2000s and reported Epstein and Maxwell.
The newly released FBI document says Donald Trump called Palm Beach’s police chief in 2006 to thank him for investigating Jeffrey Epstein, urged authorities to focus on Ghislaine Maxwell (whom he called “evil”), and claimed he had distanced himself from Epstein and expelled him from Mar-a-Lago, while detailing how a broader early-2000s investigation into Epstein ultimately stalled at the state level.
The only problem for the White House is that this phone call happened after the arrest of Epstein, not before. And so, now the White House is on record embracing the position that the President knew about Epstein and Maxwell’s conduct, yet only called authorities after Epstein was arrested:
The White House’s claim that Trump had kicked Epstein out of his club also falls apart this morning. This new document, which is significantly redacted, appears to be a narrative outlining how Epstein was a guest at Mar a Lago, and how Trump never actually kicked him out.
In a major setback for President Trump, the House rejected a White House-backed effort to block tariff disapproval resolutions from reaching the floor, opening the door for Democrats to force repeated votes on his global tariffs and putting rank-and-file Republicans in a politically difficult position.
The House defeated a Republican effort to change chamber rules and delay votes on overturning President Trump’s tariffs, after three GOP lawmakers joined Democrats to block a procedural maneuver that would have redefined the legislative calendar to avoid a required vote, clearing the way for Democrats to force action on resolutions to end tariffs imposed under Trump’s emergency declaration. The three Republican lawmakers were Congressman Thomas Massie, Congressman Kevin Kiley, and Congressman Don Bacon.
A federal grand jury rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, with seditious conspiracy charges after prosecutors under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro argued that a video urging military and intelligence personnel to refuse illegal orders violated federal law; the rare rebuke marked a significant setback to a Trump-backed effort widely seen as an attempt to criminalize political dissent.
The Department of Homeland Security faces another partial shutdown by Friday as Democrats and Republicans remain deeply divided over DHS funding, with Democrats demanding major reforms to curb the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, including judicial warrants for home entries, bans on masked agents and limits on ICE operations, while Republicans reject the proposals as impractical and radical, raising the prospect of disruptions across agencies like TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard if no deal is reached.
An Associated Press review found that at least two dozen ICE employees and contractors have been charged with crimes since 2020, including assault, sexual abuse, bribery and corruption, raising concerns that rapid expansion, reduced oversight and claims of broad immunity could fuel wider abuses of power nationwide.
According to El Paso Matters, the FAA abruptly closed airspace over El Paso and parts of southern New Mexico for 10 days, halting all civilian and military flights and citing “national defense airspace” without explanation, a rare move not seen since after 9/11 that has shut down El Paso International Airport and disrupted the region.
According to Politico, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Adam Schiff are introducing legislation to require the Government Accountability Office to investigate the Trump administration’s handling of hundreds of millions of dollars from Venezuelan oil sales, after funds were placed in offshore accounts in Qatar, raising Democratic concerns about transparency, legal authority, and potential fraud or corruption.
Germany is preparing new legislation to authorize offensive cyber operations, allowing its intelligence and security services to conduct “hack-back” actions against foreign hackers and hybrid threats, marking a major shift from its traditionally cautious stance as Berlin responds to escalating Russian-linked cyberattacks and infrastructure disruptions, though the proposals face legal, constitutional and diplomatic hurdles.
A gunman killed at least nine people, including victims at a high school and a nearby home, in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, marking Canada’s deadliest school shooting in decades; the suspect, found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted injury, left a small mountain community of 2,400 reeling as authorities investigate the motive behind the rare mass shooting in a country with comparatively strict gun laws.
A new NBC News Decision Desk Poll shows President Trump’s approval on immigration has fallen sharply, with 60% disapproving of his handling of border security after recent fatal shootings by immigration agents, strong disapproval rising to 49%, and overall job approval slipping to 39%, as independents shift away and majorities call for ICE reforms and greater oversight.
An 18-year-old gunman fired shots and took hostages at a school in Hat Yai, southern Thailand, injuring at least three people before being detained by police, who confirmed all hostages were freed; the incident adds to concerns about gun violence in a country that has experienced several high-profile mass attacks in recent years.
Journalist Don Lemon has hired former Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson, who recently resigned over concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the investigation into Renee Good’s killing, to defend him against federal charges tied to his coverage of a church protest, including alleged violations of religious freedom laws under the FACE Act.
Jill Zarin was dropped from E!’s upcoming “Real Housewives of New York” revival series The Golden Life after posting an Instagram video criticizing Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show as being mostly in Spanish and lacking white performers, comments that sparked backlash and prompted the production company to cut ties, citing company standards and values.
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New York Times, U.S. Attorney Chosen to Replace Trump Pick Is Quickly Fired by White House, Jonah E. Bromwich, Feb. 11, 2026. Federal judges had appointed Donald Kinsella, a veteran litigator, as top prosecutor in the Northern District of New York after the Trump administration’s nominee was found to be serving unlawfully.
Federal judges in upstate New York appointed a new U.S. attorney on Wednesday only to see him abruptly fired by the White House, in the latest clash between the Trump administration and the judiciary.
Donald T. Kinsella, 79, was appointed as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York in a private ceremony on Wednesday. But just hours later, Mr. Kinsella said, he received an email from a White House official telling him that he was being removed from the post.
Reached by phone on Wednesday evening, Mr. Kinsella said that he did not yet know whether the White House email carried the force of law. He said he would discuss the matter with the district judges in the morning and go from there.
The Trump administration had previously suggested it would fire any prosecutor chosen by district judges. It is unclear whether the Northern District judges will have any recourse.
“Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does,” said Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, in a social media post on Wednesday. “See Article II of our Constitution. You are fired, Donald Kinsella.”
Mr. Kinsella has more than 50 years of experience as a criminal and civil litigator. He is a former criminal chief of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District, which prosecutes crime in a broad swath of New York State, including Albany, Syracuse and Utica. His hiring and firing were first reported by The Times Union in Albany.
He had been set to replace John A. Sarcone III, left, whom a judge found last month was serving in the position unlawfully. This week, Mr. Sarcone dropped the title of acting U.S. attorney — his 210-day term had expired — and his office’s website now lists him as first assistant, typically the title of a U.S. attorney’s top deputy.
Federal judges have found a number of U.S. attorneys whose appointments were the result of unusual legal maneuvers by the Trump administration to be serving unlawfully.
Along with Mr. Sarcone, they include Alina Habba, who was the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and Lindsey Halligan, formerly the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as well as a handful of others.
Ms. Habba and Ms. Halligan both left their respective offices in recent months.
Mr. Sarcone has had a difficult relationship with the judges in his district, who declined to appoint him after his interim tenure expired in July.
He had no experience as a prosecutor before he was appointed. He made a series of unusual moves in office, many of which were assiduously documented by The Times Union, which Mr. Sarcone removed from his office’s press distribution list.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 10, 2026 [DOJ Limits Epstein Files Review By Lawmakers, Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 11, 2026. As of yesterday, members of Congress who sit on the House or Senate Judiciary Committees can see unredacted versions of the Epstein files the Department of Justice (DOJ) has already released.
As Herb Scribner of Axios explained, the documents are available from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on computers in the DOJ building in Washington, D.C. The lawmakers cannot bring electronic devices into the room with them, but they are allowed to take notes. They must give the DOJ 24 hours notice before they access the files.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the DOJ to release all the Epstein files by December 19. Only about half of them have been released to date, and many of them are so heavily redacted they convey little information. After members of Congress complained, on Friday, January 30, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said they could see the unredacted documents if they asked.
In a letter dated the next day, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) immediately asked for access on behalf of the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, saying they would be ready to view the files the following day, Sunday, February 1.
After viewing the files briefly yesterday, Raskin told Andrew Solender of Axios that when he searched the files for President Donald Trump’s name, it came up “more than a million times.” Raskin suggested that limiting members’ access to the files is part of a cover-up to hide Trump’s relationship with the convicted sex offender, a cover-up that includes the three million files the DOJ has yet to release despite the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. One of the files he did see referred to a child of 9. Raskin called it “gruesome and grim.”
Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) added: “There’s still a lot that’s redacted—even in what we’re seeing, we’re seeing redacted versions. I thought we were supposed to see the unredacted versions.”
Material that has come out has already shown members of the administration and their allies are lying about their connections to Epstein. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein for more than ten years, said in October that he had cut ties with Epstein in 2005 after visiting his home and being disgusted. The files show that in fact, Lutnick not only maintained ties with Epstein but also was in business with him until at least 2018, long after Epstein was a convicted sex offender. Members of both parties have called for Lutnick to resign.
Testifying today before the Senate Appropriations Committee, where members took the opportunity to ask him about his ties to Epstein. Lutnick acknowledged that he had had more contact with Epstein than he had previously admitted, but maintained: “I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him.” But even Republicans expressed discomfort with Lutnick’s visit with his family to Epstein’s private island.
Khanna called for Lutnick to resign. “In this country, we have to make a decision,” he said. “Are we going to allow rich and powerful people who were friends and had no problem doing business and showing up with a pedophile who is raping underage girls, are we just going to allow them to skate? Or, like other countries, are we going to have…accountability for the people who did that?”
In the U.S. there has been little fallout so far for those in the files except the resignation of Wall Street lawyer Brad Karp, senior partner for Paul Weiss—the first law firm to cave to Trump’s demands last March. Material from the files shows that Karp plotted with Epstein to get a woman they disliked charged with a crime and deported.
In Europe the revelation that a leader had ties to Epstein has abruptly ended careers. The former British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, was fired and has created a crisis for Prime Minister Keir Starmer for appointing him. Two senior Norwegian diplomats are under investigation for gross corruption from their ties to Epstein; one of them, Mona Juul, resigned Sunday from her position as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq. Slovakia’s national security advisor Miroslav Lajčák resigned after messages between him and Epstein showed them talking about women while also discussing Lajčák’s meetings with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
Poland announced it was launching an investigation into whether Epstein was tied to Russian intelligence. “More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services,” Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said. “I don’t need to tell you how serious the increasingly likely possibility that Russian intelligence services co-organised this operation is for the security of the Polish state. This can only mean that they also possess compromising materials against many leaders still active today.”
Yesterday, Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking, testified by video before the House Oversight Committee. She refused to answer any questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her lawyer said she is “prepared to speak fully and honestly” if Trump grants her clemency.
Todd Lyons, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection; and Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, all part of the Department of Homeland Security, testified today before the House Committee on Homeland Security. As Eric Bazail-Eimil of Politico reported, Lyons defended the actions of ICE agents, saying they are properly enforcing immigration laws and that they are the real victims of the encounters that have left protesters dead or injured because the protests put agents in danger. Most Republicans backed them up, saying the Democrats are trying to stop the removal of criminals.
Democrats asked the men about federal arrests of U.S. citizens and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and demanded changes at ICE and Border Patrol. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security will run out on February 13, and the administration officials warned members of Congress that a shutdown would disrupt their operations and thus endanger national security. Representative James Walkinshaw (D-VA) later told a reporter: “Look, all of this comes from Stephen Miller’s sick and twisted, deranged Great Replacement theory. Whether these folks here…know it or not, they’re…just pawns in Stephen Miller’s sick and twisted scheme.”
Daniel Klaidman, Michael Kaplan, and Matt Gutman of CBS News reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit after a federal raid on a popular horse racing venue in Wilder, Idaho, led to the detention of 105 undocumented immigrants as well as the temporary detention of 375 U.S. citizens or lawful residents. Only five arrests ended in criminal charges, all for unlicensed gambling.
Answering allegations that agents had used zip ties on children, both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field office in Boise and Homeland Security spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin flatly denied the allegations. “ICE didn’t zip tie, restrain, or arrest any children,” she said. “ICE does not zip tie or handcuff children. This is the kind of garbage rhetoric contributing to our officers facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.” But after photographic evidence of zip-tie bruises on a 14-year-old female U.S. citizen as well as personal testimony, the FBI changed their assertion to say no “young” children were zip-tied.
Court documents unsealed today show that the FBI raid on the warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, that led to the seizure of 700 boxes of ballots and other election related items was based on debunked claims of fraud from 2020 election deniers. As Ashley Cleaves and Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket explained, the affidavit that informed the search warrant came from Kurt Olsen, one of the lawyers who worked with Trump to overturn the 2020 election and whom Trump has recently appointed director of election security and integrity. In the affidavit, Olsen recycled a number of debunked theories.
Legal analyst Joyce White Vance notes that, aside from the merits of the case, it appears that the statute of limitations has run out on any potential election crimes stemming from 2020. She goes on to expose the weakness of the case itself and, finally, to point out that both the General Assembly and the Georgia State Election Board that said there was no intentional fraud or misconduct in the counting of the Fulton County ballots in 2020 were Republican led. White suggests the raid was “less about bringing a meritorious criminal prosecution against specific individuals and more about casting suspicion over Fulton County’s voting system and ability to conduct a fair election.”
Today the National Governors Association cancelled its annual bipartisan meeting with the president that usually involves a business meeting 
and a dinner. Trump had disinvited two Democratic governors, Jared Polis of Colorado and Wes Moore of Maryland, right, prompting the rest of the Democratic governors to refuse to attend. “Democratic governors have a long record of working across the aisle to deliver results and we remain committed to this effort. But it’s disappointing this administration doesn’t seem to share the same goal. At every turn, President Trump is creating chaos and division, and it is the American people who are hurting as a result,” the Democratic governors wrote. “If the reports are true that not all governors are invited to these events, which have historically been productive and bipartisan opportunities for collaboration, we will not be attending the White House dinner this year. Democratic governors remain united and will never stop fighting to protect and make life better for people in our states.”
Moore is the vice-chair of the NGA. Yesterday its chair, Oklahoma’s Republican governor Kevin Stitt, wrote: “Because NGA’s mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “I just spoke with the president about this. It is a dinner at the White House. It’s the ‘People’s House.’ It’s also the president’s home, and he can invite whomever he wants to dinners and events here at the White House.”
In Washington today, a grand jury refused to indict six Democratic members of Congress for breaking a law that makes it a crime to “interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States.” Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain and astronaut; Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst; and Representatives Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger; Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, a former Navy officer; Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, a Navy veteran; and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, a former Air Force officer, recorded a video last November reminding service members that they must refuse illegal orders.
Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Although the bar for an indictment is so low that grand juries almost always return one, the Trump administration’s attempts to harass those he perceives as opponents have been so outrageous that grand juries have repeatedly refused to go along. The New York Times called today’s refusal “a remarkable rebuke.”
U.S., NATO National Security
Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), visited the National Press Club for a "Headliners coffee and conversations" event on February 10, 2026. He is shown at right in a photo by the Justice Integrity Project's Andrew Kreig.
The speaker's complete remarks are here via YouTube after an introduction by Bloomberg News defense reporter Jen Judson, a former National Press Club president who interviewed him.
In her introduction, she stated: "It's a pleasure to host today's conversation at a moment when questions about global security, military readiness, and the future of allied cooperation are no longer theoretical. They are unfolding in real time before us. For more than 75 years, NATO has stood as one of the most successful defensive alliances in modern history. Yet, the strategic environment confronting the alliance today is arguably more complex than at any point since the end of the Cold War."
National Press Club, Europe and US must adapt rapidly to counter global threats, NATO Commander Tells NPC, Zita Ballinger Fletcher, Feb. 11, 2026. The United States and Europe must make rapid military advancements to counter threats from Russia and China, Admiral Peter Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told the National Press Club at a Headliners Luncheon on Tuesday.
Vandier is one of NATO’s most senior military commanders, overseeing the alliance’s transformation headquarters based in Norfolk, Va. During a discussion moderated by former NPC President Jen Judson, Vandier shared his views on the current state of the alliance and how it must adapt for global security.
“The industry question is really a big one. I think the US, and particularly this administration, have taken the question very, very seriously. We inherit an industrial system that has not been prepared for war,” Vandier said.
He stressed that European and American military and industrial efforts combined can outpace adversaries.
“We have a collective security problem. So that means we need a collective endeavor to solve this problem,” he told reporters. “We are in a race especially with China, and so we need the skills and the knowledge of the two sides of the Atlantic to face this challenge.”
Vandier explained that drone production is profoundly changing the way that battles are being fought and will be in the future because of omnipresent surveillance.
“We’ve seen an increased lethality of the zone of contacts on the battlefield,” he said with regard to drones. “The ability to concentrate forces is very limited. Surprise is difficult. This permanent surveillance is something which is a change. We know for example that command posts are targets, even in depth. So today the way we work a command post has to change.”
He said that speedy adaptation on the battlefield and within the defense industry will be critical to NATO’s role in helping to safeguard both European countries and the United States from adversaries worldwide. To do this, Vandier said, both the military and industry “need to shortcut to adapt, to find new procedures, to break some roadblocks.”
“The most expensive commodity today is time,” he said. “Do we have time? I don’t think we have that much time.”
Defense One, NATO innovation chief: Alliance must speed up, or risk Russian invasion, Patrick Tucker, Feb. 11, 2026. Ukraine shows that “the obsolescence is nearly immediate,” for even the best weapons.
Deterring a Russian attack depends not just on NATO's military forces, but on proof that alliance members can bring new technology to the fight as quickly as Moscow, Adm. Pierre Vandier, who leads NATO’s Allied Transformation Command, said Tuesday in Washington.
Vandier, like other military leaders and operators, said Ukrainian forces have illustrated the value of not just buying new technology, but continuously reinventing it at the front lines.
But, he said, Russia has learned the same lesson and is also continuously adapting across areas like space-based imagery, mission command, and, of course, drones.
If Russia sees NATO as lagging, there’s a chance it could make a “miscalculation” similar to the one it made in 2022 when it launched its expanded war in Ukraine, Vandier said. “If transformation is too slow over the next decade, it's a risk to [NATO] not being deterrent.”
The Ukraine war has also revealed a fundamental challenge: the cumbersome nature of how NATO buys and builds weapons. Even the best weapons or drones lose their relevance far faster than slow-moving defense firms realize. “The obsolescence is nearly immediate,” he said. “You need to have the engineers, you need to have the technicians that are very close to the fibers to be able to find solutions” quickly.
Vandier knows NATO has a reputation for being a lumbering bureaucratic organization that can’t move quickly. But he said that image is no longer true, and pointed to the REPMUS 24 (Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Maritime Unmanned Systems) experiment in Portugal in 2024, in which NATO members together fielded more than 70 autonomous systems in just under three weeks. The version of the exercise that concluded last spring included more than 276 unmanned systems.
In the coming weeks and months, NATO will stage similar experiments in Romania and Latvia to test new counter-drone systems and methods for integrating those systems into a larger system of overlapping protective measures, sometimes called a “layered defense.”
NATO is also looking to apply artificial intelligence to key early warning tasks, such as watching satellite footage for changes in military activity, via a project called SINBAD with Planet Labs. As the alliance works to extend a series of exercises and activity to the Arctic, Allied Transformation Command will develop “a bunch of satellite services that will be focused on this particular area where we have been…shortfalls.”
Another project, launched last April, seeks to use large language models to bring down the time and effort required for advanced wargame planning.
“To make a large-scale scenario for a little exercise is 18 months of work for 60 people. And so at the end, when you arrive in the last three months, if you want to do something new, it's impossible. And so it's a very slow machine. We have the ambition to do the same in less than two months and with half of the people,” he said.
Politico, US signals limited military pullback from Europe, Paul McLeary, Victor Jack and Jack Detsch, Feb. 11, 2026. “We will continue to show up,” America's ambassador to NATO said.
American policymakers are telling European leaders not to expect major U.S. troop drawdowns anytime soon, according to seven U.S. and NATO officials, calming widespread fears across the continent’s capitals.
European officials have worried President Donald Trump would call home tens of thousands of American soldiers to encourage countries to spend more on their own defense as the Pentagon focuses on the Western Hemisphere. But officials in Washington are now saying that any withdrawal would be limited, government officials from seven different European countries said.
Instead, the U.S. will make targeted changes and small pullbacks of rotational forces, leaving the vast bulk of American combat troops and materiel in place.
“We’ve received mixed signals,” said one NATO military officer, such as small-scale redeployments that won’t be replaced, but “this administration has realized that a stable Europe is important for them, and the signals we are receiving are not that there’s going to be a major withdrawal, not now.”
The subject will likely come up during Thursday’s meeting of defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby is attending in place of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a snub by the U.S. defense chief.
Colby, seen as a hard-liner on Europe and architect of the recent U.S. defense strategy, isn’t expected to unveil new plans. But it will be “quite clear the U.S. expects Europe to step up swiftly and signal that while changes may not be immediate, they are coming,” said another NATO official, who like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment.
There are also legal obstacles to a major drawdown. Under the National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress last year, Washington must keep a minimum presence in Europe of 76,000 troops. The U.S. has around 85,000 soldiers on the continent.
The issue also is expected to shadow many of Colby’s meetings with NATO allies at this week’s Munich Security Conference. Unlike last year’s speech by Vice President JD Vance, which pilloried Europe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will deliver an address in Munich this year that one U.S. official said will function as a traditional foreign policy speech. It will express support for the alliance while calling for reform and underscoring the American policy shift to focus on the Western Hemisphere and Asia, the person said.
The U.S. has not yet formally briefed allies on the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s top political decision-making body, according to two NATO diplomats.
When it comes to troop deployments, air bases and training ranges operated by the U.S. in Europe, for the most part “things will stay the same,” a second officer from a NATO member state said. Some units may be moved around to different countries in the coming years but officials on the continent largely think European allies will be able to absorb any gradual cutbacks.
But some change are coming. One is a plan to pull around 200 American troops from several European commands. That won’t happen immediately, but the troops serving in those planning and administrative roles won’t be replaced once their individual tours are up, leaving European and Canadian forces to take their place.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Donald Trump, US President address media at the NATO Summit in The Hague (NATO)
Breaking Defense, NATO shake-up sees US ousted from 2 warfighting-level commands, Tim Martin, Feb. 10, 2026. The US will hand over charge of Joint Force Command Norfolk to the United Kingdom and relinquish leadership of Joint Force Command Naples to Italy.
NATO today announced a command restructuring plan that will see the US giving up leadership of two allied operational-level commands to European senior officers.
The US will hand over charge of Joint Force Command Norfolk to the United Kingdom and relinquish leadership of Joint Force Command Naples to Italy, a statement from the alliance said. The statement also noted that Joint Force Command Brunssum will now be led by Germany and Poland on a rotational format.
Sharing more details of the shake up, the alliance said that changes involving a “new distribution of senior officer responsibility” were approved by allies last week, so “European Allies, including NATO’s newest members, will play a more prominent role” across leadership posts.
“As a result, all three Joint Force Commands (four star commands), which lead at the operational level in crisis and conflict, will be led by Europeans,” added the statement.
The alliance stressed that the US will keep hold of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) post, currently occupied by Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich. Additionally, Washington is “to lead all three theater component commands, newly taking up responsibility for Allied Maritime Command, and maintaining leadership of Allied Land Command and Allied Air Command.”
The sweeping changes are set to be gradually implemented over the “coming years,” and mark a “shift to more fairly share responsibility within NATO,” according to the alliance, but they come amid a troubling period for the 32-nation collective, with questions surrounding its future.
For instance, amid rhetoric from US President Donald Trump that Greenland should be part of the United States, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederisen said that if the US attacked a NATO ally, it would be the end of the alliance. Trump later stated that he likely would not use force to take over the semi-autonomous Arctic island.
Trump has insisted that control of Greenland is necessary for national security and Golden Dome planning, while criticizing European allies for not contributing enough to Arctic security.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte refused to comment on the Greenland issue when asked about it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, but acknowledged that efforts were taking place “behind the scenes” to reach a deal.
On Monday, US ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker told a townhall meeting in Berlin that “a lot of great progress trilaterally” has been made in relation to negotiations over the Arctic island’s future.
Politico, ‘Now we’re in a power struggle’: Europe’s resentment grows over Trump’s newest provocations, Eli Stokols and Clea Caulcutt, Feb. 11, 2026 (print ed.). President Trump has backed off his threats toward Denmark's territorial sovereignty, but he and aides have continued to irritate much of Europe.
President Donald Trump’s hasty climbdown after weeks of threats about seizing Greenland from Denmark’s control has not done much to improve the fraying transatlantic relationship.
In fact, the bad feelings across Europe have only deepened as the president and other administration officials have, in ways large and small, continued to poke politicians and entire populations in the proverbial eye. The provocations come as European officials prepare for the Munich Security Conference this weekend where key topics will include the transatlantic relationship and whether the continent can stand on its own without Washington’s help.
A high-level European official similarly described a “change in mindset” that is taking place. “We’re forced to adopt a violent approach in our relationship with the US administration,” the official told POLITICO, explaining that Europeans are realizing that Americans increasingly seem to view Europe less like allies than rivals. “It has completely changed from the times when there was cooperation between us, now we’re in a power struggle.”
Amid the row over Greenland last month, Trump casually dismissed the sacrifice of NATO troops who fought beside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, leaving NATO allies “disgusted.” Subsequently, the U.S. embassy in Denmark, removed 44 small Danish flags that commemorated the Danes who died in Afghanistan — placed in response to Trump’s comments — fueling more anti-American demonstrations in Copenhagen.
News that American federal immigration agents would be on the ground providing security during the Winter Olympics in Milan sparked widespread fury throughout Italy, and boos serenaded Vice President JD Vance as he attended the opening ceremonies and events over the weekend.
“The message, the lack of respect for Europe, that’s been sent,” said a second high-level European official who, like others interviewed for this report, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive diplomatic situation. “But they just can’t seem to help themselves from sending it again and again.”
And last week, the U.S. ambassador to Poland turned publicly hostile toward a Polish lawmaker who wouldn’t sign a petition backing Trump’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, drawing a rebuke from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The New Republic, WTF Is the FAA Doing in El Paso? Malcolm Ferguson, Feb. 11, 2026. The Federal Aviation Administration said that all airspace around El Paso, Texas, would be shut down for 10 days—and then pulled a sudden 180.
The Federal Aviation Administration will now reopen the El Paso Texas Airport and surrounding airspace, after initially planning to close it for 10 days, a bizarre reversal of an even more bizarre move that would have a massive negative impact on the communities and businesses in the region.
“The temporary closure of airspace over El Paso has been lifted,” the FAA wrote on X Wednesday morning. “There is no threat to commercial aviation. All flights will resume as normal.”
But the FAA had just said late Tuesday that the flight restrictions were being imposed for “special security reasons.”
A Trump administration official told NBC News on Wednesday that the planned 10-day closure was actually because Mexican cartel drones had entered U.S. airspace, but they have since been disabled.
There has been no additional explanation for the decision—or the sudden reversal — but there were multiple theories about why Trump’s FAA would halt all aviation activity above this southern border town of 700,000.
Other possibilities that were floated included a planned military action or exercise, a credible security threat, or a very sensitive package or person that needed to be transported.
“Important context: the El Paso TFR is not like the 9/11 nationwide airspace shutdown. DC & NY restrictions were created later,” CNN’s Pete Muntean said. “A ban on all flights over a U.S. city—including medevac and police helicopters—has no modern precedent.”
What could have merited shutting down a major airport—and a hub of U.S.-Mexico trade—for 10 whole days?
“The highly consequential decision by FAA to shut down the El Paso Airport for 10 days is unprecedented and has resulted in significant concern within the community,” said Representative Veronica Escobar, who represents the El Paso region. “From what my office and I have been able to gather overnight and early this morning there is no immediate threat to the community or surrounding areas.”
New York Times, Military’s Use of Anti-Drone Technology Said to Cause El Paso Airspace Closure, Karoun Demirjian, Kate Kelly and Eric Schmitt, Feb. 11, 2026. Federal Aviation Administration officials said privately that the agency did not have enough time or information to assess the technology’s risk to commercial aircraft, according to people briefed on the situation.
Federal Aviation Administration officials were forced to close El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday after the Defense Department decided to use new anti-drone technology without giving aviation officials ample time to assess the risks to commercial airlines, according to four people briefed on the situation.
Those accounts, offered on the condition of anonymity because the officials were not authorized to comment publicly, challenge the official explanation from the Trump administration. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, along with representatives for the White House and the Pentagon, insisted on Wednesday that a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels had necessitated a military response, which prompted the F.A.A. to close the airspace.
The military has been developing high-energy laser technology to intercept and destroy drones, which the Trump administration has said are used by Mexican cartels to track Border Patrol agents and smuggle drugs into the United States. According to the people briefed on the situation, El Paso’s airspace was shut down when the Defense Department, operating out of Fort Bliss, a nearby Army base, decided to mobilize that new technology over the F.A.A.’s objections.
According to two of the people briefed on the situation, military officials deployed that technology earlier this week against what they thought was a cartel drone, but which turned out to be a party balloon. That operation was carried out without proper coordination with the F.A.A., the people said.
U.S. Media, Propaganda, Education, Culture, Religion
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Major corporations bankroll "America First" propaganda, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 11, 2026. Mastercard, Deloitte, and ExxonMobil are spending millions to promote events supporting Trump and his divisive political agenda.
Major corporations — including Mastercard, Deloitte, and ExxonMobil — are spending millions to promote President Trump and some of his most divisive policy initiatives. The corporations are sponsoring Freedom 250, which bills itself as a “non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday.” But internal documents obtained by Popular Information reveal that Freedom 250 is bankrolling events promoting Trump and his political agenda.
Corporations pay between $500,000 and $10 million to become a Freedom 250 sponsor. Those who donate $1 million or more get invited to a private reception with Trump. For $2.5 million or more, sponsors receive a speaking role at the 4th of July celebration in Washington, D.C. The benefits for sponsors were first reported by the New York Times.
Freedom 250 will purportedly use the money to host events across the country celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday. But an “Events Toolkit” produced by Freedom 250 and labeled “DRAFT DELIBERATIVE NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION” reveals the events will actually promote pro-Trump political talking points.
For example, a “Talking Points & Messaging Guide” suggests partner organizations feature “issue-based messaging.” One featured message: “President Trump and America First leaders are restoring election integrity and protecting the voice of every legal citizen.” The idea that election integrity needs to be “restored” is based on the conspiracy theory, promoted by Trump, that the 2020 election was stolen. It also promotes the falsehood that “legal citizen” votes are being diluted by ineligible voters.
The “Events Toolkit” also instructs organizational partners that the “CORE THEME TO ELEVATE” is “President Trump’s Freedom250 Vision.” This entails praising specific executive orders issued by Trump, including “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
That order, which was signed last March, has resulted in “the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks.” New brochures at the former home of Medgar Evers, who was murdered by a member of the Ku Klux Klan, will no longer refer to Evers’ killer as “racist.” In other cases, signs “referring to the forced removal of Native Americans“ were removed from parks.
Freedom 250 is now telling partner organizations to say that this kind of historical erasure is “uniting Americans across the country.”
Other “talking points” explicitly call on partner organizations to align themselves with Trump’s political project: “[W]e’re proud to stand with the America First movement.”
The document also calls on partner organizations to use Freedom 250 events to mobilize “America First” voters, urging them to pair rallies for “election integrity” and “parental rights” with “voter registration booths.”
Deloitte, Mastercard, and ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment.
Deloitte, however, has won over $100 million in new work from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since Trump took office in 2025, according to an FT analysis. Among the new assignments is a contract for “internet research and data analytics support services” to support ICE’s targeting operations. A donation of a few million to Freedom 250 is a small price to pay if it keeps Deloitte in the Trump administration’s good graces.
Mastercard, meanwhile, faces a threat to its core business after Trump proposed a 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Although there were reports that Trump would issue an executive order imposing the restriction, he has not done so. Trump also has endorsed legislation that would bring more competition to the lucrative credit card processing fee industry. Thus far, that legislation has not advanced. All of this means that, for Mastercard, the access to Trump provided by sponsoring Freedom 250 could be extraordinarily valuable.
ExxonMobil is seeking to repair its relationship with the Trump administration after its CEO, Darren Woods, drew Trump’s ire at a high-profile White House meeting. Woods said that Venezuela, absent a change in local laws, was “uninvestible.” Trump was using the event to highlight the economic opportunities in Venezuela after the capture of President Nicolás Maduro in a military raid. Trump said he would seek retribution against ExxonMobil. “I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump told reporters. “I’ll probably be inclined to keep Exxon out.”
The full list of corporate donors is unknown. A representative for the National Parks Foundation, which is serving as the legal vehicle for Freedom 250, told a Congressional committee on Tuesday that it would keep donors anonymous upon request.
Freedom 250 is separate from America250, a bipartisan group that was established by Congress in 2016. America250 is engaged in traditional activities, such as promoting volunteerism and collecting stories from Americans. (Deloitte is also a sponsor of America250.)
In contrast, Freedom 250 is planning an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) match on the White House lawn on Trump’s birthday, along with a 250-foot-tall “Independence Arch” in the style of the Arc de Triomphe.
The Hill, Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years, Dominick Mastrangelo, Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after more than eight decades doing so, the public opinion polling agency confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday.
The company said starting this year it would stop publishing approval and favorability ratings of individual political figures, saying in a statement it “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.”
“Our commitment is to long-term, methodologically sound research on issues and conditions that shape people’s lives,” a spokesperson for the agency said. “That work will continue through the Gallup Poll Social Series, the Gallup Quarterly Business Review, the World Poll, and our portfolio of U.S. and global research.”
The Gallup Presidential Approval Rating has for decades been the among the top barometers cited by media outlets measuring public opinion of the president’s performance.
President Trump has seen his rating by the agency slip in recent months, peaking at 47 percent last February and dipping to less than 37 percent in its last poll taken in December.
“This change is part of a broader, ongoing effort to align all of Gallup’s public work with its mission,” a spokesperson for Gallup said. “We look forward to continuing to offer independent research that adheres to the highest standards of social science.”
When asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback from the White House or anyone in the current administration before making the decision, the spokesperson said, “this is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”
Trump’s Gallup approval rating as of last December was among the lowest the organization had found since it began taking the poll in the 1930s.
Former President Truman earned an average approval rating of 45 percent during his time in office from April 1945 to January 1953; former President Biden earned an average approval rating of 42 percent from January 2021 to January 2025.
Former President Kennedy experienced some of the highest average ratings Gallup has ever recorded, 71 percent from January 1961 to November 1963, and former President Eisenhower topped out at an average of 61 percent from January 1953 to January 1961.
Over the years, Gallup’s polling business has grown to include surveys outside of partisan politics, asking about subjects such as employee workplace engagement, public views on the spread of AI and other global indicators of public trust and happiness with major institutions.
Emptywheel, Analysis: Don Lemon Hires Minnesota’s Top Public Integrity Prosecutor to Defend Against Harmeet Dhillon’s Lies, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Feb. 11, 2026. It was always going to be the case that Abbe Lowell was going to challenge the process by which his client, Don Lemon, got charged for filming a protest in a pro-ICE Southern Baptist Church in Minnesota.
After all, before DOJ charged Lemon, two different judges — Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko and Chief MN Judge Patrick Schiltz — concluded there was no probable cause to charge Lemon. When Schiltz did so, he objected to DOJ’s treatment of the case as an emergency, and then said there was no evidence that Lemon committed a crime.
Already, those facts would demand that Lowell ask for the grand jury transcripts to show how prosecutors — any prosecutors — convinced a grand jury to charge his client, just as he did with Letitia James (and as Patrick Fitzgerald was on the verge of succeeding at doing with Jim Comey).
Already, other facts would make it virtually certain that Lowell would file several challenges to the indictment. As another co-defendant already did, Lowell would point out how the indictment fails to lay out evidence that Lemon committed either of the crimes with which he has been charged. He might point out that Douglass Mackey’s successful appeal of his prosecution on one of the same charges, 18 USC 241, reiterated that the charge cannot be brought without proof that someone participated in a conspiracy. Mackey won his appeal by arguing there was no evidence he was in the chat rooms where the plan to cheat Hillary voters out of their vote was hatched; Nekima Levy Armstrong has already said neither Lemon nor Georgia Fort were part of the planning.
And Abbe Lowell has been filing selective and vindictive prosecution challenges in bulk of late, including with Hunter Biden and Letitia James. He has yet to succeed (though might now if the James prosecution resurfaced, particularly given news that Eagle Ed Martin was disseminating grand jury materials, as Lowell had earlier suggested). The way DOJ refused to let Lemon self-report — refused to even speak to Lowell before Lemon was arrested — and then staged a trophy video of Lemon would add to that case.
All that’s before what I pointed out here: that before Harmeet Dhillon’s office charged Lemon and others with no career prosecutor (Dhillon’s Acting DAAG Robert Keenan is thus far the only prosecutor to file a notice of appearance in the docket), she engaged in breathtaking misconduct, including:
Attacked both Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko and Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz Falsely claimed that the entire Eighth Circuit panel had found probable cause for the indictment Disseminated false claims about what happened at the protest Disseminated the White House generated AI slop that darkened Nekima Levy Armstrong’s skin and falsely depicting her crying Tweeted Republican politicians calling for charges Called the protestors “demonic,” “godless,” and “anti-American” Platformed comments calling the defendants inflammatory terms (including terrorist) Told Megyn Kelly she would pursue Don Lemon “to the end of the earth” Made it clear that she was taking these steps to prove her (and Pam Bondi’s) mettle to the “black-pilled” further far right Platformed tweets talking about betting on the outcome of the investigation
These actions, even if she weren’t on the prosecution team, would be wildly prejudicial. But for someone to then take the lead role in indicting a case several judges had said lacked probable cause? This is the ethical equivalent of a lynching.
And that’s all important background to the filings that show Joe Thompson, the top local prosecutor who quit after DOJ — after Harmeet Dhillon — refused to open an investigation into Renee Good’s killing…
Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
[snip]
After Ms. Good was shot, Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told her staff that she would not consider opening an investigation into whether the agent had violated federal law, according to three current and former department officials who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the situation.
Would serve as local counsel for Lemon:
As the former lead AUSA in the office, Thompson would have a great deal of trust among the judges who were already pissed off by the way DOJ was bullying this case. Think about how much more likely those motions to dismiss the indictments will succeed given a trusted local helped tailor the briefs?
DOJ would struggle to claim Thompson is conflicted: He quit on January 13, five days before the protest for which Lemon was charged. But if those challenges to the indictment succeeded in getting Lemon discovery into the circumstances of his prosecution, Thompson would know precisely where the bodies were buried.
That is, it is delicious news in any case.
But one dynamic is being missed.
Thompson is a public integrity prosecutor. Less than a month ago, he was MN’s top Federal public integrity prosecutor, the guy who has spent years jailing dozens of people in the Somali COVID fraud Trump used as a pretext, as if it were newly discovered, to invade Minnesota. Todd Blanche continues to claim credit for Thompson’s years of work, pretending it is a new effort started under Trump.
Thompson is a public integrity prosecutor whose years of work were disrupted by orders — orders from Harmeet Dhillon — that he refuse to follow the facts on what happened with Renee Good’s shooting. To ensure that no investigation could contradict the President’s false claim that Good “ran over” her killer, Kash Patel and Harmeet ordered prosecutors, including Thompson, to submit a warrant to conduct a fishing expedition into Becca Good.
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
Over the next few days, top Department of Justice officials presented alternative approaches. First, they suggested prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new search warrant for the vehicle, predicated on a criminal investigation into whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, had been assaulted by her. Later, they urged the prosecutors to instead investigate Ms. Good’s partner, who had been with Ms. Good on the morning of the shooting, confronting immigration agents in their Minneapolis neighborhood.
Several of the career federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Mr. Thompson, balked at the new approach, which they viewed as legally dubious and incendiary in a state where anger over a federal immigration crackdown was already boiling over.
And after all that — after Harmeet ordered Thompson to conduct a fishing expedition to get the political result she wanted — she engaged in rampant misconduct to pursue Don Lemon “to the end of the earth.”
Harmeet Dhillon told several different kinds of lies publicly before her office said something to a grand jury to get them to charge Don Lemon: racist lies, lies about faith, lies about judges, political lies. She did a massive media blitz where she platformed some of those lies. She made it clear her associates, the people she wanted to impress, were gambling on whether Lemon would be indicted. She violated Don Lemon’s (and others’) civil rights while posing as the guardian of civil rights in America.
And now, Don Lemon has hired Minnesota’s top corruption prosecutor to represent him in the case Harmeet Dhillon charged.
U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
PoliticusUSA, Trump Shows That He Is Now In Worse Decline Than Joe Biden Ever Was, Jason Easley, Feb. 11, 2026. Donald Trump seemed to forget where he was and the name of the made up clean coal award that he was getting at the White House as Trump now seems more feeble that Biden ever was.
Rasmussen, the conservative polling firm that comes up with some of the most pro-Trump results that Americans will find anywhere outside of Truth Social, has long been a favorite go-to source for comfort food numbers for the failing president.
Until this week, when Rasmussen released the results of a survey question that asked who did a better job as president, Biden or Trump?
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This is one of those softballs that looks like it was a Trump Truth Social post waiting to happen, but the results told a different story.
By a margin of 48%-40%, likely voters said that Biden did a better job as president than Trump.
According to Republicans and the media, Joe Biden was so feeble and in such decline that he could no longer continue as president.
Trump was supposed to be the candidate who had the physical and mental fitness to be president.
The problem always was that Biden’s decline now seems overstated, and Trump’s decline was understated. So the American people traded one aging president for another aging president who might be in worse shape than the person he replaced.
The American people have noticed, which is why Trump is now viewed as doing a worse job than Biden, who, according to the hysterical corporate media, was still lucky to be alive.
On Wednesday, the American people got another eyeful of the severity of Trump’s decline.
Trump ranted about his biggest enemy, windmills:
I’m not a big fan of those crazy windmills that are all made in China. You know, they’re made in China, but not used by China. Let’s look for a couple of wind farms in China. See if you can find one. They sell us those things for fortunes, but we don’t do ‘em anymore. Have we done any of this year, Doug?
We’re not gonna do any Hopefully for four years in this country, there are losers. They lose. You’re supposed to make, you’re supposed to make money with energy, not lose money with energy, and they lose a lot of money.
Let’s straighten a few things out.
China gets 10%-12% of its electricity from wind power and is the world’s biggest producer of wind power. Given this reality, there are windmill farms in China, and the Chinese use of wind power shows how far Trump is putting the US behind by deemphasizing technology that the rest of the world is adopting.
The White House event was supposed to be about coal, and Trump was to be given some bogus trophy about clean coal.
The award was called The Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal. When Trump tried to talk about it, his brain stopped working.
Trump said, “I'm proud to officially name the undispuut-- jusssss, when did this come out? Mr Speaker." The president then had to return to his script to remember what the fake award he was receiving was called, and tried to ad-lib his way out of the mess.
Remember, Joe Biden had cancer while in office, and he made more sense as president than Donald Trump is making right now.
An argument can be made that Trump is cognitively worse than Joe Biden, and Trump still has almost three years left in his term.
Even if Republicans and the media wish to ignore what is unfolding in front of them, more of them think Joe Biden was doing a better job as president than the supposedly fine Donald Trump.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The People Are Leading. The Leaders Should Follow, William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift, Feb. 11, 2026. Congressional Democrats should take a page from the people of Minneapolis.
Who would’ve thought America’s greatest weapon against Donald Trump’s authoritarian campaign of legal revenge against enemies would turn out to be grand juries? This week, yet another grand jury refused to give federal prosecutors indictments Trump wanted against yet another set of political foes: the six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video last fall reminding spooks and troops they had an obligation not to obey unlawful orders. Here’s the New York Times:
It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington . . . authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies.
But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.
Ordinary citizens: What can’t they do? Happy Wednesday.
Meidas Touch Network, Political Commentary: Exclusive: ‘Outrageous’ and a ‘Shakedown’: Senators Rip Trump’s Tariff Check Scam, J.D. Wolf, Feb. 11, 2026. Trump continues to send out deceptive rebate emails. Donald Trump sent out yet another “tariff rebate check” fundraising email early February 10, again teasing supporters with the promise of a $2,000 payment that does not exist.
The early morning message, titled “I’ve got a $2,000 question for you,” urges recipients to respond before an “11:59 PM TONIGHT” deadline and asks whether they would take a “TARIFF rebate check signed by yours truly.” Trump campaign
The memo-style pitch, complete with Trump’s signature, mimics official government communication, but there is no legislation authorizing tariff rebates, and Trump has no unilateral authority to issue checks to the public. The email is a campaign solicitation, not a government program.Shipping containers, TrumpTrump Rants at Supreme Court as His Tariffs Face Legal ReckoningRead More
The tactic is now drawing condemnation on Capitol Hill. In comments to MeidasTouch, Sen. Maria Cantwell called the emails “outrageous,” while Sen. Peter Welch described the repeated appeals as a “shakedown.”
Their criticism comes as Congress has restored the authority to vote to end the emergency tariffs altogether, a move that would further undercut the premise of any so-called rebate.
Even as lawmakers weigh dismantling the tariff authority itself, the Trump/Vance political operation continues recycling variations of the same $2,000 “check” pitch, sent dozens of times since November, raising intensifying questions about deception, transparency, and the ethics of fundraising around a fictional government benefit.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Public Sentiment Isn’t Everything, William Kristol, Feb. 11, 2026.
“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
In yesterday’s newsletter I quoted this famous (if perhaps apocryphal) remark by Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, a French politician in the early days of the Revolution of 1848. I was commenting on a poll showing the public’s alarm about the possibility of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security interfering in this year’s elections. And I was struck by the relative silence of congressional Democratic leaders on that issue—even though they’re in the midst of a fight this week over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer emphasized again how much he hopes to work things out with Republicans: “There’s no reason we can’t get this [a deal with Republicans] done by Thursday.” And he didn’t rule out supporting a short-term DHS spending bill to buy more time for negotiations with the Trump administration.
Schumer and some of his colleagues remain strikingly unwilling to go on offense. Why not aggressively make the case for no new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol (while making clear they’re willing to separate out funding for the unproblematic parts of DHS)? Why not take the position that ICE and the Border Patrol should have to draw down at least some of the massive five-year appropriation Republicans gave them in last year’s reconciliation bill? Why give those agencies additional money now?
There’s no reason to do so. You know who understands this? The citizens of Minneapolis. Their sustained and exemplary civic action, taken at real risk to themselves to help defend their neighbors against Trump’s paramilitary forces, is a rebuke to the timidity of our political leaders.
We see this kind of pattern across the board. The massive turnout at the No Kings demonstrations in June and October showed that many in the public were more energized than their ostensible leaders. The amazing courage and persistence of the Epstein survivors led Congress to pass legislation in November compelling the release of the Epstein files. It’s the continued refusal of the survivors to accept a massive coverup by Trump’s Justice Department, and their persistence in calling out the administration’s clear failure to comply with the legislation Congress passed, that is leading to further congressional resistance.
And last night, as mentioned above, ordinary citizens serving on a grand jury in Washington, D.C. rejected an attempt by Trump’s Justice Department to prosecute elected officials who had served in the military for exercising their First Amendment rights to remind service members to obey the law.
The public’s rallying to the cause of democracy and liberty is the most heartening development of the last twelve months. But there are limits to what the public can do. In one of his debates with Stephen Douglass in 1858, Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Public sentiment is everything.” But as Lincoln well knew, that’s an overstatement. Power matters. That’s why Lincoln ran for the Senate in 1858 and for the presidency in 1860. Public sentiment isn’t self-effectuating. Elected officials have to translate public sentiment into political action. They have to turn public opinion into political power.
So the public can register its sentiments. But it’s Democratic senators who have to refuse to further empower ICE and the Border Patrol. The public can make known its disgust at what Epstein and his associates did, and at the coverup. But it’s members of Congress who have to insist that the legislation they passed is enforced. Citizens on grand juries can resist Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department. But it’s Congress that can pass legislation clarifying or changing the laws the Justice Department claims to be enforcing, thereby making it far easier for judges and juries to resist the corruption of the legal system.
President Trump’s State of the Union address is scheduled for two weeks from now. Perhaps Democratic members of Congress should accept that we aren’t living in business-as-usual times? Perhaps they should choose not to attend the State of the Union as long as ICE continues its rampages and the Justice Department continues its Epstein coverup? Some of them could choose to travel to Minneapolis to show solidarity with the intrepid citizens there. Some could spend the evening meeting with hearing from the brave Epstein survivors. Some could meet and show solidarity with other citizens around the country who have courageously stood up to Trump’s authoritarianism.¹
Protesters in Minneapolis. Survivors of Epstein’s sex crimes. A grand jury in Washington, D.C. These are the true leaders of the resistance to Trump’s authoritarian project. Surely it’s time for our elected officials to hurry to catch up.
Besides demonstrating, responding to polls, contacting our senators and representatives, and actually voting, what more can we do translate this overwhelming public sentiment into official policy? Share your ideas.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick Hits
COME AGAIN? Yesterday evening, the House of Representatives voted down a rule championed by Speaker Mike Johnson that would have blocked future House votes to end President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The reason was a minor internal GOP revolt: Three whole Republicans joined the Democrats to defeat the measure, 214–217.
The measure’s failure was an embarrassment for Johnson, but Trump himself deserves some blame for this one. It’s bad enough for the president to erratically impose, change, threaten, remove, and reimpose tariffs—including against close allies. But he doesn’t help himself by “explaining” his decisions in the most flabbergasting possible ways. Take Trump’s conversation with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow just hours before the House vote:
I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland. They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe. And we had a $42 billion deficit. And we weren’t taking anything. I said, ‘Well we have to do something because we have to even that up a little bit.’ I didn’t have to get everything at one time. So I put on a 30 percent tariff, which is very low. Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was half the deficit.
And I got an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland. And she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. ‘Sir, we are a small country. We can’t do this. We can’t do this.’ I couldn’t get her off the phone. ‘We were a small country.’
I said, ‘You may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you.’
‘No, no, we are a small country,’ again and again and again. I couldn’t get her off the phone. So it was at 30 percent. And I didn’t really like the way she talked to us and so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39 percent. And then I got inundated by people from Switzerland. And I figured, you know what? We’ll do something that’s a little bit more palatable, at least now. But I realized that all these, you know, Switzerland, you think of as, you know, ultra chic, ultra perfect. They’re not. They’re only that way because we allow them to rip us off and make all this money. And I could say the same thing with another forty countries. You know better than I do. You and I could name them. Some are much more egregious.
The surprising thing is that 214 members of the House thought, Yeah, this guy doesn’t need any supervision.
THE ARMENIAN REALLY BAD THING: Tiptoeing around the feelings of allies abroad can be a challenge. Five years after Joe Biden became the first president to recognize the Armenian Genocide, Donald Trump—who considers Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a key ally—has gone back to the trusty ol’ policy of declining to use the G word to describe the mass murder and displacement of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. But yesterday, JD Vance ran afoul of the messaging change when his official X account posted that he and his wife Usha had attended a wreath-laying ceremony in Armenia “to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.”
The post was quickly deleted, and the vice president’s office blamed the phrasing on a staffer who had simply meant to share a photo of the event. In remarks to reporters outside the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial, Vance had called the genocide “a very terrible thing that happened a little over 100 years ago”; staff later told reporters that this phrasing accurately described the vice president’s views.
Still, it’s one thing to quietly decline to use the word “genocide,” and another to use it and then walk it back. The Armenian National Committee of America called the deletion “a denialist action consistent with President Trump’s shameful retreat from honest American remembrance of a crime recognized by all 50 states, the US Congress, the White House, and more than a dozen of our NATO allies.”
LOOK, WHO HASN’T LIED ABOUT HIS EPSTEIN TIES?: In his Press Pass newsletter yesterday, our Hill reporter, Joe Perticone, reported on House Republicans’ collective shrug about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was revealed in the latest Epstein-files drop to have maintained a relationship with the pedophile financier for years after he previously claimed he had cut off contact. Now, Politico reports that the revelations are landing with a thud in the administration too—so much so that not even Lutnick’s internal enemies are eager to use them against him, figuring that Trump’s ferocious antipathy toward any mention of the files means the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
“Oh, I think knives are out [for Lutnick]. He’s despised by nearly everyone,” one person close to the White House told Politico. “I doubt Trump would easily push him out, though. The president doesn’t wanna legitimize the Epstein issue too much.”
Just to give one example, Rich Ruohonen, a lawyer from Minnesota, is a member of the U.S. Olympic curling team. Yesterday, he used his platform to show real leadership:
I’m proud to be here to represent Team USA, and to represent our country. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention what’s going on in Minnesota and what a tough time it’s been for everybody. This stuff is happening right, right around where we live. . . . I am a lawyer, as you know, and we have a constitution, and it allows us to [have] freedom of press, freedom of speech, protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, and makes it that we have to have probable cause to be pulled over. And what’s happening in Minnesota is wrong. There’s no shades of grey. It’s clear. . . . What the Olympics means is excellence, respect, friendship, and we all, I think, exemplify that. And we are playing for the people of Minnesota and the people around the country who share those same values. That compassion, that love and that respect.
Bravo, Mr. Ruohonen! I’ve got to say that his admirable and eloquent statement is enough to make me reconsider my doubts about his sport. If curlers are going to step up and tell the truth, I’m okay with curling.
U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Race
The Contrarian, Opinion: How to Rein in ICE, Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 11, 2026. Time is running down on temporary funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats submitted a ten-point plan, complete with legislative language. The response, according to Democratic House and Senate leadership, was “both incomplete and insufficient in terms of addressing the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct.” It seems inconceivable that a deal will be reached and voted upon by Friday. Another mini-shutdown or another short-term continuing resolution seems to be the most realistic outcome.
The argument that ICE (and Border Control) cannot be reformed and therefore must be dismantled is compelling. When an entity’s institutional culture is so deformed, and its ranks are riddled with abusive, lawless, emotionally and ethically unfit characters, then the case for knocking it down and starting over sounds attractive. However, as a political matter, Democrats do not currently have the votes to pull it off; as a practical matter, we need some entity to perform certain immigration and border functions.
Democrats would be wise, then, to think of the current push for reform as the beginning, not the end, of refashioning ICE, Border Control, and the entire Department of Homeland Security. The issue before them this week is: What meaningful reforms can they get passed in the short run to save lives, reduce terror inflicted on mostly Hispanic and Black communities, and protect constitutional rights?
It’s easy for pundits to dismiss “half measures,” but there are men, women, children, and entire communities for whom that response is wholly unsatisfactory. Responsible lawmakers have an obligation to help as many of ICE/Border Patrol’s victims — and potential victims — as possible.
As a preliminary matter, there is an urgent issue to be addressed before getting into the thick of the debate. The 5th Circuit has essentially blessed concentration camps in a monstrous decision last week. In adopting a fringe position (rejected by the vast majority of federal courts) that anyone in the country who is undocumented can be locked up without bail, the court set the stage for mass incarceration and approved a system of shuttling detainees from all over the country to Texas, to be held in inhumane, substandard conditions.
Constitutional guru Steve Vladeck explains:
[T]he Trump administration’s novel interpretation of a 29-year-old statute that five previous presidents (including Trump) had interpreted differently is not just the putative basis for so much of the controversial behavior in which ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies have been engaged over the last six months; it has been overwhelmingly rejected by federal district judges from across the geographic and ideological spectrum….
[Nevertheless] a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit adopted the extreme minority view—holding that, yes, the government can indefinitely detain without bond millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety. The Fifth Circuit’s opinion was written by Judge Edith Jones and joined in full by Judge Kyle Duncan—two of the most reactionary, right-wing federal appellate judges in the country.
The case is even more appalling when you consider who is actually being detained. The Department of Homeland Security’s own data revealed that less than 14 percent of those picked up in the mass deportation scheme had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. As The Independent aptly put it: “It’s the first direct confirmation from DHS itself that the agency’s efforts to prioritize the targeting of such individuals (as Trump promised during his 2024 campaign and throughout 2025) has been a failure, and instead show that the president’s mass deportation program is affecting undocumented immigrants of all stripes.” Well, that is if you believe his intention all along was not a thinly disguised ethnic cleansing scheme.
The details are more appalling than the top-line number. Trump likes to talk about murderers, rapists, and gang members. Well, a grand total of less than 2% of those detained had homicide (.5%) or sexual assault charges or convictions (1.4%). Only 2% were accused gang members, but we know that is artificially high — given the number of “oh, they weren’t gang members after all” episodes we have heard. A full 40% have no criminal conviction whatsoever.
Congress can easily fix this: Prohibit the use of funds to ship detainees out of state. Cut off funding for any facility detaining anyone without bond unless they have committed a violent crime, are a flight risk, and/or pose a threat to public safety.
In crafting a potential deal, Democrats would be wise to keep in mind two principles. First, whatever specific reforms they can obtain are useless without enforcement in a regime that brazenly breaks the law. Any concrete limitations on federal shock troops must create private rights of action for individuals, states, and cities to go to court to enforce them and civil penalties for violations.
Second, many ideas are floating around for oversight controls and outside mechanisms to reel in ICE/Border Control. Just Security lists many such proposals (e.g., an independent review board to investigate lethal force incidents, required reporting for all incidents involving use of force, class action relief for victims, reactivation of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman).
However, any rule mechanism that depends on internal action, oversight, reporting, auditing, etc., is useless in a regime that operates in bad faith. One need only listen to ICE and Border Patrol chiefs’ testimony to appreciate their determination to admit no error and convince us not to believe our own eyes. Instead, explicitly limiting federal immunity, i.e. “specifying that federal officers are immune from state-law criminal prosecution only when their conduct is both objectively reasonable and necessary to fulfill lawful federal duties—and that unconstitutional conduct is never reasonable,” carving out state and local authority to pursue prosecutions, and holding back funding to siphon off some of the giant slush fund hold the most promise.
It is not clear which, if any, of these reforms might be achievable. However, Republicans blocking the reforms should know that voters overwhelmingly disapprove of ICE and its abuses. Voters do not like goon squads — and they won’t vote for politicians who protect them.
After this battle, Democrats must begin to develop a plan for a wholesale redesign of DHS, relegation of Border Control to the border, and creation of a new internal border enforcement force. Voters need to understand which party stands on the side of fascist street thuggery, and which stands on the side of fundamental constitutional rights and simple decency.
Emptywheel, Analysis: “El Jefe” Supported CBP’s Information War and Violent Attack on Marimar Martinez, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Feb. 11, 2026.
The Chicago Sun’s coverage of the materials released from the Marimar Martinez case yesterday, between the time DHS officials finished testifying before Congress, seemingly almost as soon as Judge Georgia Alexakis approved the revised protective order, but well before Martinez announces a lawsuit today, quotes her attorney noting that they were attempting to pre-empt her announcement.
Christopher Parente, Martinez’s attorney, said he found it “ironic that after months of fighting the release of this evidence … the U.S. attorney’s office releases it at the 11th hour in a misguided attempt to take the sting out of just how damaging it is for the government.”
Having been forced to release these materials significantly because DOJ refused to force DHS to take down slanderous attacks on Martinez, someone at DOJ is attempting to undercut the other things Parente will release today, which reportedly show that Charles Exum lied to the FBI in order to get them to charge Martinez with assault, in part by obscuring that (as would happen with Renee Good months later) the bullets entered the vehicle from the front and the side, showing that he was never in danger, as claimed.
And that’s important because the most inflammatory thing Chicago’s US Attorney’s office released yesterday — precisely the thing they made a failing bid to suppress last week — were texts in which Exum described that “Everyone has been [supportive] including Chief [Greg] Bovino, Border Patrol Chief [Mike] Banks, Sec Noem, and El Jefe himself… according to Bovino.”
An email released yesterday shows that within hours, Bovino was offering to extend Exum’s retirement “in light of your excellent service in Chicago.”
Exum created a conflict (by swerving his SUV into Martinez’ vehicle), created a gunshot victim, then lied to turn her into a terrorist, the slanderous claim that (as with Renee Good) DHS refuses to disavow.
And Bovino, in conjunction with “El Jefe,” supported all that.
By November 20, DOJ realized this was enough of a shitshow that they had to drop the charge against Martinez. And yet Bovino was still running around ginning up conflict, shooting victims, and egregious lies 48 days later, when Renee Good was accused of being a terrorist, too. Harmeet Dhillon and Kash Patel refused to conduct an investigation for fear the result would — like the investigation into Martinez’ shooting — conflict with the public claims impugning her.
[A]s F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
65 days after the cover-up of the near-murder of Martinez, CBP officers shot Alex Pretti dead, with dozens of cameras documenting the cowardly act. And Bovino, Tricia McLaughlin, Noem, and Stephen Miller did the same thing again: make shit up, turning DHS’ violent assault on peaceful protesters into more propaganda, just like they did Marimar Martinez.
There’s a lot of propaganda about how that happened, much of it played out in bullshit aired in one Marc Caputo column. After Noem pretended that the conflict and lies was not the point, Miller told a similar lie, pretending that Bovino had not, all that time, been following orders directly from the White House.
Between the lines: Miller said the Minnesota operation didn’t follow the guidelines established by the White House in the aftermath of the Jan. 7 shooting of another Minneapolis demonstrator, Renee Good.
Specifically, Miller said, Bovino’s crew was supposed to divide its force into two groups: One unit was supposed to handle the arrests of specifically targeted “criminal aliens” and the other squad was in charge of crowd control to keep “disruptors” from interfering. “The White House provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors,” Miller said. “We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.”
But that text, sent back in October, was the real tell.
Whoever “El Jefe” is — and even if Exum was thinking of Trump when he said it, that opinion would have been filtered through his Wormtongue — El Jefe’s applause for Exum’s attack on Marimar Martinez is proof that ginning up victims and propaganda was always the point.
And even after, in November, DOJ realized that happened, they did nothing to stop it from happening again.
More On Epstein Files
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Brazil's Operation Fasten Your Seatbelts began in October 2025, Wayne Madsen, left, Feb. 11, 2026. The Epstein scandal may have reached Brazil as a commercial pilot for LATAM airlines, Sergio Antonio Lopes, 60, was arrested by Sao Paulo’s Civil Police just before his plane took off from São Paulo’s Congonhas Airport en route to Rio de Janeiro. Jeffrey Epstein and his circle maintained close links to Brazil.
São Paulo police said that Lopes was arrested after a criminal probe began in October last year and focused on Lopes operating “a structured network involved in the sexual abuse and exploitation of children and adolescents that had been operating for at least eight years.” Two Brazilian women were also arrested for being involved in the child molestation ring. There is speculation in the Brazilian media that Lopes’s 
name may have been found in the Jeffrey Epstein tranche of documents held by the U.S. Justice Department.
The São Paulo State Department of Homicides and Protection of Persons initiated Operation Fasten Your Seatbelts in October 2025. The investigation identified ten child victims in São Paulo state and there may be additional victims in other states. Other arrests are also possible, according to Sao Paulo police.
The Epstein files include evidence that Epstein sought to purchase a Brazilian modeling agency in 2016. Files show that Epstein was interested in buying Ford Models from its owner, Décio Restelli Ribeiro. In October 2016, Epstein discussed the purchase of Ford Models and other Brazilian modeling agencies with Ramsey Elkholy, described as a “musician and anthropologist.” Ribeiro claims that Ford Models, formed in 1995 and bought by Ribeiro from its parent company in 2020, was never for sale. Ribeiro also denies having any conversations on the sale of the agency with Epstein or any of his intermediaries.
Marina Lacerda, a Brazilian national, was identified in Epstein’s 2019 indictment as "Minor-Victim 1." Federal investigators first contacted Lacerda in 2008 as part of the FBI’s Operation Leap Year, but Epstein’s “sweetheart deal” — including a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice and Florida prosecutors covering all of Epstein’s associates —put the Epstein ring investigation on ice. In 2002, Lacerda was introduced to Epstein in New York when she was 14 years old. She was later recruited into Epstein’s child sexploitation ring. When Lacerda turned 16 and a half, she said Epstein discarded her because she was “too old.” One Epstein email, dated December 2006 and sent to an unidentified woman, asked if she had any friends for him in São Paulo. The woman responded, “They are older. But if you come to Taipei, I have lots of friends there!”
Jean-Luc Brunel, center, owner of the MC2 Model Management and a colleague of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, had modeling operations in Brazil, Tel Aviv, and Miami. Epstein had invested at least $1 million in MC2 Model Management. Brunel was arrested by French police in 2020 and charged with raping minors. He died in 2022 in a Paris prison, allegedly from suicide. Ghislaine Maxwell and Jean Luc Brunel sitting on a couch. Jean-Luc Brunel and Ghislaine Maxwell
John Casablancas, the owner of Elite Model Management and reportedly the originator of the term “supermodel,” employed Ivanka Trump as one of his models when she was 15. Casablancas had a predilection for underage girls, some as young as 14. He was also linked closely to Epstein and Donald Trump. Casablancas spent a fair amount of time in Rio de Janeiro, where he died in 2013 at the age of 70. Casablancas’s cause of death was reportedly cancer.
The Czech police have also opened an investigation into Epstein’s ties to that country. The investigation includes a probe of Epstein’s recruitment of underage girls in Czechia. Czechia Police Presidium spokesperson Ondřej Moravčík stated that the agency is currently “assessing the files” and will pursue criminal charges should circumstances warrant such action. The Epstein files also confirm that Epstein made several trips to Prague and considered buying property in Czechia. In 2009, Epstein pilot Larry Visoski told investigators that he flew Epstein to Prague. When Visoski was asked about the purpose of the trip, he replied, “I don’t remember.”
As is the case in countries from India and the UK to Slovakia and Italy, Czech opposition politicians are demanding answers from the current Trump-friendly government. MP and former foreign minister Jan Lipavský of the opposition Civic Democrats has asked the government of Andrej Babiš to commence an official investigation of Epstein’s ties to Czechia and Czech nationals. Poland and Latvia have launched official investigations of Epstein’s ties to their countries. Epstein visiting Jewish cemetery in Prague
Meanwhile, business partners of DP World are suspending their investments following revelations that Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the Chairman and CEO of Dubai-based DP World, exchanged salacious emails with Epstein following his 2008 conviction for having sex with an underage girl in Florida. La Caisse, Canada’s second-largest pension fund, has suspended future joint ventures with DP World, while DP World shareholder British International Investment (BII) has suspended future investments in DP World.
Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) named Sulayem as the individual Epstein had emailed concerning a "torture video.” In an April 24, 2009 email, Epstein emailed Sulayem: "where are you? are you ok , I loved the torture video."
Wayne Madsen Report, Epstein scandal implicates Narendra Modi, Wayne Madsen, left, Feb. 10-11, 2026. Indian National Congress protests hit Delhi as Modi (shown above in a file photo) ensnared in Epstein files.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is facing opposition protests on the streets of New Delhi as his name has appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files.
This comes as U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), himself of Indian descent, has revealed the names of six “wealthy and powerful” men who were redacted by the Department of Justice and FBI. The revealed names include retail magnate Les Wexner, founder of Victoria’s Secret and Epstein’s one-time business associate and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the Dubai-based billionaire CEO of DP World and brother of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, president of Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the sponsor of Formula One racing and other racing events.
Other names revealed by Khanna include Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, and Nicola Caputo. Little information has been provided as to their actual identities and relationship with Epstein.
Indian opposition to Modi protest his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, right.
Opposition Indian National Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera claimed on February 9 that at least 60 Epstein files originally released by the U.S. Department of Justice that mentioned India later disappeared from the department’s website. It is known that FBI director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are both political supporters of Modi and the BJP government. Khera and the Indian Congress are alleging that politics played a part in the disappearance of the India-related files. Khera stated, “The only development that took place in-between is the one-sided, pro-US trade deal. So the obvious question is unavoidable. Was an anti-India trade deal the price paid to make scandalous material disappear? Did the government trade away India’s interests just to rescue its rapidly collapsing reputation?” Khera also revealed that Congress had a team investigating the Epstein documents for references to India. FBI Director Kash Patel Says There's ...
Khera wrote on social media, “On February 6, a search for “India” in the Epstein files on the US Department of Justice website returned 484 pages of results. Each page contains 10 documents. We know this because a dedicated team was sifting through files in each page and systematically cataloguing documents of interest from each page number . . . Today, if you repeat the process, only 478 pages will show up. This means six pages, roughly 60 files, have disappeared from the search results.” Khera added, “The BJP, usually, unnecessarily loud, has gone eerily silent on the Epstein disclosures. What is the party trying to hide behind the wall of silence?”
Indian Congress general secretary K C Venugopal has called out Modi on his connections to Modi. Venugopal stated that the Epstein files were “a huge wake-up call about the kind of monsters who have access to PM Modi, and how susceptible he is to foreign manipulation . . . Has he met Jeffrey Epstein? Or did he send someone to meet him? What did his conversations [with] Epstein involve?
Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi also pounced hard on the Modi-Epstein connection, stating, “There’s a case against (Gautam) Adani [a billionaire donor to Modi and the BJP] in US courts. They are not targeting Adani, they are targeting PM Modi’s financial structure. The second thing is there is still a lot to be revealed from the Epstein files which the nation wants to know. The US has not released it till now and there is pressure on PM Modi over this. The case on Adani is like a case on PM Modi because he is the financial structure behind PM Modi and the BJP. So these are two pressure points. On February 3, 2026, Rahul Gandhi said ...
An Indian diplomat and Adani, both close to Modi, have been identified as having had relationships with Epstein. In addition, the Epstein files indicate that Modi asked Epstein for advice on organizing a visit to Israel in 2017. In a July 2017 email, Epstein wrote, “The Indian Prime Minister Modi took advice and danced and sang in Israel for the benefit of the US president.” The U.S. president at the time was Donald Trump and Modi did visit Israel in 2017 although the Indian government has denied that Epstein had anything to do with making the arrangements.
New York Times, L.A. 2028 Olympic Organizers Stand By Chairman Linked to Epstein, Jesus Jiménez and Shawn Hubler, Feb. 11, 2026. Casey Wasserman exchanged flirtatious messages more than two decades ago with Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein.
Organizers for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles said on Wednesday that Casey Wasserman will continue leading preparations for the next Summer Games despite growing calls for him to resign after his name surfaced in a new batch of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
The executive committee of the LA28 board said in a statement that it had met on Wednesday and decided that Mr. Wasserman would continue to lead LA28 after it conducted a review of his past interactions with Mr. Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Wasserman, 51, is an executive and sports agent who has represented some of the most prominent figures in entertainment. His family has deep Hollywood roots, and he has been a major Democratic Party donor.
“We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented,” the board said in a statement.
A spokesman for Mr. Wasserman’s talent agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Mr. Wasserman’s name surfaced in files related to Mr. Epstein that were released in late January by the Department of Justice. Those files revealed an exchange of flirtatious emails between Mr. Wasserman and Ms. Maxwell in 2003, while Mr. Wasserman was married with a young family. In one of the messages, he told Ms. Maxwell, “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”
The files revealed that Mr. Wasserman had traveled to Africa on Mr. Epstein’s private jet on a trip for HIV research in 2002. President Bill Clinton and the actor Kevin Spacey were also on the trip.
Mr. Wasserman sent the emails to Ms. Maxwell years before her 2021 federal conviction on charges that she helped Mr. Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
“Twenty-three years ago, before Mr. Wasserman or the public knew of Epstein and Maxwell’s deplorable crimes, Mr. Wasserman and his then-wife flew on a humanitarian mission to Africa on Epstein’s plane at the invitation of the Clinton Foundation,” the LA28 board said on Wednesday. “This was his single interaction with Epstein. Shortly after, he traded the publicly known emails with Maxwell.”
Talking Feds with Harry Litman, JAW DROPPING Georgia Case Update: Where's the Probable Cause?? Harry Litman, Feb. 11, 2026. Federal authorities seized virtually all voting records for Georgia's most populous county with shocking little evidence to support a warrant on any grounds as local authorities protest about the Trump administration's interference in elections traditionally run by states and localities.
New York Times, Chappell Roan Leaves Wasserman Agency After Founder Appears in Epstein Files, Claire Moses, Feb. 11, 2026 (print ed.). Casey Wasserman, who founded and leads the talent agency bearing his name, exchanged flirtatious emails with Ghislaine Maxwell in the early 2000s.
The Grammy-winning artist Chappell Roan announced on Monday that she had left the talent agency led and founded by Casey Wasserman, left, who exchanged flirtatious emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion, as the repercussions of the Epstein files seep into the realms of sports and culture.
“As of today, I am no longer represented by Wasserman,” Ms. Roan, known for hits like “Pink Pony Club” and “Good luck, Babe!,” wrote on Instagram. “I hold my teams to the highest standards and have a duty to protect them as well. No artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values.”
In her statement, Ms. Roan, right, did not directly name Ms. Maxwell or Mr. Epstein, the convicted sex offender who killed himself in 2019 while in jail awaiting a criminal trial on sex-trafficking charges.
“This decision reflects my belief that meaningful change in our industry requires accountability and leadership that earns trust,” Ms. Roan wrote.
Mr. Wasserman, who is also the chairman of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic Games, exchanged emails with Ms. Maxwell in 2003, according to the Justice Department documents on Mr. Epstein released last month.ImageCasey Wasserman, a man with slicked-back gray hair, a beard, and glasses, stands in a suit in front of a pink-orange backdrop.Casey Wasserman in Milan this month.Credit...Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
The communications occurred while Mr. Wasserman was married with a young family, and before Ms. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on federal charges that she conspired with Mr. Epstein to sexually abuse teenage girls.
In the emails, Ms. Maxwell offered to give Mr. Wasserman a massage that would “drive a man wild.” In another exchange, Mr. Wasserman told her: “I think of you all the time. So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”
In a statement this month, after the emails became public, Mr. Wasserman said: “I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell which took place over two decades ago, long before her horrific crimes came to light.”
Since the revelations, Mr. Wasserman has been facing mounting pressure to remove himself from his talent agency and to step down from the Olympic organizing committee.
While Ms. Roan is the most high profile artist to cut ties with Mr. Wasserman’s agency — she has more than 35 million monthly listeners on Spotify — she is not the only artist speaking out.
Dropkick Murphys, the Irish American punk band based in Massachusetts, said on Instagram on Friday that it was also leaving the Wasserman agency. “We love our agents. They are great partners. We signed with them years before they merged with Wasserman,” the statement said. “It saddens us to part ways with them, but the namesake of the agency is in the Epstein files, so… we GONE.”
Others denounced the agency. “We are demanding for Wasserman to remove himself and his name from the agency,” Lili Trifilio, the guitarist and vocalist of Beach Bunny, another Wasserman client, wrote on the band’s Instagram page this week.
“‘Deep regrets’ are not enough,” Ms. Trifilio wrote, referring to a line from Mr. Wasserman’s statement, in which he denied having a relationship with Mr. Epstein but acknowledged that he had taken a trip on his plane in 2002. “I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them,” he said.
Ms. Trifilio called Mr. Wasserman’s exchanges with Ms. Maxwell “abhorrent and disturbing on every level.”
A North Carolina indie-rock band, Wednesday, also announced this week that it would leave Wasserman. “Continuing to be represented by a company led by and named after Casey Wasserman goes against our values and cannot continue,” the band wrote on Instagram. “For the sake of his staff we hope that he steps down from the company and it is rebranded.”
The Wasserman agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
In an open letter to the agency, Bethany Cosentino, the frontwoman of the band Best Coast, which has been represented by the Wasserman agency since 2021, wrote that she had asked the agency to remove her name and her band’s name from its website, and called for Mr. Wasserman to step down.
“As an artist represented by Wasserman, I did not consent to having my name or career tied to someone with this kind of association to exploitation,” Ms. Cosentino wrote.
Other prominent musicians represented by Wasserman include Kendrick Lamar, Coldplay, Joni Mitchell, Lorde and Tyler, The Creator.
New York Times, Peter Attia’s Ties to Epstein Spark a Backlash From Doctors, Maggie Astor, Feb. 11, 2026 (print ed.). What started as a rebuke of Dr. Attia, above, has become a discussion about his credentials, longevity medicine and whom patients should trust.
Criticism of the longevity influencer Dr. Peter Attia has come from many angles since the revelation of his yearslong relationship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. His ethics, his fees and his medical credentials are all being scrutinized.
In less than two weeks, a widespread backlash has developed, as doctors challenge not only Dr. Attia himself but also, in some cases, the legitimacy of wellness influencers and the longevity industry.
A trove of documents released at the end of January showed that Dr. Attia had spent part of the 2010s in close contact with Mr. Epstein, making visits, dispensing medical advice and exchanging crude emails about women. Now, dozens of doctors — mostly women — are speaking out against Dr. Attia, whose podcast and book are popular and highly influential. (Dr. Attia was interviewed at The New York Times’s Well Festival last May.)
Nine doctors, from fields including internal medicine, gynecology, dermatology and more, raised a number of criticisms in interviews with The Times; many others did so on social media. Defenders of Dr. Attia have generally not been vocal since the documents came out, and several doctors and wellness influencers who have appeared on his podcast did not respond to interview requests.
Many of the doctors who criticized him, including some whose own advice adheres to mainstream medical consensus and some who go beyond it, accused Dr. Attia of violating the ethical standards that physicians should maintain by having the relationship long after Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges involving underage girls.
The behavior on display in the emails “is inconsistent with what we hope is modeled and practiced by physicians, and I feel like we can’t separate the personal and the professional,” said Dr. Aviva Romm, a family medicine physician.
In a statement last week, Dr. Attia emphasized that the Epstein documents showed no criminal activity on his part. He said that he had not witnessed abuse and that he had not been Mr. Epstein’s doctor, though emails show him advising him on medications and supplements, obtaining an assessment of Mr. Epstein’s gait and arranging a blood draw. But he said he was ashamed and added: “I am not asking anyone to ignore the emails or pretend they aren’t ugly. They simply are.”
Some doctors used the news moment to also criticize Dr. Attia’s extremely expensive practice — as of last year, he charged more than $100,000 for his program and had fewer than 75 patients, according to a “60 Minutes” interview — and the health protocols he promotes in his podcast and best-selling book. Others noted that longevity medicine lacks standard training or certification.
“Every good doctor wants you to live longer,” said Dr. Jen Gunter, an obstetrician and gynecologist who writes the “Vajenda” newsletter, adding that straightforward lifestyle interventions like exercise, a healthy diet and not smoking don’t require elaborate protocols or a lot of money. “What American longevity medicine does is somehow get people to believe that doctors aren’t invested in that, that only they are, and that somehow there’s a first-class ticket that you can buy.”
U.S. Crime, Law, Rights, Justice
New York Times, Nancy Guthrie Live Updates: Man Detained for Questioning Is Released, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Chelsia Rose Marcius and Jill Cowan, Feb. 11, 2026. The development came several hours after investigators released chilling video showing a masked figure on Ms. Guthrie’s front porch the morning of her disappearance.
A man who was detained during a traffic stop by investigators looking into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie has been released after questioning.
In an interview early Wednesday, the man said he had not heard about Nancy Guthrie but hopes that she is found safe. “I hope they get the suspect, because I’m not it,” he said, speaking on the doorstep of his wife and mother-in-law’s home in Rio Rico, Ariz.
The F.B.I. and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday had carried out a “court-authorized search” related to the investigation in Rio Rico, about an hour’s drive south of Tucson, Ariz., the county sheriff, Chris Nanos, said in a statement.
As of 1:20 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the department had not yet confirmed that it had released the person it had detained for questioning. But a spokeswoman, Angelica Carrillo, said investigators had “completed their search of a property in Rio Rico.”
Investigators questioned the man after he was detained during a traffic stop south of Tucson, more than 10 days into the search for the 84-year-old mother of the “Today” host Savannah Guthrie.
Outside a home in Rio Rico, a woman said the man was her son-in-law and that investigators had broken down her door and were searching the house. She said her son-in-law had been delivering food when he was stopped by the police. She insisted that the masked figure in a newly released surveillance video was not him.
The footage, released earlier, shows a masked person on Nancy Guthrie’s porch around the time that she is believed to have vanished from her neighborhood near Tucson early on Feb. 1. The person is wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack, and appears to be armed with a pistol.
Cable news pundits and true crime enthusiasts have spent more than a week analyzing the scant details of Ms. Guthrie’s case as they have trickled out. The authorities said early on that they were investigating the disappearance as a kidnapping, and Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have released a series of videos pleading with whoever is involved to reach out to them. They said they were prepared to listen to ransom demands.
It was not yet clear whether the authorities believe the person being questioned is the same person in the video, according to a second law enforcement official familiar with the case. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details.
Here’s what we’re covering:
Global News
New York Times, 9 Killed and 25 Injured in Shootings at School and Home in Canada, Francesca Regalado, Vjosa Isai and Yan Zhuang, Feb. 11, 2026. The police said the suspect died of a self-inflicted injury after the shooting in Tumbler Ridge, a remote community in British Columbia.
Canada was reeling on Wednesday, a day after a shooter killed nine people and injured 25 others in a remote town in northeastern British Columbia, the third-deadliest shooting in the country’s history, which comes amid a wider debate about gun control.
Seven people were found dead in Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, including the person believed to be the shooter, who died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted injury, according to Superintendent Ken Floyd of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Two other people were found dead in a local residence that the police believed to be connected to the shooting.
Another person died while being transported from the school to the hospital, and 25 people suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, the police said in a statement.
Mass killings are rare in Canada, but the attack in Tumbler Ridge, population 2,400, was the second deadly incident in British Columbia in less than a year after a man drove a car into a crowd last April.
U.S. Jobs, Inflation, Economy, Markets
New York Times, Live Updates: U.S. Hiring Starts the Year at a Strong Pace, Lydia DePillis, Feb. 11, 2026. The U.S. economy put in a strong showing at the start of 2026, following a year of disruptions that depressed both the demand for labor and its supply.
Employers added 130,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday, in a report delayed from last week by a short government shutdown. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent from 4.4 percent a month earlier.
The peppier-than-expected data is a sign that the labor market might be emerging from a period of extremely slow growth brought on by a trade war that made companies hesitant to hire, an immigration crackdown that lowered the number of available workers and a federal government firing spree.
Annual revisions to earlier data changed the picture of last year. The economy added only 181,000 jobs in 2025, down from an earlier estimate of 584,000.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent and the economy added 130,000 jobs in January. The gains were powered, once again, by health care.
New York Times, The Whiskey World Is Reeling, but This Company Has Bigger Troubles, Clay Risen, Feb. 11, 2026 (print ed.). A new report paints a grim financial picture of Uncle Nearest, a high-profile brand named for an enslaved distiller. But its founder disputes the findings.
New York Times, Trump Decries a ‘Nation of Renters’ but His New Policy Promotes One, Matthew Goldstein, Feb. 11, 2026. President Trump’s recently announced executive order that would bar big investors from acquiring single-family homes includes an exemption that allows them to build homes for rent.
President Trump has identified what he says is a clear culprit holding back the housing market: corporate investors buying up single-family homes and renting them out.
“Homes are built for people, not for corporations,” Mr. Trump said in a speech last month in Davos, Switzerland. “America will not become a nation of renters.”
But buried in Mr. Trump’s recently announced executive order that seeks to bar large investors from acquiring single-family homes is an exemption that allows them to build homes for renting out.
These build-to-rent housing communities are a growing niche of the market and involve some of the same Wall Street landlords that Mr. Trump has blamed for preventing average Americans from owning their own homes.
In recent years, private equity firms like Blackstone have been building new subdivisions of single-family houses that are all for rent. Large home-building companies like Lennar and D.R. Horton have also gotten into the business, building single-family homes dedicated as rentals. One of the president’s own top housing officials, Bill Pulte, had a small business of buying newly built rental homes before he joined the administration.
The build-to-rent exemption may seem at odds with the Trump administration’s stated goal of making more homes available for sale to middle-income Americans by cracking down on Wall Street-backed landlords. Similar proposals have garnered support from some Democratic and Republican politicians over the years.
But housing analysts say, from a policy perspective, build-to-rent communities make sense because they are improving the availability of quality rental housing.
New York Times, Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s, Lydia DePillis, Feb. 11, 2026. Economists at top banks and investment firms who command high salaries to divine the direction of the economy expected the latest jobs report on Wednesday to show that about 68,000 jobs were added last month.
A crowd of anonymous online gamblers placing bets on Kalshi, a prediction site, expected to see 54,000 new jobs.
The report ended up showing the U.S. economy had added 130,000 jobs at the start of the year. Both groups had missed the mark by a wide margin — and to similar degrees.
Over the five years that Kalshi has existed, its thousands of gamblers have proved as accurate on average at predicting certain economic indicators as the highly trained forecasters, a working paper published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research found. The crowd is also pretty good at predicting interest rate decisions from the Federal Reserve, and even better than the professionals at predicting the rate of inflation.
“Getting information from a large pool of people can be a remarkably good form of forecasting,” said Jonathan Wright, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University who co-wrote the paper.
Thomas Simons, a U.S. economist with Jefferies, the investment firm, took notice when Kevin Warsh was leading in the prediction markets to be President Trump’s nominee for chair of the Federal Reserve. Mr. Simons had dismissed the possibility because of Mr. Warsh’s past advocacy for higher interest rates, rather than the lower rates that Mr. Trump prefers.
“‘How could it possibly be that he’s at the head of this? It doesn’t make any sense,’” Mr. Simons recalled thinking.
But the markets turned out to be right, and he decided he shouldn’t disregard the odds. Bettors, he realized, have one advantage: They don’t have to make a prediction if they’re not highly confident that they’re right. Professional forecasters don’t have a choice; even if the data are confusing and they don’t have much conviction in the number, they guess.
Feb. 10
Top Stories
The convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, right, with the US political strategist Steve Bannon in an undated photograph.
Feb. 10, 2026. I just spoke directly with Amanda and Sky Roberts, family members of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who gave an emotional and urgent interview about a major new law introduced today and their reaction to tomorrow’s hearing, as Pam Bondi and the White House attempt to move past the Epstein files.
Teddy Rosenbluth, Feb. 10, 2026 (print ed.). Oz Offers Forceful Call for Vaccination as Measles Becomes More Dire.
Gabbard’s 2020 Election Claims Put Her Back in Favor With Trump, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager and Glenn Thrush, Updated Feb. 10, 2026, Tulsi Gabbard has focused on attacking the so-called deep state after an uneven first year as the director of national intelligence.U.S. Sports, Culture, Media, Education
Bowl half-time show featuring Bad Bunny had more watchers than any other halftime show in history: an estimated 135 million watched live, while millions more have streamed it since.More On Epstein Files
Feb. 10, 2026. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his relationship with Epstein was "absolutely done" after a single meeting in 2005. The Epstein files tell a much different story.U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Race
U.S. Governance, Politics
special elections to national polls to citizen mobilization, we see an American public is increasingly aware and alarmed about the dangers of Trump and Trumpism.U.S. Inflation, Economy, Markets, Jobs
Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 10, 2026. Debunking the latest Trump-minion talking point.Top Stories
The convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, right, with the US political strategist Steve Bannon in an undated photograph.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium, Wayne Madsen, left, former Navy intelligence officer and author of 28 books, Feb. 10, 2026. Epstein and Bannon 
closely coordinated support for European far-right political parties, including those with neo-Nazi pasts
The Francophone Belgian Socialist Party is crying foul over a 2018 email exchange between international child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Following Bannon’s 2018 speech in Belgium, in which he opposed the UN Global Compact for Migration, one of the members of Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel’s four-party coalition government withdrew, resulting in the collapse of the government.
In an email to Epstein, Bannon bragged that it was his speech in Brussels that resulted in the withdrawal from the coalition of the New Flemish Alliance.
In reaction to Bannon’s speech launching what he called “The Movement” — a global coalition of fascist parties — the Flemish nationalists decided to oppose the UN migration compact, which the three other parties — the French-speaking Socialists, Michel’s Reformist Movement, and the Les Engages party — supported.
Bannon wrote Epstein, “The Belgium govt fell 5 hours after my speech — spent all day with the Flemish nationalist — and had the Walloon populists/nationalist meet them for first time in my hotel suite.”
Bannon was a private citizen at the time. The Walloon “populists” to which Bannon referred were members of the far-right fringe People’s Party led by Bannon’s friend Mischaël Modrikamen. The party is now defunct.
'I brought down Belgian Government in 2018,' Bannon tells Epstein in leaked files Bannon’s 2018 speech in Brussels. Bannon wrote Epstein that this speech “brought down the Belgian government.”
The Socialists have countered criticism from its former coalition partners that it was playing politics with the Epstein files. The Socialists contend that they were not accusing any politicians of criminal wrongdoing but noting the influence that “transnational far-right networks” and foreign interference by the likes of Epstein and Bannon have played in the domestic politics of Belgium and other countries. Belgium is not alone in having been targeted for political manipulation by Bannon, who has tried to launch a de facto “Fascist International” of far-right parties, and Epstein, whose foreign political influence operations extended from center-left to far-right parties.
The current Belgian government is led by Prime Minister Bart de Wever, a leader of the NV-A and someone considered soft on Russia.
The Epstein scandal continues to rock Norwegian politics. Police have opened an “aggravated corruption” investigation of the diplomatic couple Mona Juul and Terje Rød-Larsen over their ties to Epstein. Juul resigned as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq over the scandal, which has also tainted other Norwegian politicians.
The scandal has also spread to Bermuda, where questions are being asked about Juul and Rød-Larsen borrowing Epstein’s plane in 2011 to fly them and their children to Bermuda for a vacation. The Epstein emails also contain a 2010 message from former Barclay’s Bank CEO James Edward “Jes” Staley.to Epstein that states, “Just arrived in Bermuda. Great trip. Clear head.” In 2025, Staley was banned for life from the UK’s financial industry and fined £1.1 million by the Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority over Staley’s ties to Epstein and several trips to Epstein’s Little St. James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Bermuda authorities are examining an account at HSBC Bank of Bermuda, which sent more than $58,000 to Epstein’s Haze Trust, which managed $41.4 million of Epstein’s cash assets. Epstein used a network of Bermuda shell companies to launder billions of dollars. Epstein was also a client of the 125-year-old Bermuda law firm Appleby, which has been found to have had a number of dubious clients. These included Liquid Funding, partially-owned by Bear Stearns, Epstein’s former employer. Liquid Funding dissolved in 2015.
Zimbabwe also features prominently in the Epstein files. Following the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2015, Epstein and his MIT Media Lab colleague, Joichi “Joi” Ito. emailed with one another about introducing a new currency and financial system. Epstein described Zimbabwe as “a great petri dish” in one email with Ito. Epstein was reportedly a wealth manager for Zimbabwe’s late authoritarian president Robert Mugabe. Ito asks Epstein if he was friends with Mugabe, to which Epstein replied, “No, but can easily get his attention.” There are also reports that Epstein acted as a wealth manager for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Zimbabwe hyperinflation: 1 U.S. dollar ... Epstein considered introducing a new currency to Zimbabwe to halt hyperinflation
The Epstein scandal continues to implicate French and Italian politicians in Epstein’s net. A series of emails between Bannon and Epstein during 2018 and 2019 provide evidence that Bannon was hitting up Epstein for funds for several far-right European political parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, Matteo Salvini’s Italian League, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and other parties in Hungary, Austria, Sweden, and Poland. There are indications that Bannon and Epstein discussed financing far-right parties via cryptocurrencies in order to ensure anonymity and suspicious banking transaction mechanisms.
French left-wing party La France Insoumise has called for an investigation of Epstein’s links to French politicians, including former Culture Minister Jack Lang, former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, Marine Le Pen, and former foreign policy adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Olivier Colom.
In Italy, the Epstein scandal has implicated deputy prime minister and League leader Salvini in a Bannon operation for Epstein to fund his party. Andrea Casu of the center-left opposition Democratic Party said, “We are asking the government — not just Salvini — for clarity and transparency . . . we must first understand if there is a link, not only with Bannon, but with those who today play a political game with these right-wing forces at the European level.” Casu added, “These files are getting a lot of attention in the US, as is obvious . . . But in my opinion, they should be given just as much attention for what they represent for Europe today, and for the political situation in which we are in.”
Left-wing Più Europa (More Europe) president Riccardo Magi declared that the Epstein files “implicate Matteo Salvini in alleged funding that Bannon had promised to provide for his election campaign . . . [and that] raises concerns about potential external influence affecting the second-largest party in the current majority.”
New York Times, Epstein Files Reveal Efforts to Build Ties With Officials in Russia, Steven Lee Myers and Nataliya Vasilyeva, Feb. 10, 2026. New documents detail Jeffrey Epstein’s efforts to foster strategic, sometimes reciprocal relationships with Russian officials.
The Kremlin has seized on the latest release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, saying the lurid details of his ties with leading American and European figures in business, politics and culture underscore the moral depravity of the West.
Yet the files also detail Mr. Epstein’s contacts inside similar circles in Russia, where he cultivated officials and traded favors, including with those he hoped might facilitate a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, left.
In 2014, Mr. Epstein befriended Sergei L. Belyakov, then a deputy minister of economic development who had attended the academy of the Federal Security Service, a successor of the Soviet K.G.B. At one point, Mr. Epstein turned to Mr. Belyakov for advice in what he described as a blackmail attempt by a Russian woman against a businessman. Other emails and court records make clear that the businessman was the billionaire financier Leon Black.
Through two senior Norwegian diplomats, the foreign minister of Slovakia and Ehud Barak, right, a former prime minister of Israel, Mr. Epstein sought to meet Mr. Putin or the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. After Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016, Mr. Epstein offered his services to help the Russians understand the new American president.
“I think you might suggest to putin, that lavrov, can get insight on talking to me,” Mr. Epstein wrote in 2018 to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was then head of the Council of Europe.
Mr. Epstein does not appear to have ever landed a meeting with Mr. Lavrov, let alone Mr. Putin, but the files offer new details about the breadth of his contacts related to Russia, which he saw as an opening for political and business interests, as well as a source of the young women he lured into his network. It also shows how Russian officials sought out Mr. Epstein for advice, insights and possibly investments.
Some of Mr. Epstein’s ties with Russia have been known before, but the trove of more than 1.3 million files that the Justice Department released last month has raised new questions among Russia’s critics about whether the relationships opened the door to Russian intelligence activity.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, left, said last week that his government would investigate the ties documented in the files.
Some of the people who appear in them have since resigned, including Brad Karp, chairman of the elite law firm Paul Weiss, who had exchanged emails with Mr. Epstein about Mr. Black. In Britain, the disclosures have rattled the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. They have prompted the resignation of Mr. Starmer’s chief of staff after the dismissal last fall of Peter Mandelson, the British ambassador to the United States.
Others linked to Mr. Epstein and Russia are also facing the fallout. They include Mr. Jagland and another Norwegian diplomat, Terje Rod-Larsen, whose wife, Mona Juul, stepped down on Sunday as the country’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq.
Last week, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, used the disclosures to disparage the United States and Europe. “Now we know how the Western elite treat children, including their own,” she said in a briefing, referring to Mr. Epstein’s exploitation of underage girls.
Ms. Zakharova did not respond to questions about Mr. Epstein’s ties to Russian officials, but critics of Mr. Putin’s government called the official response disingenuous.
Meidas Touch Network, Raskin Says Trump's Name Appears in the Unredacted Epstein Files Over One Million Times: Report, Troy Matthews, Feb. 10, 2026. Members of the House now have access to the redacted names in the files.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Axios in an interview Tuesday that after a search he found that Donald Trump's name comes up "more than a million times" in the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files. Members of the House Oversight Committee were given access to the unredacted files this week.
At least one of the unredacted Trump files already contradicts a statement Trump has previously made, according to Raskin, that Trump had banished Epstein from Mar-a-Lago.
According to Raskin, the document was a 2009 email exchange between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, in which Trump is paraphrased as saying "No, Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and no, we never asked him to leave."
Trump is already named roughly 38,000 times in the files that have been released as required by a bipartisan law authored by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. Three million additional files have not yet been released by the Department of Justice.
The Parnas Perspective, Afternoon News and Commentary: White House Says it is "Moving On" From Epstein as More Critical Documents Released and Survivors Demand Answers From DOJ, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 10, 2026. I just spoke directly with Amanda and Sky Roberts, family members of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who gave an emotional and urgent interview about a major new law introduced today and their reaction to tomorrow’s hearing, as Pam Bondi and the White House attempt to move past the Epstein files.
I will be on Capitol Hill tomorrow morning for a press conference with survivors and will share a full update afterward. I will then cover Pam Bondi’s testimony and spend the day meeting with members of Congress. I have already sent dozens of redacted files to lawmakers for comparison with the unredacted versions, and I expect to have new and consequential information soon.
If you are able, please consider subscribing or gifting a subscription to support this work. Much more is coming, and the next developments will be significant.Subscribed
Here’s the news:
Congressional Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, introduced “Virginia’s Law” alongside Epstein survivors and the family of Virginia Giuffre to abolish statutes of limitations for sex trafficking and abuse cases, expand civil remedies for adult victims and their survivors, including for crimes committed abroad under U.S. jurisdiction, and press for fuller public release of millions of still-unreleased Epstein investigation documents, though the bill faces an uncertain path in a Republican-controlled Congress.
Karoline Leavitt, right, said today that the White House is “moving on” from the Epstein files as they relate to President Trump:
Rep. Jamie Raskin says unredacted Epstein files reference Donald Trump extensively — claiming Trump’s name appears “more than a million times” — and include material he argues contradicts Trump’s public statements, while Raskin criticizes the DOJ’s limited access and redactions and calls for full public release of the documents.
Epstein survivors released the following letter ahead of Pam Bondi's testimony tomorrow blasting the DOJ's failures and demanding answers to 15 key questions during her hearing. "The Department’s actions to-date mirror the very dynamics Epstein relied upon: powerful actors protected by secrecy, while victims are exposed, scrutinized, and made to bear the consequences."
Emails in newly released Epstein files show Jeffrey Epstein actively orchestrated and advised a months-long romantic relationship between a woman in his network and Kimbal Musk, revealing far more direct, personal involvement by Epstein in Musk’s private life than previously known, though Musk denies any wrongdoing and says he was unaware of Epstein’s behind-the-scenes role.
Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie say they forced the Justice Department to unredact the names of six wealthy men they describe as “likely incriminated” in the Epstein files, accusing DOJ of unnecessary redactions, an ongoing cover-up involving millions of unreleased documents, and broader efforts to shield powerful figures from accountability.
A newly released FBI interview record says Donald Trump told Palm Beach police in the mid-2000s that “everyone has known” about Jeffrey Epstein’s misconduct and urged focus on Ghislaine Maxwell, a claim Trump’s team says supports his account of cutting ties early but that raises fresh questions about what he knew and when. The primary question is this: Assuming the report is true, why did he wait until after a criminal investigation into Epstein was launched to report him?
Amid renewed scrutiny from the Epstein files, Ohio billionaire Les Wexner—named by Rep. Ro Khanna as appearing in unredacted materials—was revealed to have donated to several Republican candidates and party committees during the 2025 cycle, drawing attention to his continued political influence despite long-standing questions about his past financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein, which Wexner denies involved any knowledge of wrongdoing.
Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis said reviewing unredacted Epstein files changed her view of the scandal, admitting she initially “didn’t care” but was shaken after seeing evidence of very young victims, including a 9-year-old, and now says lawmakers pushing for disclosure were right.
ICE acting director Todd Lyons refused to commit to pausing immigration enforcement during the 2026 World Cup, telling Congress that ICE is a “key part” of tournament security, despite lawmakers warning that aggressive operations tied to Trump’s immigration crackdown could deter fans and undermine the event.
The FBI released new door-camera images showing a masked, possibly armed individual tampering with Nancy Guthrie’s front-door camera the morning she disappeared, as investigators expand the search and her daughter Savannah Guthrie publicly urges the public to help bring her home alive.
NBC News confirmed that the Trump administration removed the Pride flag from New York City’s Stonewall National Monument, citing new Interior Department rules on authorized flags, a move that reverses a decade-long tradition at a landmark of the LGBTQ rights movement and drew sharp backlash from New York officials and Democrats who accused the administration of erasing LGBTQ history.
Newly unsealed court documents show the FBI’s January raid of a Georgia election hub was triggered by a referral from Kurt Olsen, a Trump-appointed election security official who promoted debunked 2020 voter fraud claims, reviving Trump’s false stolen-election narrative despite repeated court rulings and state officials rejecting any evidence of widespread fraud.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney pushed back after Donald Trump threatened to block the new $4.6bn Gordie Howe International Bridge, reminding him that Canada paid for the project and that ownership and construction were shared, as Trump’s latest Canada tirade sparked disbelief and ridicule north of the border.
The FDA declined to review Moderna’s application for its first mRNA flu vaccine, saying the clinical trial lacked an adequate control, a decision Moderna calls inconsistent with prior FDA guidance and another setback for mRNA technology amid skepticism from Trump administration health officials.
A British woman visiting Texas was fatally shot by her father after a heated argument about Donald Trump and sexual assault, with a UK inquest revealing the killing followed heavy drinking and a dispute over guns, though a Texas grand jury later declined to indict him.
Norway’s defence chief Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen warned that a limited Russian land grab in northern Norway cannot be ruled out as Moscow seeks to safeguard its nearby nuclear assets, while forcefully rejecting Donald Trump’s claims about Nato allies and Greenland and stressing the need to prepare for both invasion and hybrid threats.
The Trump administration plans to repeal the 2009 EPA “endangerment finding” that underpins federal limits on greenhouse gases, a move it calls the largest deregulation in US history and that climate groups warn would cripple climate rules, endanger public health, and trigger immediate legal challenges.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who led long mysterious lives as socialites, financiers, lovers and fellow sex traffickers and rapists, are shown in an undated photo released by the U.S. Justice Department on Dec. 22, 2025 in compliance with a Congressional law passed nearly unanimously in November.
New York Times, Former Police Chief Said Trump Told Him ‘Everyone’ Knew of Epstein’s Actions, Luke Broadwater, Feb. 10, 2026. Michael Reiter, a former Palm Beach police chief, described a 2006 conversation with Donald Trump to the F.B.I. years later, according to a newly released document.
After it became known that Jeffrey Epstein was under investigation in the 2000s, one of the first calls the Palm Beach police received was from Donald J. Trump, the local police chief at the time told the F.B.I. more than a decade later.
Mr. Trump reportedly told the chief, Michael Reiter, “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” according to a document recounting their conversation that is part of the tranche of Epstein files released by the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump said it was known in New York circles that Mr. Epstein was disgusting and suggested that the police also focus their investigation on Mr. Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, according to the memo. “She is evil,” Mr. Trump reportedly said.
Mr. Trump also told the police chief that he was around Mr. Epstein once when teenagers were present and that he “got the hell out of there,” according to Mr. Reiter’s account.
The former chief described his conversation with Mr. Trump to the F.B.I. in October 2019, two months after Mr. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, the memo shows. Mr. Reiter told The Miami Herald, which reported on the document earlier, that the call with Mr. Trump occurred in July 2006.
The account highlights the shifting explanations Mr. Trump has given about what he knew — and didn’t know — about Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell.
PoliticusUSA, Trump's Scheme To Steal The Midterm Election Falls Apart, Jason Easley, right, Feb. 10, 2026. Trump called on Congress to nationalize the midterm election by passing the SAVE Act, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that there aren't enough Republican votes to change the filibuster.
As his poll numbers continue to plunge, Donald Trump keeps looking for ways to avoid what increasingly looks inevitable. Polling shows that Democrats are in a good position to retake the House majority, and they are also in an improving position to flip the Senate.
The Cook Political Report’s Poll Tracker reveals how dire things have become for Trump and by extension, Republicans who will be running for election or reelection this November:
Trump’s overall approval rating among voters now stands at 41.0%, down from 47.3% when CPR first began publishing an aggregated polling average nearly a year ago. In March 2025, his net approval stood at a near-even -1.6% (47.3% approve versus 48.9% disapprove.) That net rating now stands at -15.3%, a nearly 14-point drop.
What’s more, the decline in the president’s overall approval is particularly steep among the infrequent voter blocs that made up his 2024 coalition and who will be key to the GOP’s midterm hopes: young people (down a net 24.5% since last March), Latinos (down a net 16.0%) and independents (down a net 23.7%). In fact, fewer than 30% of independent voters now give the president a thumbs up on his performance.
The Cook metric uses 21 different metrics that were all vetted for their sound methodology, and what Cook found is that Trump has been on a consistent slide downward since March of 2025.
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The president has been pressuring the Senate to pass a massive national voter suppression law, but Majority Leader John Thune delivered some bad news to Trump on Tuesday.
The Parnas Perspective, News Updates and Commentary: Major Developments: Trump Cabinet Member Admits to Visiting Epstein's Island, DOJ Admits to Redaction Failures, and Epstein Co-Conspirators Revealed, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 10, 2026. We are witnessing major developments right now.
Under oath, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, below left, has admitted that he visited and had lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island -- a direct contradiction of his prior public claims that he was so disgusted by Epstein he would never even be in the same room with him again.
This admission did not happen by accident. It only happened because the Epstein files were released and because we identified Lutnick’s name in them. Transparency forced the truth into the open.
At the same time, we are learning the identities of Epstein co-conspirators in real time as the DOJ continues to unredact key documents. What was hidden for years is now coming into view—and the picture is getting darker by the day.
Over the past several days, I have been compiling primary documents and delivering them directly to members of Congress so they can see what was redacted and what still remains hidden. I will continue that work today. I am also meeting with members of Congress and survivors today and tomorrow -- so stay tuned.
Many of you have asked about my personal safety. I am taking precautions and I am safe. Yes, I am being attacked for this reporting. No, I will not stop. This is too important.
Here’s the news:
After previously claiming that he was disgusted by Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted to having lunch on Jeffrey Epstein’s island. Senator Chris Van Hollen pressed Lutnick on whether he visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, and Lutnick acknowledged a brief lunch there during a family trip, saying his wife, children, and others were present and they left together after about an hour.
The DOJ is now unredacting documents that Congressman Thomas Massie called them out on after reviewing the unredacted version. This document below is a list of individuals, all of which was previously redacted:
Congressman Thomas Massie has confirmed that Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem was discussing the torture video mentioned in this email.
The FBI labeled several individuals as co-conspirators. Only Maxwell and Epstein were indicted. This document was unredacted after Thomas Massie publicly called out Todd Blanche. It clearly identifies several co-conspirators of Epstein’s including Les Wexner, left, and Lesley Groff, who were never indicted. The full file can be found here.
Despite naming Wexner as a possible co-conspirator in 2019, the FBI did not indict him. FBI Director Kash Patel later claimed, last year, under oath, that there was insufficient evidence to charge third-parties.
New Epstein file discusses the 2003 birthday book with the alleged birthday book note sent by President Trump (a note, shown at right, he denies writing). This email, which is redacted, explicitly notes requests for the birthday book from Trump.
Congressman Khanna argues the Epstein revelations are toppling British elites and institutions, and challenges the U.S. for failing to confront its own powerful figures—pointing to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick implicated in the files.
Rep. Luna says the files show Ghislaine Maxwell engaged in trafficking and rape, arguing she deserves no special treatment and condemning her as a monster.
Boebert says the Epstein files clearly implicate people and firmly opposes clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, calling for a longer sentence and harsher imprisonment.
Following the release of DOJ Epstein-related emails showing past suggestive correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell, Casey Wasserman is facing a cascading crisis: prominent artists are publicly cutting ties and demanding his removal, agents are exploring spinning off the music division without his name, rival agencies are circling clients, and growing political pressure is calling for his resignation as head of the LA28 Olympic committee—while Wasserman apologizes, denies wrongdoing, and relies on a fortified board and deep institutional influence to weather escalating reputational and organizational fallout.
Donald Trump launched a late-night Truth Social posting spree starting around 2:30 a.m., flooding the platform with grievance-filled messages and nostalgic throwbacks before briefly stopping and then resuming hours later, prompting fresh scrutiny of his erratic online behavior.
A group of Buddhist monks completed a 2,300-mile “Walk for Peace” from Texas to Washington, drawing large, diverse crowds of Americans who found comfort, community, and a rare sense of calm amid political turmoil, economic stress, and emotional exhaustion, inspired by the monks’ quiet message of slowing down and cultivating inner peace.
Politico has confirmed that Trump has granted former “Stop the Steal” lawyer Kurt Olsen—now a temporary White House employee—unusual access to highly classified U.S. intelligence as he leads a probe into debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election, raising alarm among intelligence officials and Democrats who warn the effort risks politicizing sensitive spy material and misusing government power to revive long-disproven conspiracy theories.
As public opinion turns against Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, Democrats are hardening their stance on Department of Homeland Security funding, refusing another short-term spending bill unless ICE and DHS agree to reforms—raising the risk of a partial shutdown as both parties brace for blame while negotiating under a fast-approaching deadline.
An investigation by The 74 and The Guardian found that local police nationwide are using school district license-plate reader cameras from Flock Safety to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security in immigration enforcement during the Trump crackdown—raising major concerns about mass surveillance, student privacy, and the repurposing of school safety technology for deportation efforts.
An immigration court halted the Trump administration’s effort to deport Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts Ph.D. student and pro-Palestinian activist, ruling the government failed to justify her removal—marking a setback for the administration’s use of immigration law to target foreign students over political speech critical of Israel.
The Justice Department says Venezuelan men previously sent by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s CECOT prison (with prison conditions shown in a file photo above) under the Alien Enemies Act can be returned to U.S. custody if a court orders it, after a judge ruled their deportation violated due process and amid ongoing legal battles over whether they must be given hearings in the United States.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned Europe to expect further U.S. hostility and said the recent “Greenland moment” should be a wake-up call for the EU to accelerate long-stalled reforms, strengthen its competitiveness, and assert greater strategic independence rather than accommodating pressure from Washington, Reuters has confirmed.
Vice President JD Vance made a historic first visit by a sitting U.S. vice president to Armenia, offering economic, technology, and nuclear energy cooperation as the Trump administration pushes a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, before continuing on to Azerbaijan.
According to The Associated Press, the United Nations is awaiting clarity on how much of the nearly $4 billion in unpaid dues the U.S. will pay, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns of a looming financial crisis and U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz says the Trump administration plans a significant down payment in the coming weeks.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, with President Trump and Mehmet Oz, the Medicaid and Medicare services administrator at right, in the White House in September (New York Times photo by Tierney L. Cross)
New York Times, One Year After Texas Outbreak ICE Detention Center S. Carolina Outbreak Vaccine Effectiveness Symptoms and Transmission Long-Term Health Risks, Teddy Rosenbluth, Feb. 10, 2026 (print ed.). Oz Offers Forceful Call for Vaccination as Measles Becomes More Dire.
The comments by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director come as South Carolina grapples with a large measles outbreak.Listen to this article · 3:39 min Learn more
Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, stands in front of a microphone wearing a black suit, a red tie and an American flag pin on his lapel.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York TimesTeddy Rosenbluth
Dr. Mehmet Oz has urged Americans to get vaccinated against measles, one of the strongest endorsements of the vaccine yet from a top health official in the Trump administration, which has repeatedly undermined confidence in vaccine safety.
Dr. Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director, told CNN on Sunday that there was a simple solution to the raging measles outbreak in South Carolina, which has infected more than 900 people and become the largest U.S. outbreak in recent history.
“Take the vaccine, please,” Dr. Oz said. He also pledged that there “will never be a barrier to Americans getting access to the measles vaccine.”
Dr. Oz’s comments are far more urgent than those from his boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, whose comments about the measles vaccine are often contradictory. He has said that the vaccine “is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease,” but he also has raised safety concerns and said getting vaccinated is a personal choice. The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is considered very safe and about 97 percent effective in preventing infection.
Dr. Oz’s statements come as the country struggles to contain the highly contagious virus, which infected thousands of people in 2025 and appears to be following a similar trajectory this year. The United States is now at risk of losing its elimination status, a designation given to countries that have not had continuous spread of measles for more than a year. Measles has been eliminated in the United States since 2000.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, likened Dr. Oz’s comments to taking a garden hose to a forest fire.
“When you cast those kinds of doubts about vaccine safety and effectiveness, one interview on one news show is not going to move the needle,” he said.
Dr. Osterholm argued that Mr. Kennedy began sowing distrust in the vaccine soon after he was confirmed last February. As measles spread through West Texas, he appeared on national television, encouraging vaccination and then, almost in the same breath, raising questions about its safety.
“We don’t know the risks of many of these products because they’re not safety-tested,” Mr. Kennedy said last April.Editors’ PicksA Designer Moves Upstairs — and Starts OverMy Co-op’s Renovation Project Is Bad for Residents. Can We Stop It?How to Choose Wallpaper Like a Professional Designer
As the outbreak swelled and crossed state borders, he spoke of “miraculous” alternative remedies and promised to explore potential new treatments for the disease, a move public health experts said signaled to Americans that vaccines weren’t necessary.
Mr. Kennedy and other top health officials have taken other actions that experts believe could negatively affect M.M.R. vaccination rates, which have been declining for years. In November, Mr. Kennedy instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, despite the fact that large-scale studies have found no link between the shot and autism. And one of his appointees, who leads the federal panel that recommends vaccines for Americans, said last month that shots against measles should be optional.
New York Times, Trump Administration to Cut $600 Million in Health Funding From Four States, Apoorva Mandavilli, Feb. 10, 2026 (print ed.). The states, all led by Democrats, used the grants to support a wide variety of functions, including H.I.V. prevention and surveillance.
The Trump administration plans to rescind $600 million in public health funds from four states led by Democrats because it finds the grants “inconsistent with agency priorities,” according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The programs slated to be cut are in California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota. They include grants to state and local public health departments as well as to some nongovernmental organizations. A list of the cuts was shared with relevant congressional committees on Monday.
The funds are administered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They include grants given to states for a variety of purposes, including hiring staffs, modernizing data systems and managing disease outbreaks. Some programs are aimed at the needs of specific communities.
Some of the cuts will be finalized this week and others over the coming weeks, totaling roughly $600 million. The figure was first reported by The New York Post.
Nearly two-thirds of the funding is unspent money allocated to state and local public health departments in California.
“These grants are being terminated because they do not reflect agency priorities,” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said. About two dozen of the grants were aimed at curbing H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections.
Dr. Deb Houry, who served as the C.D.C.’s chief medical officer before she resigned in August, noted that Congress had already appropriated the funds.
“It is concerning that H.H.S. is cutting public health funding to local communities that cover core functions in the middle of a measles outbreak and other health threats,” she said. “This coupled with large staffing cuts to federal public health leaves communities less prepared.”
Much of the rescinded money comprised large grants to health departments. Among the cuts to partner organizations were:
$7.2 million from the American Medical Association in Illinois, which supports gender transitions for children;
$5.2 million from Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago for increasing H.I.V. prevention therapy among Black women;
$876,000 from the Prevention Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco, to address “reducing social isolation among older L.G.B.T.Q. adults”;
$371,000 from the Colorado Health Network Inc. to focus on “engaging Latino and African American” men who have sex with men.
In September, the C.D.C.’s website was revised to detail the agency’s new priorities, including moving away from a focus on diseases that predominantly affect certain populations.Editors’ PicksA Designer Moves Upstairs — and Starts OverMy Co-op’s Renovation Project Is Bad for Residents. Can We Stop It?How to Choose Wallpaper Like a Professional Designer
That focus “has not translated into measurable improved health for minority populations, and in many cases has undermined core American values,” the agency now says.
Last month, Health and Human Services told state health departments that public health infrastructure grants totaling $5 billion would be paused and reviewed to ensure that they were “aligned” with the administration’s goals. The pause was lifted within 24 hours.
New York Times, Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation, Lisa Friedman and Maxine Joselow, Feb. 10, 2026 (print ed.). A small group of conservative activists has worked for 16 years to stop all government efforts to fight climate change. Their efforts seem poised to pay off.
In the summer of 2022, Democrats in Congress were racing to pass the biggest climate law in the country’s history and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declaring that global warming posed a “clear and present danger” to the United States.
But behind the scenes, four Trump administration veterans were plotting to obliterate federal climate efforts once Republicans regained control in Washington, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the matter.
Two of them, Russell T. Vought, right [a leader in the Heritage Foundation's ultra-right "Project 2025" plan for the Trump Administration], and Jeffrey B. Clark, were high-profile allies of Donald Trump. Mr. Vought, who has railed against “climate alarmism,” and Mr. Clark, who has called climate rules a “Leninistic” plot to seize control of the economy, drafted executive orders for the next Republican president to dismantle climate initiatives.
The other two, Mandy Gunasekara and Jonathan Brightbill, were lesser-known conservative attorneys with long histories of fighting climate initiatives. Ms. Gunasekara, a onetime aide to the most vocal global warming denialist in the Senate, and Mr. Brightbill, who had argued in court against Obama-era climate regulations, collected an “arsenal of information” to chip away at the scientific consensus that the planet is warming, documents show.
Their efforts are now paying off. In the coming days, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to revoke a determination that has underpinned the federal government’s ability to fight global warming since 2009.
That scientific conclusion, known as the endangerment finding, determined that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are supercharging storms, wildfires, drought, heat waves and sea level rise, and are therefore threatening public health and welfare. It required the federal government to regulate these gases, which result from the burning of oil, gas and coal.
New York Times, Newly Unbound, Trump Weighs More Nuclear Arms and Underground Tests, David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, Feb. 10, 2026 (print ed.). It remains to be seen whether the three big nuclear powers are headed into a new arms race, or whether President Trump is trying to spur negotiations on a new accord now that a last Cold War treaty has expired.
In the five days since the last remaining nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia expired, statements by administration officials have made two things clear: Washington is actively weighing the deployment of more nuclear weapons, and it is also likely to conduct a nuclear test of some kind.
Both steps would reverse nearly 40 years of stricter nuclear control by the United States, which has reduced or kept steady the number of weapons it has loaded into silos, bombers and submarines. President Trump would be the first president since Ronald Reagan to increase them again, if he chose to do so. And the last time the United States conducted a nuclear test was 1992, though Mr. Trump said last year that he wanted to resume the detonations “on an equal basis” with China and Russia.
So far, the statements from the Trump administration have been vague. It has said that it is looking at a variety of scenarios that might bolster the arsenal by reusing nuclear arms now in storage, and that Mr. Trump has instructed his aides to resume testing. But no one has specified how many weapons may be deployed or what kind of tests could be conducted. The details matter, and may determine whether the three big nuclear powers are headed to a new arms race, or whether Mr. Trump is trying to force the other powers into a three-way negotiation on a new treaty.
“It’s all a bit mysterious,’’ said Jill Hruby, a longtime nuclear expert who, until last year, ran the National Nuclear Security Agency, a part of the Energy Department that designs, tests and manufactures American nuclear weapons. “It is very confusing what they are doing.”
The indications started within hours of the expiration on Thursday of New START, which limited the number of weapons that the United States and Russia could deploy to roughly 1,550 each. Mr. Trump turned down an offer from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for an informal extension of the 15-year treaty — which would not be legally binding — while both countries considered negotiating a successor treaty.
That same day, the State Department sent its under secretary for arms control and international security, Thomas G. DiNanno, to Geneva to address the Conference on Disarmament. The treaty, he complained in a speech, “placed unilateral constraints on the United States that were unacceptable.” And he noted that in Mr. Trump’s first term the president had pulled out of two previous treaties with Russia — the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty — because of Russian violations.
He repeated a familiar case, which many Democrats in the national security world have also voiced, that the New START treaty failed to cover whole new classes of nuclear weapons that Russia and China are developing, and that any new treaty would have to place limits on Beijing, which has the fastest-growing nuclear force on the globe.
New York Times, Gabbard’s 2020 Election Claims Put Her Back in Favor With Trump, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager and Glenn Thrush, Updated Feb. 10, 2026, Tulsi Gabbard (shown above in a file photo) has focused on attacking the so-called deep state after an uneven first year as the director of national intelligence.
In late January, Tulsi Gabbard, right, the director of national intelligence, was leading a meeting on Syria in the Situation Room, when President Trump abruptly changed course by reminding her of an earlier chat on a subject he regarded as even more urgent.
Ms. Gabbard’s role in reopening and expanding the investigation of the 2020 election.
Now Mr. Trump was ordering Ms. Gabbard to help oversee an F.B.I. investigation of his baseless claims of irregularities in the vote, according to people with knowledge of the meeting.
“You go do that, you get it done,” Mr. Trump suddenly told her.
Days later Ms. Gabbard appeared at a warehouse in Fulton County, Ga., where ballots from the 2020 vote were stored. As the F.B.I. conducted a raid, she observed and oversaw their work. After the operation, Ms. Gabbard met with the F.B.I. agents and put Mr. Trump on speaker phone to address them.
It was an unusual move. Most presidents keep an arm’s distance from investigations. Mr. Trump’s conversation with the F.B.I. agents and his decision to order Ms. Gabbard to Georgia to oversee the raid could raise questions about vindictive prosecutions and complicate future court cases.
Ms. Gabbard has fallen in and out of favor at different times during the first year of the Trump administration — earning a rebuke from the president for a social media video, ill-timed comments about Iran’s nuclear program and frequent appearances on cable television that some viewed as self-promotion.
But with the renewed investigation into baseless claims about fraud during the 2020 election, she is back in the spotlight, and Mr. Trump’s good graces.
Administration officials say Ms. Gabbard has found her footing by being more judicious about her television appearances and focusing on the intelligence briefing her office gives to the president. And perhaps more important, the White House sees Ms. Gabbard as a “true believer,” they said.
Ms. Gabbard’s super power — at least in the eyes of Mr. Trump — is her enthusiasm for what many consider conspiracy theories and her relentless focus on attacking, and rooting out, the so-called deep state.
This article is based on interviews with administration and other American officials as well as other people with knowledge of Ms. Gabbard’s work. They spoke on the condition their names or positions not be revealed given the sensitivity of Ms. Gabbard’s work.
After Ms. Gabbard accused former President Barack Obama of “treasonous conspiracy” for starting the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump praised Ms. Gabbard, seeing her as an effective spokeswoman about issues he cares about.
As the director of national intelligence, Ms. Gabbard is charged with coordinating and overseeing the nation’s spy agencies — as well as intelligence briefings for the president. The office, in recent years, has collected and publicized evidence of foreign meddling in U.S. elections.
During the Biden administration, that meant tracking, and calling out, influence operations by Russia, Iran and other foreign powers. But Ms. Gabbard has shifted the focus of her office’s election defense work to the security of voting machines, and whether they could be compromised by adversarial foreign governments.
Citing a 2022 assessment about the potential for foreign powers to hack into electronic voting machines and manipulate the vote, Ms. Gabbard has pushed her office to look deeper into the voting systems. With the help of a U.S. attorney, her team seized voting machines from Puerto Rico last year to examine them for vulnerabilities.
The examination found various potential problems including modems that connected to cellular networks outside the United States — though no evidence of a foreign power tampering with votes has yet to be released. Amid Ms. Gabbard’s work on the voting machines, Mr. Trump tapped her to oversee the F.B.I. examination in Georgia.
Mr. Trump has expressed frustration with the Justice Department for not moving fast enough, or effectively enough, on prosecutions or investigations he wants to see. He has taken Attorney General Pam Bondi to task privately several times. And other officials said Mr. Trump has little confidence that Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, can follow through and find evidence of wrongdoing on the issues the president cares about.
While the Trump administration’s explanation for Ms. Gabbard’s presence in Georgia has shifted, people briefed on the decision-making said the president’s doubts about the Justice Department prompted him to give Ms. Gabbard an outsize role in overseeing the investigation into voting irregularities.
U.S. Sports, Culture, Media, Education
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 9, 2026 [Big Picture On NFL, Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 10, 2026. Last night’s thirteen-minute Super Bowl half-time show featuring Bad Bunny had more watchers than any other halftime show in history: an estimated 135 million watched live, while millions more have streamed it since.
Rapper, singer, and record producer Bad Bunny, whose given name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is from Puerto Rico, and rocketed to prominence with the release of his first hit single on January 25, 2016. On February 1, 2026, just a week before the halftime show, Bad Bunny made history by being the first artist to win Album of the Year at the Grammys for an album recorded in Spanish.
Right-wing critics complained about the NFL’s invitation for Bad Bunny to do the halftime show, saying he was “not an American artist.”
In fact, people born in Puerto Rico are American citizens. But Puerto Rico has an odd relationship with the United States government, a relationship born of the combination of late-nineteenth-century economics and U.S. racism.
In the 1880s, large companies in various industries gobbled up their competitors to create giant “trusts” that monopolized their sector of the economy. The most powerful trust in the United States was the Sugar Trust, officially known as the American Sugar Refining Company, which by 1895 controlled about 95% of the U.S. sugar market. Thanks to pressure from the Sugar Trust, in 1890, Congress passed the McKinley Tariff, which ended sugar tariffs and tried to increase domestic production by offering a bounty on domestic sugar.
This privileged domestic producers, and in 1893, sugar growers in Hawaii staged a coup to overthrow the Hawaiian queen and asked Congress to admit the islands as an American state. President Benjamin Harrison, a friend and confidant of tariff namesake William McKinley, cheerfully backed annexation, but before the treaty could be approved, an 1894 law reinstated the duties on sugar and ended the bounties. Voters elected President Grover Cleveland later that year, and with Hawaiians furiously protesting against the machinations of an American business ring, Cleveland insisted on an investigation, and Hawaiian statehood stalled.
When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, the Senate still did not have enough votes to admit Hawaii, so Congress annexed it by a joint resolution and McKinley, now president, signed the measure. As the popular magazine Harper’s Weekly put it in a cartoon with a little boy dressed in the symbols of the American flag eating candy, America was swallowing “sugar plums.”
The acquisition of the territory of Hawaii had begun the question of annexing islands. Then the 1899 Treaty of Paris that ended the war transferred from the control of Spain to the control of the United States the islands of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, as well as a number of smaller islands including Guam, all of which either were sugar producers or had the potential to become sugar producers.
Since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, adopted under the Articles of Confederation that made up the basis of the nation’s law before the Constitution, the U.S. had rejected colonies and had instead established a system for incorporating new territories into the country on terms of equality to older states. But in the era of Jim Crow, annexing the newly acquired islands under the terms established a century before presented a political problem for lawmakers. Although sugar growers wanted the islands to be domestic land for purposes of tariffs, most Americans did not want to include the Black and Brown inhabitants of those lands in the United States on terms of equality to white people.
Congress’s 1898 resolution of war against Spain in Cuba had contained the Teller Amendment, which required the U.S. government to support Cuban political independence once the war was over and Spanish troops gone, providing a quick answer to American political annexation of Cuba (although it left room for economic domination). But there was no such amendment for the rest of the islands the U.S. acquired in 1899.
A fiercely pro-business Supreme Court provided a solution for Puerto Rico in what became known as the Insular Cases. In May 1901, in Downes v. Bidwell, the court concluded of the newly acquired island that although “in an international sense [Puerto Rico] was not a foreign country, since it was subject to the sovereignty of and was owned by the United States, it was foreign to the United States in a domestic sense, because the island had not been incorporated into the United States.” This new concept of “unincorporated territories” that were “foreign…in a domestic sense” allowed the U.S. government to legislate over the new lands without having to treat them like other parts of the Union, while also preventing the inclusion of their people in the U.S. body politic.
Two months after the court’s decision, on July 25, McKinley issued a proclamation removing tariff duties for products from Puerto Rico, and the sugar industry boomed.
But what did this system mean for the people in Puerto Rico? In 1902, a pregnant twenty- year-old Puerto Rican woman named Isabel González arrived in New York City to join her fiancé, but the immigration commissioner turned her away on the grounds that she was an “alien” who would require public support. González sued.
When her case reached the Supreme Court, it concluded in the 1904 Gonzalez v. Williams case that González was not an alien, and indeed that she should not have been denied entry to the United States. The justices went on to create a new category of personhood for the island’s inhabitants. They were not aliens, but they were not citizens either. Instead, they were “noncitizen nationals.” As such, they had some constitutional protections but not all. They could travel to the American mainland without being considered immigrants, but they had no voting rights in the U.S.
U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans was established in the 1917 Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act, also known as the Jones-Shafroth Act.
Today, Puerto Rico is a self-governing commonwealth of about 3.2 million people. Puerto Ricans do not pay federal taxes or vote in presidential elections, although a resident commissioner serves in Congress and can sit on committees and debate, but not vote on legislation. Puerto Ricans do pay U.S. Social Security taxes and receive certain federal benefits.
Last night, Bad Bunny highlighted Puerto Rican history, beginning with the workers at the heart of colonial sugar production and moving through to those same cane workers hanging from electric poles in an evocation of the recent blackouts in the country’s inadequate electric grid, poorly addressed by the U.S. government after Hurricane Maria wiped out the system in 2017. He carried the flag of the island from before the U.S. takeover—an independence flag banned from 1948 to 1957— its light blue triangle picked up in various fabrics throughout the performance.
He ended by shouting “God Bless America” in English, echoing the United States mantra in an answer to right-wing critics. And then he rejected the idea animating the current U.S. administration’s deportation of Black and Brown people with the claim they are not Americans and their culture will undermine American culture.
After saying “God Bless America, Bad Bunny listed in Spanish: “Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Antilles, United States—not Estados Unidos—Canada, and Puerto Rico.”
“Together,” the football he carried said, “we are America.”
New York Times, Why the N.F.L. Booked Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl, Ken Belson, Feb. 9, 2026 (print ed.). League executives may be nervous about the Latin superstar’s outspoken stance on immigration, but their priority is attracting popular halftime performers.
Bad Bunny’s outspoken views on U.S. immigration policies have put the politics-wary N.F.L. in an awkward position. But to understand why the league selected the Latin superstar to headline this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, you have to go back to 2018.
That year, the league faced hostility unlike it had ever experienced over players who were kneeling during the national anthem to draw attention to police brutality and social justice issues. The protests, started by the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016, became a flashpoint for fans, owners, sponsors, entertainers and politicians. President Trump, in particular, was deriding the league and the players, and calling on team owners to fire players who did not stand for the anthem.
In solidarity with Mr. Kaepernick, some singers said they would not perform at the Super Bowl if asked. The league ultimately chose Maroon 5 to play at the Super Bowl in February 2019. The show was widely panned.
The N.F.L., forever trying to protect its brand, worried that its marquee event was tarnished.
Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, who has deep connections in the music industry and Hollywood, had been pushing the league to align with groups working to combat social injustice, including those endorsed by celebrities. He and Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, quietly flew to Los Angeles to meet with Jay-Z, the rap star and impresario.ImageJay-Z, wearing a black knitted cap and black jacket, sits with one hand on his chin.Jay-Z at an N.B.A. Cup basketball game in Los Angeles in December. His entertainment company, Roc Nation, produces the Super Bowl halftime show.Credit...Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
In August 2019, the N.F.L. struck a deal with Jay-Z’s entertainment company, Roc Nation, to produce the Super Bowl halftime show and help the league support social justice efforts. In one swoop, the league had a foothold in the music business, a seal of approval from one of the country’s biggest Black celebrities and a way to reach a younger, more diverse audience.
Since then, the league’s halftime act has included a wide range of top performers like Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (with a cameo by Bad Bunny), Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar.
While the N.F.L. signs off on the halftime performers, Roc Nation finds the musicians, and picking Bad Bunny was, from a musical standpoint, an obvious choice. He has broken ticketing records around the world, produced 15 Top 10 hits and won album of the year at the Grammys last week.
Most N.F.L. owners and executives are probably unfamiliar with Bad Bunny’s music, and uncomfortable with his stance on the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. But many of them also understand that they need to tolerate his views and the views of other musicians if they want to continue to attract the most popular performers and their fans.
“I don’t want to pick the music that I listen to ’cause none of you would come to the halftime show,” Mr. Goodell said in October.
Jay-Z, he added, understands the importance of the halftime show for the music industry and the artist, “but he also understands it from the fan standpoint and the N.F.L. standpoint. And so it doesn’t get real deep because he knows I’m not going to challenge him.”
More On Epstein Files
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick stands behind U.S. President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Samuel Corum via Getty Images)
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump cabinet member ensnared in Epstein scandal, Judd Legum, right, and Rebecca Crosby, Feb. 10, 2026. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his relationship with Epstein was "absolutely done" after a single meeting in 2005. The Epstein files tell a much different story.
In an October 2025 interview with the New York Post, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave a detailed account of his relationship with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. According to Lutnick, their interactions consisted of one trip to Epstein’s home in New York City in 2005, three years before Epstein was convicted. Lutnick, who was Epstein’s neighbor, said he found the visit so disturbing that he decided not to have any further contact with Epstein. “That’s my story,” Lutnick said. “A one and absolutely done.”
Lutnick said that after moving into his home in 2005, he and his wife were invited to Epstein’s house for coffee. (Lutnick emphasized that Epstein was “arrested in like, ‘08, I think.”) While he was there, Epstein offered to give Lutnick and his wife a tour of his house. During the tour, Epstein opened some double doors off the dining room to reveal “a massage table in the middle of the room and candles all around and stuff.” Lutnick asked Epstein how often he got massages. “Every day,” Epstein said, according to Lutnick. “And the right kind of massage.”
After that comment, according to Lutnick’s account, he and his wife immediately told Epstein they had to go. Then, “in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.” Lutnick declared, unequivocally, that, after that day, “I was never in the room with [Epstein] socially, for business, or even philanthropy” because “he’s gross.”
There is only one problem with Lutnick’s story: it is not true.
In December 2012, four years after Epstein pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor and seven years after Lutnick claimed he cut off contact, Lutnick emailed Epstein to arrange a get-together at Epstein’s infamous island, Little St. James.
Lutnick confirmed plans to have lunch with Epstein. On December 24, 2012, Epstein’s assistant passed along a message to Lutnick: “Nice seeing you.”
A few days later, on December 28, Lutnick and Epstein became partners in a business venture. They each acquired stakes, through LLCs, in an advertising technology firm called Adfin. They signed the share purchase agreement on consecutive pages. Although the company has now shut down, they both remained investors until at least 2014.
In May 2011, a year before the island meeting, Lutnick and Epstein met for drinks at Epstein’s house, according to emails. Lutnick apparently left his phone at Epstein’s place.
Lutnick has not explained the contradiction between his October 2025 interview and these subsequent meetings with Epstein. “This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments, including securing trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals and fighting for the American worker,” the Commerce Department said in a statement.
Lutnick maintained ties to Epstein for many years. In 2015, for example, Lutnick invited Epstein to a “very intimate fundraising reception“ for Hillary Clinton. (There is no record of Epstein donating.) Epstein did donate $50,000 to a 2017 dinner honoring Lutnick that benefited Jewish charitable causes. In May 2018, Lutnick wrote Epstein to warn him about the expansion of a nearby museum, which could “block our park views.”
Although none of this implicates Lutnick in Epstein’s crimes, it does raise serious questions of why Lutnick lied about his relationship with Epstein and maintained ties long after it was clear that Epstein was a sexual predator.
Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA), and Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) all said that Lutnick should resign or be fired. “Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”
European officials held accountable for connections to Epstein
In contrast to the United States, officials across Europe have lost their posts due to their connections to Epstein.
In the United Kingdom, newly released files showed that Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., had a closer friendship with Epstein than was previously known. In 2009, Mandelson forwarded Epstein a confidential document outlining “a potential sale of government assets” that had been sent to the then-prime minister. The following year, Mandelson gave Epstein early notice that a “€500 billion bailout had been agreed to tackle the eurozone crisis.” Other documents suggest that Mandelson received $75,000 from Epstein, but Mandelson denies receiving the money.
Other documents have revealed that after Epstein was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, Mandelson wrote to Epstein and encouraged him to “be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can.” Mandelson and Epstein appear to have maintained contact until 2016. Mandelson was fired by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September after an earlier release of Epstein-related documents.
On Sunday, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, resigned. McSweeney, a “longtime protégé” of Mandelson’s, said he had “advised the prime minister” to appoint Mandelson to ambassador, and that he took “full responsibility for that advice.” On Monday, Starmer’s communications director, Tim Allan, also resigned to “allow a new No. 10 team to be built.”
In Slovakia, Miroslav Lajčák, national security advisor to the prime minister, resigned at the end of January after released emails showed that Epstein “invited him to dinner and other meetings in 2018.” Communications between Epstein and Lajčák also included suggestive communications about “gorgeous” girls.
On Sunday, Mona Juul, Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, also resigned. Both Juul’s name and her husband’s name appeared “several times” in the Epstein files, Politico reported. A change to Epstein’s will made shortly before his death reportedly intended to leave Juul’s children $10 million. In a statement announcing her resignation, Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had opened an investigation “into Juul’s knowledge of and contact with Epstein.” In Sweden, Joanna Rubinstein resigned after it was revealed that she visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in 2012. Rubinstein was president of UNHCR in Sweden, a group that fundraises for the UN Refugee Agency.
U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Race
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Department of Government Embezzlement, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 10, 2026. How about some good news for a change?
The Wall Street Journal reports that an immigration court has dropped the deportation case against Turkish grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, who became one of the earliest victims of the Trump administration’s swerve into cartoonishly evil immigration enforcement last year when plainclothes officers were caught on video forcing her into an unmarked van.
The State Department, it later came out, had tried to revoke her student visa over an op-ed she’d co-written in a Tufts University student paper.
“Today, I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that despite the justice system’s flaws, my case may give hope to those who have also been wronged by the U.S. government,” Öztürk said in a statement yesterday. Happy Tuesday.
U.S. Governance, Politics
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: This Just In: Charity Good Again, Andrew Egger, Feb. 10, 2026. When Donald Trump told an interviewer last week that the American people shouldn’t mind him ordering his IRS to pay him $10 billion in their money because he’d “give it to charity,” it wasn’t just an instant contender for the most ridiculous policy pitch he’s made in his decade in political life. It was also the last nail in the coffin of the spirit of DOGE.
This time last year, with the new-look Trump administration only a couple weeks into action, the Department of Government Efficiency was dominating both the headlines and the White House’s attention. DOGE was pitched as One Weird Trick to solve America’s decades-in-the-making deficit crisis. Elon Musk’s band of merry hackers, the right believed, was going to go through the world of government contracts like a cleansing fire, rooting out billions or even trillions of dollars a year of fraud and silly spending.
Musk approached this project in his usual way: as a series of manic fixations. Within days, he’d zeroed in on what he believed to be the main culprit in federal overspending: the dastardly behavior of NGOs—or as some like to call them, charities. While he never delivered the trillions in federal savings he’d promised before flaming out of DOGE far ahead of schedule, Musk did manage to blow up the government’s system of giving billions a year to causes like fighting hunger and disease in impoverished and war-torn places abroad.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk tweeted just over a year ago. “Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
Before DOGE’s arrival, USAID spent about $21 billion a year on foreign aid and development. This time last year, MAGA considered it a great triumph that the White House was taking that money out of the mouths of widows and orphans to restore it to its rightful owner: the U.S. taxpayer. Now, as Trump lays the groundwork to grant himself roughly half that sum from the Treasury, he seems to have rediscovered the American people’s affection for philanthropy: “Nobody cares how much [I pay myself],” he said this month, “if it goes to a good charity.”
The sentiment is all the more outrageous given Trump’s own personal history with self-dealing “charitable” contributions. It’s too bad Musk and DOGE weren’t around to audit the Trump Foundation a decade ago: Trump had been using his personal charity, it came to light after a lawsuit from the state of New York, to pay his business debts, make political contributions,¹ and buy things for himself. He eventually settled the suit in 2019, admitting he had failed to comply with basic laws governing charitable organizations, paying $2 million in damages, and dissolving the Trump Foundation for good. (All a witch hunt, if you ask him.)
Despite all this, the Republican party’s hardest-nosed fiscal hawks don’t seem eager to object to Trump’s personal payout. Yesterday, I reached out to the offices of the three co-chairs of the Congressional DOGE Caucus, GOP Reps. Aaron Bean of Florida, Pete Sessions of Texas, and Blake Moore of Utah, asking what they made of the possible $10 billion bonanza (for charity!). None responded.
It’s hard to know which is more galling: Trump’s own obvious contempt for his own supporters, whom he expects to share exactly his own protean, vibes-based approach to every policy issue and fall into line behind him wherever he happens to land, no matter how nakedly self-interested his own motives may be—or the fact that those supporters keep proving they deserve that contempt in spades.
You believe charity is a crock and a swindle and a waste of taxpayer money, Trump spent the entire DOGE era telling his people.
God, yes, we sure do!, they replied.
Can you believe the lib media wants you to be mad that I’m giving money to charity? Trump all but asks today.
The nerve of those guys!, they say.
Still, there are consolations. Trump’s mass hypnosis of his closest supporters may be as strong as ever, but it’s only getting clearer to everyone outside the spell how insane the status quo has become. As Nate Silver noted, “the share of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump broke 46 percent for the first time yesterday.” Hey, it’s a start.
In a post-Trump world, what do we do about all the corruption? Assuming we can’t get the money back—at least, not all of it—how do we ensure this doesn’t happen again?
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The People Are Leading, William Kristol, right, Feb. 10, 2026. Every day and in almost every way, from special elections to national polls to citizen mobilization, we see an American public is increasingly aware and alarmed about the dangers of Trump and Trumpism.
The latest piece of evidence: In a new survey by Data for Progress voters—who we’re often told only care about their own narrow self-interest and can only grasp what’s right in front of them—turn out to be clear-eyed about and opposed to Donald Trump’s plans for election interference in November.
When asked, “Do you think President Trump will or will not attempt to deploy immigration enforcement agents to prevent participation in the 2026 midterms,” 64 percent of likely voters said Trump would attempt to do this, and only 21 percent thought he would not.
When asked whether they support or oppose the federal government blocking ICE enforcement actions at polling locations or other election-related sites, 56 percent of likely voters support blocking ICE from election-related sites, while 34 percent oppose.
This survey adds to a growing mountain of evidence that “kitchen table issues” are not, in fact, all that matters to voters, and that they care 
about their rights and freedoms and our democratic system as well.
Good for the voters. But the elites are slower. You might think congressional Democrats would be doing more to highlight the issue of election interference in the current discussions of ICE funding. You might think our political, business, and civic elites would be doing more to mobilize on the subject of election interference. They may be getting there, at long last—but reluctantly and hesitantly. Their behavior brings to mind the alleged remark by the French politician, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, in 1848: “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick Hits
BRINGING IN THE BIG GUNS: Another one for the I’m sure it’s fiiiiiine midterm-elections file, per Politico:
President Donald Trump has directed top U.S. spy agencies to share sensitive intelligence about the 2020 election with his former campaign lawyer, known for pushing debunked theories of electoral fraud, according to four people with knowledge of the effort.
The intelligence that top U.S. spy agencies are furnishing to Kurt Olsen—now a temporary government employee in the White House—is meant to support a probe he is leading into whether Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was the result of fraud or other electoral irregularities. . . .
It’s unclear whether there are any limits to the types of sensitive materials Olsen has access to. Two of the people familiar with Olsen’s work specified that he has at least reviewed some sensitive compartmented intelligence programs, which are among the most highly classified material stored by U.S. spy agencies. One of the people said he leans on Trump when he needs something—including access to highly classified intelligence reporting—from different spy agencies.
“Every time he hits a roadblock, he just calls POTUS,” said the first person familiar with Olsen’s work.
Read the whole thing.
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND:
The constant parade of new White House outrages can make it hard for us to keep our eyes on the ones that merely persist. But conditions in America’s immigration detention facilities remain appalling for the people stuck there—and even continue to provoke the occasional international incident. The Irish Times reports on Seamus Culleton, an Irish national who has lived in the United States for two decades, is married to a U.S. citizen, and was in green card proceedings when ICE scooped him up last September. Culleton has been languishing in a Texas ICE facility ever since:
He said he has been locked in the same large, cold and damp room for 4½ months with more than 70 men. He said detainees are constantly hungry because meals served at tables in the centre of the room offer only child-sized portions. Fights often break out over food, “even over those little child-sized juice containers”. Toilet areas are “filthy”.
He said there is little to do but lie on a bed all day. Most detainees do not speak any English. He said he has been allowed outside for air and exercise fewer than a dozen times in nearly five months. The atmosphere is full of “anxiety and depression”, he said.
At a November bond hearing, a judge approved his release on a $4,000 bond, which his wife paid. When nothing further happened towards his release, they learned the US government had denied the bond, initially without explanation.
In a follow-up article, the Irish Times reported that the government of Ireland has attempted to intervene in Culleton’s case: “Our Embassy in Washington DC is also engaging directly with the Department of Homeland Security at a senior level in relation to this case,” a spokeswoman said. Read the whole thing.
U.S. Inflation, Economy, Markets, Jobs
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: No, AI Doesn’t Justify Lower Interest Rates, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 10, 2026. Debunking the latest Trump-minion talking point.
During the 2024 campaign Donald Trump repeatedly promised not just to end inflation but to reduce prices. Unfortunately, enough voters believed him to put him back in the White House. Predictably, he has utterly failed to deliver.
Equally predictably, his response to this failure has been an attempt to gaslight the public. Reuters reports:
In five speeches on the economy since December, Trump asserted that inflation had been beaten or was way down almost 20 times and said prices were falling almost 30 times, assertions at odds with economic data and voters’ daily experiences.
It isn’t working: 52 percent of Americans say that Trump’s policies have made the economy worse, while only 28 percent say that he’s made it better.
And plunging approval on the economy isn’t the only way in which stubborn inflation, currently hovering close to 3%, hurts Trump. It also undermines any case for the Federal Reserve to deliver a big cut in short-term interest rates — which Trump constantly and threateningly demands. Granted, the Fed cut rates in 2024 and 2025 in response to a steep decline in inflation from its 2022 peak. But there’s little justification for further cuts, especially big ones, with inflation stubbornly above the Fed’s 2 percent target.
So what can Trump’s yes-men do?
Trump hasn’t made a rational argument for lower interest rates. Instead, he seems to believe that rate cuts should be his reward for overseeing a “hot” economy – like a third-grader given a gold star for acing a quiz. Understanding that this makes no sense, Trump’s economy-policy minions have converged on a different, ostensibly more economically rational reason to cut interest rates: AI.
Recently Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, Stephen Miran, who Trump appointed to the Federal Reserve Board, and Kevin Warsh, his choice as Fed chair, have all argued that the coming AI-led boom in productivity justifies slashing interest rates now. The script goes like this: AI will lead to a surge in productivity; higher productivity will reduce production costs and thereby reduce inflation; and the coming fall in inflation justifies much lower interest rates now.
I will admit that this story isn’t completely nonsensical, unlike what Trump has been spouting. Yes, AI could reduce production costs and, other things equal, reduce inflation. However, both theory and historical experience say that the supposed benefits of AI aren’t a reason to cut interest rates now and almost certainly won’t be a reason to cut them in the future.
First, it’s dangerous to base policy on the assumption that AI will sharply raise productivity growth. That would be a serious case of counting your digital chickens before they’re hatched. AI might deliver big productivity gains, or it might not. Nobody knows yet.
Moreover, we know that right now the boom in AI spending is raising many prices. Demand from data centers has been driving soaring electricity prices. And data center demand for memory chips, which are essential for almost every consumer electronics product, has caused an apocalyptic shortage, with prices roughly tripling — a cost that will be reflected in the price of your next laptop or smartphone.
As for promises of a productivity bonanza, it’s instructive to look at the history of productivity as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates growth rates between business cycle peaks: A graph of growth in a company AI-generated content may be incorrect.
Information technology, including but not limited to the internet, did lead to a burst of productivity growth in the 1990s and 2000s. AI enthusiasts point to that burst as a precedent for what they claim AI will do now.
But look at what happened after 2007. Technological change didn’t stop. Notably, this era was marked by the rise of smartphones — the first iPhone was introduced in 2007 — which changed our lives and society (in many ways for the worse, but still). But the macroeconomic payoff to the mobile internet and other post-2007 innovations is invisible in the data. This is a general observation: The economy is huge and diverse, and flashy, attention-grabbing technologies often don’t matter as much as one might expect. In fact, the productivity boom that began around 1995 largely involved distinctly unglamorous applications like inventory management at Walmart.
Second, even if AI does end up driving a major acceleration in productivity growth, this is likely to require higher, not lower, interest rates.
Why? Accelerated productivity growth would indeed reduce the inflation rate, other things equal. This might allow policymakers to run an economy with low unemployment and tight labor markets, as Alan Greenspan did in the late 1990s. But while it’s possible for new technologies to reduce inflation by reducing production costs, they also raise prices by driving higher investment spending by business, which can lead both to shortages of particular goods like memory chips and overheating in the economy as a whole. The 90s technology boom led to a very large rise in business capital expenditure — mostly carried out by telecoms, not dotcoms — as a share of GDP: A graph showing the growth of a company AI-generated content may be incorrect.
High levels of business investment, in turn, meant that interest rates had to stay relatively high by today’s standards to avoid inflationary overheating. Contrary to what you sometimes read, Greenspan didn’t cut interest rates during the 90s boom, except for an emergency cut during the LTCM crisis. All he did was refrain from raising rates despite historically low unemployment. And long-term interest rates remained high compared with rates now — whereas they slumped during the post-2007 productivity slowdown: A graph showing the growth of the stock market AI-generated content may be incorrect.
And while the productivity payoff from AI is still speculative, massive capital expenditure driven by AI dreams is already happening, on a scale that raises questions about where the money (not to mention the electricity and the chips) will come from.
So no, AI doesn’t justify interest rate cuts, and certainly not the huge cuts Trump demands.
And the alacrity with which Trump officials have jumped on the argument that the Fed should slash rates because of AI is troubling for reasons that go beyond the fact that they’re wrong. Consider how this argument became popular in Trumpworld. Did Bessent, or Warsh, or Miran carefully consider the evidence, and advocate an interest-rate policy based on what that evidence showed? Of course not. Their boss wants to slash interest rates, so they went looking for plausible-sounding economic arguments that might rationalize his whims.
So am I saying that the argument that AI justifies rate cuts is dishonest, that AI has become the last refuge of scoundrels? Why yes, I am.
Feb. 9
Top Stories
Aaron Parnas, Feb. 9, 2026. There are significant new developments following the deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell. I am continuing a detailed review of the Epstein files and will be on Capitol Hill Wednesday for Pam Bondi’s testimony—more reporting to come. Maxwell’s latest moves are already making headlines, and they matter.Politico, Justice Department seeks to wipe out Bannon conviction for defying Jan. 6 committee, Kyle Cheney, Feb. 9, 2026. Bannon already served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for his conviction on the charges.More On U.S. Media, Entertainment, Culture, Sports
New York Times, Seahawks bully Drake Maye, Patriots on way to dominant Super Bowl 60 win, Matt Barrows, Updated Feb. 9, 2026. The Seattle Seahawks, who rode a dominant defense to their first Super Bowl title 12 years ago, did it again Sunday, suffocating Drake Maye and the New England Patriots in a decidedly defensive 29-13 win at Levi’s Stadium.the world's biggest artist on the world's biggest stage at the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.More On Epstein Files
U.S. Justice, Courts, Crime
U.S. Immigration, Race, Civil Rights
Feb. 9, 2026. They just never cared.Accountability Journalism: How Trump is rigging immigration courts against Somali migrants, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 9, 2026. During a December 2 cabinet meeting, President Trump unleashed a torrent of bigoted invective against Somali migrants. “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “They come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but bitch.”More On U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections
right, Feb. 9, 2026. On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) stood up in front of the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, at a gathering to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.Global News
New York Times, Trump’s Oil Grab in Venezuela Shatters an American Taboo, Michael Crowley, Feb. 9, 2026 (print ed.). U.S. presidents have long been accused of plotting to control foreign oil. But President Trump has asserted a U.S. right to take it.More On U.S. Media, Entertainment, Culture, Sports
Davenport Sports Network, On February 8, 1975 initially offering no explanation, Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell shuns the Basketball Hall of Fame, saying he will refuse induction, Staff Report, Feb. 8, 2026. In his first year of eligibility, the 11-time NBA Champion and 5-time NBA MVP is voted into the Hall today.Top Stories
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Criminal investigations of Epstein circle expands on six continents, Wayne Madsen, left, Feb. 8-9, 2026. Probes of Epstein associates threaten presidents, prime ministers, royals, and ambassadors.
In a functioning democracy, not an autocratic kleptocracy, Donald Trump would have already be driven from office over his close relationship with the late international child sex trafficker and double agent for Russia and Israel Jeffrey Epstein, shown above.
The release of only half of heavily-redacted files held by the Justice Department has resulted in the opening of criminal investigations in a dozen countries and counting.
Former UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson’s close relationship with Epstein has already cost him his ambassadorship, his seat in the House of Lords, and his senior statesman position in the Labor Party. Revelations fromthe Epstein files that Mandelson, right, shared sensitive government information with Epstein in 2009 and 2010, have resulted in a criminal investigation of Mandelson. London Metropolitan Police searched Mandelson’s two homes in London and Wiltshire and carried away several boxes of evidence. Police detectives carry away evidence from one of Mandelson’s two homes
The Epstein scandal may cost Prime Minister Keir Starmer his job. His former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner — who is seen as a 
potential replacement for Starmer — revealed that she warned Starmer about appointing Mandelson ambassador to Washington.
Starmer ignored Rayner’s warning on the flimsiest of excuses. Mandelson reportedly told Starmer that he “barely knew” Epstein.
The Epstein scandal has also rocked the British royal family, with former Prince Andrew, right — now known as Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten — losing his royal titles and privileges over his close relationship with Epstein and his involvement with underage girls. The Epstein files have also implicated Andrew’s wife, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, in Epstein’s financial web.
Starmer has apologized for his appointment of Mandelson and he has promised to hand over vetting documents on Mandelson to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. Starmer has also come under criticism by one of his predecessors in Number 10 Downing Street. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared to indicate that it may be time for Starmer to go. In an article in The Guardian, Brown wrote of the Epstein affair, “Deceit, betrayal and a scandal that demands historic change . . . [it’s the] most egregious example of a global network of wealthy and powerful men that thinks it can act with impunity.”
Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney resigned his post on February 8, citing his responsibility for proposing Mandelson as the British ambassador to Washington. McSweeney stated, “The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself . . . When asked, I advised the Prime Minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice." Many observers of British politics do not believe that McSweeney’s departure will temper calls for Starmer’s resignation.
One British politician who has called for Starmer to resign is far-right Reform leader Nigel Farage, right. 
Farage’s own close relationship with Steve Bannon, who, in turn was close to Epstein, has failed to produce any upsurge in support for Farage’s party ahead of a crucial by-election in the constituency of Gorton and Denton.
In a 2018 email from Bannon to Epstein, the former Trump campaign manager pointed to his becoming a political adviser to Farage. Making matters worse for Farage and Reform is the publication of a recent photo of Bannon with Reform’s Gorton and Denton candidate Matt Goodwin.
In March 2018, Bannon (shown above in a collage of file photos) had given a speech to the French far-right National Front (now National Rally) party. After the speech, Epstein emailed Bannon, writing, “Very well done, congratulations!" Farage and Goodwin attended a far-right party in Washington coinciding withTrump’s second inauguration in January 2025. Goodwin posted on SubStack: “I also attended Nigel Farage’s ‘Stars and Stripes’ party at the Hay Adams Hotel, which was absolutely packed with countless American and British politicians and donors, offering a sharp contrast between Nigel Farage’s visible and growing influence in Washington and Keir Starmer who was nowhere to be seen in Washington.” At another party, one hosted by Bannon, Goodwin was photographed shaking hands with the one-time convicted felon later pardoned by Trump. goodwin with bannon Bannon with Reform by-election candidate Matt Goodwin
The Epstein scandal has also tainted Canadian Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative Party. Former Canadian Tory foreign minister and current Poiliever senior adviser John Baird. Epstein files reveal that Baird was invited to an Independent Commission on Multilteralism dinner in New York on September 22, 2014. The dinner was co-hosted by Norwegian diplomat and International Peace Institute President Terje Rød-Larsen, who helped lead the ICM initiative, and Canadian-American publisher Mort Zuckerman. In 2020, Rød-Larsen resigned as IPI head after he was found to have had close ties to Epstein, even referring to him as a "thoroughly good human being.” Epstein and Zuckerman, owner of The New York Daily News, had also signed a deal to provide financing for Radar magazine in 2004–2005.
Baird has denied knowing Epstein or attending the dinner in New York to which Epstein was also invited. Baird is no stranger when it comes to personal scandals.
In June 2011, Baird celebrated the Conservatives’ election victory by joining several gay Tories at a "Fabulous Blue Tent" party held atop the Ottawa Westin Hotel. Also in attendance was Jason Kenney, later the Premier of Alberta, who tweeted “Great view of Parliament Hill from the top of the Ottawa Westin, at The Fabulous Blue Tent party.” One of the event's organizers was Kenney's former aide, Jamie Ellerton, who ordered the pink and blue lights and catering services for the event. Jason Kenney, along with his peer, John Baird, is a committed bachelor that has never married.
Under Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservatives backed several anti-LGBTQ initiatives. Baird’s extreme pro-Israel views would be in line with Epstein’s remit from the Mossad. Baird, who is not Jewish, quipped that he had his "own rabbi” and even his very own “Jewish mother” in the form of the Jewish National Fund.
The Epstein files release has had a major political impact in Norway, where the government has opened a criminal investigation into several high-profile Norwegian officials and their relationship with Epstein. Mona Juul, the Norwegian ambassador to Jordan and Iraq and wife of Terje Rød-Larsen, has been suspended from her position while the Foreign Ministry in Oslo examines her relationship with Epstein.
Baird was listed in an email sent by Camilla Reksten-Monsen, IPI’s chief of staff, to Epstein as a confirmed attendee at the Zuckerman/Rød-Larsen dinner, along with former Norwegian Prime Minister and Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjørn Jagland, whose relationship with Epstein as a conduit for the sex trafficker to Russian President Vladimir Putin via Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has come under a police investigation in Norway.
Other confirmed attendees include former Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák, who resigned as Slovakia’s national security adviser to the 
pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico following the release of lewd emails to Epstein, one in which Lajčák writes, “Why don’t you invite me for these games? . . . I would take the ‘MI’ girl;” Børge Brende, fortmer Foreign Minister of Norway and current President and CEO of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (Brende is now under investigation for his ties to Epstein); former Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn; former Australian Prime Minister and current Australian ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd; former interim Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril; former Austrian Foreign Minister and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (Barak stayed so often at Epstein’s Manhatten townhouse that local Epstein staff and Barak’s personal assistant referred to it as “Ehud’s apartment); and Secretary General of the Arab League and international adviser to IPI Amre Moussa.
A criminal probe of Epstein’s operations in Slovakia has commenced.
One less-notable but significant confirmed guests was Andrei Illarionov of the Cato Institute and chief economic adviser to Putin from 2000 to 2005. Illarionov later became a sharp critic of Putin. Illarionov and Putin
Rudd and a few other notable Australians whose names appear in the Epstein files, including the daughter of another Australian prime minister, have been quick to threaten legal action against those who link them to Epstein in any way.
The French National Financial Prosecutor's Office has initiated an investigation into former Culture Minister Jack Lang and his daughter Caroline Lang on suspicion of “aggravated tax fraud laundering” linked to Epstein. Since Lang and his daughter’s names appeared in the Epstein files, Jack Lang has resigned as president of the Arab World Institute in Paris and his film producer daughter announced her resignation from the French Independent Production Union.
There are now opposition calls for the government of Antigua and Barbuda to investigate Epstein’s business deals in trying to acquire the privately-owned Guiana Island, off Antigua. The island had belonged to international financial scammer “Sir” Allen Stanford prior to the collapse of his financial empire earlier in 2009. The island was purchased from the Stanford receiver by Chinese investor Yida Zhang for some $60 million. Zhang later incorporated the island into the broader Yida International Investment Group-led $2 billion 2015-2035 YIDA project, which will establish an over 1,600-acre Antigua and Barbuda Special Economic Zone (ABSEZ). The United Progressive Party opposition has called for the scrapping of the YIDA project.
Other criminal investigations of Epstein and his sex trafficking ring, financial dealings, and ties to Russia have been initiated in Poland, Sweden, North Macedonia, Australia, Turkey, Lithuania, and Latvia.
The Epstein scandal is growing in intensity worldwide, from South Africa and Kenya to the Kingdom of Bhutan and the former Kingdom of Sikkim, the latter now an Indian state. The Dalai Lama of Tibet has denied any past association with Epstein as has the royal family of Thailand.
The Parnas Perspective, Ghislaine Maxwell Offers to "Clear" Trump's Name if He Let's Her Out of Prison as Survivors Slam Maxwell and Fall out Grows, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 9, 2026. There are significant new developments following the deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell. I am continuing a detailed review of the Epstein files and will be on Capitol Hill Wednesday for Pam Bondi’s testimony—more reporting to come. Maxwell’s latest moves are already making headlines, and they matter.
A global reckoning triggered by the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of millions of documents tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein shows no sign of slowing. New developments on both sides of the Atlantic underscore how deeply Epstein’s network penetrated political, diplomatic, and elite circles—and how fiercely those still entangled are fighting to control the fallout.
At the center of today’s developments is Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence at a minimum-security federal prison in Bryan, Texas. During a virtual deposition with the House Oversight Committee, Maxwell invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, declining to answer lawmakers’ questions. This is the statement released following the deposition from Congressman Robert Garcia: House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer sharply criticized the move, calling it “very disappointing.” He said lawmakers had intended to question Maxwell not only about the crimes she and Epstein committed, but also about “potential co-conspirators” who may have escaped accountability.
In a striking escalation, Maxwell’s legal team issued what many observers described as an extraordinary overture to President Donald Trump. In a public statement, her attorney suggested that if Trump were to grant Maxwell clemency, she would be willing to clear his name and President Bill Clinton’s name of any alleged wrongdoing related to Epstein. The offer immediately drew backlash from Epstein survivors and advocacy groups.
Ghislaine Maxwell Offers to "Clear" Trump's Name if He Let's Her Out of Prison as Survivors Slam Maxwell and Fall out Grows
Survivors urged lawmakers to approach any claims from Maxwell with extreme caution. In a letter entered into the congressional record during the deposition, they warned committee members to treat her statements “with the utmost skepticism” and to rigorously scrutinize any attempt to rewrite history or deflect responsibility. May be an image of crossword puzzle and text
Virginia Giuffre’s family had a pointed message for Maxwell: “Ghislaine, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in a jail cell. Trapped in a cage forever just like you trapped your victims.”
Meanwhile, the Epstein files continue to reverberate internationally.
In the United Kingdom, police are reviewing allegations that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential government reports with Epstein during his tenure as a UK trade envoy. The prince has long denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein and has not publicly responded to the latest claims. King Charles and the Royal family are expected to cooperate in this criminal probe.
Adding to the unease, the Prince and Princess of Wales expressed being “deeply concerned” by the revelations contained in the newly released files. A spokesperson conveyed the couple’s reaction to journalists in Riyadh ahead of Prince William’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
In Norway, the consequences have become criminal. Authorities charged former Norwegian ambassador Mona Juul with “gross corruption,” citing her relationship with Epstein, according to the country’s financial crimes agency, Økokrim. Her husband, diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, was also charged with complicity in the alleged corruption.
Taken together, the developments underscore a widening international scandal that extends far beyond Epstein himself. As investigators, lawmakers, and journalists continue to comb through the newly released documents, pressure is mounting on institutions—and individuals—that for years avoided scrutiny. For survivors, the question remains whether this moment will finally bring accountability, or merely expose once again how power shields itself from consequences.
Donald Trump and his future wife Melania, a former nude model and beauty contestant granted U.S. citizenship on a special "genius" immigration grant. They pose along with their friends Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, with the latter now imprisoned as Epstein's recruiter, lover and fellow rapist of young girls but granted special VIP privileges in her minimum security federal facility (photo via Getty Images).
Emptywheel, Analysis Confirmed: Todd Blanche Locked Ghislaine Maxwell into a False Story, Then Rewarded Her, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Feb. 9, 2026. Presidential Election, Epstein, Weaponized DOJ.
Back in August, I argued that Todd Blanche’s interview of Ghislaine Maxwell was not intended to elicit useful information.
Rather, it was an effort to lock in transparently false testimony that would minimize the damage she could do to Trump going forward.
It was quite clear from Blanche’s interview that he wasn’t interested in meeting with Trump’s sex trafficker buddy to advance any normal investigative interests. He was offering Maxwell something she wanted — a chance to damage the victims again, a chance for cozier digs — in hopes of getting dirt on Trump’s political adversaries, and he was doing so to staunch the stories focusing on Trump’s close ties to Epstein.
Todd Blanche did none of the things a competent proffer would do. He didn’t insist on dates, he didn’t test Maxwell’s answers, he appeared to work mostly from gossip. On the specific question of whether Maxwell “stole” Trump’s spa girls, which Maxwell first denied:
TODD BLANCHE: Do you know whether masseuses from Mar-a-Lago’s spa ended up giving massages to — private massages to Mr. Epstein? I’m not asking for what you may have read, but from — at the time, from your personal knowledge, do you know whether that’s true?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I — I don’t — I don’t recall. Is it possible? Yes. But I don’t remember — I don’t remember that. So I don’t want to — I don’t recall that, but it’s possible.
TODD BLANCHE: Do you have a recollection of you ever recruiting a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago spa to give — to go give a private massage to Mr. Epstein?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that.
TODD BLANCHE: Okay. So what — what I think we should do now, it’s about 12:15. We’ll take a — we’ll take a break and we will come back in a little bit.
Then, the next day, conceded could have happened but Blanche prodded her for a specific denial that Maxwell recruited Virginia Giuffre there.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Some more names did come to me in the night, and I did have some additional memories just for clarity. I believe I said that I couldn’t think of anybody who I may have asked from Mar-a-Lago, but then I realized that I was — the allegation at least is that I met [redacted] in Mar-a-Lago and so I felt that I needed to address that. And I didn’t want to leave that hanging because that seems weird under the circumstances.
And also — but I couldn’t remember anyone and — maybe, you know, it’s a long period of time.
So the issue is not that I’m trying to not say, but I just don’t — I don’t remember anybody that I would have. But it’s not impossible that I might have asked someone from there.
TODD BLANCHE: I don’t — I don’t know exactly what you said yesterday, but I don’t think what you said yesterday is different than what you just said. So, yes. There’s —
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Okay. I just wanted to be — I just didn’t want to feel that I had said no to something and that it — and —
TODD BLANCHE: [redacted] definitely had has said that she was working at Mar-a-Lago and that you received a treatment of her — from her at some point, and that you recruited her to meet Mr. Epstein.
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: Right.
TODD BLANCHE: Do you know, affirmatively, whether that’s true or false, or do you just not have a memory either way?
GHISLAINE MAXWELL: I really don’t believe it’s true. But I know that I did go to spas and if I met someone, I did ask if they’re (indiscernible) — so I don’t — in the realms of possibility, it could have, but I have no memory of it.
TODD BLANCHE: Okay. GHISLAINE MAXWELL: And I don’t believe that that it’s how it went down, but I don’t want to —
Not only did Blanche get the story wrong (Giuffre was not doing massages, she was working the desk, reading a book about massages), but he went to some length to get a specific denial on the record.
What Blanche did was not get the truth, but instead lock Maxwell into specific lies.
It was a shameful use of government resources.
But it appears to have achieved Mutually Assured Silence.
By that, I meant that Blanche used the 2-day interview to test whether and if so how Ghislaine would implicate various famous people, including Trump. After she declined to do that, even with testimony that directly conflicted with piles of records Blanche had in his possession, he rewarded her with a puppy and a transfer to Club Fed.
And then records disproving her false claims showed up in the NYT, effectively locking in mutually assured silence for both Ghislaine and Trump.
If she ever tries to change her testimony from what she already gave, she could be prosecuted for perjury.
And Ghislaine’s refusal, today, to answer any questions from Congress — including how she came to be moved to ClubFed — accords with that argument.
PoliticusUSA, Trump Melts Down Over A Canadian Bridge And Says China Will Ban Hockey In Canada, Jason Easley, right, Feb. 9, 2026. Donald Trump had a bizarre meltdown where he ranted about the Gordie Howe International Bridge that will connect Detroit and Windsor that twisted into China banning ice hockey and the Stanley Cup.
The Detroit River has been a critical trade route between the US and Canada since the Civil War. The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest crossing on the US/Canada border. To solve traffic problems and boost trade between the two nations, a new bridge will open soon. The Gordie Howe International Bridge will provide a freeway between the two nations. It also includes toll-free bike and pedestrian paths.
It is an important advancement that has been decades in the making, which will connect Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario.
This bridge has also triggered one of Donald Trump’s most deranged meltdowns.
Trump posted on Truth Social:
As everyone knows, the Country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades. Now, things are turning around for the U.S.A., and FAST! But imagine, Canada is building a massive bridge between Ontario and Michigan. They own both the Canada and the United States side and, of course, built it with virtually no U.S. content.
President Barack Hussein Obama stupidly gave them a waiver so they could get around the BUY AMERICAN Act, and not use any American products, including our Steel. Now, the Canadian Government expects me, as President of the United States, to PERMIT them to just “take advantage of America!” What does the United States of America get — Absolutely NOTHING!
As usual, Trump is leaving some very important details out. The most important detail Trump left out of the early part of the story is that construction on the bridge began on July 5, 2018, when some guy named Donald J. Trump was president.
If this bridge was such a bad idea, we should blame the president who stood by and let it be built.
The reason why Trump didn’t say anything then is that the bridge is still a great and important idea, but the president was just getting started.
Trump continued:
Ontario won’t even put U.S. spirits, beverages, and other alcoholic products, on their shelves, they are absolutely prohibited from doing so and now, on top of everything else, Prime Minister Carney wants to make a deal with China — which will eat Canada alive. We’ll just get the leftovers! I don’t think so.
The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup. The Tariffs Canada charges us for our Dairy products have, for many years, been unacceptable, putting our Farmers at great financial risk.
The reason why US beverages aren’t on the shelves in Ontario is Trump’s tariffs. Trump is the reason why American businesses are being harmed. Trump initiated a trade war against Canada and complained that Canada retaliated.
Canada is talking about a trade agreement with China, because US policy is being run by an irrational person. The nation of Canada is not being sold to China. The Chinese government will not control policy in Canada, so it will not ban ice hockey.
This is going to come as a surprise to Trump, but hockey is played in China. In fact, it is a growing sport there.
Finally, came Trump’s extortion demand, where he demanded half of the Gordie Howe Bridge:
I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve. We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY. With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset. The revenues generated because of the U.S. Market will be astronomical.
If Trump got half of the bridge, his first move would be to name the American half The Donald J. Trump International Bridge.
Breaking down Trump’s post makes the insanity of it stand out more. Donald Trump was triggered into a meltdown, which included China banning hockey in Canada, by a bridge that he allowed to be constructed. This is what is making decisions in the Oval Office, and it is why the world is laughing at the United States.
Politico, Justice Department seeks to wipe out Bannon conviction for defying Jan. 6 committee, Kyle Cheney, Feb. 9, 2026. Bannon already served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for his conviction on the charges.
The Justice Department is seeking to erase the criminal conviction of longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon for defying a 2021 subpoena from congressional investigators probing his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In a motion signed by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — and without the signature of any career prosecutors — the Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to dismiss the two-count indictment that DOJ brought against Bannon more than four years ago. Nichols, a Trump appointee, presided over a week-long jury trial of Bannon in 2022 that resulted in his conviction on criminal contempt charges.
Federal prosecutors brought those charges in November 2021 after the Democratic-led House voted to hold Bannon in contempt. The Jan. 6 select committee, convened that year by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had subpoenaed Bannon to describe his contacts with key organizers of the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol that day. They also hoped to learn details about his contacts with President Donald Trump in his effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
The end of the case is, in some ways, symbolic. Bannon already served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for his conviction on the charges. But he has appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which was awaiting a response from the Justice Department before Monday’s move by Pirro. If Nichols grants the motion to dismiss, it would likely end the pending Supreme Court case and erase Bannon’s jury conviction.
Solicitor General John Sauer confirmed this goal in a brief filing to the justices Monday.
“The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” Sauer wrote, asking the justices to effectively erase lower-court rulings that upheld Bannon’s conviction.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump adviser Peter Navarro was similarly tried and convicted for defying the Jan. 6 committee, and is also appealing his conviction. Navarro has said he wants to pursue that fight rather than seek clemency from Trump. Like Bannon, Navarro spent four months in prison.
Pirro’s motion to dismiss comes amid renewed scrutiny of Bannon’s close association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship revealed in the recent congressionally mandated disclosure of millions of pages of documents from the Justice Department’s investigation of Epstein’s purported sex trafficking ring.
It also comes as the GOP-led House has weighed holding Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt for initially defying subpoenas to testify in their own Epstein-related investigation. That plan was shelved, however, after the Clintons agreed to provide limited testimony.
“The intelligence in this case is as least as dangerous to our democracy as the Ukraine call was in 2019,” Andrew Bakaj, Chief Legal Counsel, Whistleblower Aid.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Heads keep rolling in the Epstein scandal (but not in the United States), Wayne Madsen, left, Feb. 9, 2026. Starmer government battered by second major resignation as probes of Epstein scandal blossom around the world.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, faced another major resignation as a criminal probe of Starmer’s former ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson, and his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein continues unabated.
Starmer’s Communications Director Tim Allan resigned a day after Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over his recommendation of Mandelson to be appointed ambassador in Washington.
There are increasing calls within the Labor Party for Starmer to step down. Among those requesting Starmer’s resignation Scotland Labor Party leader Anas Sarwar. Two names mentioned as his potential successors are former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
A dark horse candidate emerging is Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. He is considered to the left of Starmer.Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, below left, a dark horse candidate to succeed Starmer as PM.
Mona Juul resigned as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan after it was reported that Epstein left her children $10 million in his will. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry is also investigating its funding and relationship with the International Peace Institute in New York while its president was Terje Rød-Larsen, Juul’s husband. Other Norwegians tainted by their relationship with Epstein include Crown Princess Mette-Marit, former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland and former Foreign Minister Børge Brende, the current president of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Estonia has joined Latvia and Lithuania in investigating the Epstein files for potential criminal activity. Estonia's two main national security agencies, the Internal Security Service (ISS) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (Välisluureamet), have joined their Baltic counterparts in examining the Epstein files.
Finland is also looking into links between Epstein and Emails show venture capitalist Joi Ito, the previous director of the MIT Media Lab who resigned in 2019 after admitting his lab received $1.7 million from Epstein, proposed an introduction between Marko Ahtisaari, right, the son of former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, and Epstein. A meeting did take place in November 2013. Marko Ahtisaar, right,
admits to one meeting with Epstein.
Even Bhutan, a small kingdom nestled in the Himalayas between India and China, has not escaped scrutiny with regard to Epstein. Bhutan has been surprised to discover that two Bhutanese women were in Epstein’s inner circle. One, Tsering Dolma, recommended Sonam Dema for the position of Epstein’s housekeeper.
In 2013, Hyatt Hotels chairman Tom Pritzker emailed Epstein about a wedding he had attended in the former Himalayan Kingdom of Sikkim, invaded and annexed by India in 1975. Pritzker mentions that wedding guests included the Vice Chairman of Deutsche Bank (who was also a deputy finance minister of Germany), former senior finance officials, CIA-linked individuals, movie stars, high lamas, Japanese tea masters and “international rogues.” Pritzker mentioned a similar previous wedding in Bhutan.
There is speculation that “wedding” may be a code name for something more sinister that occurred in both Sikkim and Bhutan. There is only one individual who meets the description of vice chairman of Deutsche Bank and deputy finance minister of Germany — Caio Koch-Weser, deputy finance minister from 1999 until 2005 and vice chairman of Deutsche Bank from 2006 until 2016.
In 1999, Koch-Weser and U.S. deputy Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who worked for Epstein friend Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and who became Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary, determined the 20 members of the G20.
What was Tom Pritzker doing in Sikkim in 2013? Kingdom of Sikkim ... The remote state of Sikkim is not spared in the Epstein files.
Epstein responds (as shown above) to Pritzker, left, stating that he would be attending the 2013 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California followed by spending the following weekend at Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.
Others attending the Beverly Hills confab included former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, right; Newscorp chairman Rupert Murdoch; Bill Gates; 
Commerce Secretary in the first Trump administration Wilbur Ross; Palantir founder Peter Thiel; hedge fund baron Ken Griffin; and Josh Harris, the co-founder and chief investment officer of Apollo Global Management and the Epstein friend who appears 538 times in the Epstein files).
The Milken Institute was founded by convicted “Junk Bond King” Michael Milken. In the 2013 email, Epstein invited Pritzker to the Zorro ranch, which was another major nexus for Epstein’s child sex trafficking and underage rape.
Michael Milken, chairman of the Milken Institute, left, listens during an interview with Tony Blair, former U.K. prime minister, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.
Epstein rubbed shoulders with Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch at the 2013 Milken Conference in Beverly Hills. Epstein then traveled to his ranch in New Mexico. Did he bring any guests from Beverly Hills?
In February 2008, while Epstein was on trial in Florida for statutory rape, his chief procurer of underage girls, Ghislaine Maxwell (shown above in a file photo with Epstein, was sending emails and photos from Bhutan and the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.
The Dalai Lama of Tibet, shown at right in a 2012 photo, appears 169 times in the Epstein files. The Dalai Lama, from his headquarters in Dharamsala, India, has denied knowing Epstein. Some of the references to the Dalai Lama are connected to Joichi Ito. In 2014, Maxwell hosted the Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order (Dragon Order) of Tibetan Buddhism, at her New York apartment. The Drukpa Prder is based in Ladakh, a territory of India bordering Kashmir and Tibet. Maxwell with Gyalwang Drukpa, 2014
There is outrage in Brazil that a 2013 email to Epstein from an individual who the Trump Justice Department redacted refers to a Brazilian “sexy and cute 9-year old who had “just arrived.” A criminal investigation is underway of the trafficking of the child by the Epstein ring.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Lawmakers to View Unredacted Epstein Files, Michael Gold, Feb. 9, 2026. What We’re Covering Today
In other news:
President Trump denounced Bad Bunny over his Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, complaining that “nobody understands a word this guy is saying” after the largely Spanish-language performance.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the Puerto Rican superstar musician better known as Bad Bunny, has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration. Just days ago at the Grammy Awards, he declared “ICE out” — referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who have been the face of Mr. Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown — while accepting an award.
Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, is expected to invoke her her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and decline to answer questions, according to Democratic members of the committee.
As a Friday deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security approaches, Democrats and Republicans appeared no closer on Sunday to a deal to keep the department running.
“If I had to say now, I probably would expect there is a shutdown,” said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”
Slate, I Watched the “All-American” Super Bowl Halftime Show. It Was Even More Embarrassing Than You Imagined, Heather Schwedel, Feb. 9, 2026. Kid Rock doing... something.
Just because there’s one very famous story about an underdog taking on a leporine opponent and winning does not mean it worked out that way for Turning Point USA in its quest to compete with Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. In fact, don’t insult the tortoise community by bringing them into this. TPUSA has only itself to blame for the utter lameness of its All-American Halftime Show.
The right-wing nonprofit’s decision to offer counterprogramming to the official halftime show followed a wave of conservative backlash over the selection of the Puerto Rican, Spanish-speaking artist Bad Bunny as this year’s headliner. Though President Donald Trump has frequently struggled to get big-name artists to perform at events associated with him, he was able to land Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts, and more for his second inauguration, and that was before Nicki Minaj went MAGA. I knew that TPUSA’s show wouldn’t be able to compete with the production value or the star power of the real show, but I had no idea how bad it would be.
About a week ago, the organization announced its slate of performers: Kid Rock would be headlining, joined by Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett. That Kid Rock, he of the private jet with a middle finger on its tail, has embraced Trump is still vaguely disappointing—I’m old enough to remember his glory days, such as they were—but no longer surprising. And if your reaction to the latter of those three names is that they sound made up, well, I was right there with you.
My report after watching? It was as dumb as I expected it to be, but satisfying in one important way: They clearly struggled to fill the room. While it was more crowded than, say, a New York City screening of Melania (I would know), the VMAs this was not. At times, there was enough room between that stage and the extremely subdued audience to safely do a cartwheel. The YouTube stream earned 16 million views, so the audience was not no one, but it’s nevertheless nice to know that when it comes down to it, people can criticize mainstream pop culture’s supposedly overly woke values till they’re blue in the face, but they didn’t want to skip their Super Bowl parties for this gallery of has-beens and nobodies. That very much includes our president, who, despite complaining bitterly about the performers, tuned in to the real thing anyway. We know this because he posted a little review on Truth Social: He declared the show “one of the worst, EVER!”
Trump hates to be associated with losers, and he could sense the loser energy of the All-American Halftime Show from Air Force One. I don’t actually believe he watched most of the Bad Bunny performance, by the way—his ADHD is too raging. (His poor attention span is the excuse he gave for not attending the game in person, though he was probably worried about booing too.) Some of us weren’t as blessed as Trump in this regard. Don’t worry, though: I didn’t have to skip Bad Bunny for Kid Rock and friends. It was prenegotiated with my editor that I was allowed to watch the real halftime show first.
Politicus USA, Political Opinion: Trump's Illusion Of Support Has Crumbled, Sarah Jones and Jason Easley, right, Feb. 9, 2026. Donald Trump's mandate is being revealed as something that never was as the illusion of support for his presidency has crumbled.
Donald Trump’s imaginary mandate has completely evaporated. The NFL didn’t yield to his pressure to drop Bad Bunny from the Super Bowl halftime show, and the league was rewarded with record viewership for the Puerto Rican global star.
Trump’s polling numbers have collapsed on every issue. The documentary on his wife bombed.
The Republicans continue to get crushed in special elections, in red districts that Trump carried.
The signs are everywhere that the Trump presidency is a sinking ship.
As Sarah Jones said on Chew’s Views:
We’re seeing the money leaving Trump. And I think that’s unfortunately because this country runs on money more than anything else. It’s our most important value in this country is money. And the people who have it, they have abandoned Trump. They see that where the money is, where the money has left, the consumers have left.
And so that is why, he didn’t want Bad Bunny for the halftime show, but they, the NFL, which is certainly not aligned with progressive values and, they were like, no, this is what we’re doing. And we’re, and it was this show of I think he had the big sign in the back. The only thing more powerful than hate is love.
This is at a Super Bowl and I think it’s really important. I think that we are watching in real time this illusion of support or the delusion of support. It is eroding and falling apart in front of our eyes and we have to document this and we have to say, yes, this is happening. And look at Melania, and it looks like that movie was artificially inflated for the little that it got.
There are other signs that a political earthquake is coming.
Those who lobby Washington, D.C. have to have an ear to the ground. They need to know what is going on and where the political winds are blowing.
Not all lobbyists work for big corporations, big tech, or in the name of economic interest. There are public interest lobbies that work for causes such as environmental protection, social justice, human rights, and public health.
The lobbyists have a clear sense of where the midterm election is going, according to a canvass done by Punchbowl News:
Most K Street leaders (90%) said Democrats are in a stronger position than the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, according to our most recent Canvass survey.
Notably, 84% of Republican respondents ranked the Democratic Party in the more favorable position heading into the campaign season.
Other major events K Street predicts will have an impact in November: the Jeffrey Epstein files (35%); military actions in Venezuela and other foreign nations (24%); and the reconciliation law (23%).
The lobbyists do show how out of touch they are with their list of likely top issues in the midterm election. The economy and inflation are still dominant front and center in the minds of voters.
However, even the money in D.C. thinks that this election is going against Trump and his party. Trump’s culture war has turned against him. His economic failings have taken away one of the only issues on which he was viewed as strong. It has all caved in on Trump. The illusion has been shattered, and his pretense of power has crumbled.
Associated Press via TRT World (Turkey), After 9/11, Ghislaine Maxwell mailed 42 people, imagining eradication of all 'The Arabs' by 2032, Staff Report, Feb. 9, 2026. Ghislaine Maxwell, disgraced British socialite and accomplice of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, emailed dozens of contacts, wishing eradication of Arabs worldwide, according to newly unveiled files published by US.
Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty in 2021 for her role in helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, circulated an email to approximately 42 contacts after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, imagining destruction of Arabs worldwide.
The content of the email was a fictional narrative set in the year 2032, depicting a world where "the Arabs" had been eradicated globally.
In this imagined future, a father tells his son about a historical event called "9/11.. The son asks what "Arabs" were, implying they no longer exist. The father explains that Arabs were a people who carried out the 9/11 attacks, after which the world united to eliminate them entirely.
In a newly released email, with no context attached to the document, Maxwell wrote to a contact, 'The Invisible Man', writing:
"It is the year 2032, and a father and his son walk the streets of lower Manhattan."
"Approaching the site where the (World Trade Centre) used to be in the end of the 20th century, the father sighs and comments, ‘to think that right here used to be the Twin Towers…'
"The son, not understanding, asks his father: 'What are the Twin Towers?'
"The father smiles and looks at the son, and explains, 'The Twin Towers were two huge buildings that used to be here until 2001, when the Arabs destroyed them'.
"The son looks up to his father, and asks, 'And what are the Arabs?'"
Reports suggest Maxwell sent the email to dozens of her contacts, including billionaire Thomas Pritzker among other elites in Epstein/Maxwell network.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 following a trial in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on five federal felony counts related to her role in recruiting, grooming, and facilitating the sexual abuse of minors in connection with Jewish American financier Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
She was acquitted on one count, enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts.
Maxwell received a 20-year sentence in June 2022, upheld on appeal in 2024 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Thus far, her appeals and motions to challenge the conviction have been unsuccessful.RelatedTRT World - Epstein funded anti-Palestine groups, including one aiding Zionist settlements, US documents reveal
Maxwell ready to testify if given clemency
On Monday, Maxwell refused to answer questions at a deposition before the US House's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, according to lawmakers.
"This is obviously very disappointing. We had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators," the committee's chairman, Republican Representative James Comer, told reporters.
Maxwell, however, signalled she would testify if granted clemency by US President Donald Trump, claiming she could say both Trump and former President Bill Clinton did nothing wrong in their ties to Epstein.
During the closed-door deposition, Maxwell's attorney, David Oscar Markus, said in a statement to the committee that "Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump."
He added that both Trump and Clinton "are innocent of any wrongdoing," but that "Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation."
Democrats on the committee, however, accused Maxwell of using the deposition to campaign for clemency from Trump and called on the Republican president to rule out such a move.
"What we did not get were any substantive answers to the questions that were asked that would advance our investigation," said Representative James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat.
"What we did get was another episode in her long-running campaign for clemency from President Trump. And President Trump could end that today — he could rule out clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell, the monster."
"NO CLEMENCY. You comply or face punishment," Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna, wrote on social media.
"You deserve JUSTICE for what you did you monster."
U.S. Media, Entertainment, Culture, Sports
New York Times, Seahawks bully Drake Maye, Patriots on way to dominant Super Bowl 60 win, Matt Barrows, Updated Feb. 9, 2026. The Seattle Seahawks, who rode a dominant defense to their first Super Bowl title 12 years ago, did it again Sunday, suffocating Drake Maye and the New England Patriots in a decidedly defensive 29-13 win at Levi’s Stadium.
Nationa Football League and Mundo NFL, Bad Bunny's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show via , Feb. 8, 2029. Watch the world's biggest artist on the world's biggest stage at the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Good Bunny. Bad Super Bowl. Defund ICE., Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 9, 2026. Political lessons from the wide world of sports. And music.
Super Bowl LX was a real clunker¹—say it with us now: FAAAKE MAAAYE!—but at least we got some sizzle from Bad Bunny’s halftime show, which featured Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga, an (apparently actual?) wedding, dancers dressed as bushes and electrical linemen, and an appeal to hemispheric unity featuring the flags of every American country, and a football inscribed with the slogan “Together, We Are America.”
Not everybody was impressed, however. “The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” Donald Trump raged on Truth Social. “It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence.” He went on like that for a while, but you get the idea. Happy Monday.
U.S. Law, Courts, Justice, Crime, Rights
One First U.S. Supreme Court Legal Analysis, The Modern Emergency Docket Turns Ten, Steve Vladeck, Feb. 9, 2026. The Supreme Court's February 2016 rulings blocking President Obama's Clean Power Plan were unprecedented at the time; in retrospect, they were harbingers of a deep paradigm shift in the Court's role.
I wanted to use today’s “Long Read” to take a step back from all of the news of the moment (some of which I covered on Saturday), and reflect on a fairly significant anniversary that hits today—the tenth anniversary of the Court’s five rulings on February 9, 2016, in which a 5-4 majority granted emergency relief to block President Obama’s “Clean Power Plan.” The orders, one of which is pictured below, were unsigned and entirely unexplained. And they were also, at least at that point, completely unheard of. As Justice Kagan would note in 2022, “Never before had the Court stayed a regulation then under review in the lower courts.”
In retrospect, the Court’s interventions on February 9, 2016 were the birth of what we might call the modern emergency docket (or whatever you want to call it). Although the justices had regularly entertained (and sometimes granted) applications for emergency relief in death penalty and election cases in the years leading up to 2016, there are virtually no examples of full Court emergency relief respecting national (or even non-election-related state) policies prior to the Clean Power Plan orders. Indeed, the Court’s norm for decades had been to have emergency applications resolved only by individual justices—not by the full Court—at least in part to moderate the effects of any rulings. And yet, within 18 months of the Clean Power Plan rulings, the Court was regularly receiving applications from (and granting emergency relief to) the first Trump administration—rulings that, following the precedents the Court set in the Clean Power Plan cases, were unsigned and entirely unexplained.
Other than Justice Kagan’s cryptic reference in her 2022 dissent in West Virginia v. EPA, there’s been virtually no public accounting of why the Court intervened when it did, or what led the five justices in the majority to agree to a procedural move the Court had never undertaken before. But what can’t be gainsaid is that the ruling was the progenitor of a much broader—and more problematic—pattern of behavior by the Court, one that, as the last year has underscored, has become an ever-more-significant feature of the Court’s work, and an ever-more-controversial one, to boot. More on all of that below. But first, the news:
The only ruling of any kind out of the Court last week was Wednesday’s denial of California Republicans’ emergency application that had asked the justices to block California’s (Texas-motivated) congressional redistricting. As I suggested last week, there was no universe in which the Court could remotely justify intervening to block California’s map given the terms on which it had intervened in December to un-block Texas’s map. The fact that there were no public dissents may suggest that the justices all agreed.
It also seems worth pointing out that the summary denial is a pretty big slap in the face to the Trump administration, and Solicitor General Sauer, specifically—who had filed a brief urging the Court to block California’s map, never mind that he had also filed a brief in the Texas case urging the Court to stay a district court decision that had found the exact same equal protection violation in Texas that Sauer claimed occurred in California. I suspect that the federal government’s hard-to-defend hypocrisy was not lost on the justices; whether it leads to any broader erosion of the SG’s credibility before the Court remains to be seen.
Turning to this week, there is, again, nothing scheduled from the Court. We don’t expect any rulings in argued cases or even any regular orders. It’s possible there will be movement on some non-Trump-related emergency applications (and also possible that we get a new application for emergency relief from DOJ in seeking to block last week’s district court ruling that kept in place “temporary protected status” for more than 350,000 Haitians—at least, if the Trump administration wants to move faster than the deliberate timeline the D.C. Circuit has set for resolving its stay request there).¹ But it’s also possible the week comes and goes with no news out of the Court whatsoever.
Finally, in the (completely) miscellaneous category, the Court last week posted its official calendar for the October 2026 Term. Near as I can tell, there are no obvious structural changes from this term, but for those who set their watches by the Court’s calendar, you can now plan all the way to June 2.
U.S. Immigration, Race, Civil Rights
The Contrarian, Opinion: They’ve Always Known He is A Racist..., Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 9, 2026. They just never cared.
Why did it take Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) until Friday, after Trump had posted a video portraying former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a hard-bitten racist? And why has legacy media for so long avoided calling Trump racist?
Perhaps if Scott, or any number of lawmakers, had spoken up as strongly when Trump questioned Obama’s birth certificate or rode down the golden escalator in 2015 and launched his campaign while calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers, criminals, and rapists, Trump would not have won the presidency the first time. Perhaps if the legacy media had identified Trump as a shameless racist years ago, the political, media, and business elite might have found it harder to normalize him and his neo-Confederate MAGA cohort.
The evidence of Trump’s abject bigotry has been out in the open for decades, from his determination to assign the death penalty to the exonerated Central Park 5 to his nonstop racist commentary about immigrants. His attack on DEI is rooted in this same racism, although the legacy media and timid politicians dare not call it that for fear of being labeled “woke.” Blaming the 2025 D.C. plane crash on DEI; taking down a tribute to Jackie Robinson; replacing MLK, Jr.’s birthday as a federal holiday with his own at our National Parks; trying to write slavery out of the Smithsonian; and arresting Black journalists…are plainly efforts to demean and erase African Americans from our history.
Even before Trump took office in 2025, the ACLU aptly described precisely what he was doing:
This attack on DEI is part of a larger backlash against racial justice efforts ignited by the 2020 killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and the nationwide protests — unprecedented in size and diversity — that followed.
The ACLU explained that anti-DEI ideologues frame “their attacks as a strike against ‘identity politics’ and weaponizing the term ‘DEI’ to mean any ideas and policies they disagree with — especially those that address systemic racism and sexism.” This is nothing more than a tactic in “a larger effort by right-wing foundations, think tanks, and political operatives to dismantle civil rights gains made in recent decades.”
Trump has turned the top ranks of civilian and military personnel into a virtually all-white boys club. He has restored the names of Southern slaveholders to military bases; while refusing to appoint a single Black woman to the federal bench in his second term. He has repeatedly hired neo-Nazis and elevated White Nationalist sympathizers. He selected primarily Black and Muslim countries to enforce restrictions and provoke adverse treatment on visas.
Furthermore, his constant insults directed at women — evidenced by the E.J. Carroll sexual assault verdict, or his ongoing mistreatment of female reporters — leave no doubt about his misogynistic venom. His compulsive dehumanization of immigrants and resorting to enabling White supremacists have been at the heart of his presidency. It is hard to conjure what more proof of deep-seated racism and misogyny would be sufficient to persuade those who feign inability to know Trump’s real motives.
It should be noted that, on Friday, in a candid and refreshing move, the New York Times did report: “President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip…then deleted it after an outcry, including from members of his own party.” The paper also acknowledged the endemic nature of Trump’s racism: “Mr. Trump has a history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants…. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on official sites.” However, the Times and other legacy media reporters do not persistently grill him on this topic. In failing to put serial examples of his racism in context, they allow Trump and MAGA politicians to skate along with formulaic denials.
Even now, the regime slides by without serious confrontation. The press should continue interrogating the White House press secretary as to why she originally stated that the Obama video clip elicited “fake outrage.” She needs to be pressed to identify the mystery aide who allegedly posted it erroneously (has that “aide” been fired?) This should be the focus when she returns to the briefing room.
Beyond this incident, corporate/legacy media could confront MAGA politicians, examine the racist views of Trump’s voters, or explain that his policies, however rationalized, are racist. The crusade to destroy the Voting Rights Act could be identified as part and parcel of Trump’s aim to return America to Jim Crow politics, and his plan to make the country whiter through mass deportation could be labeled as the full expression of White nationalism. They could reject his excuses (e.g., DEI is all about “merit”) and refuse to let Republicans scamper away or appear on TV without answering about the most recent racist comment.
Cowed for fear of being labeled as “woke,” elected leaders, sports champions, business leaders, and other prominent figures must stop ignoring the regime’s racist underpinnings, the MAGA party’s White nationalism, and the wholesale assault on pluralistic democracy — which the Supreme Court has aided and abetted (e.g., eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, ending affirmative action). They should follow Judge Ana C. Reyes’ example: look to Trump’s own words to discern his motives. We need to stop pretending there are benign reasons for policies and personnel decisions that (wow!) just so happen to bolster white men at the expense of all those easily classified as “others.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had it right in demanding his enablers and sycophants aggressively denounce Trump.
Trump might be president, but the time for mincing words and normalizing his ethnic cleansing campaign (disguised as “immigration policy”) has long passed. All decent citizens should ostracize him when he prioritizes frivolous social functions at Mar-A-Lago rather than attending to the needs of the nation (see: snoozing through the Melania premiere while the country grappled with Alex Pretti’s devastating, baseless murder).
Let’s say it: Trump is a racist. The Republican Party tolerates — if it does not actively endorse — his racism. Those who normalize him enable racism. His agenda is grounded in racism.
New York Times, A Raid in a Small Town Brings Trump’s Deportations to Deep-Red Idaho, Anna Griffin, Photographs by Loren Elliott, Feb. 9, 2026. Peoplee in Wilder, Idaho, didn't give much thought to the dusty horse track west of town known as La Catedral Arena, where, on Sundays in the summer and early fall, vendors sold horchata and tacos, announcers called race results in Spanish and immigrant families gathered for reasonably priced fun.
But when federal agents swarmed the track on Oct. 19 — weapons drawn, a helicopter overhead, unmarked S.U.V.s screeching in on dirt roads — they did more than crack an alleged gambling ring and increase deportation numbers. They shattered Wilder’s innocent belief that its out-of-the-way location and deep-red politics could isolate the town from the raids overtaking other parts of the country.
“We rely on Hispanic labor,” said Chris Gross, a second-generation farmer who grows sweet corn seed and mint in Wilder. She added, “Nobody thought something like this could happen here.”
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: How Trump is rigging immigration courts against Somali migrants, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 9, 2026. During a December 2 cabinet meeting, President Trump unleashed a torrent of bigoted invective against Somali migrants. “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Trump said. “They come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but bitch.”
At the same meeting, Trump made clear that he wanted all Somalis to be kicked out of the United States. “I don’t want them in our country,” Trump announced. “Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country.”
At a December 10 event in Pennsylvania, Trump reprised his dehumanizing tirade, calling Somalia a “shithole” nation. “The Somalians should be out of here,” Trump said, describing their homeland as “filthy, dirty, disgusting, [and] ridden with crime.”
It is clear what Trump wants, but all migrants in the United States have due process rights under federal law. Specifically, Somali migrants have the right to appear before an immigration judge and seek asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, political views, or another protected category. This is a particular risk in Somalia, where al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.
The Trump administration, however, appears to be manipulating the judicial process to dramatically reduce the chance that Somali immigrants are granted asylum.
Matthew Happock is an immigration lawyer based in Kansas City. He currently represents eight Somali migrants in immigration court. On February 4, Happock said that all his cases had been reassigned to a new immigration judge. While the cases will still be heard in Kansas City, this new judge will preside via video conference from Louisiana. According to Happock, other immigration lawyers representing Somalis have had their cases reassigned to the same judge on the same day.
The judge who will now be hearing these cases involving Somali migrants is Sherron Ashworth, Popular Information has learned. Ashworth is a former ICE prosecutor with a track record of quickly rejecting most asylum claims and accepting the Trump administration’s most specious legal arguments.
Unlike other court systems, immigration courts are run by the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR). Although it is normally handled as a bureaucratic matter, the DOJ and Attorney General Pam Bondi can reassign immigration cases.Who is Sherron Ashworth?
Ashworth was first appointed as an immigration judge in July 2020. She was named to the post as part of a cohort of 46 immigration judges by former Trump Attorney General William Barr. She was hired as part of a push by the first Trump administration to install immigration judges more skeptical of asylum claims. From 2009 to 2020, Ashworth worked as a prosecutor for ICE.
Ashworth has delivered. Between 2020 and 2025, Ashworth has rejected 85.3% of asylum claims. Nationally, the average rejection rate was 58.9%. In 2025, Ashworth denied asylum in more than 95% of cases.
Her work has not gone unnoticed. In January 2026, the DOJ promoted Ashworth to Acting Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, overseeing the cases for several Louisiana immigration courts. This is a critical position because there is a high concentration of immigration detention centers in the Louisiana area, making these courts a major hub of activity.
Ashworth and the case of Rümeysa Öztürk
Rümeysa Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national and Fulbright scholar, was a student at Tufts University when, on March 25, 2025, she was apprehended by six plainclothes ICE agents and handcuffed. Over the next 24 hours, she was transported over 1,300 miles to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile. That facility is overseen by the Oakdale Immigration Court, meaning Öztürk’s detention proceedings would be considered by Ashworth.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he had summarily revoked Öztürk’s visa because she was a “lunatic.” Öztürk’s lawyers say she was never notified that her visa was revoked.
Lawyers representing Öztürk sought her release on bond. But Ashworth rejected that request, finding that Öztürk was “both a flight risk and a danger to the community.” Ashworth’s decision was based entirely on a Department of State memorandum, which only cited Öztürk’s co-authorship of a 2024 student op-ed critical of Tufts’ stance on Israel and Palestine.
A March State Department memo, later reported in the Washington Post, “determined that the Trump administration had not produced any evidence showing that she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization.” Further, according to the memo, “Rubio did not have sufficient grounds for revoking Öztürk’s visa.”
In May, after being detained for six weeks, Ashworth’s decision was effectively overturned by a federal district court judge. District Judge William Sessions said there were “very substantial” and “very significant” claims that Öztürk’s First Amendment rights were violated. “Her continued detention cannot stand,” Sessions said. “There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the op-ed. I mean, that literally is the case.”More Somalis may end up in immigration court after March
On January 13, the Trump administration announced that it was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somali nationals. TPS is a humanitarian measure used to protect migrants who would not be safe if they returned to their home country. It has been afforded to Somali nationals since 1991, but will expire on March 17.
“Allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. “We are putting Americans first.”
TPS currently benefits about 2,400 Somalis, according to ABC News. Once TPS expires in March, this group could be subject to deportation. Somalis will still be able to argue for asylum on a case-by-case basis in light of the ongoing violence in their home country. It is not known how many Somalis will seek asylum after TPS expires, or whether those cases will also be diverted to Ashworth.
In his derogatory comments, Trump has not distinguished between undocumented Somali migrants and other Somalis living in the U.S. According to U.S. Census data, about 80% of the foreign-born Somali population — 93,000 of 115,000 — are naturalized U.S. citizens.
More On Epstein Files
New York financier and department store heir Andrew Farkas, left, relaxes with Jeffrey Epstein (Photo released by U.S. Justice Department).
New York Times, Billionaire Called Epstein a ‘Blessing’ as They Made Deals, Debra Kamin, Feb. 9, 2026. Andrew Farkas has repeatedly played down ties to Jeffrey Epstein. But they swapped business favors in the Virgin Islands, and in nearly 2,000 emails, the two expressed admiration for each other.
The billionaire exchanged nearly 2,000 emails with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein over more than a decade, revealing deeply personal thoughts about life, loneliness and growing old.
He kept their relationship from his investors, apparently confident that all the links between Mr. Epstein and himself, including the business they were partners in and the trips he had made to visit Mr. Epstein in jail, would never be disclosed.
But the release of three million additional pages of the Epstein files on Jan. 30 has made it clear that the billionaire, the New York real estate mogul Andrew Farkas, had a profound friendship with Mr. Epstein, whom he called “one of the blessings” in his life and “one of the bravest men I’ve ever known.”
Their relationship played out in the trading of deep confidences, swapped introductions to powerful people and visits to Mr. Epstein’s island, the documents show, and their business partnership was a mutually beneficial real estate deal that helped Mr. Epstein save millions of dollars in taxes.
In an emailed statement on Friday, Mr. Farkas issued no denials about the nature of the two men's connection.
“I deeply regret ever associating with Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. But he disputed that he had kept the marina partnership a secret, saying that he was under no obligation to disclose it.
Over the weekend, Mr. Farkas sent over a second statement noting that his 15 years of exchanges with Mr. Epstein could “be mischaracterized” if they were “taken out of context or without understanding my broader communication style.” He added, “At no time have I conducted myself inappropriately.”
Mr. Farkas has not been charged with any crime or accused of any impropriety.
The emails between the two men, peppered with crude misogyny and casually dropped names of power players, show that Mr. Epstein’s and Mr. Farkas’s business ties were the byproduct of friendship. Seeming eager to keep Mr. Epstein in his good graces, Mr. Farkas often appeared willing to cut him in on deals. Mr. Epstein, in turn, seemed happy to be Mr. Farkas’s connector to political figures, influential bankers and others.
Mr. Farkas, 65, the scion of a family that built the department store chain Alexander’s, is the founder of Island Capital, a New York-based merchant bank, whose real estate acquisitions include the $373 million Sheraton Times Square. He is also a generous donor to Harvard University, his alma mater, where he serves as chairman of a social club called the Hasty Pudding Institute and endowed a building, Farkas Hall, in honor of his father.
In 2005, Mr. Farkas, an avid boater with a taste for massive, custom-made yachts, was looking to expand into the luxury marina business. He launched a new company, Island Global Yachting, on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Mr. Epstein had owned a private island since 1998.
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center on March 30, 2020.
WOSU Public Media (89.7 NPR News), Ohio State OB-GYN received payments from Jeffrey Epstein's firm, documents show, George Shillcock, Feb. 9, 2026. The latest batch of Epstein files released by the U.S. Department of Justice showed an Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center OB-GYN receiving payments from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's firm in the early 2000s.
Multiple documents, including FedEx receipts, mention Dr. Mark Landon, the chair of OSU's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In an email between Epstein and an attorney he worked with, Darren Indyke, Epstein wrote that they were paying Landon $75,000 a year. The email didn't mention what they were paying Landon for.
Indyke wrote to Epstein in 2006 and said "Are we still paying Mark Landon?... Eric was dealing with this, so I am not sure what was decided when the previous payment was made. Landon's agreement requires quarterly payments of $30k to be made to Landon on the 15th of January, April, July and October. The previous payment made to Landon was for $25,000 and not $30,000. The contract is terminable at will on 15 days' prior notice. Is NYSG to make payment to Landon by January 15th and if so for $25K or $30K? Please advise."
"75 per year," Epstein responded.
The FedEx receipts date back to 2001, but don't indicate what was being sent in the packages.
In a statement sent to WOSU, Landon denies providing any care to Epstein or his victims.
"I was a paid consultant for the New York Strategy Group regarding potential biotech investments from 2001 to 2005. I had no knowledge of any criminal activities; I find them reprehensible and I feel terrible for Epstein’s victims," Landon said.
The New York Strategy Group was Epstein's money management firm. Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell while awaiting trial for allegedly sex trafficking underage girls.
For years, Epstein worked for Central Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who the medical center is named for. Epstein allegedly stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the billionaire.
At the time, he was paying Landon, Epstein owned land in New Albany which was sold to him by Wexner.
Wexner is set to testify before Congress this month about his close relationship with Epstein.
More On U.S. Politics, Governance, Elections
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Be Like Bad Bunny, William Kristol, right, Feb. 9, 2026. The big sports weekend was a bit of a letdown. Did anyone really watch Super Bowl LX to the end? And when you turned on Winter Olympics XXV, more often than not what you saw was . . . curling!?! Why is curling an Olympic sport?
It’s true that curling was part of the first-ever Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, in 1924. On the other hand, it was promptly—and, if I might add, understandably—dropped, and only reappeared in the 1998 games three quarters of a century later. (No offense to curlers everywhere, but maybe it’s time for another curling Olympic time out?)
Anyway, last weekend’s sports may not have been super thrilling, but the culture war aspects were entertaining. Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language halftime show led Donald Trump to denounce him. And when some of the American Olympians said a few words distinguishing their love of their country from support for the Trump administration, MAGA-types attacked them (more on this below). Samuel Johnson, call your office: Patriotism has become the first refuge of scoundrels.
Speaking of scoundrels, I’ll note that back here in Washington, D.C., Congress doesn’t seem close to a deal on the 2026 funding legislation for the Department of Homeland Security.
Which is good news. Senate Democrats are actually pretty well positioned for the fight this week. A couple weeks ago, they were able to prevail on separating out the $64 billion DHS appropriations bill from the rest of a large 2026 funding package. They should now take the next step and make clear that they have no problem with funding the non-problematic parts of DHS—the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration, and so on. They should propose separating those out and funding them now. Such legislation could be passed before Friday, when the continuing resolution expires. And if Republicans balk, shutting down the respectable parts of DHS would be on them.
That would leave only the proposed $10 billion of 2026 funding for ICE and $6 billion for the Border Patrol unappropriated.
Good. There’s no reason to appropriate any of it. The less new funding that goes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, the better.
The Democrats, being Democrats, seem unwilling or unable to articulate this simple and obvious position. They’re against the mass deportation of immigrants without due process. They’re against the mass incarceration of those seized on our streets without trial. They’re against the mass intimidation of Americans who disagree with the Trump administration. They’re against the administration’s interference with the 2026 elections. And they’re right to be against all these things. Congress can reduce the ability of ICE and the Border Patrol to do these things. The simplest and most effective way to do so is to reduce these organizations’ funding—or at least to reduce the increase in their funding—as much as possible.
Unfortunately, ICE and the Border Patrol have plenty of money stashed aside already. Last year’s reconciliation bill allocated ICE $75 billion and Customs and Border Protection $65 billion to be spent through 2029. Clawing back as much of that money as possible should be a priority for September 30, when the next appropriations fights happen, and especially for the next Congress, in which Democrats are likely to control the House and maybe the Senate. But for now the best Congress can do is deny Trump’s paramilitary forces an additional $16 billion. This would at least put a dent in their already built-in growth.
Democrats have demanded a host of new restrictions on immigration enforcement operations. Many of these are desirable. But it will be hard to enforce these restrictions on an administration that’s shown a remarkable willingness to ignore inconvenient laws. More important, none of the restrictions is nearly as important as simply depriving ICE and the Border Patrol of funds. The money matters most. It will be much harder for the Trump administration to spend money it doesn’t have than to evade restrictions it doesn’t like.
The people of Minneapolis have been courageously confronting the Trump administration’s bullies in the streets. The least Democratic elected officials could do is confront the administration seriously in Congress. That means doing what they can to starve the Trumpist authoritarian beast.
This won’t be easy. But my advice to Democrats would start with this: Politics in the age of Trump isn’t like curling. Don’t spend all your time sweeping and maneuvering. Speak out and fight. Be like Bad Bunny.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick Hits
FAILED-STATE COPS: After federal officers killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the Twin Cities last month, federal law enforcement prevented local authorities from investigating the matter—but insisted that they would conduct a full investigation themselves. This was a ludicrous claim to make while the entire administration was already calling Pretti and Good terrorists who’d gotten what was coming to them, but they made it nevertheless.
Now it’s becoming clear just how obscenely insufficient those investigations were. The New York Times reports that, as FBI agents were preparing to do routine forensic analysis of the scene of Good’s killing, they received orders from political leadership to stop:
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation—by using a warrant obtained on that basis—would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
Over the next few days, top Department of Justice officials presented alternative approaches. First, they suggested prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new search warrant for the vehicle, predicated on a criminal investigation into whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, had been assaulted by her. Later, they urged the prosecutors to instead investigate Ms. Good’s partner, who had been with Ms. Good on the morning of the shooting, confronting immigration agents in their Minneapolis neighborhood.
Law enforcement refusing to investigate a crime scene because it would prove the president is lying about it is the sort of thing that tends to happen in failed and failing states. Time will tell how well that ends up describing us.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 8, 2026 [Trump's McCarthy Moments?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 9, 2026. On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) stood up in front of the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, at a gathering to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
The senator waved a piece of paper and later recalled telling the audience: “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” He said he didn’t have time to share the names of all those individuals, but he assured the audience that the Democratic administration of President Harry S. Truman was refusing to investigate “traitors in the government.”
Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who was busy trying to hammer together the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Marshall Plan to provide aid to European countries rebuilding after World War II, later said McCarthy’s Wheeling speech was a good representation of the senator’s work. It was “the rambling, ill-prepared result of his slovenly, lazy, and undisciplined habits.”
McCarthy was an undistinguished junior senator running for reelection and needed an issue. With his dramatic statement, he found it in attacks on the postwar rules-based international order those like Acheson were trying to build. The staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune, whose editor hated the idea of using American resources to help foreign governments, trumpeted the story and threw its weight behind the idea that Democrats were trying to destroy the United States.
The next day, McCarthy pledged to share the names of “57 card-carrying Communists” in the State Department with Acheson, so long as the secretary would let Congress investigate the loyalty records of the people in his department. Then McCarthy telegraphed Truman, charging him with protecting communists in government. The Chicago Tribune put the accusations on the front page, and McCarthy’s office sent out copies of his missive. “Failure on your part will label the Democratic party as being the bedfellow of international Communism,” McCarthy wrote.
McCarthy’s critics pointed out that he never produced any evidence of his wild claims, but their outrage gained far less attention than the claims themselves. He yelled, he made crazy accusations, he leaked fragments of truth that misrepresented reality, he hectored and badgered. He perfected the art of grabbing headlines and then staying ahead of the fact-checkers. By the time reporters called out his lies, they were already old news, and the fact checking got buried deep in the papers. The front page would have McCarthy’s newest accusation.
The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, when communist North Korea, backed by the Soviet Union and Communist China, invaded South Korea, stoked anticommunism, and McCarthy’s warning that there was a secret plot among Democrats to make America communist gained traction. He spoke widely across the country that summer, and in the midterm elections in fall 1950, every candidate he endorsed won. Using his lies to gain power, McCarthy rampaged across the next years, ruining lives through lies and innuendo.
McCarthy’s star fell abruptly in May 1954, when Americans watched him lie and berate witnesses in televised hearings. But in that same month, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, opened up a different avenue for far-right extremists to argue that Democrats were undermining American society by trying to usher in communism. Reaching back to the racist tropes of Reconstruction, they claimed that federal protection of Black equality before the law was socialism because enforcing civil rights required government personnel who could be paid only through taxes. Those calling for equality before the law were, in this formulation, redistributing money from taxes levied on hardworking white taxpayers to undeserving Black people.
The idea that a secret group was undermining America to make it socialist continued into the 1980s, when films like Red Dawn—in 1984 the bloodiest movie ever made—told the story of a group of everyday Americans fighting communists who were taking over their town with the collaboration of the government. In the film, the Wolverines, an embattled group of high school football players in Colorado, fight off a communist invasion of Soviets, Cubans, and Nicaraguans. The mayor and his son cooperate with the communists, making the heroic Wolverines the underdogs fighting both world communism and their own government.
The idea that everyday Americans had to fight their government to protect the nation so inspired a group of young men that in 2003, when leaders in the George W. Bush administration decided to search for Saddam Hussein, they named the effort Operation Red Dawn. The soldiers began by looking in two sites they dubbed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2.
With the U.S. economy so obviously weighted toward the wealthy in the past decades, garnering power by warning that Democrats are trying to usher in socialism has been a hard sell. But that idea has evolved among far-right thinkers to underpin another conspiracy theory that fits snugly in the space previously occupied by the idea that Black and Brown Americans and their allies are destroying the country through socialism.
The Great Replacement theory says that elites—often a code word for Jews—are deliberately replacing white European populations with nonwhite immigrants using mass migration and white birth rates that are lower than those of migrants. Those indebted peoples will, the theory goes, keep the elites in power in exchange for social welfare programs.
Like the conspiracy theory about socialism, the Great Replacement theory has roots in the nation’s past. In 1916, lawyer Madison Grant wrote The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History. Grant’s book drew from similar European works to argue that the “Nordic race,” which had settled England, Scotland, and the Netherlands, was superior to other races and accounted for the best of human civilization. In the U.S., he claimed, that race was being overwhelmed by immigrants from “inferior” white races who were bringing poverty, crime, and corruption. To strengthen the Nordic race, Grant advocated, on the one hand, for an end to immigration and for “selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit” through sterilization, and on the other hand, for “[e]fforts to increase the birth rate of the genius producing classes.”
Grant’s ideas were instrumental in justifying state eugenics laws as well as the 1924 Immigration Act establishing quotas for immigration from different countries. But his ideas fell out of favor in the 1930s, especially after Germany’s Adolf Hitler quoted often from Grant’s book in his speeches and wrote to Grant, describing the book as “my bible.”
A 1973 French dystopian novel anticipated the modern Great Replacement theory by showing immigrants from third-world countries destroying European society, but observers tend to date the emergence of this theory from the 2011 publication of Le Grand Remplacement, or The Great Replacement, by Renaud Camus, a French writer who claims that Muslims in France are destroying French culture and civilization. The theory has become influential among the far right in Europe and Canada. But it moves in a straight line from the Republican insistence that Black voters and their allies would destroy the U.S. with socialism.
Trump nodded to the Great Replacement theory in his 2016 run for the presidency, saying when he announced his candidacy in 2015 that Mexico was “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
On August 11, 2017, the influence of the Great Replacement theory on Americans burst into public awareness when racists, antisemites, white nationalists, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, and other alt-right groups met in Charlottesville, Virginia, to “Unite the Right.” They chanted “you will not replace us,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “blood and soil.” In addition to that Nazi slogan, they gave Nazi salutes and carried Nazi insignia.
Rather than denouncing them, President Trump refused to condemn them, telling a reporter that there were “very fine people, on both sides.” That statement marked Trump’s open embrace of the far right that backed the Great Replacement theory, snaking it into public discourse through lies like the claims that former president Joe Biden had created “open borders” and that countries were sending “migrant criminals” to the U.S., and by repeating terms like “illegal monster,” “killers,” “gang members,” “poisoning our country,” “taking your jobs,” and a dead giveaway: “the largest invasion in the history of our country.”
At the urging of then-candidate Trump in January 2024, Republicans refused to pass a bipartisan immigration reform measure hammered out by Senate negotiators over months. The bill appropriated $20.3 billion for border security, increased the number of immigration judges to end case backlogs, sped up asylum processes, and closed the border during high-traffic periods. It did not include a path to citizenship for those brought to the U.S. as children, the so-called Dreamers, making the measure skew toward Republican demands rather than Democratic priorities.
Nonetheless, Trump urged his supporters to kill it, and they did, teeing up a campaign in which he and his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, emulated Senator Joe McCarthy as they hammered on immigration fears, lying about open borders and migrant crime, claiming that a Venezuelan gang had taken over and was terrorizing Aurora, Colorado, and insisting—falsely—that Haitian immigrants were eating white neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio.
While many Trump voters appeared to cling to the belief that a Trump administration would deport only “criminal” immigrants, which they thought meant those who had committed violent crimes, Trump’s team appeared to embrace the Great Replacement theory that defined all non-white Americans as a threat to the nation. Now, along with Vice President J.D. Vance, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and others, they are making the idea of purging Brown and Black people from the United States central to federal policy both at home and abroad.
In September, Trump told European nations at the United Nations General Assembly that “the unmitigated immigration disaster” is “destroying your heritage.” “If you don’t stop people that you’ve never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail,” Trump told them. “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. I can tell you, I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” he said.
McCarthy’s supporters in the 1950s claimed that his lies were necessary for keeping Republicans in power: the ends justified the means. Neither journalists nor politicians could figure out how to counter McCarthy’s tactics. It was the American people who finally destroyed his career, turning against him when they realized he was hurting decent people and lying to them to gain power.
Suddenly reporters ignored him, the Senate “condemned” him, and he died only two and a half years later, likely from complications relating to alcoholism. Wisconsin voters elected Democrat William Proxmire to replace him. Proxmire told voters that McCarthy was “a disgrace to Wisconsin, to the Senate, and to America.”
Global News
New York Times, Trump’s Oil Grab in Venezuela Shatters an American Taboo, Michael Crowley, Feb. 9, 2026 (print ed.). U.S. presidents have long been accused of plotting to control foreign oil. But President Trump has asserted a U.S. right to take it.
President George W. Bush said he was invading Iraq to keep America safe. But critics saw a hidden motive: oil.
“No blood for oil!” became a global rallying cry, and Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, accused Mr. Bush of seeking “to control the Middle East oil.”
The Bush administration rejected the charge and was determined to refute it. After invading and occupying Iraq in March 2003, Bush officials were careful to leave Iraqis in control of their oil industry, and they never sought special treatment for American firms.
As foreign investors moved in, the biggest winners by far were not U.S. companies but Chinese ones.
American presidents have long been accused of plotting to control foreign oil. But while the United States has built relationships and even intervened abroad for oil, it has never simply seized control of another country’s oil reserves.
“I can’t think of a military operation that the U.S. engaged in to actually take oil from anybody,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security.
Until now.
Immediately after U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January, President Trump announced plans to take control of the country’s oil industry.
Since then, Mr. Trump has forced Venezuela’s government to begin “turning over” as many as 50 million barrels for sale by the United States and is pressuring American firms to start drilling in the country, which sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
“The people of the United States are going to be big beneficiaries,” Mr. Trump said at the White House last month. (Mr. Trump says that some oil revenue will be returned to Venezuela, but not how much.)
Venezuela’s parliament passed legislation in late January opening the country’s mostly state-run oil sector to more foreign investment, a decision critics note was made as U.S. warships floated near Venezuela’s coast.
“You are taking their oil at gunpoint,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, told Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a hearing in late January. Mr. Trump is selling “stolen oil,” Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, has charged.
New York Times, Venezuela Frees Key Opposition Figures, Then Rearrests One, Genevieve Glatsky, Updated Feb. 9, 2026. Hours after at least 35 political prisoners were released, one of the most prominent was apparently back in custody, raising doubts about the government’s direction and control.
Venezuela on Sunday freed a group of prominent opposition leaders, according to statements from the country’s press union, the political opposition party and relatives of the freed prisoners. But one of the most prominent among them, Juan Pablo Guanipa, was apparently taken back into custody hours later, with his whereabouts unknown early Monday.
The confusion cast dark clouds over tentative hopes that Venezuela’s interim government might move away from the most repressive practices of its deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, and also suggests divisions within the security forces.
Ramón Guanipa Linares, Mr. Guanipa’s son, wrote on social media that his father had been “kidnapped” by a group of about 10 armed, unidentified men. The de facto opposition leader, María Corina Machado, wrote in a separate post, that “heavily armed men, dressed in civilian clothes, arrived in four vehicles and violently took him away.”
The Venezuelan Public Ministry, which is under the direction of the attorney general’s office, said shortly afterward in a statement that it had asked a court to revoke Mr. Guanipa’s release because of his “noncompliance” with court-imposed conditions. It did not say what those conditions were, but added that the government had asked for Mr. Guanipa to be put under house arrest “to safeguard the criminal proceedings.”
His whereabouts was unclear, and the family did not comment on the government’s statement. Hours earlier, it had welcomed on social media Mr. Guanipa’s release from the notorious El Helicoide prison. “Our entire family will soon be able to embrace each other again,” his son wrote.
Mr. Guanipa, a former congressman from a centrist opposition party, became governor of Venezuela’s oil rich Zulia state in 2017. But Mr. Maduro’s government dismissed him from office for refusing to swear allegiance to a legislative body that the president had created.
The authorities had released at least 35 political prisoners on Sunday, according to the rights group Foro Penal, which last week said that more than 650 were detained.
The government made no official statement about the releases, but Venezuela’s de facto leader, Delcy Rodríguez, left, has said in recent days that she would close El Helicoide, which rights groups have described as a torture center. She has also announced plans for a mass amnesty law.
Since the United States captured Mr. Maduro last month, his former vice president, Ms. Rodríguez, has moved quickly to realign Venezuela with Washington.
New York Times, Vietnam’s Leader Has New Power, and He’s in a Hurry, Damien Cave and Tung Ngo, Feb. 9, 2026. To Lam is a former security chief who carved his way to prominence and relishes the good life. He has promised to make Communist Vietnam rich and influential.
To Lam was already Vietnam’s top leader when last month’s Communist Party congress began. But as it ended on Jan. 23 with him amassing more power, he seemed quicker to smile, to shake hands with comrades in Hanoi’s red-draped convention hall, and in a rush to do more.
At a news conference after the new Politburo list confirmed that he would serve dual roles as head of party and president — a break from Vietnam’s power-sharing norm — he was the first of several officials to enter the room and the first to sit down. His dark wood chair in the center was much larger than the others.
“This congress convenes in a new context, requiring a new vision,” he told a group of mostly state-employed reporters. “This time,” he added, “what’s more important is action.”
Mr. Lam, 68, is now Vietnam’s most powerful leader in decades, consolidating control at a turning point for Asia, with Washington focused elsewhere and Beijing trying to escape a national malaise with dominance in exports and military hardware.
He is not quite like anything this one-party state has elevated before: a former security chief with a Ph.D.; a pro-business reformer; a divorced father of four; a globalist partial to fine wine and Kenny G. And he rose by unusual means: not through compromises among the ruling party’s top ranks and factions, but by insisting that he could make Vietnam a rich, developed country by 2045 — and cutting down rivals to build a bloc of loyalists who owe their fate to him.
New York Times, News Analysis: Jimmy Lai’s 20-Year Sentence Follows Beijing’s Playbook on Dissent, David Pierson, Feb. 9, 2026. The sentence for the media mogul, along with long prison terms for his editors, shows how Hong Kong enforces Xi Jinping’s red lines with a new severity.
For decades, Jimmy Lai, the media mogul, used his wealth and his newsroom in Hong Kong to criticize Beijing’s authoritarian excesses and give voice to those who hoped for democracy in China.
On Monday, as a court in Hong Kong sentenced him to 20 years in prison, the city made clear that defiance now carries the same price as it does across the border.
The landmark ruling completes a yearslong effort by Beijing to dismantle the influence of a self-proclaimed “troublemaker” whom it blamed for masterminding Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests nearly seven years ago. Critics say Beijing declared Mr. Lai guilty before he could ever receive a fair trial.
The decision reached far beyond one man’s fate. Along with Mr. Lai, six of his former employees at the shuttered Apple Daily newspaper were sentenced to terms of up to 10 years, establishing a grim new benchmark for the city’s once freewheeling media. While the government maintains that these cases are about national security, the scale of the penalties underscores the narrowing window for independent journalism in what was once Asia’s media hub.
By applying the same heavy penalties usually reserved for dissidents on the mainland to a local media tycoon and his editors, Beijing has also accelerated the erosion of a political arrangement that was supposed to preserve Hong Kong’s Western-style liberties, critics say.
“The sentences handed down to Lai and his colleagues are very harsh, even by mainland standards,” said Elaine Pearson, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch. Ms. Pearson noted that only one Chinese dissident has received a longer prison term than Mr. Lai: Ilham Tohti, an economics professor who advocated for the Uyghur minority in China’s far western Xinjiang region and was sentenced to life in prison in 2014.
Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, has waged a far-reaching crackdown on any vestiges of dissent in his country. He has targeted not only human rights activists but also business tycoons, intellectuals and members of the party elite, some of whom have been sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison.
While Hong Kong has a separate legal system from the mainland, Mr. Lai’s prosecution has highlighted how the lines tend to blur when it comes to the city’s national security laws, Ms. Pearson added.
The sentence is effectively a life term for Mr. Lai, who is 78 years old and in deteriorating health, his family said. “This is a heartbreakingly cruel sentence,” his daughter, Claire Lai, said in a statement. “If this sentence is carried out, he will die a martyr behind bars.”
New York Times, Apple Daily Sentences Show a New Era of Media Peril in Hong Kong, David Pierson, Feb. 9, 2026. Two editors and an opinion writer from Jimmy Lai’s now-shuttered newspaper were each sentenced to 10 years in prison, a significant escalation in media prosecution in the once freewheeling city.
The Hong Kong court that sentenced the pro-democracy media mogul, Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison on Monday also issued heavy sentences to six former employees of his now-shuttered newspaper, setting a new standard for the city’s limits on press freedom.
The newspaper, Apple Daily, was one of Hong Kong’s most independent and widely read news outlets for years until it was forced to shut in 2021 as part of a crackdown on dissent. It was rambunctious, often sensational and proudly pro-democracy. Many Hong Kongers see it as a symbol of the civil liberties that have been lost as Beijing has tightened its grip over the city.
On Monday, the court handed down 10-year prison terms to the paper’s leading editorial voices: Editor-in-Chief Law Wai-kwong, Executive Editor Lam Man-chung, and an editorial writer, Fung Wai-kong.
Others received significant terms as well: Yeung Ching-kee, another editorial writer, was sentenced to seven years and three months; an associate publisher Chan Pui-man, seven years, and Cheung Kim-hung, a publisher, six years and nine months.
Daily Mail (UK), Chequers pub owned by mysterious Chinese tycoon where Cameron took Xi Jinping for fish and chips suddenly shuts down...TWO WEEKS after Mail uncovers spy claims, John Sturgis and Tom Hussey, Feb. 8, 2026. The strange episode of The Plough and the Chinese began ten years ago on October 23, 2015, when PM David Cameron popped to his local with a VIP guest: China's President Xi Jinping.
The question of whether the Chinese secret service may be mounting a vast spying operation within the United Kingdom has become a particularly vexed one lately - prompting fraught debate in diplomatic circles around the world.
With plans for the construction of a controversial Chinese super-embassy in the heart of London now approved, critics are warning that the vast complex will become a Beijing intelligence hub capable of spying on the whole of Europe.
Now the Daily Mail can reveal details of a very strange sideshow to all this -- involving the most powerful man in China, some fish and chips, dubious multi-million investment deals and a dramatic new twist.
The Plough pub in Cadsden in Buckinghamshire shot to brief global fame in 2015 when then-prime minister David Cameron popped in to treat his VIP guest, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, to some traditional fish and chips, as a break from their policy discussions at Chequers, the PM's official country house, around the corner.
The pub was then suddenly bought a year later for a vastly inflated price by a mysterious Chinese businessman with close links to the regime in Beijing.
This sparked the long-running local conspiracy theory that held that The Plough had been acquired as a base for the Chinese secret service from which to spy on the British prime minister and future guests.
When the Daily Mail first told the strange story of The Plough and the Chinese in October, it was with tongue firmly in cheek -- but events that quickly followed now beg the question: was there actually more to those local rumours than a phoney conspiracy theory?
Because it has now emerged that within days of our story's publication, the owners suddenly shut the doors of The Plough and ceased operating.The Plough at Cadsden in Southern Buckinghamshire has not one but two unusual claims to fame: it is the local boozer for Britain¿s prime ministers, and it has a mysterious Chinese owner.
More On U.S. Media, Entertainment, Culture, Sports
The Hartmann Report, Opinion: The NFL Is “Socialist” on Purpose, and It Exposes Republican Economic Stupidity, Thom Hartmann, right, Feb. 9, 2026. 
The NFL proves that rules, referees, and “redistribution” are the only way any game, including the American economy, actually works…
Last night’s NFL Super Bowl game was great. The guys wearing blue beat the guys wearing red, and Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga made MAGA snowflakes cry.
But the NFL can also teach Americans a huge lesson about economics, “socialism,” and the differences between Republican “free market” nuts and FDR’s re-regulation of the American economy that created the largest middle class in history and the first in the world to include more than half of a nation’s citizens.
Most Americans would be highly offended, for example, if the NFL took big bucks from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody like these monopolists to change the rules so whichever team gave the League the most money could have an extra three players on the field at all times.
But that’s pretty much exactly what Reagaonics and deregulation have brought us in our marketplaces; it’s the staggering difficulty that every small business in America faces today in the form of massive corporations like Walmart, Facebook, X, Google, and Amazon.
For capitalism to work in a way that doesn’t produce oligarchs and monopolies, it must be regulated. Capitalism, after all, is just a game that people play using money and mutually agreed-upon rules. Just like football.
The NFL heavily regulates football in the United States, at least the football played by its teams. Those regulations include how many players are on the field at any time, exactly what constitutes a down or a touchdown, and rules about how players may physically contact each other, and under what circumstances.
The NFL’s super-socialist regulations also decide which team gets first pick of new players: they decided that the worst-performing teams should have first choice of newly available players, giving every team an opportunity to rise up through the ranks in the following season.
It’s much like progressive income taxation and the estate tax, giving the little guy a chance while slightly restraining those already at the top. These regulations guarantee the safety and stability of the game itself, and also guarantee that fans of football have a consistent experience, because everybody understands and follows the rules.
That’s not meritocracy; it’s planned redistribution of future resources to maintain league balance. If American public policy worked this way, the millionaire opinion bots at billionaire-owned Fox “News” would spontaneously combust.
The league also pools its television and licensing revenue and divides it equally among all teams: No owner gets richer just because they’re in a bigger market. In a pure “free market,” the Cowboys and Giants would drown everyone else in cash. The NFL says, “Nope, everybody eats.” That’s redistribution by design.
And they impose a hard salary cap so rich owners can’t simply buy championships, and they require owners to spend what is effectively a minimum wage on players rather than hoarding profits. Teams that overspend are punished: that’s collective control of capital to prevent oligarchy, the exact thing conservatives scream about.
NFL teams are also required to spend a minimum percentage of shared revenue on their players. Owners can’t just hoard money; they must reinvest in labor. That’s closer to social democracy than laissez-faire capitalism.
The NFL figured out something America forgot after Reagan: markets only work when rules prevent the powerful from rigging the game.
In other words, the NFL is a regulated market with enforced rules that prevent monopolies, protect labor, and preserve competition. And because of that, small-market teams can win, dynasties don’t last forever, and fans get a fair game.
If the American economy were run more like the NFL, we’d have fewer oligarchs, more competition, and a much healthier middle class.
But imagine if Milton Friedman, Robert Bork, or the other idiots like them who first advised the Reagan administration and now have guided Republicans ever since were to have taken over the NFL.
The teams with the wealthiest owners would always get the best players, and thus would win every game. They might even decide that the team that gave the NFL the most money could have an extra player or three on the field at various times.
They’d assure us that the teams that didn’t perform as well just have to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Perhaps their problem is just that their players are “lazy,” these people would tell us, and the solution is to cut their salaries and reduce the amount of protective equipment they can wear so that they will have a “incentive” to play harder and increase their performance.
Then the richest teams would begin buying the poorer teams, until all the teams are owned by three or four billionaires. Sounds like every industry in today’s America. But conservatives would try to convince you it would create a football paradise, right?
Of course it wouldn’t be a paradise: Fans would stop watching, kids would stop dreaming of playing, and the game itself would collapse under the weight of rigging and unfairness. Not to mention that if the socialist NFL ever actually tried some crazy “free market” stupidity like that, Congress would be holding hearings within a week and the public outrage would be deafening.
But when the same thing happens in our economy, we’re told by Republicans that it’s just “the free market.” We’re told that “monopolies are natural,” that “billionaires are geniuses,” and that working people who can’t get ahead in a rigged system somehow “deserve their fate.”
Politicus USA, News and Commentary: "Melania" Is Officially A Box Office Bomb And Another Trump Failure, Jason Easley, right, Feb. 9, 2026. The box office for what looks like a bribe disguised as a documentary "Melania" withered and died on its second weekend as the film is cementing its box office bomb status.
Donald Trump has a pattern of cheating to make it look like he is winning when he is actually losing. From bogus right-wing polls to cooked investment numbers that are made up out of thin air, Trump has always been successful at creating the illusion of success instead of actually being successful.
Super Bowl weekend is one of the slowest movie-going weekends of the year. The film industry punts on Super Bowl weekend and focuses on using the Super Bowl to advertise summer blockbusters and future releases.
None of this stopped Jeff Bezos from pushing Melania into hundreds more theaters as the movie spent the weekend showing on 2000 screens nationwide, and the result was a box office decline of 67%.
Politico reported:
“Melania,” from Amazon MGM, added 300 theaters in its second weekend but dropped steeply to $2.4 million in ticket sales, down 67% from its much-discussed debut. The rapid downturn means the Brett Ratner-directed documentary is likely heading toward flop territory given its high price tag. Amazon MGM paid $40 million for film rights, plus some $35 million to market it.
The North American total for “Melania” stands at $13.4 million. Amazon MGM has not released international figures, though they’re expected to be paltry.
Kevin Wilson, head of domestic distribution for the studio, said the movie’s box-office performance “is a critical first moment that validates our wholistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.”
That was a nice bit of goalpost moving by the head of distribution, as the point of releasing a movie in thousands of theaters wasn’t to get people to pay for tickets, but to build momentum so that Americans will watch the movie for free on Amazon Prime.
It is either the worst business strategy in history or a total lie. As Jeff Bezos just got done gutting The Washington Post, he has enough money throw $50 million or more down the drain and treat it with the nonchalance that someone who dropped a penny on the sidewalk might.
There are reports of bulk ticket buying, where tickets were sold but people didn’t show up. It is a similar tactic to how the best seller lists are rigged through bulk buying, especially on the right to land conservative books on the best seller list.
Allegations have been made that some members of the military have been forced to go see the movie, and there was the White House and Fox News endlessly pushing the movie to try to save face so that this dud would not look as embarrassing as it is.
The problem with doing a documentary about Melania Trump is that it is a documentary about Melania Trump, a person who manages to be empty, dull, and thoroughly unlikable all at the same time.
A documentary about a First Lady who refuses to live in the White House, or show up to do anything related to being First Lady, would be interesting if that person had any personality or a desire to be honest.
Melania Trump is just like her husband. She’s here for the money, and America is definitely not here to watch a movie about an absentee First Lady who manages to constantly say nothing in the most distasteful way possible.
Davenport Sports Network, On February 8, 1975 initially offering no explanation, Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell shuns the Basketball Hall of Fame, saying he will refuse induction, Staff Report, Feb. 8, 2026. In his first year of eligibility, the 11-time NBA Champion and 5-time NBA MVP is voted into the Hall today.
But he said: `“For my own personal reasons, which I don't want to discuss, I don't want to be a part of it," says Russell, then the Seattle Sonics coach. "I'm not going."
Speculation is that Russell's decision has racial undertones since there are no other African-American players from the NBA in the Hall. “If that's so, then he (Russell) is wrong," says Lee Williams, executive director of the Hall. "We have the original Rens in our honors court. They were elected in 1961 and consist of seven black players.
Also, Robert Douglas, owner and manager of the Rens, is in the Hall of Fame." Russell later confirmed the speculation stating, "I felt others before me should have that honor". He specifically wanted to see players like Chuck Cooper, the first Black player drafted into the NBA, recognized.
The decision was deeply rooted in his experience with racism and a desire to highlight the lack of diversity among early inductees.
After 44 years, on November 15, 2019, Russell quietly accepted his Hall of Fame ring during a private ceremony attended by his wife and friends, including Bill Walton, Ann Meyers, Elgin Baylor, Jamaal Wilkes, and Alonzo Mourning.
National Press Club (NPC), NPC Statement on the Sentencing of Journalist and Publisher Jimmy Lai, National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. released the following statement:
“Issuing a 20-year sentence to journalist and publisher Jimmy Lai today is a grave affront to press freedom and the fundamental rights that underpin open societies.
Mr. Lai is not being punished for committing a crime. He is being punished for publishing, for dissenting and for refusing to abandon the principles of a free press. Today’s action sends a chilling signal to journalists worldwide: Truth-telling can be met with imprisonment and accountability journalism carries extraordinary personal risk.
Mr. Lai, the 78-year-old founder of Apple Daily, was convicted under Hong Kong’s national security law in December following a trial conducted without a jury. His publishing activity and public commentary were central to the case. The 20-year sentence handed down Sunday evening equates to a life sentence for Mr. Lai.
Mr. Lai’s case stands as a stark example of how legal systems can be weaponized to silence independent journalism by punishing those who dare to report, publish and speak freely.
The National Press Club affirms unequivocally that journalism is not a crime. The work of informing the public, questioning power and defending democratic values must never be treated as a threat.
The international community must not look away. Governments, democratic institutions and press freedom advocates have a responsibility to speak out forcefully and consistently against the persecution of journalists and to demand the immediate release of Jimmy Lai.
What happens to Jimmy Lai matters not only to Hong Kong, but to journalists and citizens around the world who depend on a free and independent press to safeguard democracy.”
Feb. 8
Top Stories
The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: Republican Congressman Threatens 'Nuclear Option' to Expose Epstein Conspirator Names as Trump DOJ Fails to Search Key Epstein Property, Aaron Parnas, Feb. 8, 2026. Epstein survivors have released a Super Bowl ad that every American needs to see. Please share it everywhere.
New York Times, News Analysis: Reaction to Trump’s Racist Post Shows He Is Not Always Immune to Politics, Erica L. Green, Feb. 8, 2026 (print ed.). With the midterm elections nearing, President Trump has found himself in the uncomfortable position of backtracking, even if only by degrees, at key moments.
An 86-page DOJ memo detailing possible Epstein co-conspirators vanished after reporters asked questions. But we saved a copy.the extraordinary assertion that vast numbers of noncitizens throughout the country can be arrested and held in detention centers without the right to release until they are deported.More On U.S. Justice, Immigration, Crime, Law, Civil Rights
Londoño and Michael S. Schmidt, Feb. 8, 2026 (print ed.). Some offices are so decimated that the Justice Department has sent in military lawyers. More recently, officials asked for volunteers from other offices who can quickly deploy to places in desperate need.More On Epstein Files, Reactions
Noam Chomsky's Wife Responds to Epstein Controversy"Aaron Maté, Feb 8, 2026. "Noam’s overly trusting nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts... we express our unrestricted solidarity with the victims," Valéria Chomsky writes.U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
Feb. 8, 2026. 2026 Mid-Term Election, Economics, Elections, Epstein, Immigration.
New York Times, For $1 Million, Donors to U.S.A. Birthday Group Offered Access to Trump, Kenneth P. Vogel, Lisa Friedman and David A. Fahrenthold, Feb. 8, 2026. A new organization blessed by the president is raising money for events and projects that will put a Trumpian spin on the nation’s semiquincentennial.
President Trump’s allies are offering access to him and other perks to donors who give at least $1 million to a new group supporting flashy initiatives he is planning around the nation’s 250th birthday, according to documents and interviews.
The group, Freedom 250, is threatening to overshadow years of plans meant to reach the broadest cross section of Americans for semiquincentennial celebrations. They are now taking on a Trumpian flare, replete with marble and machismo.
But Freedom 250 has also emerged as another vehicle, akin to the White House ballroom project, through which people and companies with interests before the Trump administration can make tax-deductible donations to gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fund-raising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters.
When Mr. Trump announced the creation of Freedom 250 in a social media post in December, he promised that it would give the nation “the most spectacular birthday party you’ve ever seen.”
Several of Freedom 250’s planned events and monuments lack obvious connections to the Boston Tea Party, the signing of the Declaration of Independence or other seminal moments in the nation’s founding. Rather, they are tailored to Mr. Trump’s political agenda and his penchant for spectacle, personal branding and legacy. They include the construction of an arch overlooking Washington, an IndyCar race through the nation’s capital, a national prayer event and an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday.
Meredith O’Rourke, the president’s top fund-raiser, is amassing private donations for Freedom 250. Her team is circulating a solicitation, obtained by The New York Times, offering “bespoke packages” for donors.
While there are inconsistencies in the solicitation language, the detailed breakdowns of packages for donors indicate that those who give $1 million or more will get invitations to a “private Freedom 250 thank you reception” hosted by Mr. Trump, with a “historic photo opportunity.” Those who give $2.5 million or more also are being offered speaking roles at an event in Washington on July 4.
The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: Republican Congressman Threatens 'Nuclear Option' to Expose Epstein Conspirator Names as Trump DOJ Fails to Search Key Epstein Property, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 8, 2026. Epstein survivors have released a Super Bowl ad that every American needs to see. Please share it everywhere.
At the same time, Congressman Thomas Massie says he is prepared to invoke the “nuclear option” and expose the names of the men who worked with Jeffrey Epstein on the House floor. Tomorrow, Ghislaine Maxwell is expected to plead the Fifth in her deposition, and it has now been confirmed that the Trump DOJ failed to search a critical Epstein property where significant abuse occurred.
I have received many messages over the past few days about two things. First, my safety. Second, my exhaustion. On safety, I am okay. I am carefully reviewing and reporting on these files and have taken concrete steps to protect myself, even as this work leads into very dark territory. On exhaustion, yes, I am tired. But I am also energized and deeply committed to this reporting. I believe in this work, and I will continue.
Here’s the news:
Epstein survivors released this powerful PSA in advance of the Super Bowl demanding answers from the Justice Department. This is the Super Bowl ad every American should see. Spread it everywhere.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie called for Howard Lutnick’s resignation, claiming the Epstein files show Lutnick visited Epstein’s island and did business with him, and arguing he lied in a way worse than a British ambassador who was fired.
Massie warned he may use the “nuclear option” if Bondi refuses to unredact the names of Epstein’s clients.
Valeria Chomsky apologized for her and Noam Chomsky’s “grave mistake” in maintaining ties with Jeffrey Epstein, saying they were deceived, careless in researching his background, and later regretted engaging with someone who hid extensive criminal abuse while exploiting Chomsky’s trust and reputation.
Newly released Epstein files reveal extensive abuse of underage girls at his vast Zorro ranch in New Mexico, alongside evidence that the property was never federally searched, investigations were stalled, powerful visitors were present, and key questions about what happened there remain unanswered.
Jeffrey Epstein privately promoted a plan to impregnate women at his New Mexico ranch to spread his DNA, reflecting his fascination with transhumanism and eugenics, while leveraging lies, wealth claims, and elite connections to embed himself in scientific and political circles despite being charged with sex trafficking.
The ranch was later split into parcels with one eyed for a wildlife refuge or memorial and another leasable, while the rest of Epstein’s New Mexico property was sold in 2023 to San Rafael Ranch LLC after being listed to fund estate obligations, and was followed by a $4.95 million Deutsche Bank pledge to support anti-human-trafficking efforts in the state.
UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has resigned after facing pressure over his role in appointing Epstein friend Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the U.S.
Mona Juul resigned as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan and Iraq after an investigation into her ties to Jeffrey Epstein, with Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide citing a serious lapse in judgment amid revelations including Epstein’s reported $10 million bequest to Juul’s children.
There are new, significant questions over the night Epstein died in jail. Newly released documents show a press release that, either contains a significant typo, or was drafted one day before Epstein died on August 9, 2019. The draft release did not contain the word “suicide,” while the final release issued by the Justice Department did contain that word. There are a lot of questions that remain, and I broke them all down here:
In 2017, Jeffrey Epstein claimed that people at a dinner with Donald Trump were worried about signs of dementia, citing heavy makeup and saying Trump did not recognize old friends. Image
Newly released Justice Department files include videos allegedly seized from Jeffrey Epstein’s computer showing young women and girls performing semi-clothed “catwalk” auditions around the world, reinforcing allegations that he posed as a modeling or Victoria’s Secret talent scout to lure victims into a global sex-trafficking operation.
Dalai Lama said he never met or interacted with Jeffrey Epstein, rejecting attempts to link him to the Epstein files released by the Justice Department, which reference his work but include no accusations of wrongdoing.
Congress will begin reviewing more than 3 million unredacted Justice Department documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, with lawmakers barred from bringing devices but allowed to take notes, as scrutiny grows over redactions, unverified claims involving Donald Trump, and forthcoming closed-door testimony from Ghislaine Maxwell.
Ghislaine Maxwell is set to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer all questions related to Epstein, Trump, and more during tomorrow’s deposition. Rep. Ro Khanna has sent the following letter to Oversight Committee Chair James Comer in response:
Donald Trump spent the morning targeting Hunter Hess, a Team USA Olympian, after Hess called out what ICE is doing in America:
New York Times, News Analysis: Reaction to Trump’s Racist Post Shows He Is Not Always Immune to Politics, Erica L. Green, Feb. 8, 2026 (print ed.). With the midterm elections nearing, President Trump has found himself in the uncomfortable position of backtracking, even if only by degrees, at key moments.
President Trump has seemed immune to the usual rules of politics.
The man who once boasted that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing support from voters regularly shatters political and legal norms at home and abroad, with few obvious consequences.
But every once in a while, Mr. Trump runs smack into whatever boundary remains and is forced to pull back, offering a glimpse into the country’s tolerance for his behavior.
The chaotic White House response to a racist video clip of the Obamas that Mr. Trump posted online was one moment where the administration realized that its usual reactions to criticism — laugh it off, double down, move on — would not work. And while Mr. Trump does not, as a rule, acknowledge wrongdoing — and did not in this case, either — he deleted the clip in the face of widespread outrage in what amounted to a remarkable climbdown.
“It is surprising, in itself, to ever see him take a step back, to do anything other than, in the moment, double down and triple down, so in that sense it is surprising; it feels significant,” said Jeff Shesol, a historian and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton who now serves as a partner at West Wing Writers, a speechwriting and strategy firm in Washington.
Mr. Trump still enjoys strong support from Republicans. The White House often points to a string of successes as evidence that for all the controversy over the president’s style and his tactics, his strategies are working. European allies are on track to spend more for their own defense, which Mr. Trump demanded, and he has intervened in a number of overseas conflicts, including winning the freedom of the 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas.Sign up for the Race/Related Newsletter Join a deep and provocative exploration of race, identity and society with New York Times journalists. Get it sent to your inbox.
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican Party and anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, Republicans will remain united together against the radical Democrats, who will destroy our country once again, if given the chance, with wide open borders, noncitizens voting in elections, and horrible economic policy.”
It’s undeniable that Mr. Trump often skates through controversies that would have sunk any other politician. He continues to lie about having won the 2020 election and even a criminal conviction didn’t keep him from winning the presidency for a second time. In recent weeks, his administration threatened to shut down a major infrastructure project if it didn’t have Mr. Trump’s name on it.
Still, with the midterm election in November, Mr. Trump has been forced to backtrack — even if only by degrees, and even if only temporarily — at key moments, including on Friday when the White House moved to contain a bipartisan backlash over the video clip portraying the Obamas as apes. In another case, after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents in Minnesota, Mr. Trump first justified the killing yet after widespread criticism he toned down some of his language about Mr. Pretti’s death.
On Friday, the White House at first dismissed the criticism as “fake outrage” over an internet meme. But it soon became clear that Mr. Trump was facing a rebuke from members of his own party, starting with Senator Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate and one of Mr. Trump’s close allies, who called the clip “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” From there, a chorus of criticism poured in from Republicans.
By midday, the White House had taken the post down and blamed an unknown “staffer” for the mishap. By the evening, Mr. Trump said he did not realize the clip of the Obamas had been spliced into the end of the video. Asked if he condemned the racist depiction of the Obamas, he said: “Of course I do.”
Meidas Touch Network, DOJ Deleted an Epstein Prosecution Memo About Possible Co-Conspirators. We Saved It, Ben Meiselas, right, Feb. 7-8, 2026. An 86-page DOJ memo detailing possible Epstein co-conspirators vanished after reporters asked questions. But we saved a copy.and MeidasTouch Network.
An 86-page Department of Justice prosecution memo tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation disappeared from the Epstein Files library without any explanation.Subscribed
The memo, titled “Investigation into Potential Co-Conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein,” had been publicly accessible as part of the massive trancheof Epstein-related documents recently released. Then, after reporters from the Miami Herald, including the renowned Julie K. Brown, began asking the DOJ specific questions about it, the document was suddenly gone.
But unfortunately for the Trump DOJ, we had already saved it.
And we’re making it available so the public can read it for themselves. You can download it in its entirety by clicking here: Investigation into Potential Co-Conspira...7.11MB ∙ PDF fileDownload
This is a formal prosecution document produced in December 2019 by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and sent to then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. It lays out, in granular detail, interviews conducted by federal and state investigators with victims, witnesses, and people associated with Epstein.
The memo includes statements from 24 women who say they were abused by Epstein as minors and 14 who say they were abused as adults, along with additional references to assistants and recruiters. In many cases, investigators confirmed key elements of the women’s accounts independently. The document also summarizes allegations made against a number of powerful men, based on tips, interviews, and investigative leads compiled over years. Much of the document is redacted.
The memo shows what investigators knew, what they looked at, and what they ultimately chose not to pursue. It provides a rare window into an investigation that spanned nearly two decades and three presidential administrations. It also stands in sharp contrast to repeated public statements from senior law enforcement officials claiming there was no credible evidence to pursue anyone else.
Read the document. Judge it for yourself. And ask the questions the DOJ still hasn’t answered.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 7, 2026 [Right Wing Court Expands Pre-Hearing Detention Of Immigration Suspects], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 8, 2026. Yesterday two right-wing circuit judges signed off on the Trump administration’s new mass detention policy: the extraordinary assertion that vast numbers of noncitizens throughout the country can be arrested and held in detention centers without the right to release until they are deported.
As Steve Vladeck explained in December in One First, this new policy dramatically expanded the number of immigrants suddenly subject to arrest and long-term detention. U.S. judges overwhelmingly rejected the new policy; Vladeck quoted Politico’s Kyle Cheney, who reported that in more than 700 cases, at least 225 judges appointed by all modern presidents—including 23 appointed by Trump—have ruled that the new policy likely violates both the law and the right to due process.
But the administration handpicked a right-wing circuit to rule on the policy, and last night, as Vladeck explained today in One First, Judge Edith Jones and Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit okayed the Trump administration’s new rule denying detained immigrants the right to release on bond. That includes, as Vladeck wrote, “millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety.” It is likely the plaintiffs will appeal the decision.
This policy has dramatically increased detention of immigrants. Before it, the U.S. held about 40,000 people on any given day. Now, according to Laura Strickler and Julia Ainsley of NBC News, the United States is currently holding more than 70,000 immigrants in 224 facilities across the nation, 104 more facilities than it had before Trump took office. Those detainees include children.
Private prison companies under contract with the U.S. government operate these detention facilities, including the $1.2 billion Camp East Montana located at Fort Bliss Army base in Texas, where a medical examiner recently ruled the death of detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos a homicide. The cause of the January death of Victor Manuel Díaz there remains unclear, although officials claim it was “presumed suicide.” A third man, Francisco Gaspar Andrés, died in December after being transported from the camp to an El Paso hospital for treatment for a serious medical condition.
On January 20, Judd Legum of Popular Information, right, reported that ICE stopped paying third-party providers for medical care for detainees on October 3, 2025, and that it would not start even to process claims again until at least April 30, 2026. It told medical providers to “hold all claims submissions” until then. A source in the administration told Legum that some medical providers are now denying detainees medical care.
From 2002 to 2023, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helped to make sure detainees had medical care if an ICE facility couldn’t provide it, with ICE paying the VA for the coverage. But in 2023, Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville lied that President Joe Biden was “robbing veterans to pay off illegals,” and on September 30, 2025, a small right-wing nonprofit sued to get documents from the Trump administration about the VA’s role in detainee care. On October 3, Legum discovered, “the VA ‘abruptly and instantly terminated’ its agreement with ICE,” leaving it with no way to provide prescribed medication or access off-site care.
According to Legum, ICE said it could not provide “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy.” ICE officials described the loss of care as an “absolute emergency” that needed an immediate solution to “prevent any further medical complications or loss of life.” But it did not get solved.
Douglas MacMillan, Samuel Oakford, N. Kirkpatrick, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post reported that according to ICE’s own oversight unit, Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss, Texas, has violated at least 60 federal standards for immigrant detention. The contract for the $1.24 billion project was awarded to a small business that operates out of a residential address and has, as Lyndon German of VPM News reported, “little to no publicly available record of managing immigration facilities.”
Last April, at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, acting director of ICE Todd Lyons told attendees: “We need to get better at treating this like a business.” He called for a deportation process “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” In the Republicans’ July 2025 budget reconciliation bill—which they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—they put $45 billion into additional funding for ICE detention.
In November and December, NBC News and Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration was considering “mega centers” for detaining people. Fola Akinnibi, Sophie Alexander, Alicia A. Caldwell, and Rachel Adams-Heard of Bloomberg reported that in November, ICE issued a $29.9 million contract—just below the threshold of $30 million that would require open bidding—to KpbServices LLC for “due diligence services and concept design for processing centers and mega centers throughout the United States.”
In December, Douglas MacMillan and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported that the administration was working to put in place a national detention system that would book newly arrested detainees into processing sites before sending them to one of seven warehouses that would hold 5,000 to 10,000 people each. MacMillan and O’Connell reported that “sixteen smaller warehouses would hold up to 1,500 people each.” From there, people would be deported.
“These will not be warehouses—they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” a DHS spokesperson wrote to Angela Kocherga and Dianne Solis of KERA News in Texas. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”
Strickler and Ainsley reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security has already secured at least three facilities. It paid $87.4 million for one outside Philadelphia and $37 million for another outside San Antonio, a warehouse of nearly 640,000 square feet. ICE bought a building the size of seven football fields in Surprise, Arizona, outside Phoenix, for $70 million.
But there is increasing criticism of the new warehouses as Americans mobilize against the violence and abuse of ICE and Border Patrol.
Officials from Surprise answered concerns about the federal facility with a statement saying: “The City was not aware that there were efforts underway to purchase the building, was not notified of the transaction by any of the parties involved and has not been contacted by DHS or any federal agency about the intended use of the building. It’s important to note, Federal projects are not subject to local regulations, such as zoning.”
On Tuesday, February 3, more than a thousand people turned out for the Surprise City Council meeting to oppose the establishment of the federal detention center. One of the speakers reminded the council of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945. He said:
“The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S. Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was ‘done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said: ‘This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.’
“The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don’t know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the mayor of Ohrdruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought, ‘How is this my fault? I had no jurisdiction over this.’ Maybe he would have said, ‘This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?’ But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.”
More On U.S. Justice, Immigration, Crime, Law, Civil Rights
New York Times, Demanding Support for Trump, Justice Dept. Struggles to Recruit Prosecutors, Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer, Mimi Dwyer, Ernesto Londoño and Michael S. Schmidt, Feb. 8, 2026 (print ed.). Some offices are so decimated that the Justice Department has sent in military lawyers. More recently, officials asked for volunteers from other offices who can quickly deploy to places in desperate need.
Chad Mizelle, a former chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi, hung an online help wanted sign for federal prosecutors last weekend that perhaps explained why so many valuable Justice Department staff members have left, and why so few candidates want in.
Assistant U.S. attorneys are not typically recruited, as Mr. Mizelle sought to do, by a former federal employee who asks potential candidates to send a private message to his X account. Nor have they been asked in the past to prove political or ideological fealty.
“If you are a lawyer, are interested in being an AUSA, and support President Trump and anti-crime agenda, DM me,” wrote Mr. Mizelle, a fierce Trump supporter who remains close with Justice Department leaders and senior officials in the West Wing.
Mr. Mizelle was acting as a private citizen expressing his own views. But the post reflected the prevailing sentiment inside the department — that Mr. Trump has the right to hire only those willing to execute his agenda. It also highlighted the dynamic that appears to be contributing to the very staffing shortages Mr. Mizelle tried to address.
The intermingling of law enforcement and political goals has made the department, long a magnet for platinum legal talent, an unappealing landing spot, according to current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The number of applications is down significantly from previous years, officials said, even as Trump loyalists have publicized vacancies through official and unconventional channels. Some of those applying are generally not as qualified as those who sought the position in the recent past, they added.
A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to specific questions, but said all of the department’s actions reflected Ms. Bondi’s February 2025 memo requiring all employees to “zealously advance, protect and defend” the interests of Mr. Trump in his role as the nation’s chief executive.
The White House has exercised extraordinary control over the Justice Department, with prosecutors pressured to investigate and prosecute the president’s enemies, all in the name of reversing purported politicization under Democrats.
Applications for vacant slots in U.S. attorneys’ offices, once apolitical questionnaires, now often include requirements to weigh in on Mr. Trump’s policies.
“How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” read one of the queries on an application for a job in the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, whose ranks have drastically thinned after the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis spawned an exodus of prosecutors.
“Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired,” reads another.
One former prosecutor who served on a hiring committee in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said that candidates who expressed support for administration policies were often moved forward for final interviews, even those with weak academic records and little litigation experience.
Yet at Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, the choosers are also beggars.
Several federal prosecutors’ offices around the country have suffered debilitating losses from firings and resignations — many stemming from efforts by senior department leaders to push career prosecutors into doing Mr. Trump’s bidding.
The department’s work force declined by 8 percent between November 2024 and November 2025, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.
U.S. attorneys’ offices, the front lines responsible for executing Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to crush crime, lost 14 percent of their head count, dropping from 11,863 to 10,154. That was a staggering one-year reduction unlike anything the department has seen in recent memory, former officials said.
Worse still, the departures have hit the upper tier of prosecutors in premier offices the hardest, simply because those with the most experience were the most likely to have lucrative job prospects on the outside.
The crisis has been most acute in offices targeted by the tornadic disruption of White House directives that run counter to prosecutors’ ethics and training.
More On Epstein Files, Reactions
A photograph released by the Justice Department shows former President Bill Clinton with Ghislaine Maxwell. Newly released emails show Ms. Maxwell’s behind-the-scenes role in helping to start the Clinton Global Initiative, one of Mr. Clinton’s signature post-White House endeavors (Bill Clinton speaking at a Clinton Global Initiative event in 2006 (New York Times photo by Librado Romero).
New York Times, Epstein Files Reveal Scope of Ghislaine Maxwell’s Role in Clinton Circle, Danny Hakim, Feb. 8, 2026. Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion helped advise on the kickoff of the Clinton Global Initiative and arranged for $1 million in funding for it, emails show.
Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion helped advise on the kickoff of the Clinton Global Initiative and arranged for $1 million in funding for it, emails show.
Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of President Bill Clinton’s signature post-White House endeavors, new documents released by the Justice Department show.
Ms. Maxwell took part in budget discussions related to the first Clinton Global Initiative conference; talked through challenges about it with both Clinton aides and Publicis Groupe, the company that produced the inaugural event; and arranged to wire $1 million to pay Publicis for its work on “the Clinton project,” according to emails in the massive cache of documents collected as part of the government’s investigations of Mr. Epstein.
The source of the money is unclear, including whether Mr. Epstein provided the funds. However, the emails show that he was aware of the payment.
“Ask him to tell you why i million now and where will it be going,” Mr. Epstein wrote to Ms. Maxwell a few days after she received the wiring instructions from Publicis.
Ms. Maxwell’s involvement in the launch of the Clinton Global Initiative took place in 2004, before Mr. Epstein’s 2006 indictment and 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution with a minor, and long before Ms. Maxwell, a daughter of the media baron Robert Maxwell, was sentenced in 2022 to two decades in prison for conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls.
The emails support an assertion Ms. Maxwell made last year in an interview with the Justice Department that she played a key role in helping set up the global conference.
Mr. Clinton has said he stopped speaking with Mr. Epstein sometime before his 2006 indictment. In a statement, Angel Ureña, a spokesman for the Clintons, said the former president had “called for the full release of the Epstein files” and “has nothing to hide.”
“He knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes,” Mr. Ureña said. “When it became clear Epstein had no genuine interest in lifesaving philanthropic work, there was no reason for further contact. The facts are the facts and the truth is the truth, and they’re both on our side.”
The new documents provide texture about the connections between the Clinton and Epstein circles, which have long generated a swirl of conspiracy theories and unverified allegations.
The emails reinforce previous accounts that Mr. Clinton and those around him had a more enduring relationship with Ms. Maxwell than with Mr. Epstein. In addition to her involvement with the Clinton Global Initiative, the records reveal that Ms. Maxwell had flirtatious exchanges in the early 2000s with Doug Band, who at the time was Mr. Clinton’s top aide.
She was already known to have attended Chelsea Clinton’s 2010 wedding along with her then-boyfriend, Ted Waitt, a tech billionaire who was a friend of the Clintons’ and a prolific Clinton Foundation donor. And she remained in the Clinton orbit even after reports began surfacing accusing her of misconduct related to Mr. Epstein’s abuse of young women. Ms. Maxwell told the Justice Department last year that she last saw Mr. Clinton sometime between 2016 and 2018, when she said they had dinner together in Los Angeles.
In a Justice Department interview last year, Ms. Maxwell said that “President Clinton was my friend, not Epstein’s friend.” Her lawyer did not return requests for comment.
Ms. Maxwell and Doug Band, who was previously Mr. Clinton’s top aide, at a party in New York in 2007.Credit...Patrick McMullan
A review by The New York Times of references to the Clintons in the recently released files found very little related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and limited new information about the former president’s interactions with Mr. Epstein, a Democratic donor who supported Mr. Clinton’s 1992 political campaign and donated $10,000 to help refurbish the White House. He also donated $20,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign in 1999.
Logs that have previously been made public show that Mr. Epstein visited the White House a number of times during the Clinton administration and that Mr. Clinton took four international trips on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003. Mrs. Clinton has said she never flew on Mr. Epstein’s plane.
The former president has said he never visited Mr. Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, an account supported by emails between Mr. Epstein and his associates. (The Secret Service has indicated in the past that they have not been to the island, and said in a statement that “at this time, we have no new information to provide regarding this matter.”)
House Republicans have sought to put a spotlight on the ties between the Clintons and Mr. Epstein, and threatened to hold them both in criminal contempt of Congress if they did not testify in the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the convicted sex offender. Those depositions are set to be held at the end of this month.
Mr. Clinton has tried to downplay his association with Mr. Epstein. In a sworn declaration submitted to the House panel last month, Mr. Clinton said that while Mr. Epstein may have visited the White House while he was president, “I do not recall encountering Mr. Epstein, or any specific interactions with him, while in office.”
The former president also said that he did not recall when he first met Ms. Maxwell, “though I believe she was working for Mr. Epstein at the time.” Mr. Clinton said he did not recall his specific interactions with her or when he last saw her, “but it was many years ago.”
President Trump, who socialized extensively with Mr. Epstein and also traveled on his private plane, has expressed misgivings that the Clintons are being forced to testify, despite his repeated attacks on both of them over the years.
“I think it’s a shame, to be honest,” Mr. Trump told reporters this week. “I always liked him. Her? Yeah, she’s a very capable woman.”
For his part, Mr. Trump had warm words for Ms. Maxwell in 2020, after her arrest, saying “I just wish her well, frankly.” Both presidents appear to have provided messages for a book put together for Mr. Epstein’s 50th birthday, though Mr. Trump’s staff has denied it.
The Clinton Global Initiative was conceived in the early 2000s as Mr. Clinton’s version of the annual gathering of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland, with the goal of imbuing it with a more charity-minded mission to shape his post-presidential legacy.
Mr. Band, who has since had a bitter break with the Clintons, has long been credited with being the driving force behind the project. Ms. Maxwell’s involvement has been largely unknown.
But in her Justice Department interview last year, Ms. Maxwell said she had a “very central” role in setting up the Clinton Global Initiative, though she added that the idea was not originally hers. “I don’t try to elevate myself in any form of importance here,” she added.
Ms. Maxwell also indicated that Mr. Epstein was engaged in the effort, saying he “supported me to help them, but then I think he may have tried to use that to insert himself in some way.”
Richard Attias, a former top executive at Publicis, said in an interview this week that Ms. Maxwell had played a key role in getting the project going.
“She was in Davos with President Clinton, and this is when they realized the amazing impact of Davos and they came up with the idea of creating something similar, but with a different philosophy,” he said.
Mr. Attias said that Ms. Maxwell sent the $1 million to Publicis to pay for its work producing the event, which was held in New York in September 2005. He said he was not aware who provided the funding, but said he believed it most likely came from a variety of sources.
After initially saying he did not believe Mr. Epstein was involved, Mr. Attias later described Mr. Epstein as “one of the sponsors,” but in follow-up texts to The Times, he also said he didn’t really remember, noting the discussions took place more than two decades ago.
Mr. Attias, who left Publicis in 2008 — and who has since produced conferences for The Times — said in texts and the interview that he was ultimately uncertain about the extent of Mr. Epstein’s involvement in the Clinton conference.
In 2007, when Mr. Epstein’s lawyers were seeking lenient treatment for their client as he was being investigated for sex trafficking, they asserted in a letter to prosecutors that he “was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative.”
The Times identified one 2004 email to Ms. Maxwell from Mr. Attias in which he appeared to reference Mr. Epstein.
“I trust you and JE at 300 percent,” Mr. Attias wrote, while pleading for her to call off what appeared to be a lawyer for Mr. Epstein who was demanding a wide range of specific budget details early in the planning stages. (“We have no idea of what will be the programme, the venue, the hotels, the consultants, the speakers, etc. … ” Mr. Attias wrote to Ms. Maxwell.)
In a statement, the Clinton Foundation, which now runs the Clinton Global Initiative, said it accepted only one $25,000 donation in 2006 from an Epstein-affiliated foundation, which has been previously reported. The foundation said it did not have any record of any other financial contributions to the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative related to Mr. Epstein or Ms. Maxwell.
“Publicis funded the development of the event which they were ultimately hired to produce,” the foundation said, adding that it “was not responsible for raising money for Publicis’s business.”Post-Presidential Ties
Ms. Maxwell’s involvement in the kickoff of the Clinton Global Initiative came during a period when she and Mr. Epstein were both socializing with the former president.
In 2002, less than two years after leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton flew on Mr. Epstein’s plane on a 10-day trip to seven countries, including Ghana and Nigeria. Other passengers on the trip, which has been previously reported, included Ms. Maxwell and the actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, according to flight manifests and photos that are among the documents that have been released.
At some point, Mr. Clinton appears to have handwritten a thank-you note to Mr. Epstein on stationery that Mr. Epstein kept on one of his planes. The Times obtained a photo of the undated note, which was framed and recovered from Mr. Epstein’s estate. In it, the former president thanked the financier for letting him “invade your private space” and explained that he had been “exhausted and had to get away from the crowd.” He also wrote that “as we forge ahead, i’ll finally figure out the financial stuff!”
The newly released files show numerous interactions between Ms. Maxwell and the former president’s aides.
In November 2002, Ms. Maxwell arranged to send Mr. Clinton what she described as “devil slippers” for his birthday, an email shows. The next month, Ms. Maxwell and a Clinton aide corresponded about talking points for how to respond to a Vanity Fair reporter who was writing a profile on Mr. Epstein. The same day, another Clinton aide, Ira Magaziner, sent Ms. Maxwell an email describing a Clinton project to combat AIDS.
Asked about the contact, Mr. Magaziner said in an email to The Times that he had sent the kind of information he shared with potential donors about what would become the Clinton Health Access Initiative, a group that fights disease in dozens of countries
Ghislaine Maxwell with onetime Bill Clinton aide Doug Band.
During this period, Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Band, then a Clinton aide, were also exchanging suggestive emails, the documents show.
“Booboo,” Ms. Maxwell wrote to him in 2002, “are you around? I am very ill and require immediate medical attention - I am suffering from boobooitis - a very serious condition. Without a booboo fix the symptoms become very pronounced.”
She referred to “cries into the night that sound like Shakespeare sonnets that sound like this - Oh Douglas - oh Douglas - wherefore art though Douglas.”
The same day, Mr. Band replied that “my boobooitis is also reaching epic poportions,” adding, “Lots going on but will be In boobooville the second you arrive.”
During their exchanges, they facilitated connections between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Epstein. In an April 2002 message, Mr. Band wrote: “the pres wanted me to tell you to tell jeffrey he says hello and he misses him.”
In a statement to The Times, Mr. Band said his communication with Ms. Maxwell occurred when he was in his late 20s and unmarried.
“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” he said, calling Ms. Maxwell “a monster.”
In 2011, Mr. Band sent an email to another Clinton aide, directing him to “remove” Ms. Maxwell “from all lists” giving her access to Clinton-related events as questions about her conduct grew, according to a copy of the email viewed by The Times.
Earlier that year, a Daily Mail report had dubbed her “Epstein’s Girl Friday ‘Fixer.’”
Mr. Ureña, the Clintons’ spokesman, said nothing was communicated broadly across the organization at the time about banning Ms. Maxwell.
Ms. Maxwell resurfaced again at a Clinton Global Initiative event in 2013, after Mr. Band stopped working for the Clintons, and was honored for an ocean conservation project.
Noam Chomsky and Valeria Wasserman Chomsky at the University of Arizona. 2018. Photo by John de Dios.
Films for Action, Noam Chomsky's Wife Responds to Epstein Controversy"Aaron Maté, Feb 8, 2026. "Noam’s overly trusting nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts... we express our unrestricted solidarity with the victims," Valéria Chomsky writes.
Note: Noam Chomsky’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein has become the source of controversy. After suffering a severe stroke in June 2023, Chomsky is unable to comment on it. His wife Valeria has responded to questions surrounding their contacts with Epstein in the statement below. I am publishing it here, with minor typographical corrections.
Statement from Valéria Chomsky:
As many are aware, my husband, Noam Chomsky, now 97, is confronting significant health challenges after suffering a devastating stroke in June 2023. Currently, Noam is under 24/7 medical care and is completely unable to speak or engage in public discourse.
Since this health crisis, I have been entirely absorbed in Noam’s treatment and recovery, solely responsible for him and his medical treatment. Noam and I don’t have any kind of public relations assistance. For this reason, only now have I been able to address the matter of our contacts with Jeffrey Epstein.
Noam and I have felt a profound weight regarding the unresolved questions surrounding our past interactions with Epstein. We do not wish to leave this chapter shrouded in ambiguity.
Throughout his life, Noam has insisted that intellectuals have a responsibility to speak the truth and expose lies — especially when those truths are uncomfortable to themselves.
As is widely known, one of Noam’s characteristics is to believe in the good faith of people. Noam’s overly trust[ing] nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts.
Questions have rightly been raised about Noam’s meetings with Epstein, and about administrative assistance his office provided regarding a private financial matter—one that had absolutely no relation to any of Epstein’s criminal conduct.
Noam and I were introduced to Epstein at the same time, during one of Noam’s professional events in 2015, when Epstein’s 2008 conviction in the State of Florida was known by very few people, while most of the public – including Noam and I – was unaware of it. That only changed after the November 2018 report by Miami Herald.
When we were introduced to Epstein, he presented himself as a philanthropist of science and a financial expert. By presenting himself this way, Epstein gained Noam’s attention, and they began corresponding. Unknowingly, we opened a door to a Trojan horse.
Epstein began to encircle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas Noam has been working on extensively. We regret that we did not perceive this as a strategy to ensnare us and to try to undermine the causes Noam stands for.
We had lunch, at Epstein’s ranch, once, in connection with a professional event; we attended dinners at his townhouse in Manhattan and stayed a few times in an apartment he offered when we visited New York City. We also visited Epstein’s Paris apartment one afternoon for the occasion of a work trip. In all cases, these visits were related to Noam’s professional commitments. We never went to his island or knew about anything that happened there.
We attended social meetings, lunches, and dinners where Epstein was present and academic matters were discussed. We never witnessed any inappropriate, criminal, or reproachable behavior from Epstein or others. At no time did we see children or underage individuals present.
Epstein proposed meetings between Noam and figures that Noam had interest in, due to their different perspectives on themes related to Noam’s work and thought. It was in this academic context that Noam wrote a letter of recommendation.
Noam’s email to Epstein, in which Epstein sought advice about the press, should be read in context. Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in. It is now clear that it was all orchestrated, having as, at least, one of Epstein’s intentions to try to have someone like Noam repairing Epstein’s reputation by association.
Noam’s criticism was never directed at the women’s movement; on the contrary, he has always supported gender equity and women’s rights. What happened was that Epstein took advantage of Noam’s public criticism towards what came to be known as “cancel culture” to present himself as a victim of it.
Only after Epstein’s second arrest in [July] 2019 did we learn the full extent and gravity of what were then accusations—and are now confirmed—heinous crimes against women and children. We were careless in not thoroughly researching his background. This was a grave mistake, and for that lapse in judgment, I apologize on behalf of both of us. Noam shared with me, before his stroke, that he felt the same way.
In 2023, Noam’s initial public response to inquiries about Epstein failed to adequately acknowledge the gravity of Epstein’s crimes and the enduring pain of his victims, primarily because Noam took it as obvious that he condemned such crimes. However, a firm and explicit stance on such matters is always required.
It was deeply disturbing for both of us to realize we had engaged with someone who presented as a helpful friend but led a hidden life of criminal, inhumane, and perverted acts.
Since the revelation of the extent of his crimes, we have been shocked.
In order to clarify the check: Epstein asked Noam to develop a linguistic challenge that Epstein wished to establish as a regular prize. Noam worked on it, and Epstein sent a check for US$20,000 as payment. Epstein’s office contacted me to arrange for the check to be sent to our home address.
Regarding the reported transfer of approximately $270,000, I must clarify that these were entirely Noam’s own funds. At the time, Noam had identified inconsistencies in his retirement resources that threatened his economic independence and caused him great distress. Epstein offered technical assistance to resolve this specific situation.
On this matter, Epstein acted accordingly, recovering the funds for Noam, in a display of help and very likely as part of a machination to gain greater access to Noam. Epstein acted solely as a financial advisor for this specific matter. To the best of my knowledge, Epstein never had access to our bank or investment accounts.
It is also important to clarify that Noam and I never had any investments with Epstein or his office—individually or as a couple.
I hope this retrospectively clarifies and explains Noam Chomsky’s interactions with Epstein. Noam and I recognize the gravity of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and the profound suffering of his victims. Nothing in this statement is intended to minimize that suffering, and we express our unrestricted solidarity with the victims.
Aaron Maté is an NYC-based journalist and producer. He hosts the news show Pushback for The Grayzone, and writes regularly for The Nation.
More On U.S. Crime, Immigration, Law, Civil Rights
New York Times, One Month After Renee Good’s Killing, Her Partner Makes First Public Appearance, Sabrina Tavernise, Feb. 8, 2026 (print ed.). Becca Good attended a memorial for Renee Good, offering words of compassion and resilience to the crowd gathered in a snow-covered Minneapolis park.
In her first public appearance since her partner was killed by immigration agents, Becca Good stood on a stage in a wintry park in Minneapolis on Saturday, as hundreds of people came to commemorate Renee Good’s life, a month after her death.
It was an emotional moment for a city that has been grappling over the killings of two U.S. citizens this year — first Ms. Good, and a few weeks later Alex Pretti — as they protest against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
Ms. Good, was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Jan. 7 while she was driving in her S.U.V. Federal officials have defended the agent’s actions, saying it was in self-defense, a viewpoint that has been disputed by state and local officials.
A month later, there remain offerings of flowers, candles, signs and well wishes on the street where Ms. Good was killed by federal officers.
But Saturday’s event was the first public memorial celebrating the life of Ms. Good, where her partner, Becca Good, was present. Although she did not speak, she offered a statement that was read by Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg.
“Becca Good, Renee’s wife has had to grieve alone for weeks,” Rabbi Lekach-Rosenberg said. “This is a really important moment, Rebecca gets to share words back to you. So, it is my honor to get to offer Becca’s words.”
The short statement began by thanking the community.
“Minneapolis has shown me that even in the middle of grief and fear, people still show up for each other,” Becca Good wrote in the statement. “I am so proud to call Minneapolis my home.”
She wrote of Renee Good being a volunteer, a teacher and a mother, saying that she worked to make things “a little better for others.”
And she ended by talking about the son they shared.
“Every night I kiss my son at bedtime and tell him things are going to get better, and I have to mean it. We know that this is wrong. I am on your side, and I am grateful you are on mine.”
Renee Good’s sister, Annie Ganger, was also in attendance and briefly spoke.
“We who do not live in this area of Minnesota see this powerful work that you’re doing despite the pushback, and it encouraged us to dive into our own communities, We are so proud,” she said, her voice breaking. “My family is so grateful for you. Thank you for being my sister’s home.”
Ms. Ganger also worked to lift up the spirits of those in the crowd.
“Renee was completely hilarious,” Ms. Ganger told the crowd at Powderhorn Park. “Every time I talked to her, I laughed until I cry-snorted, but she cried-snorted with me.
“I think Renee’s advice to us right now would be to take care of ourselves, care for our neighbors,” she said. “Receive care from our neighbors, rest and eat, and play and show up.”
New York Times, 7 Days, No Suspects: The Disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, Reis Thebault and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Feb. 8, 2026. The mother of the “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie has not been heard from since an evening of dinner and games with family members.
It was the type of Saturday evening that Nancy Guthrie treasured: dinner and game night at the home of her eldest daughter and son-in-law.
They lived near each other, in the unincorporated desert communities north of Tucson, Ariz., and Ms. Guthrie arrived by Uber just after 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 31. The family spent about four hours together before Ms. Guthrie was driven home by her son-in-law, who watched to ensure she made it safely inside, the police said later.
At 9:48 p.m., her garage door opened, according to a timeline from the authorities. Two minutes later, it closed. That glimpse of Ms. Guthrie heading inside was the last time anyone in her family saw or heard from her.
What unfolded in the following hours is still mostly a mystery, but one flecked with several ominous details. It has been more than a week since Ms. Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, disappeared. The case has captivated the nation. But, so far, it has confounded the authorities.
Investigators have not identified a possible perpetrator, and they have spent days analyzing notes from people claiming to be the kidnappers, including one that demanded millions of dollars in Bitcoin. The authorities have closed and reopened the crime scene at the house multiple times. And they have acknowledged that they do not know where she might be or whether she is still alive.
“These are facts you usually only find all together in a movie, and now you’re seeing them play out in real life,” said Lance Leising, a retired F.B.I. agent in Phoenix. “And it’s heart-wrenching for the family.”
The search has become a sensation, fueled by Savannah Guthrie’s fame and the many questions that remain. The F.B.I. is involved, and its director, Kash Patel, is receiving regular updates. President Trump has checked in with the family and discussed the case aboard Air Force One. On Friday, Mr. Trump said, “We could have some answers coming up fairly soon.” He did not elaborate.
The next day, Savannah Guthrie spoke directly to her mother’s abductors in a video shared on social media, imploring for her return: “This is very valuable to us,” she said, “and we will pay.”
More Global News
New York Times, Starmer’s Chief of Staff Resigns, Citing Role in Mandelson Appointment, Michael D. Shear, Feb. 8, 2026. The chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was caught up in the scandal engulfing Britain’s former ambassador to the United States and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff to Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, resigned under pressure on Sunday after days of political upheaval over his role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as ambassador to the United States.
Mr. McSweeney, a longtime protégé of Mr. Mandelson’s, said in a statement that “the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.”
He added, “When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment, and I take full responsibility for that advice.”
Mr. Starmer’s allies in the Labour Party have been calling for Mr. McSweeney to depart for days because emails released by the U.S. Justice Department revealed a much closer relationship than had previously been known between Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Epstein, the wealthy sex offender and disgraced financier who died in prison in 2019.
The resignation could dampen calls for Mr. Starmer to step down, or it could accelerate a fast-moving scandal that threatens to bring down the prime minister’s leadership of the first Labour Party government in 14 years.
U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Democrats ‘Haven’t Heard Back’ About Limits on Federal Agents, Jeffries Says, Michael Gold, Feb. 8, 2026. Immigration enforcement talks remain stuck ahead of a Friday deadline, lawmakers say.
As a Friday deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security approaches, Democrats and Republicans appeared no closer on Sunday to a deal to keep the department running.
“If I had to say now, I probably would expect there is a shutdown,” said Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”
In the wake of federal immigration officers’ killings of two American citizens in Minnesota last month, Democrats have demanded a host of new restrictions on immigration enforcement operations as a condition for a new spending bill.
They include barring immigration officers from wearing masks, requiring them to show visible identification and mandating the use of judicial warrants when they enter private property to make arrests.
“Dramatic changes are necessary to the manner in which the Department of Homeland Security officers are conducting themselves before any funding bill should move forward,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Republican leaders have rejected those proposals as an unrealistic wish list, calling the new restrictions overly burdensome to an immigration crackdown that they generally support.
“They are threatening the safety and security of our agents so that they can’t do their job,” Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is something we need to look at carefully. The request that we should put ICE agents in harm’s way is absolutely intolerable.”
Mr. Jeffries said Democrats had not heard a response to their proposals from the White House or Republican leaders in Congress. “The ball is in the court right now of the Republicans,” he said.
A spokesman for Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Saturday that the party had not received any legislative text.
Though Congress passed a stopgap spending bill last week, if no deal passes both chambers, the department and the agencies it oversees will shut down on Saturday.
Mr. Thune said last week that he could put forth another stopgap measure as soon as Monday if there continued to be no progress in the negotiations. But a temporary spending bill would require the support of at least seven Democratic senators to move forward.
If no deal can be reached before the deadline, a shutdown would affect the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration. Many of those agencies would continue operating in some capacity, but their employees would have to go without pay.
Some Democrats have suggested funding those agencies separately while they continue to negotiate limits on federal immigration agencies, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Politicus USA, Commentary: Trump Is Flipping Out And Demanding That Republicans Rig The Midterm Election, Jason Easley, Feb. 8, 2026. Donald Trump's gerrymandering effort backfired, so he has moved on to trying to rig the midterm election by trying to get Republicans to pass a massive voter suppression law.
Nothing is working for Donald Trump. His immigration policy and tactics that he thought would delight MAGA have imploded and caused all but his most loyal supporters to turn against him. Trump’s tariffs have made the economy worse and added to the misery that many Americans are feeling. Layoffs have hit their highest level since the Great Recession. Prices and inflation are still enraging voters.
A Louisiana state House district that Trump carried by 13 points in 2024 experienced a 37-point swing toward Democrats in a jungle primary on Saturday. The seat was already held by Democrats, but Republicans viewed it as a prime pick-up opportunity because Trump had carried it three times. Instead, it swung even more toward Democrats. Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that they may lose their Senate majority, and nearly a dozen Republican incumbents have already left or announced that they not be running for reelection in the House.
Trump is quickly running out of options. He has been blocked from deploying the National Guard and lacks the manpower to send ICE to districts to impact critical House and Senate races, so he is now demanding that Republicans pass a massive voter suppression law.
Trump posted on Truth Social:
America’s Elections are Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World. We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer. I am asking all Republicans to fight for the following:
SAVE AMERICA ACT!
1. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW VOTER ID (IDENTIFICATION!).
2. ALL VOTERS MUST SHOW PROOF OF UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP TO REGISTER FOR VOTING.
3. NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!).
If America’s elections are rigged and stolen, does this mean that Donald Trump’s two election wins and all of the Republican wins in 2024 were also rigged and stolen?
House Minority Leader Jeffries (D-NY) responded to Trump’s effort to rig the midterm by telling CNN:
We're not going to let it happen. We stopped them in terms of their gerrymandering efforts, where they were going to try to redraw congressional maps in red states throughout the nation, not expect Democrats to respond forcefully, and try to rig them in terms. They failed.
We have stopped Donald Trump from being able to federalize the National Guard, which we believe was probably part of some toxic attempt to unleash troops on American cities all across the nation and intimidate people from voting, and we're going to stop him from nationalizing the election.
This is going to be a free and fair election. It's going to be conducted like every other election, where states and localities have the ability to administer the laws.The Republican Party views vote-by-mail as critical to its chances of winning elections. Trump is alone in his demand to end mail-in voting. It is estimated that the SAVE Act would disenfranchise 21 million US voters. That is why Democrats oppose it. The SAVE Act is going nowhere. Senate Republicans don’t want to change the filibuster rules because they are terrified of what Democrats will pass if they can do it with 51 votes.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised to bring the SAVE Act up for a vote in a matter of months, but Democrats are universally against it, so the bill will die via the filibuster.
Trump knows that the door is going to be slammed shut on his presidency and is losing phase one of his plan. Phase two, if Trump follows his own history, is that he will claim that the midterm was stolen and try to challenge, or at least invalidate, the results in the eyes of the public.
Just like all of the other times he has tried to harm the election process, Trump will fail, and he seems to know it.What do you think about Trump’s outburst? Discuss it in the comments below.Leave a commentInvite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy PoliticusUSA, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.Invite Friends LIKE
Politicus USA, Trump Super Bowl Interview Disaster Is Going To Cost Republicans, Sarah Jones & Jason Easley, Feb. 8, 2026. The MidtermTrump claimed ownership of an economy that the vast majority of Americans despise in a Super Bowl interview that is going to haunt Republicans through the midterm election.
Donald Trump keeps doubling down on his delusions about the US economy. Even though over 60% of Americans consistently in polling think that the economy is bad, Trump keeps trying to sell it as great.
If you are a billionaire like Donald Trump, the economy is wonderful, and Trump has no idea what other people are complaining about, as grocery prices seem pretty low to him.
The rest of Trump’s pre-taped interview aired during the Super Bowl pre-game show, and if Republicans were hoping to make it through the interview without one of Trump’s famous verbal landmines detonating on them, they were very disappointed.
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Trump was asked by NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas, “You said you inherited a mess from President Biden when it comes to the economy. But at what point is it on you? At what point are we in the Trump economy?”
This was a good question because it cut to the heart of Trump’s continuation of blaming Biden for the economy when he has been in office for more than a year.
Trump could have given a normal human answer about this being a big job, and how he is working hard to grow the economy, but this is Donald J. Trump, and lie-filled bragging is the only gear that he is capable of.
You can guess Trump’s answer.
Trump said:
Oh, I’d say we’re there now. I’m — I’m very proud of it, 5.6%. You know, we have a GDP of 5.6 despite a shutdown. We had a 42-day shutdown. I call it the Democrat shutdown. And because of that I lost a point and a half. I would’ve been at a 7 GDP, which hasn’t been seen I don’t know if ever, maybe. Maybe ever.
…And — I think ‘26 is even gonna be better. You know, we have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our country. Actually trillions. $18 trillion is being invested in our country as we speak. And there are factories and plants and thousands of businesses being built all over the country. Nobody has ever seen any — I just spoke to President Xi of China. Nobody has ever seen anything like s —
That little clip of Trump saying that this is his economy and he is very proud of it will spawn a million Democratic campaign ads in 2026.
It is like the political gods smiled on Democrats and gave them the ultimate gift.
Emptywheel, Analysis: If MAGAt Political Culture Collapsed in the Woods and No Traditional Media Were There To See It…, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Feb. 8, 2026. 2026 Mid-Term Election, Economics, Elections, Epstein, Immigration.
Democrat Chasity Martinez just won a State House district in Louisiana that Trump won by 13, and she won it by big numbers.
Democrats successfully defended a conservative seat in rural Louisiana on Saturday night, as Chasity Martinez defeated Republican Brad Daigle by a dominant 62-38 margin—a massive 37-point overperformance compared to the 2024 presidential result.
Republicans had hoped to score their first legislative pickup of any kind during Donald Trump’s second term, and they had good reason to think they might succeed in the 60th House District.
Voters in the district, which includes part of Assumption and Iberville parishes (Louisiana’s equivalent of counties), had long backed state and local Democrats but had moved decidedly toward Republicans on the federal level in recent years.
The seat had been held by a third term Democrat whom Governor Jeff Landry installed in a state position, setting up what Republicans had hoped would be a chance to flip a district, what would have been their first since Trump’s win.
Didn’t work out that way.
Martinez’ win comes on the heels of Tyler Rehmet’s equally surprising 58-41 win in a Texas State Senate district, last week, flipping a Trump +17 district.
Neither of these wins matter legislatively, yet. The Texas Senate won’t convene before what is expected to be a much tougher November rematch between Rehmet and the woman he beat. And Martinez simply replaces another Democrat in a chamber where Republicans have a supermajority. But the size of the swing in these pro-Trump districts are an early read on what is going on, in the solidly Republican south, politically.
People are still trying to process Rehmet’s win. One thing that happened — unsurprisingly — is that the Latino vote shifted 20+ points towards Rehmet from what Kamala Harris won.
Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s recent upset victory over a MAGA star to represent a reliably red Texas Senate district was, at least in part, due to a significant leftward shift by Latino voters. These maps help illustrate the point.
Precincts in Senate District 9 with a majority of Hispanic residents swung on average 34 percentage points toward Rehmet compared to the margin garnered by the Democratic nominee in 2022, when the seat was last on the ballot.
Across the entire district, VoteHub estimated that Rehmet captured about 79% of the Hispanic vote, a 26-point improvement on the 53% that went for Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 — the biggest shift of any racial group in the district.
There are a lot of things going into this Latino swing, but one is obviously the way Trump’s ICE dragnet racially profiles brown people, indiscriminately, including brown US citizens.
Another, more interesting analysis of Rehmet’s win describes that non-MAGAt Republicans swung to Rehmet seeking sanity.
As the usual explanations began circulating — weather, turnout, changing demographics, low awareness — I kept thinking about the conversations I’d been having inside the district for weeks. The consensus: rank-and-file Republicans had grown weary of the MAGA populism rife in Texas Republican politics.
The most revealing exchange I had was with a fourth-generation Texan who was following the race closely. He talked like someone who’d reached a limit. He mentioned property taxes being out of control, a Legislature that’s more interested in symbolic fights than cost-of-living basics, and school battles that, in his view, have drifted from stewardship into performance.
I asked the obvious question. Do you think voting for Rehmet fixes any of that?
“It won’t,” he said. “But I can stomach a sane Democrat a whole lot better than I can being controlled by West Texas billionaires.”
That sentence explains SD-9 better than any voter roll. Texas isn’t turning blue, but some staunch Republican voters are signaling that they are no longer obligated to support Republican nominees. That’s what makes SD-9 a potential canary.
[snip]
For years, Texas Republicans have assumed suburban voters will tolerate almost any nominee as long as there’s an “R” next to the name. SD-9 could be a signal that those days are numbered. [my emphasis]
It’ll be at least a year before we can begin assessing whether what we’re seeing is anything more than a stronger-than-usual backlash against an incumbent, and that’s assuming elections still work the way they’re supposed to.
But this analysis verbalizes a hypothesis I’ve been contemplating, the first of two I’ll present in this post. Since Clinton, since LBJ even, Republicans have become increasingly unbeatable in many rural areas and the South, especially poorer areas, entirely through cultural affinity. Since the moment when Trump beat Evangelical Ted Cruz in South Carolina’s 2016 primary, Trump began to coopt that preexisting culture, until he turned Red State political culture entirely MAGAt. So if Trump becomes toxic, then that entire culture, the continuation of the culture the right wing has used to stay in power for decades, may be tainted as well. If Everything Trump Touches Dies, will right wing political culture he coopted in his own image, also die? And if so, will it make these formerly red areas newly contestable?
Hypothesis Number 1: if and when and as MAGAt culture becomes toxic, the political culture that has solidified Republican power for generations may become newly contestable. I’m not arguing it’s true. I’m testing whether it might be.
There are clear limits to this.
One top thing cited in most of this is the economy, which on its face would suggest my hypothesis sucks. Perhaps this is no more than incumbency, the same way Joe Biden got blamed for a shitty post-COVID economy.
But there are hints that there is cultural coding, even there. Martinez described that she represented the struggles that are being ignored in Baton Rouge.
Martinez said she represents frustration with traditional politics in Iberville and Assumption parishes.
“They see promises made and things are not changing, and I tell everybody all the time there is power in numbers — I’m just one person, one council member, but seeing the things that my people deal with on a daily basis at a local level, I want to change that, but it has to be taken to a state level,” Martinez said. We have people that live off of the basin; they make ends meet like that — that is their livelihood, crawfishing, fishing — there are people at the state level making decisions and not taking to those people who live it every day. That’s a problem,” Martinez said.
The Dallas Morning News described being controlled by sane Democrats to be preferable than being controlled by billionaires.
The economy right now is divergent, with the super rich experiencing almost all the benefits, and everyone else struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, Trump is bragging about new Dow records, while claiming “affordability” is a hoax. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the other day, accused Trump of catering to the big donors building his ballroom while ignoring MAGAts.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said President Trump’s Make American Great Again slogan was a “lie,” saying his first year back in office was focused on obliging wealthy supporters.
“I think people are realizing it was all a lie. It was a big lie for the people. What MAGA is really serving in this administration, who they’re serving, is their big donors,” Greene said in a Wednesday interview with radio personality Kim Iversen.
“The big, big donors that donated all the money and continue to donate to the president’s PACs and donate to the 250th anniversary and are donating to the big ballroom,” she added.
All of a sudden, people have discovered Trump is a member of the billionaire class.
And that resonates with one of the other things that, I suspect, may make MAGAt culture toxic.
I’ve long argued that the focus on the Epstein files short-circuited a key function for Trump, his magic power to grab attention and redirect it.
That is, the controversy over the Epstein files disrupted Trump’s messaging, making it possible to get purchase for other messaging.
But how that we’ve seen the files?!?!
Now that we’ve seen that Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk were lying about their ties to Epstein? Now that we’ve seen how Epstein and Peter Thiel rejoiced over a return to tribalism post-Brexit?
Holy hell! These files reveal that QAnon was mostly just projection. And so, because of its deep belief in the former corp of MAGAt, Epstein is becoming a metonymy for the corrupt elite, with Trump at its center, surrounded by all his oligarch buddies who’ve cashed in treating average people like disposable objects.
Jon Ossoff, who won his seat by a whisker, but is now (barring any shenanigans with Fulton County’s vote) favored to win reelection comfortably, adopted the term “Epstein class” to encapsulate Trump’s elitism and corruption.
We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. You remember that? But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country. They are the elites they pretend to hate. So prices are up, jobs are going away, Medicaid and school lunches are slashed, nursing homes are getting defunded,
[snip]
He was supposed to Drain the Swamp. Instead, this is the most corrupt Administration of all time and everybody knows it.
And finally, there’s ICE, the masked goons Trump sent all over the country to assault brown people in public streets. Clearly, that’s part of what has led Latinos to reverse trend of increasingly supporting Trump, even in more conservative Latino communities, like Cuban-Americans.
But it goes well beyond that. While Republicans in Congress still bank their future on that spectacle, the signs that this is badly backfiring among a libertarian right, along with most moderate sane people, are everywhere. Ammon Bundy has been speaking out against it. Wrestling fans are chanting Fuck ICE.
All of those, individually, are threads via which people who formerly identified as culturally Republicans might have second thoughts.
The turn against ICE leads me to my second hypothesis.
Lakshya Jain mapped out how Trump is losing support — how ICE is losing support — based on primary news source.
In both categories (Trump and ICE), he’s losing support least quickly among those who get news from outlets he has mastered. Get your “news” from Fox News? You are, unsurprisingly, not going to be that bothered by ICE abuse, if you even see it. Get your “news” from Elon’s Nazi bar? You’re probably one of the few people cheering ICE violence. Podcasts, where Trump is desperately hoping that Joe Rogan doesn’t entirely abandon him on account of ICE (and no doubt lying to him via back channels), that’s less true. But if you get your “news” from TikTok or one of the Reddit threads that immediately responded to Alex Pretti’s murder, and you are going to see the ugliness of ICE’s goons and hate it.
Hypothesis Number 2: We’re missing more substantive change in politics because much political analysis occupies a political bubble.
Chris Whipple, the guy who wrote that Vanity Fair profile on Susie Wiles, said something in a NYT op-ed that accords with my own suspicions about that profile. The reason she overshared damning details about Trump is because she is so deep in a bubble that she didn’t realize how normies would receive her comments.
I believe there’s another reason Ms. Wiles was so unguarded — one that is peculiar to this White House. Mr. Trump’s first term was marked by dysfunction and chaos, with rival factions battling for influence over the president’s agenda. His second term has been a less fractious, smoother-running operation — Ms. Wiles runs a tighter ship in the West Wing — and this time, nearly everyone is reading from the same ideological script.
Ms. Wiles and her team are so like-minded in their devotion to the president that they’ve in many ways lost touch with the outside world. On what planet would a White House official say out loud, of prosecuting the president’s political enemies, that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it”? Or that Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a “right-wing absolute zealot”? Or that Mr. Vance’s 180-degree conversion to Trumpism was “sort of political”?
As I discovered, this is the way true believers talk in Mr. Trump’s West Wing. I don’t think Ms. Wiles knew that her comments, outside the White House, would explode like bombs. They were confirmation of an old Washington maxim: The definition of a gaffe is when a powerful official accidentally tells the truth.
Susie Wiles is politically sophisticated. But being in Trump’s circle of sycophancy has turned her, with all her resources, into a blithering idiot about what’s going on. Which means she and Trump’s other advisors are bound to exacerbate his woes, because they don’t understand what is going on in political polls and lost special elections (aside from Joe Rogan’s potential defection, which they see clearly).
But Wiles is not the only one. So are most political pundits and journalists (and indeed, access journalists have maintained access to Trump with their own sycophancy).
Back in December, this paper showing that Cable News shifted American focus from economics to culture wars attracted a lot of attention. As G Elliot Morris explained,
[N]ews companies in general emphasize “cultural” issues much more than politicians do. The authors arrive at this conclusion by categorizing segments on TV based on the words reporters mention in their stories. The authors write:
classifying the content of politicians’ campaign advertisements since 1960 and television news since 1968, we show that politicians and cable news emphasize very different topics The vast majority of political advertising centers health care, taxes, jobs, and social insurance, with only a small fraction mentioning culture- war topics; in contrast, cable news outlets exhibit the opposite pattern, with far more emphasis on cultural conflict than on economic issues. The older broadcast news outlets have roughly balanced cultural and economic coverage.
But a FT article Morris links actually shows something different is going on on some social media. As social media moves towards a TikTok algorithm, rather than whatever hocus pocus all those broligarchs who were chummy with Jeffrey Epstein have used, content becomes more political.
Watch Fox News or hang out in Elon’s Nazi bar? They are pushing you to believe cultural issues — the cultural issues that have anchored right wing dominance in Red States since the incarnation of Fox News tainted the presidency of Arkansas’ Governor. Obtain your “news” from sources with different kind of gate-keeping functions? You’re going to be outraged by ICE and pissed off that Trump prioritized tax cuts for those broligarchs lying about dinners with Jeffrey Epstein over your health insurance.
Kamala Harris lost for two reasons. One, the economy sucks for normal people, just like it still sucks. More amorphously, the media landscape is changing rapidly, and she didn’t have enough time to respond.
But now those same two factors — plus Trump’s policy incompetence, plus things like the Epstein focus — are scrambling Trump’s ability to sell his racist agenda in lieu of economic fixes. And we’re still barely seeing it, except in the surprising results of the special elections.
It may well be that all we’re seeing is an especially strong backlash against an incumbent, a familiar pattern for decades, exacerbated by the backlash to Stephen Miller’s dragnet.
But it’s possible something more fundamental is going on, and we simply don’t see it because we’re all in our own bubbles.
Associated Press via Politico, 'Melania' viewership falls off during Super Bowl weekend, Staff Report, Feb. 8, 2026. Hollywood largely ceded attention to football over a slow box-office weekend, with the survival thriller “Send Help” repeating as No. 1 in ticket sales and the Melania
Trump documentary “Melania” falling sharply in its second weekend.
Super Bowl weekend is typically one of the lowest attended moviegoing times of the year. It was the second slowest weekend last year and in 2024 it ranked dead last for moviegoing.
Studios instead put their focus on advertising movies for the massive television audience. Among the trailers expected to hit the NFL broadcast Sunday were The Walt Disney Co.'s “Mandalorian and Grogu,” Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael” and Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”
In North American theaters, the Disney.-20th Century Studios release “Send Help,” directed by Sam Raimi, lead all films with $10 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. With $53.7 million globally thus far, the R-rated survival thriller has proved a solid midbudget success. Disney meanwhile watched its remarkably long-lasting “Zootopia 2" cross $1.8 billion worldwide in its 11th week of release.
“Melania,” from Amazon MGM, added 300 theaters in its second weekend but dropped steeply to $2.4 million in ticket sales, down 67% from its much-discussed debut. The rapid downturn means the Brett Ratner-directed documentary is likely heading toward flop territory given its high price tag. Amazon MGM paid $40 million for film rights, plus some $35 million to market it.
The North American total for “Melania” stands at $13.4 million. Amazon MGM has not released international figures, though they’re expected to be paltry.
Kevin Wilson, head of domestic distribution for the studio, said the movie’s box-office performance “is a critical first moment that validates our wholistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.”
The film’s ticket sales — which would be very good for a less expensive documentary — were a talking point throughout the week. Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel hammered the movie’s sales. Kimmel called them a “rigged outcome.” Elsewhere in theaters, the Italy-set Kevin James romantic comedy “Solo Mio” debuted with a robust $7.2 million, a major win for Angel Studios, best known for its faith-based releases. “Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience,” a K-pop concert film released by Bleecker Street, launched with $5.6 million, and an additional $13.2 million overseas. The Luc Besson-directed Bram Stoker adaptation “Dracula” opened with $4.5 million, a studio-best debut for the indie distributor Vertical.
Politico, A MAGA push to erase a Dem House seat is triggering accusations of fraud and violence in Utah, Samuel Benson, Feb. 7, 2026. Assault allegations, potential fraud and a roster of Trumpworld supporters are rocking the Beehive State.
National Republicans are throwing money and bodies at a down-ballot initiative to try to wrest back a congressional seat in Utah. Their efforts could blow up in their face.
With a looming February 15 deadline, Republicans have seen only half the number of verified signatures they need to move things forward. And the effort, which has the backing of President Donald Trump and support from multiple MAGA groups, has devolved into chaos.
Local county clerks are flagging hundreds of potentially fraudulent submissions. People have reportedly been repeatedly misled into signing the petition by signature-gatherers, with some telling local news outlets that they were told it was an anti-ICE petition. Those signature-gatherers have reported being assaulted by hecklers and their signature packets stolen or destroyed.
In the Beehive State, where politics are often seen by outsiders as cartoonishly friendly, this effort has turned so tumultuous that Republican Gov. Spencer Cox — who earned national attention for his pleas for civility after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated in the state — called on Utahns to “resolve [their] disagreements peacefully.”
While the GOP groups insist they’ll have the numbers needed, they’re still far short — which would represent a major failure in a ruby-red state.
The effort aims to overturn a new judge-ordered congressional map that hands Democrats one safe blue seat by attempting to repeal an anti-gerrymandering law that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature to reinstall a more favorable map ahead of the 2028 elections. It has garnered support from Trump and his allies, who had already spent $4.3 million on the effort as of November — and have only ramped up since.
The signature-gathering initiative represents an early test of Republicans’ ground-game efforts in a midterm year where they face strong headwinds in the polls.
Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr, have signaled support to the Utah initiative, with Trump recently encouraging his Truth Social followers to support the “very important effort” to ”KEEP UTAH RED.”
Turning Point Action — the 501(c)(4) founded by the late Charlie Kirk, who was killed in the state last summer — is “all in” on the effort, its COO said, and is canvassing the state with a half-dozen events over the next week. A fleet of about 700 paid workers, many of them from out of state, have been hired to gather signatures, bankrolled by Securing American Greatness Inc., a 501(c)(4) previously run by former Trump White House official Taylor Budowich. MAGA celebrity Scott Presler parachuted in last month for a series of events. And Trump Jr. cut an 11th-hour ad begging Utah outdoorsmen to protect “their pioneer heritage” by signing the petition at the state’s largest hunting expo in Salt Lake City next week. (Trump-loving country singer Ted Nugent, who will attend the expo, will autograph merch for signers.)
But so far, those efforts don’t appear to be paying off. As of Friday, the initiative had garnered just over 76,000 verified signatures, about half of the more than 140,000 required statewide for a measure to be added to this November’s ballot. A daily analysis conducted by independent journalist Bryan Schott shows the initiative on track to fall well short of the required signature thresholds: eight percent of all active registered voters statewide, and eight percent in at least 26 of the 29 Utah state Senate districts.
“The only thing that will matter is on the very last day, do we have enough signatures, and I strongly believe that we will,” said Brad Bonham, a Republican National Committeeman and initiative sponsor.
The initiative’s Republican backers claim the lagging signature count is part of their strategy. Bonham said the initiative’s sponsors have “many, many thousands of signatures” they are independently verifying and have not yet submitted. Utah Republican Party Chairman Rob Axson said “many tens of thousands” more have been submitted to county clerks and are undergoing verification.
“We feel very, very good about the strategy that we are executing on and the momentum that we’re building,” Axson said.
Dropping a large tranche of signatures close to the February 15 deadline could backfire, said Elizabeth Rasmussen, the executive director of Better Boundaries, the anti-gerrymandering group opposing the repeal, as signers still have a 45-day window after their signature is verified to remove it.
Rasmussen said her group mailed nearly 8,000 letters last week to petition signers encouraging them to remove their names, and will continue to do so in coming weeks. Her groups’ previous efforts have led to over 500 signatures removed, Rasmussen said.
And she’s not so sure that Trump’s involvement will help the GOP in a heavily conservative state whose voters nonetheless have long been skeptical of the president.
“Trump’s approval rating in Utah is at an all-time low,” Rasmussen said. “We’re not seeing that as a value add, if anything.”
The ongoing saga in Utah is an odd addendum to the nationwide redistricting push. In 2018, Utah voters passed Proposition 4, a ballot measure that created an independent redistricting commission to prevent partisan gerrymandering. Earlier this year, District Judge Dianna Gibson ruled that the GOP-controlled state legislature failed to comply with Prop 4 when it drew four safe Republican districts in the 2022 map. The GOP submitted another map with four safe seats last fall, but the judge selected a different map, which includes a blue seat in Salt Lake County, in November.
Feb. 7
Top Stories
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
Feb. 7, 2026. I spent a significant part of today reviewing additional Epstein files, and there is a great deal the public needs to know. The documents include a list of men connected to Epstein, emails that remain redacted despite no clear justification, and deeply disturbing messages that describe the abuse survivors endured. These accounts are difficult to read, but they matter, and the world should see them. (Trigger warning.)Green, Isabella Kwai and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Feb. 7, 2026 (print ed.). The video clip that President Trump posted in a late-night flurry of social media activity caused an unusually strong and public outcry from members of his own party.Feb. 7, 2026. An 86-page DOJ memo detailing possible Epstein co-conspirators vanished after reporters asked questions. But we saved a copy..New York Times, Whistle-Blower Report Involved Intelligence About a Trump Contact, Julian E. Barnes, Feb. 7, 2026. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, moved to lock down an intelligence intercept that referred to someone close to President Trump, the report said.U.S. Free Speech, Free Press, Academia, Libraries
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: My Head Talking to Hasan Minhaj, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 7, 2026. Including thoughts on Bitcoin.Global News
Emptyhweel (Mary Wheeler, right), Feb. 7, 2026. The last ten days or so provide a slew of examples of what I’m tentatively calling, “the big shift” — very obvious examples where we can show Trump taking funds away from something good and spending those funds on something horrible. More On Epstein Files
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
Feb. 6, 2026. New bombshell documents show that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, maintained a business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein years after publicly claiming he was so disgusted by Epstein that he would never be in the same room with him again. At the same time, the White House is engulfed in controversy, with Republicans privately saying Trump’s racist Truth Social post about the Obamas cost them the midterm elections.
The Daily Beast, Listen To The Jeffrey Epstein Tapes: ‘I Was Donald Trump’s Closest Friend, Hugh Dougherty, Nov. 2, 2024. Explosive tapes recorded by author Michael Wolff show Epstein claiming Trump liked to “f---” his friends’ wives and first slept with Melania on the “Lolita Express.”More On U.S. Law, Crime, Corruption
Contrarian publisher, and Gabriel Lezra, Feb. 7, 2026. And how YOU are helping fight back -- Publisher's Roundup 53.Top Stories
The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary, Horrific New and Significant Epstein Files Revealed as Pam Bondi Faces Scrutiny on Capitol Hill, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 7, 2026. I spent a significant part of today reviewing additional Epstein files, and there is a great deal the public needs to know. The documents include a list of men connected to Epstein, emails that remain redacted despite no clear justification, and deeply disturbing messages that describe the abuse survivors endured. These accounts are difficult to read, but they matter, and the world should see them. (Trigger warning.)
The coming week will be especially important for the Epstein files. Attorney General Pam Bondi is set to testify on Capitol Hill, and Ghislaine Maxwell will be deposed on Monday.
I will remain relentless in this coverage. I will not stop. That is why I am still here, caffeinated, focused, and reviewing every page.
Here’s the news:
Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation compiled an internal list of allegations involving at least 11 prominent men connected to Jeffrey Epstein, based largely on tips, interviews, and secondhand claims rather than a verified “client list.”
The names, included in a PowerPoint sent to FBI Director Kash Patel in 2025, range from Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to business and media figures, and contain accusations spanning rumors, sexual assault, orgies, and money laundering, many of which those named strongly deny.
Several emails show the Department of Justice over-redacting information:
A newly revealed exchange shows Jeffrey Epstein communicating with a child he groomed and trafficked after she told him a doctor diagnosed her with molluscum, though her symptoms suggested a possible herpes infection. She said Epstein was the only person she had been sexually involved with and expressed confusion and distress about how she became ill, while also noting she was uncomfortable being examined by a male doctor associated with Epstein. The exchange highlights the coercion, loss of bodily autonomy, and power imbalance faced by Epstein’s victims, underscoring why survivor testimony is critical to understanding exploitation. Full email here.
Newly released U.S. Department of Justice files show that Jeffrey Epstein built relationships with senior Russian officials and business figures, sought help from a Russian official after claiming a Moscow woman was blackmailing “powerful businessmen,” and repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, expanding evidence of Epstein’s extensive international political and intelligence-linked contacts.
Jeffrey Epstein’s private emails show persistent efforts throughout the 2010s to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, often using former Norwegian prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland as an intermediary, though Justice Department files contain no evidence such a meeting ever occurred.
Separate emails show Epstein telling former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak that he had been invited to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum but declined, insisting that any meeting with Putin would require “real time and privacy.”
Justice Department files show that Sergey Belyakov, a graduate of Russia’s Federal Security Services Academy and then a deputy economic development minister, cultivated a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, exchanging gifts, invitations, and business discussions while Belyakov ran the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and later worked with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. Correspondence indicates Epstein introduced Belyakov to figures such as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and U.S. tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and sought Belyakov’s help in 2015 with an alleged blackmail attempt by a Russian woman involving “powerful businessmen,” highlighting Epstein’s reliance on senior Russian-linked contacts.
New files also raise concerns about federal handling of Epstein related evidence. In March 2025, the Federal Bureau of Investigation discussed internally whether they had “clear and specific guidance” to redact images involving former U.S. presidents, a secretary of state, and other celebrities.
A 2013 email shows someone telling Jeffrey Epstein that he had offered to buy her baby, highlighting another disturbing and unexplained statement linked to his behavior.
This email shows how there was a Epstein victim that was part of a sex-trafficking scheme in Israel, and how her attorney tried to get her to the United States of America. Read the full email chain here.
Hermes turned down Jeffrey Epstein as a donor in 2016:
May be an image of ticket stub and text that says 'To: From: Sent: Subject: jeffrey E. Fri 12/2/2016 8:15:29 PM Re: Dwayne from Charity Buzz-Hermes pulling their pkg! No problem On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 3:12 wrote: Dwayne David with Charity Buzz called to let us know Hermes is not comfortable with Mr. Epstein as donor and they are pulling their package. we will see credit back to our Amex... you have any questions, Dwayne is available to speak with:'
French prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into former culture minister Jack Lang over suspected laundering of tax fraud proceeds linked to his connections with Jeffrey Epstein, following the release of Epstein-related files by the U.S. Department of Justice. Lang, 86, who is named hundreds of times in the files, denies any wrongdoing and says he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes, but has offered to resign as head of the Arab World Institute amid mounting pressure.
His daughter, Caroline Lang, is also under investigation over alleged financial links, though authorities say neither she nor Lang is accused of involvement in Epstein’s sexual offenses, and being named in the files does not imply criminal conduct.
A whistleblower alleges the National Security Agency detected a sensitive phone call between foreign intelligence and someone close to Donald Trump. According to the whistleblower’s attorney, Tulsi Gabbard blocked the report from normal distribution, took a paper copy directly to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and instructed the NSA to send the intelligence only to her office.
The disclosure to Congress was delayed for months, prompting Democrats to say the complaint was improperly buried and may have violated whistleblower law, while Gabbard’s office denies wrongdoing and calls the allegations false and politically motivated.
Senator Ossoff: We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they pretend to hate. If you’re Steve Bannon, how do you sell any of this? He’s literally closing rural hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros.
At the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan, Vice President JD Vance was met with audible boos and jeers from parts of the crowd when shown on stadium screens, but U.S. viewers did not hear the reaction because NBC’s broadcast appeared to cut or mute the crowd noise; the boos were captured by other broadcasters and witnesses, spread widely on social media.
An Ohio man, Shannon Mathre, 33, was arrested on Feb. 6 after a grand jury indictment for threatening to kill Vice President JD Vance, allegedly saying he would use an M14 rifle to carry out the attack; during the investigation, authorities also discovered he possessed and distributed child sexual abuse material between late December 2025 and January 2026, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Sunday “Bad Bunny Day” ahead of the Super Bowl, with his press office posting an over-the-top, Trump-style message praising Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny’s talent, looks, and Spanish-language music in response to conservative backlash over his halftime show selection.
New York Times, Whistle-Blower Report Involved Intelligence About a Trump Contact, Julian E. Barnes, Feb. 7, 2026. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, moved to lock down an intelligence intercept that referred to someone close to President Trump, the report said.
Members of Congress were briefed this week on a whistle-blower report about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing a person close to President Trump, according to people familiar with the material.
It is not clear what country the two foreign nationals were from, but the discussion involved Iran. The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, around the time the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran. Mr. Trump ordered a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June.
The identity of the person close to Mr. Trump could not be immediately determined, nor could the content of what the two foreign nationals were saying about the person.
The existence of the whistle-blower report, which came to light after a Wall Street Journal report, has led to debate on Capitol Hill about the significance of the report as well as the underlying intelligence.
The whistle-blower accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of limiting who could see the report and of blocking wider distribution among the nation’s spy agencies, according to people familiar with the complaint.
People who have reviewed the whistle-blower report have differed about the importance of the underlying intelligence, which was collected by the National Security Agency.
The people interviewed for this story spoke on the condition that their names not be disclosed because much of the intelligence around the whistle-blower complaint remains classified.
One official said there was no other intelligence that led officials to think the two officials had been speaking truthfully. Some intelligence analysts concluded the two foreign nationals were either gossiping or deliberately spreading disinformation.
As a result of those doubts, Ms. Gabbard moved to restrict the report’s visibility. She also provided the information to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, according to people briefed on the events.
The acting intelligence community’s inspector general cleared Ms. Gabbard of wrongdoing after she responded to questions about her actions.
It is not clear when the inspector general cleared Ms. Gabbard. But inspectors general are typically supposed to make a determination about a whistle-blower complaint within two weeks.
And some people, including administration critics, who have reviewed the report and have considered the underlying intelligence to be significant, agreed that Ms. Gabbard did not act improperly by restricting distribution of the report.
While inspectors general are required to notify Congress only about complaints they find credible, some of the administration critics said Ms. Gabbard erred in not alerting the congressional intelligence committees or members of congressional leadership about the whistle-blower report or the underlying intelligence soon after it was lodged.
Congressional officials learned about the complaint, but not its contents, when Andrew Bakaj, a lawyer for the whistle-blower, sent a letter to the intelligence committees in November.
The Guardian earlier reported that the intelligence involved an intercept by the National Security Agency.
New York Times, Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Sets Date to Meet in Washington, Officials Say, Natan Odenheimer, Feb. 7, 2026. The group, which has prompted skepticism from some U.S. allies, is scheduled to meet on Feb. 19, according to the officials.
President Trump’s new “Board of Peace,” which he says intends to resolve global conflicts, is scheduled to meet in Washington in the coming weeks, according to a U.S. official and a Board of Peace official.
The meeting is planned for Feb. 19, according to an invitation letter that was shared with The New York Times, the details of which were confirmed by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
The Board of Peace, as envisioned in a charter signed last month, has divided several U.S. allies, including France and a number of other European nations that declined to join at this time. Critics have called it the latest example of Mr. Trump’s efforts to dismantle the post-World War II international system, and analysts say he is trying to create a rival to the United Nations that puts him in charge. As chairman, he would have veto power over some of the body’s decisions.
The original idea for the board was to focus on war-torn Gaza’s reconstruction, but its remit has broadened since then.
One of the primary objectives of the upcoming summit is to raise funds for the reconstruction, according to the two officials and one other Board of Peace official who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning details.Sign up for Your Places: Global Update. All the latest news for any part of the world you select. Get it sent to your inbox.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The news site Axios previously reported the meeting.
The Board of Peace met for the first time in Davos, Switzerland, last month, as member states signed its founding charter.
The notion of establishing the board was first set out in Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan, announced last September, for ending the two-year war between Israel and Hamas. That plan helped pave the way for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, which was negotiated by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United States last fall.
The board’s creation initially focused on Gaza and was backed by the U.N. Security Council in a U.S.-drafted resolution in November. But the charter envisions a broader role for the organization, saying the board would “secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict,” not just Gaza. It also called for “a more nimble and effective international peace-building body,” a seeming reference to the U.N.
The plans for the meeting may suggest that the Trump administration is pushing ahead with its efforts to rebuild Gaza, despite recent outbreaks of violence that have tested the cease-fire in the territory.ImageDestroyed buildings and makeshift shelters line a muddy path where a person walks, carrying a large item on their head.Gaza City in ruins last month.Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who is a member of the Board of Peace, is the first head of state who publicly confirmed his attendance.
“Two weeks from now we will meet again in Washington,” he told his supporters at a campaign event on Saturday, referring to seeing Mr. Trump, “because the Board of Peace, the peace body, will hold its inaugural meeting.”
Countries must contribute $1 billion to the Board of Peace to become permanent members, according to the organization’s charter.
More than 20 countries have joined so far, including Argentina, Hungary, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement on Saturday that he will meet Mr. Trump this Wednesday in Washington “to discuss negotiations with Iran.”
Mr. Netanyahu, who accepted Mr. Trump’s invitation to serve on the board, did not participate in the organization’s signing ceremony in Davos last month.Trump’s Department of Justice did it again.
New York Times, Why Trump’s Calls to ‘Nationalize’ Voting Have Raised Midterm Fears, Nick Corasaniti, Feb. 7, 2026. The president has escalated his language as his administration takes steps to involve itself more in election matters.
President Trump has repeatedly suggested that he wants the Republican-led federal government to “nationalize” or “take over” the running of elections.
His position is at odds with the Constitution, which leaves the administration of elections to the states.
Mr. Trump’s remarks have raised alarms among election officials in both parties, who cite his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat, his castigation of American elections and his administration’s attempts to involve itself more in voting matters. The latest efforts come as Republican worries grow about defending their majorities in Congress. White House officials contend that Mr. Trump is referring to federal legislation and is simply concerned about the safety and security of elections.
Here’s a look at what Mr. Trump has said and done, the response and what might come next.
New York Times, Prosecutors Began Investigating Renee Good’s Killing. Washington Told Them to Stop, Ernesto Londoño, Feb. 7, 2026. Federal prosecutors had a warrant to collect evidence from Ms. Good’s vehicle, but Trump administration leaders said to drop it. About a dozen prosecutors have departed, leaving the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office in turmoil.
Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent’s use of force.
The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good’s civil rights.
But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
Over the next few days, top Department of Justice officials presented alternative approaches. First, they suggested prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new search warrant for the vehicle, predicated on a criminal investigation into whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, had been assaulted by her. Later, they urged the prosecutors to instead investigate Ms. Good’s partner, who had been with Ms. Good on the morning of the shooting, confronting immigration agents in their Minneapolis neighborhood.
Several of the career federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Mr. Thompson, balked at the new approach, which they viewed as legally dubious and incendiary in a state where anger over a federal immigration crackdown was already boiling over. Mr. Thompson and five others left the office in protest, setting off a broader wave of resignations that has left Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office severely understaffed and in crisis. Officials have not said whether they ultimately obtained a new warrant to search the vehicle.
From an office of about 25 criminal litigators, gone are the top prosecutors who had overseen a sprawling, yearslong investigation into fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs, which the White House months ago cited as a reason for the immigration crackdown in the state.
New York Times, ‘I Didn’t Make a Mistake’: Trump Declines to Apologize for Racist Video of Obamas, Erica L. Green, Isabella Kwai and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Feb. 7, 2026 (print ed.). The video clip that President Trump posted in a late-night flurry of social media activity caused an unusually strong and public outcry from members of his own party.
President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for even after he deleted the video following an outcry.
The clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was among a flurry of links posted by Mr. Trump late Thursday night. It was the latest in a pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Mr. Trump said he only saw the beginning of the video. “I just looked at the first part, it was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia,” Mr. Trump said. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”
He then tried to deflect blame, suggesting he had given the link to someone else to post. “I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.
Still, Mr. Trump offered no contrition when pressed. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.
The White House response to the video over the course of the day — from defiance to retreat to doubling down — was a remarkable glimpse into an administration trying to control the damage in the face of widespread outrage, including from the president’s own party.
The clip was in line with Mr. Trump’s history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants, and he has for years singled out the Obamas. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on government websites and accounts, with the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging.
But the latest video struck a nerve that appeared to take the White House by surprise. The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes perpetuates a racist trope, historically used by slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize Black people and justify lynchings.
New York Times, Fake Post, Which Looked to Be Trump’s on Truth Social, Spreads Widely, Stuart A. Thompson, Feb. 7, 2026. The post appeared to describe the president’s rationale for deleting a racist video about the Obamas that he had shared.'
A fake post that was designed to look as if it were from President Trump’s social media feed spread widely online over the weekend, adding confusion to the ongoing debate over Mr. Trump’s social media activity this week. Posts on X circulating the forgery reached at least 3.7 million views by Saturday.
The fake post appeared to describe Mr. Trump’s rationale for deleting a racist video that he shared earlier this week, which depicted former President Barack Obama and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, as apes.
In the fake post that went up on Friday night, Mr. Trump appeared to claim that the video was offensive to animals.
Though many users seemed to understand it was fake, some believed it was real, including some right-wing users who praised the president for not apologizing. The user who first published the fake post on X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Its spread appeared to be aided in part by the confusion surrounding how Mr. Trump came to post the original racist video and why it was deleted. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, first brushed off the criticism, saying that it was a joke from a longer video depicting several Democrats as jungle animals. Mr. Trump later pushed back on that idea while talking to reporters on Air Force One. He said that he did not err in posting the video but that he had not seen the racist clip — which is spliced into another video about voter fraud conspiracy theories — before sending it to aides to post on his behalf.
“I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.
The image is part of a surge of fake content that has been circulating online in recent months. A group of right-wing influencers and meme-makers have created scores of artificial-intelligence-generated jokes, videos and satirical political content that is sometimes racist and sexist, racking up millions of views.
Mr. Trump has elevated their work before. In October, Mr. Trump posted an A.I.-generated video of himself piloting a fighter jet and dropping excrement on protesters. The user who created the fighter jet video also created the racist video of the Obamas.
U.S. Free Speech, Free Press, Academia, Libraries
Senior military leaders look on at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia.
New York Times, Hegseth Says Defense Department Will Cut Ties With Harvard, Chris Cameron, Feb. 7, 2026 (print ed.). Mr. Hegseth’s order appeared to target his alma mater, Harvard’s Kennedy School for public policy.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the Defense Department would sever its academic ties with Harvard University, the latest broadside by the Trump administration in its pressure campaign to force the university to cut a deal with the government.
In a statement and video published on Friday evening, Mr. Hegseth attacked the university in hyperbolic language, decrying it as a politically liberal institution, and said that, beginning in the new school year in September, the Defense Department will “discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs at the school.” Mr. Hegseth added that military personnel who are attending classes will be able to finish those courses of study.
It is unclear what programs will be affected, and to what extent, but there are several graduate-level programs for military officers at Harvard. Mr. Hegseth’s order appeared to squarely target his alma mater: Harvard’s Kennedy School, which teaches government and public policy programs.
The Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, for example, has a national security fellowship for mid-level U.S. military officers. Retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the highest-ranking officer in the armed forces for part of President Trump’s first term, is also a fellow at the Belfer Center. There were 12 officers enrolled in the national security fellowship this year. (David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, is a lecturer at a defense program in the Belfer Center.)
The Kennedy School also offers programs for senior U.S. military leaders. The “Senior Executives in National and International Security” program, for example, is open to U.S. generals and admirals. Mr. Hegseth, who served as an infantry officer with the National Guard, graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School in 2013 with a master’s degree in public policy.
In the past, Harvard leaders have said the school is working to make the campus culture welcoming to different viewpoints, but have pushed back strongly against the Trump administration’s assertions that it is hostile to conservatives.
Public statements by the university have previously highlighted programs focused on veterans, or service members who are about to leave the military, as well as officer cadets who are enrolled at the university, but it is unclear if those programs would be included in the embargo.
When asked which programs, specifically, would be cut as part of Mr. Hegseth’s order, the Pentagon said in a statement that it didn’t have “anything more to provide beyond the secretary’s video.” Harvard University did not respond to a request for comment.
Harvard has been the top target in Mr. Trump’s sweeping campaign to exert more control over higher education. Mr. Trump views many top universities, including Harvard, as hostile to conservatives and his presidency. Earlier this week, Mr. Trump said he would demand $1 billion “in damages” from the university and threatened the school with a criminal investigation.
Pro Publica, Grant Guidelines for Libraries and Museums Take “Chilling” Political Turn Under Trump, Jaimie Seaton, February 6, 2026. Former Institute of Museum and Library Services leaders from both political parties expressed concern that the new funding guidelines could encourage a more constrained or distorted view of American history.
A library in rural Alaska needed help providing free Wi-Fi and getting kids to read. A children’s museum in Washington wanted to expand its Little Science Lab. And a World War I museum in Missouri had a raft of historic documents it needed to digitize. They received funding from a little-known federal agency before the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to dismantle it last year.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for its 2026 grant cycle. But this time, it has unusually specific criteria.
In cover letters accompanying the applications, the institute said it “particularly welcomes” projects that align with President Donald Trump’s vision for America.
These would include those that foster an appreciation for the country “through uplifting and positive narratives,” the agency writes, citing an executive order that attacks the Smithsonian Institution for its “divisive, race-centered ideology.” (Trump has said the museum focused too much on “how bad slavery was.”) The agency also points to an executive order calling for the end of “the anti-Christian weaponization of government” and one titled Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again.
The solicitation marks a stark departure for the agency, whose guidelines were previously apolitical and focused on merit.
Former agency leaders from both political parties, as well as those of library, historical and museum associations, expressed concern that funded projects could encourage a more constrained or distorted view of American history. Some also feared that by accepting grants, institutions would open themselves up to scrutiny and control, like the administration’s wide-ranging audit of Smithsonian exhibits “to assess tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals.”
The new guidelines are “chilling,” said Giovanna Urist, who served as a senior program officer at the agency from 2021 to 2023. “I think that we just need to look at what’s happening with the Smithsonian to know that the administration has a very specific goal in mind when it comes to controlling the voice of organizations and museums across the country.”
An agency spokesperson told ProPublica it is not unusual for the institute to publish directors’ letters with grant applications, and that this one informs readers “about this Administration’s thematic emphases in the semi-quincentennial year.” He did not comment on criticisms that those letters insert political themes into a historically nonpartisan program.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, IMLS is working to revitalize our cultural institutions, urging less traditional applicants to consider working with us, and to promote civic pride and a deep sense of belonging among all Americans,” he said, adding that any institution that “meets programmatic requirements and goals” outlined in the funding opportunity “will receive all due consideration and undergo peer review.”
The spokesperson did not say how alignment with Trump’s executive orders would be weighed in the selection process or address concerns about the administration’s intrusion into funded institutions.
Established in 1996, the institute is the only dedicated source of federal support for libraries and one of the primary federal funders of museums and archives. Its long-running grant programs promote community engagement and public access to information, while bolstering institutions’ ability to care for collections and prepare for disasters. One grant, named after former first lady Laura Bush, helps recruit and train library professionals.
Washington Post Chief Executive William Lewis (Washington Post photo by Elliott O'Donovan).
New York Times, Washington Post C.E.O. Will Lewis Steps Down After Stormy Tenure, Benjamin Mullin, Katie Robertson and Erik Wemple, Feb. 7, 2026. His departure came days after the company cut 30 percent of the staff. He will be replaced in the interim by Jeff D’Onofrio, the chief financial officer, the company said.
Will Lewis, the embattled chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post, has stepped down, the company announced Saturday.
Mr. Lewis said in a statement that he had made the difficult decision “in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.” His farewell email, which was terse, thanked only Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post, and did not mention any journalists at the newspaper.
Mr. Lewis stepped down days after the company undertook a significant round of layoffs that cut 30 percent of the staff — more than 300 journalists — setting off widespread recrimination from current and former Post employees. Marty Baron, the celebrated former editor of The Post, called it one of the “darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”
Mr. Lewis will be succeeded by Jeff D’Onofrio, the chief financial officer of The Post.
In a news release announcing Mr. Lewis’s replacement, Mr. Bezos said that The Post has “an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity.” He added, “Each and every day our readers give us a road map to success.” He did not mention the cost-cutting in his statement.
Mr. Lewis was brought in by Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, at the beginning of 2024 to transform the publication and turn around years of financial losses and audience decline. The Post has yet to achieve consistent profitability, despite a hodgepodge of new strategies rolled out by Mr. Lewis, including the use of artificial intelligence, the inclusion of new opinion product called “Ripple” and a “big hairy audacious goal,” or B.H.A.G., of reaching 200 million paid users.
It’s is unclear how many paid subscribers The Post has, since it’s a private company, but management cited the annual losses as one of the factors leading to the layoffs this past week.
Mr. Lewis’s tenure has been marked by a mass exodus of journalists and broad dissatisfaction in the newsroom. He got off to a rough start after news outlets, including his own, began looking into his conduct at British newspapers that raised questions about his journalistic ethics.
In May 2024, Mr. Lewis announced his plan to create a third newsroom division at The Post, separate from core news coverages areas of politics and business and focused on social media and service journalism. The Post’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, abruptly resigned, and Mr. Lewis hired two of his former colleagues as top editors.
The New York Times reported that Ms. Buzbee and Mr. Lewis had clashed shortly before her exit when he objected to the newsroom’s plans to cover developments in the phone-hacking lawsuit winding its way through the British courts that named him. Mr. Lewis has not been charged and has repeatedly rejected accusations that he had acted to conceal wrongdoing while an executive at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp more than a decade ago. He denied that he had pressured Ms. Buzbee not to cover the story.
Mr. Lewis, who started his career in Britain as a reporter before rising in the ranks, was previously the chief executive of Dow Jones and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, which he left in 2020.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: My Head Talking to Hasan Minhaj, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 7, 2026. Including thoughts on Bitcoin.
I didn’t interview anyone this week. So I thought I’d repost an interview I did a few months ago with Hasan Minhaj, which happens to include an airing of my Bitcoin skepticism, just after the 20 minute mark.
Host Hasan Minhaj introduces his guest on the topic: "Why the Stock MarketHasne't Crashed Yet" as follows:
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote for the New York Times for 25 years. But those stuffed shirts at the Times just couldn’t handle the heat from those Krugman takes, the fire he was spitting. So he left last year for Substack where he can let his freak flag fly. So I asked Professor Krugman to come on the show to help me make sense of the economic chaos President Trump is unleashing on the country and the world. I also asked him his thoughts on crypto. I think crypto is basically a scam. Whether the Nobel Prize for economics is basically just a kid’s choice award for intellectuals. You get a surfboard. And if he’s getting in touch with his inner Chapo trap house on Substack. Paul, you team Luigi or what?
You were at a huge institution for two and a half decades and now we get to see Kugman unleashed. This goes pretty hard in the paint. Uh the title of this on your Substack is “health insurance is a racket.”
Paul Krugman: Um I think I would have been able to say that for 24 years at the Times. Not sure in the last year I would have gotten away with it.
Global News
New York Times and International Consortium of Journalists (ICIJ), Mexican Cartels Overwhelm Police With Ammunition Made for the U.S. Military, Ben Dooley, Isabella Cota and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega (ICIJ reporters Ben Dooley and Isabella Cota reported from Washington and Mexico City, respectively. Times reporter Emiliano Rodríguez Mega reported from Villa Unión, Mexico, and Mexico City), Feb. 7, 2026. Drug syndicates have used .50-caliber ammunition, produced at a plant owned by the U.S. Army and then smuggled across the border, in attacks on Mexican civilians and police.
On the morning of Nov. 30, 2019, a convoy of pickup trucks carrying men armed with a heavy machine gun and powerful .50-caliber rifles entered the Mexican town of Villa Unión and opened fire.
The men had been sent on a mission of intimidation: They planned to set fire to the town hall. Their superior firepower pinned down state and local police officers as they waited for military reinforcements. Terrorized residents scrambled to take cover from the hail of bullets.
The smell of smoke filled the streets and spent casings covered the ground like “fallen leaves,” said Luis Manzano, a Mexican journalist who drove into town during the shooting. But his most vivid memory was the thunder of .50-caliber guns. The “ground trembled” as they fired, he said. “I had never experienced anything like that.”
The military drove off the assailants. In the end, four police officers, two civilians and 19 cartel members were killed. Afterward, as investigators collected evidence from the scene, they gathered at least 45 .50-caliber casings stamped with the initials “L.C.”
The letters stood for the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, a sprawling facility just outside Kansas City, Mo., that is owned by the U.S. government and is the largest manufacturer of rifle rounds used by the American military.
It has also been a major supplier of ammunition for American consumers, including .50-caliber cartridges. These powerful rounds — as big as a medium-sized cigar and designed to be used by the military to destroy vehicles and light aircraft — are currently available for purchase by civilians across the United States. ImageLuis Manzano is shown in profile in front of a tree.Luis Manzano, a Mexican journalist who drove into town during the shooting.Credit...Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times
Millions of pages of court documents, seizure records and government data obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The New York Times show how agreements between the Army and the private contractors that run Lake City have allowed .50-caliber ammunition and components made at the plant to enter retail markets and fall into the hands of Mexican cartels.
Mexico’s government has also purchased Lake City ammunition, the documents show, although they do not indicate the caliber.
The U.S. domestic market for the ammunition is small: .50-caliber rifles, which have limited civilian application, typically retail for thousands of dollars, and heavy machine guns like the one used in Villa Unión cost considerably more. The guns’ standard cartridges average between $3 and $4 apiece and are rarely purchased by American gun owners.
But in Mexico, where cartels have deep pockets and a seemingly endless appetite for .50-caliber firearms, demand is high.
Cartel gunmen armed with .50-caliber firearms have downed helicopters, assassinated government officials, shot at police and military forces, and massacred civilians.
Since 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has seized more than 40,370 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition in states bordering Mexico, according to data obtained through public records requests. Lake City’s product accounted for about a third of them, a larger share than any other manufacturer.
While .50-caliber ammunition from other companies — located primarily in Brazil and South Korea — has also made its way to Mexican cartels, the data makes clear that the U.S. Army plant has been a major source of the destructive ammunition being used to wage military-style battles with Mexican authorities.
This includes a particularly powerful version of Lake City’s ammunition — incendiary rounds capable of piercing armor, which were used in an attack on Mexican police in 2024 and are for sale online today.
Emptywheel, Analysis: Marco Rubio Will Let 2.5 Million Children Die so Sarah Rogers Can Fund Far Right Extremists in Europe, Emptyhweel (Mary Wheeler, right), Feb. 7, 2026. The last ten days or so provide a slew of examples of what I’m tentatively calling, “the big shift” — very obvious examples where we can show Trump taking funds away from something good and spending those funds on something horrible.
Most notably, while Trump defunds VA care, he has sent masked Latino men to Blue cities to shoot people like VA nurse Alex Pretti dead.
Yesterday brought another such example.
Early last week, the Lancet released a study predicting the impact of last year’s cuts to USAID based on showing the benefits of past funding. Here’s CNN’s summary:
It’s been one year since the Trump administration dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with aid cuts leading to the closure of HIV clinics in South Africa, the termination of medical programs in Afghanistan, and the end of numerous programs tackling malnutrition and preventable diseases around the world.
The slashing of US foreign assistance was followed by cuts by the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and other developed nations, which are set to take effect this year and next year, compounding the impact.
Now, a new study published in The Lancet medical journal aims to quantify the human toll of those budget decisions – projecting that global aid cuts could lead to at least 9.4 million additional deaths by 2030, if the current funding trend continues. About 2.5 million of those deaths are projected to be children under the age of 5.
Then yesterday, Refugee International laid out the various ways the gap in funding affects things like disease treatment and food aid.
In Uganda, funding shortfalls linked to donor cuts forced the UN to suspend food assistance for 1 million refugees and reduce general food rations by up to 80 percent. These cuts may be contributing to the increased rate of acute malnutrition among refugees in Uganda as UNHCR reports that the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate increased from 5.5 percent at the end of 2024 to 7.7 percent in late 2025.
In Bangladesh, WFP’s planned cuts to Rohingya rations would have been devastating for more than 1 million refugees and would have left people trying to survive on roughly $6 per month. Following intensive advocacy, U.S. funding allowed WFP to stem the extreme ration cuts, but, without further funding, cuts are again on the horizon.
In Kenya, the UN reduced the minimum food basket by 40 percent for nearly 800,000 refugees, sparking protests and unrest in refugee camps, and leading to documented deaths.
In northern Ethiopia, reporting from Tigray describes worsening hunger and deaths from malnutrition in forcibly displaced and other communities already struggling to recover from war, with conditions exacerbated by aid cuts.
Meanwhile, FT reported on a slush fund the State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, has set up to fund far right extremists in Europe. Here’s Kyiv Post’s summary:
The US government is preparing to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe to promote what it calls “American values” and challenge perceived threats to free speech.
The initiative, first reported by the Financial Times on Thursday, Feb. 6, would channel US State Department grants to organizations linked to rightwing and populist movements in several European capitals as part of events marking the 250th anniversary of US independence later this year.
According to the FT, senior State Department official Sarah Rogers travelled to Europe in December to meet representatives of conservative think tanks and political groups, including figures from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, to discuss directing funding to counter what Washington views as censorship of online speech.
The initiative is expected to focus on projects in London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels and has already sparked concern among some US allies, particularly center-left governments, over what they see as American interference in domestic policy debates.
A US official told the FT the program was a variation on previous State Department funding efforts but would prioritize groups aligned with Washington’s free speech agenda.
Here’s a wildly credulous interview Semafor did with Rogers.
So under Marco Rubio and with the significant involvement of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, the State Department took away support for millions, which will (if not reversed or replaced by someone else) lead to the deaths of millions of children.
And instead of spending money to keep children alive in Africa, Marco Rubio will instead spend it to boost Nigel Farage in the UK.
More On Epstein Files
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: A Few Questions for Trump's DOJ on the Epstein Files, Rick Wilson, right, Feb. 7, 2026. The fallout from the January 30 Mother of All Friday news dumps of 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files has reached a fever pitch.
As I previously wrote, no one has read them all, but even the Department of Justice’s clunky search feature has led to more shocking revelations about not only Jeffrey Epstein’s monstrous behavior, but the spectrum of horrors is widening, the obvious deceptions from the Department of “Justice” are becoming crystalline.
The DOJ is still a massive tranche (between 30-50%) of the total identified trove. These questions are designed to stop the usual Trump Cabinet bluster and corner Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy AG Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel on their specific roles in the cover-up and redaction process.
To Attorney General Pam Bondi: You testified in October 2025 that your department identified “roughly 6 million” pages responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act. On January 30, you declared the mission “complete” after releasing 3.5 million. Where is the 42% gap, the remaining 2.5 million pages, and which specific official signed the order to classify them as “non-responsive” despite the Congressional mandate?
To FBI Director Kash Patel: In late 2025, you claimed the FBI possessed “tens of thousands of videos” from the Zorro Ranch and Palm Beach properties. However, only 2,000 were released on Friday, most with “extensive redactions” of the men involved. Can you explain the disappearance of roughly 8,000 to 15,000 video files that your office previously acknowledged?
To Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche: You stated on Meet the Press that the DOJ is withholding files that “depict child sexual abuse material” to protect victims. Why then have survivors like Annie Farmer and Virginia Giuffre’s family stated that the DOJ is actually continuing to withhold FBI 302 victim interview statements, text documents, and other evidence that name their abusers, under the guise of “victim privacy”?
To AG Bondi: The January 30 release prioritized the investigation into Epstein’s butler and personal staff. Why was the DOJ able to process 180,000 images of staff members in 60 days, while the “compiled list” of high-profile political donors and “powerful men” remains locked behind “unvetted tip” redactions?
To Deputy AG Blanche: Before you were Deputy AG, you were the President’s personal defense attorney. In July 2025, you personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell in prison and then ordered her transfer to a minimum-security “Club Fed.” Did you ever receive any kind of guidance on Maxwell from the President, his staff, his allies, family members, or any other party before this unprecedented relocation of a convicted sex offender?
To Director Patel: A spreadsheet of “unverified allegations” against the President and his associates was briefly uploaded to the DOJ repository on Friday before being taken offline for “overload.” When it returned, several columns related to “1990s Florida social events” were redacted. Who ordered those specific 11th-hour redactions, and was the White House Counsel involved in that decision?
To AG Bondi: You have moved to hold the Clintons in contempt for refusing to testify. Yet, the January 30 files include a 2002 email from “Love, Melania” to Maxwell that your office redacted to “protect the sender’s privacy.” How do you reconcile holding one former First Lady in contempt while using the DOJ’s shield to provide total anonymity to the current one?
To Deputy AG Blanche: You told reporters on Friday, “We did not protect President Trump.” If that is true, why did the DOJ specifically use the phrase “sensationalist and false claims” in a formal press release to describe documents that, by law, you were required to release without editorializing?
To Director Patel: FBI case initiation summaries in the new dump claim “no other victim described being lent out to other men.” Yet, Virginia Giuffre’s unredacted 2015 testimony, which is confirmed to be in your possession, names specific “royalty” and “famous people.” Is the FBI’s 2026 “summary” a deliberate attempt to contradict sworn testimony and shut down investigations into Epstein’s co-conspirators? Why are several Epstein victims’ testimonies not listed in this latest release?
To AG Bondi: In 2008, you were the Florida AG during Epstein’s “sweetheart deal” crafted by State Attorney (and later Trump Labor Secretary) Alex Acosta. In 2026, you are the person deciding which files from that era the public gets to see. Why is the 82-page draft indictment from the 2007 Florida investigation still withheld, given that the “Transparency Act” specifically targets documents from that period?
To Deputy AG Blanche: The files released Friday mention a “Trump Princess” cap and a fake passport seized from Epstein. Did the DOJ investigate whether these items were used to facilitate travel for minors, or did your team classify this as “sensationalist” to avoid investigating your former client?
To all witnesses: The January 30 release includes unredacted emails from Elon Musk and Bill Gates but blacks out the names of 14 “prominent US businessmen” on the same email chains. What is the “Protection Standard” being used to decide which billionaires are exposed and which are protected? Has the President, his staff, his political consultants, family members, friends, or any other party passed along his orders to block the names of these persons?
To Director Patel: The “Bannon-Epstein Interview” video was released on Friday, showing Epstein claiming he was a “Tier 1” predator. Why was this video withheld in the December production? Have you interviewed Mr. Bannon? Was it because it highlights the close social circle between your administration’s key advisors and a serial child trafficker?
To AG Bondi, right: 20 survivors issued a joint statement Saturday accusing you of “betrayal” for exposing their names in raw files while redacting the names of the men they accused. Why are you using the “Victim Privacy” excuse to shield the men in these photos while leaving the women Epstein raped, trafficked, and abused to face public scrutiny?
To Deputy AG Blanche: You cited “Attorney-Client Privilege” for 200,000 pages. To be clear: is this privilege between Epstein and his lawyers, or is it Executive Privilege being used to hide communications between the current DOJ and the President regarding these files?
To Director Patel: The Prince Andrew/Epstein emails mention a “26-year-old Russian woman” and “private time” at Buckingham Palace. Why were these foreign ties released while the files regarding Epstein’s “intelligence community contacts” in the US remain 100% redacted on “National Security” grounds?
To AG Bondi: You claimed this release “marks the end” of the transparency effort. If the House Oversight Committee finds even one unredacted document in your vault that does not contain CSAM or victim names, will you resign for perjury?
To Deputy AG Blanche: You stated on Friday that the DOJ’s job is not to protect the President. Why then did your office remove 12 photographs from the “Epstein Library” on Saturday…photographs that NPR confirmed showed the President at Mar-a-Lago with Epstein?
To Director Patel: As a podcaster, you were the most vocal proponent of “declassifying everything” regarding Epstein. Now that you are in power, why is the “Patel FBI” more secretive about Epstein’s 302 statements than the imaginary “Deep State” you spent years criticizing?
To all witnesses: The American people were promised the “complete truth.” You have delivered a curated 50% dump that protects current administration allies while attacking political rivals. How does this “limited transparency” differ from the 20-year cover-up that allowed Epstein to operate in the first place?
To AG Bondi: When you released the “Epstein Files: Phase I” to MAGA influencers, who in the FBI and DOJ prepared those documents for release? Do you consider influencers to be the appropriate channel for the release of this information?
To AG Bondi: In November 2025, you assigned Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to launch a fresh investigation into Epstein’s ties to several of the President’s political foes (including the Clintons and prominent Silicon Valley donors). Who in the White House ordered this effort? Why did you pursue these investigations even though the DOJ believed there was “no evidence that could predicate an investigation”
To AG Bondi: Given the assertion of “explosive new information,” can you explain to this committee why Mr. Clayton is only investigating Mr. Trump’s political opponents when numerous other figures in Mr. Clayton’s jurisdiction were implicated in the latest release?
To AG Bondi: When you ordered the still-active Epstein investigation transferred from the Southern District of New York to the main Justice Department, all subpoenas, interviews, and grand jury activity inexplicably stopped. Why?
To all witnesses: At long last, have you no shame?
The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary, Bombshell Documents Reveal Business Relationship Between top Trump Official and Epstein as White House Engulfed in Scandal, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 6, 2026. New bombshell documents show that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, maintained a business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein years after publicly claiming he was so disgusted by Epstein that he would never be in the same room with him again. At the same time, the White House is engulfed in controversy, with Republicans privately saying Trump’s racist Truth Social post about the Obamas cost them the midterm elections.
Here’s the news:
The release of new Jeffrey Epstein files has triggered resignations, investigations, and institutional fallout across Europe—affecting figures tied to Peter Mandelson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and others—while exposing sharp contrasts with the United States, where most prominent figures have faced little consequence. Despite documented associations involving Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, Steve Bannon, and Elon Musk.
Newly released Epstein files show Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein were business partners in an advertising tech company deal signed in late 2012—contradicting Lutnick’s claim of having cut ties in 2005—with documents and emails indicating continued contact, planned social visits (including to Epstein’s island), and coordination into at least 2014, though Lutnick and the Department of Commerce maintain he had limited interactions and no wrongdoing.
Further communications concerning Epstein and Lutnick having drinks: Lutnick previously vowed he would never be in the same room as Epstein:
U.S. Justice Department documents indicate Peter Mandelson suggested a private Amalfi Coast holiday home to Jeffrey Epstein in a 2010 email highlighting “privacy” for Epstein’s “guests,” sent after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting a minor. Mandelson says he does not recall the email, claims he believed Epstein’s denials until his death in 2019, and has since expressed deep regret over the association.
The New York Times confirmed that senior partners at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison forced Brad Karp to resign as chairman after newly released Jeffrey Epstein files revealed his deeper-than-acknowledged involvement, including advising Epstein on legal matters after Epstein’s conviction, prompting client concerns and leading the firm to immediately replace him with Scott Barshay while Karp remains a partner.
Newly released Epstein files have plunged Norwegian royal family into crisis, as Crown Princess Mette-Marit faces mounting backlash over previously undisclosed, years-long email correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein, conducted well after his conviction for soliciting a minor. The revelations—paired with a separate rape trial involving her son Marius Borg Høiby—have sparked public debate about her suitability to become queen, prompted charities and cultural institutions to reconsider ties, and drawn rare political criticism from Jonas Gahr Støre, who said she showed “poor judgment.”
The fallout is growing in the White House this morning after Donald Trump removed but refused to apologize for reposting a racist video depicting Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes—claiming he didn’t view the full clip and blaming a staffer—after bipartisan backlash (including from Republicans like Tim Scott), with many calling the post offensive and dangerous, especially during Black History Month, despite the White House initially defending it as an internet meme before taking it down.
Trump’s former Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, suggested that the Truth Social post ended any hopes that Republicans had to win in the midterm elections:
Even Fox News was not fully buying the Administration’s explanation:
According to Business Insider, Military Religious Freedom Foundation says it has received reports from service members at eight U.S. military bases that commanders “pressured” troops and their families to attend screenings of the Melania—even listing it as a “Unit Activity Event” where attending a required number of morale activities can affect penalties—while an active-duty email described a commander urging the unit to go together.
JD Vance received a loud chorus of boos during the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games when he and Usha Vance appeared on the big screen, underscoring an icy reception to the U.S. vice president on one of the world’s most visible stages.
Athletes from Team USA competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics publicly criticized U.S. immigration enforcement, saying representing the country brings “mixed emotions” amid nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and recent fatal shootings of U.S. citizens, while protests erupted in Milan over reports of Department of Homeland Security personnel attending the Games.
Tammy Duckworth told NBC News that the Department of Homeland Security general counsel repeatedly warned the agency’s independent watchdog that Kristi Noem claims authority to shut down investigations, including asking the inspector general to list all active audits and criminal probes—moves Duckworth calls unusual and potentially intimidating—while DHS argues the power is explicitly allowed under the Inspector General Act of 1978 and has long existed in law.
A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the Trump administration’s policy requiring mandatory immigration detention without bond hearings, endorsing Department of Homeland Security’s reinterpretation of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to treat many non-citizens already living in the U.S. as “applicants for admission.”
The New York Times confirmed that the United States Department of Justice is facing a severe staffing crisis after losing about 8% of its workforce in a year, as political loyalty tests and pressure to advance Donald Trump’s agenda have driven experienced prosecutors to resign, deterred qualified applicants, and forced emergency measures—including deploying military lawyers and “jump teams”—to keep depleted U.S. attorneys’ offices functioning amid rising caseloads and internal turmoil.
Authorities say they are investigating a new email message that may be connected to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Savannah Guthrie. The FBI and Pima County Sheriff’s Department are analyzing the message for authenticity and whether it is linked to earlier ransom notes, one of which has already been identified as a hoax. Six days into the search, investigators say no suspect or person of interest has been identified, though they believe Guthrie was taken from her Tucson home against her will, confirmed her DNA was found on her porch, and continue to offer a $50,000 reward as officials say there are “strong clues” but few public details.
Talking Feds, Legal Commentary: Here's Why the Clintons Agreeing to Testify is SO RADICAL, Harry Litman, Feb. 6, 2026. Harry breaks down the breaking news that former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before Congress.
Former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, shown in a file photo by Karen Smith via Flickr.
Politicus USA, Bill Clinton Blasts James Comer And Refuses To Be Trump's Epstein Cover-Up Prop, Jason Easley, right, Feb.7, 2026. Former President Bill Clinton released a lengthy statement where he slammed House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, and called out Republicans for playing politics with the Epstein scandal.
To say that Bill Clinton has been around the block a few times would be a grievous understatement. Clinton was the subject of what some believe is the most baseless presidential impeachment in US history. Clinton is the only president in US history to become more popular through an opposition-party impeachment.
Bill Clinton spent years of his presidency tangling with House Republicans.
He is a person who knows his way around political scandals, and the former president also understands what James Comer, right, and House Republicans are attempting to do with their Oversight Committee investigation, which is much more interested in trying to shift the blame for the Jeffrey Epstein scandal onto Bill Clinton and away from Donald Trump.
Chair Comer has refused to allow former President and First Lady Clinton to testify in public, and in response, Clinton said through a series of posts on X:
I have called for the full release of the Epstein files. I have provided a sworn statement of what I know. And just this week, I’ve agreed to appear in person before the committee. But it’s still not enough for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.
Now, Chairman Comer says he wants cameras, but only behind closed doors. Who benefits from this arrangement? It’s not Epstein’s victims, who deserve justice. Not the public, who deserve the truth. It serves only partisan interests. This is not fact-finding, it’s pure politics.
I will not sit idly as they use me as a prop in a closed-door kangaroo court by a Republican Party running scared. If they want answers, let’s stop the games & do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about.
Former President Clinton is exactly right. The whole process of demanding testimony from the former president and first lady has been centered around politics.
Comer has refused the Clintons’ demand for public hearing by claiming that public hearings are more for entertainment than substance, and he said about Hillary Clinton, ““She has moved the goalposts millions of times throughout the entire process, then fires out an email attacking me today, accusing me of moving the goalposts, and she’s the one trying to move the goalposts again.”
Republicans have been pulling a con on the Epstein scandal. The GOP talks about transparency, but all of the party’s real actions on getting and releasing information are about keeping details from the public.
The White House and congressional Republicans have not released any information on Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators. Republicans voted for a law to compel the release of the Epstein files, then allowed the DOJ to cherry-pick through the documents and only release half of them.
Republicans don’t hold public hearings, and they have done nothing to find out what the president and his administration seem to be hiding.
Bill Clinton was right. Comer and Oversight Republicans are attempting to use the Clintons as props in a distraction circus because, as Donald Trump said earlier this week, they want the country to move on from Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files.
For decades, Bill and Hillary Clinton have been a distraction that Republicans have used to hide behind. The Republican Party has returned to the well of attempting to create a new Clinton scandal in a bid to distract the country from Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The Clintons need to keep pressing because that is the only way to make this investigation about getting justice for the Epstein survivors.
Daily Mail, Explosive Epstein Claim: Former British prime minister was involved in threesome with Ghislaine Maxwell, royal historian Andrew Lownie claims in explosive Epstein podcast, Joseph Luke Palmer, Feb. 7, 2026. Lownie joined Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah Vine to make sense of the latest release from the Epstein files by the US Department of Justice.
Last week, the DOJ released its largest tranche of documents yet from its investigation into paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, constituting more than three million papers, pictures and videos.
The historian wrote the unauthorised biography Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, which chronicles Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's spectacular fall from grace.
As an early voice who warned of Andrew's troubling behaviour and compromising network of connections, Lownie has become a controversial authority on the British establishment's links to Epstein.
In addition to a claim that in 2006 Andrew and Epstein tried to pay an exotic dancer to have sex with them both at the same time, Lownie alleged that the disgraced former prince was not the only member of British high society to have had sexual relations with Epstein and Maxwell.
Lownie joined Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah Vine to make sense of the latest release from the Epstein files by the US Department of JusticeThe historian wrote the unauthorised biography Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, which chronicles Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's spectacular fall from grace
The historian wrote the unauthorised biography Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, which chronicles Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's spectacular fall from grace.
Lownie said: 'I have heard lots of talk about threesomes -- including a threesome between Ghislaine and a British prime minister.'
'A recent prime minister?' Vine asked.
'A former prime minister, but it's not Winston Churchill,' the author joked.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Lownie alleged there is still much the public does not know about Andrew's activities with Epstein.
He claimed elements within Buckingham Palace and government 'aided and abetted' the former Duke of York, covering up his behaviour.
Andrew has consistently denied all allegations of sexual misconduct. In 2022, he settled a civil case with Virginia Giuffre without admitting liability, though he expressed regret for his association with Epstein.
'Two things need to happen:
'We need to have a Parliamentary investigation into Andrew's time as Trade Envoy.
'Second, they need to release all the files on Andrew's time as Trade Envoy. By law, they should be in the National Archives. That will help clean the stables and restore some trust.
On Epstein specifically, Lownie claimed the financier was a Russian intelligence asset recruited by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. He said Epstein and others were recruited to run honeytrap operations in Britain and the United States to gain leverage over influential people.
Lownie explained: 'In the 1930s, the Russians penetrated the establishment through Oxford and Cambridge. They then realised they could do it through the royal family.
'They realised there were these greedy royals who would get into bed with people and give them access and credibility.
'There's material that was captured by the FBI which has never appeared -- videos which will include Andrew. Some of that stuff was given to Putin. We know that Andrew was involved in honeytraps in Russia, in Central Asia, everywhere.
'But certainly, I have been given evidence that Epstein was a Russian source, that he was running these honeytrap operations. He traded in information and blackmail.'
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
The Daily Beast, Listen To The Jeffrey Epstein Tapes: ‘I Was Donald Trump’s Closest Friend, Hugh Dougherty, Nov. 2, 2024. Explosive tapes recorded by author Michael Wolff show Epstein claiming Trump liked to “f---” his friends’ wives and first slept with Melania on the “Lolita Express.”
Jeffrey Epstein described himself as Donald Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed intimateknowledge of his proclivity for sex, including cuckolding his best friends, according to recordings obtained exclusively by the Daily Beast.
The convicted pedophile even boasted of his closeness to Trump and his now-wife Melaniaby claiming, “the first time he slept with her was on my plane,” which was dubbed the LolitaExpress.
Epstein spoke at length about Trump with the author Michael Wolff in August 2017, two years before being found dead in his jail cell. Wolff was researching his bombshell bestseller, Fire and Fury at the time.
The recordings cast more light on Trump’s long relationship with Epstein, and will add todebate over the character of the Republican candidate, especially his attitudes and conducttoward women, just days before the election.
The tapes tell Epstein’s version of the relationship between two former friends and their verydifferent paths: One toward infamy, prison and suicide; the other toward power, the OvalOffice and his own criminal conviction for paying hush money to a porn star.
Trump’s camp referred to the tapes’ release as “false smears” and “election interference."
The tapes also offer unusual insight into the friendship of two wealthy, powerful men whofrequently went out on the town together, prowling for women in New York and Atlantic City
Epstein painted a complicated portrait of Trump. He calledhim “charming,” and “always fun,” capable of extraordinary salesmanship, and suggested he was personally in favor ofTrump’s policies on“the transgender stuff.”
But he allegedTrump was a serial cheat in his marriages and loved to “f---the wives of his best friends.”
He also claimed that while Trump has friends, he was at heart a friendless man incapable of kindness. And he alleged that Trump had undergone scalp reduction surgery for baldnessand called himself “The Trumpster.”
The new tapes shed light on a barely explored part of Trump's past, his long-term friendship with a man who would become one of America's most notorious sexual predators.
Asked by Wolff, “How do you know all this?” Epstein replied, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.
”Wolff shared the tape with the Daily Beast ahead of discussing it on his Fire and Fury podcast on Monday.
Last Thursday he caused shockwaves by revealing a few seconds of aseparate recording in which Epstein spoke in detail about the inner workings of the Trump administration. W
olff also said Thursday that the pedophile showed off photos of Trump with topless young women sitting in his lap.
Wolff, a veteran journalist and author who was also the biographer of Rupert Murdoch, has long attracted praise and bromides. When Fire & Fury was published in January 2018,Trump tried to stop it with a failed cease and desist order, then threatened to sue.
No case ever materialized, and it sold 5 million copies worldwide.
Wolff, who appears regularly on his Fire and Fury podcast, wrote two more books on Trump after Fire and Fury, and about Epstein in 2021’s Too Famous.
Wolff says he has up to 100 hours of recordings of interviews with Epstein, including from using him as asource for Fire and Fury, and from years of meetings whe nthe disgraced financier appeared to want Wolff to write a biography of him. Wolff said he decided to release parts ofthe archive after a new accuser, a former Miss Switzerland, alleged last week that Trump had groped her in 1992.
The new recording offers extraordinary insights into Epstein, who in 2017 was shuttling freely on his two private jets between his Manhattan townhouse, his Palm Beach, Florida, estateand Little St. James, a private island in the Virgin Islands.
In 2017, Epstein was free to travel between his properties on a choice of two planes—thisGulfstream, and his Boeing 727, dubbed the “Lolita Express,” on which he claimed Melania and Donald Trump first had sex.
Epstein had been convicted in 2008 in Florida of procuring a child for prostitution andsoliciting a prostitute in a plea deal that allowed him to escape prosecution for victimizing multiple underage girls, in return for an 18-month sentence.
He spent the years after hisrelease associating with billionaires—including Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global 4/11 Management who paid him more than $150 million for financial advice, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates—and dining behind closed doors with members of the financial and political elite.
In July 2019, however, he was arrested by the FBI and charged with child sex trafficking. Six weeks later Epstein’s body was found hanging in his prison cell; authorities said he had died by suicide.
Wolff told the Beast he interviewed Epstein, then 64, in a “gargantuan” study in his townhouse on East 71st Street in Manhattan two years before his death. The Beast has reviewed the entire recording, which is one hour, 44 minutes long. The voice on the tape clearly matches recordings of Epstein’s voice from depositions in 2012 and 2016.
The Trump campaign has already attacked Wolff for releasing audio of Epstein, calling the author “a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics.”
A spokesperson renewed that attack Saturday, and said, “He waited until days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying forattention.”
Sources in the Trump camp also suggested it was “widely known” that Trump had“kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago” when he learned about the sex-traffickingallegations.
Wolff interviewed Epstein at his vast Manhattan townhouse on a day in August 2017. Just short of two years later, it was raided by the FBI.
Trump’s long friendship with Epstein, which spanned the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s has been well documented. In the 1990s, the two publicly partied at Mar-a-Lago and went toa Victoria’s Secret Angels show together. In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine of Epstein, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even saidthat he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
Epstein’s infamous leaked address books had Trump’s own phone number as well as Melania’s, while Trump’s name appeared seven times in the passenger logs of Epstein’s planes. (The books and logs also included princes, politicians and potentates such as Bill Clinton, former British prime minister Tony Blair, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and celebrities and billionaires including Mick Jagger and Les Wexner.
The long friendship between Trump and Epstein saw them party at Mar-a-Lago, including in February 2000 when they posed with their then-girlfriends, Melania Knauss
More On UI.S. Law, Crime, Corruption
New York Times, Binance Gives Trump Family’s Crypto Firm a Leg Up, David Yaffe-Bellany, Feb. 7, 2026. Ties between the exchange and the president’s company, World Liberty Financial, have only strengthened since the president pardoned Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao (shown above in an AP photo).
World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up, reached a major landmark last month. The total circulation of the company’s signature digital coin hit $5 billion, cementing its place as one of the world’s top cryptocurrencies.
“New milestones achieved,” the company declared on social media. The president’s second son, Eric Trump, celebrated the moment with a series of fire emojis.
Much of that success was down to an alliance with the crypto exchange Binance — founded by Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire mogul who was pardoned by President Trump last year.
As the world’s largest platform for trading digital coins, Binance has become a vital engine of the Trump family’s business over the past two months. The exchange has offered a series of marketing promotions to encourage its customers to buy USD1 — World Liberty’s stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency that maintains a price of $1, making it easier to use for transactions.
Of the $5 billion of USD1 coins now in circulation, about 85 percent are held in accounts on Binance, according to the data firms Arkham and Nansen, even though the exchange’s platform is available only outside the United States.
“Most of the money is sitting within Binance, and has really always sat within Binance,” said Jonathan Reiter, a co-founder of ChainArgos, another crypto data firm. “They are the main trading venue for this.”
The relationship between World Liberty and Binance has faced heavy scrutiny from ethics experts and some members of Congress, who view it as a considerable conflict of interest, because President Trump is now both a crypto mogul and the industry’s chief policy maker. The White House has voiced support for legislation, pending in Congress, that would make it easier for crypto exchanges to operate in the United States.
In October, Mr. Trump granted the pardon to Mr. Zhao, who spent four months in prison after he and the company pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023. Despite the felony record, Mr. Zhao was allowed to remain Binance’s majority shareholder, and his clemency could pave the way for the company to break into the U.S. market, where it currently is not allowed to operate.Editors’ Picks9 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This WeekN.F.L. Careers Scarred Their Brains. Could Mushrooms Provide Relief?It’s Time to File Your 2025 Tax Return. Here’s What to Know.
Since the pardon, the ties between Binance and World Liberty have only strengthened, even as the Trump family’s company has faced increasing political pressure from Democrats.
The Contrarian, Investigative Commentary: Trump & Cronies’ Top 10 Corruption Scandals, Norman Eisen, right, Contrarian publisher, and Gabriel Lezra, Feb. 7, 2026. And how YOU are helping fight back -- Publisher's Roundup 53.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
That famous line was at the center of the classic 1970s film Network – but it is also an apt motto for how my democracy litigation colleagues and I are responding to Donald Trump’s corruption in all its forms. According to the New York Times, there are over 600 cases defending the guardrails of democracy against his assault. We have 252 cases and matters at Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action alone, with hundreds more by other organizations.
Building on those successes, the time has come to go on offense against corruption by Trump and his cronies. That’s why this week we at DDF, along with wonderful partners, filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s so-called “Gold Card” visa program. It is a blatantly illegal attempt to strip qualified immigrants of a path to citizenship while selling legal status to wealthy foreigners. Forget “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” Trump’s maxim is “give us your money, your oligarchs, your privileged few.”
Guess who made that lawsuit possible? You did, Contrarians! All profits from your paid subscriptions go to help support that and our other 251 cases and matters–like our huge win at the Supreme Court this week defending California’s Prop. 50 and counteracting Trump’s attempt to steal congressional seats. If you’re not a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one and joining the fight.Subscribed
I cover the Gold Card case and nine other outrages in my updated top 10 list of Trump and his cronies’ worst corruption scandals – and of the pushback in the courts of law and of public opinion. There is nothing the American people hate more than corruption, and it has contributed to Trump’s historic unpopularity.
Since we published our first list in December, new schemes have emerged, and old ones have metastasized or featured shocking additional revelations of abusing power for personal or financial gain, corrupting the rule of law, and more. What follows is an updated list, reflecting both brand-new scandals and new developments in cases we flagged before. After you give the list a look, please keep on reading for our usual roundup of all our great Contrarian coverage this week.
1. The Epstein Files Cover-Up
The signature corruption scandal of the Trump administration remains Trump’s association with one of the most notorious child sex traffickers in history – and his administration’s refusal to turn over all of the files about the case so we can be certain we have all Trump-Epstein documents. The administration admitted it’s refusing to disclose about 3 million files, despite a law requiring their disclosure. The Department of Justice wants us to trust that it has good reasons for all that, but the place is run by two of his former defense lawyers, the FBI is helmed by an even bigger Trump loyalist, and they have acted like it too often for us to give them any credence. This scandal is not going away.
Current Status: Democracy Defenders Fund filed a complaint this week with the Office of the Inspector General about the missing documents, and we are litigating and investigating on multiple fronts. We will continue to pursue all legal avenues to ensure the complete release of all eligible files relating to the Epstein investigation, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
2. Selling American Residency to the Super-Rich
In September, Trump debuted the so-called “Gold Card,” a program that lets wealthy foreigners effectively buy permanent U.S. residency for a $1 million payment to the federal government. That’s bad enough, but consider this: Rather than asking Congress to create a new visa category, Trump simply ordered federal agencies to treat these massive cash “gifts” to the Department of Commerce as proof of eligibility for elite EB-1 and EB-2 visas. Those are categories Congress reserved for Nobel laureates, pioneering scientists, and individuals whose work serves the national interest. But these employment-based visas are strictly capped – so every Gold Card handed to a millionaire donor necessarily displaces a qualified scientist, engineer, physician, or researcher already waiting in line. (It is worth noting that all available EB-1 visas were granted September 8, 2025, with the cap resetting every year on October 1.) That means that Trump has effectively transformed lawful permanent residency into a luxury commodity, letting oligarchs buy into our country like they buy Ferraris and Picassos.
We’re not letting Trump auction off our immigration system without a fight. This week, we brought suit on behalf of a group of highly accomplished professionals – people who followed the rules, only to find themselves subject to being pushed aside by wealthy applicants who could jump the line with a seven-figure check. And remember: Congress — not the president — has the exclusive authority to set immigration eligibility and raise federal funds. The Gold Card program overrides Congress’s choices — both as to who qualifies for employment-based immigration and how and under what conditions agencies may collect revenue.
Current Status: We will see Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in court (and in the Epstein files).
3. World Liberty Financial
Trump’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), was near the top of our list when we debuted it in December – and things have only gotten worse. New reporting last week revealed that the “Spy Sheikh,” Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan — the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and one of the most powerful men in the Gulf – had quietly amassed a secret stake in Trump’s crypto venture through a web of investment vehicles designed to obscure his involvement. His hidden investment in Trump’s crypto business created an extraordinary conflict of interest: a foreign national security advisor with direct financial ties to the sitting U.S. president’s private enterprise. And it may already be paying off, as, months later, the UAE secured a deal for millions of the most advanced computer chips from American company NVidia, a “coup” for the tiny nation. The White House has denied any impropriety here.
Current Status: WLFI is flush with Gulf cash – but these revelations may make Trump’s crypto conflicts so unpalatable that there are consequences. Perhaps even the crypto industry PAC’s $193 million midterms war chest won’t be enough to get uneasy Democrats to vote for legislation creating a market structure for cryptocurrency without any checks on Trump’s ability to influence the market to his benefit.
4. The Meme Coin Grift
Trump’s meme coin represents perhaps his most brash self-enrichment scheme, one unlike anything we have ever seen from an American president. According to the website, the token is “intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol “$TRUMP“ — and not as an investment or security. But of course this slice of code was listed on various crypto exchanges and immediately surged in price. Since its launch, the coin’s value closely followed Trump’s announcements, with wild fluctuations. The president even hosted an exclusive dinner for meme coin “investors” who spent tens of thousands to buy the digital token. This access auction was a scheme so brazen — even for Trump — that it left ethics experts like us stunned. The White House denies any conflicts of interest.
Current Status: The Trump-dominated Securities and Exchange Commission has shown zero interest in examining Trump’s meme coin activities. This makes defeating the new crypto market bill even more important. We have been sounding the alarm, and our fight continues.
5. Tom Homan’s $50,000
With Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan, below, back in the news as he took center stage in Minnesota’s ICE invasion, Democracy Defenders Fund this week expanded our investigation of his conduct. We launched additional FOIA 
requests about his alleged acceptance of a $50,000 payment from undercover federal agents posing as business executives. Homan, left, has denied wrongdoing. But if Trump is going to thrust him into the country’s civil rights flashpoint, then we have to have transparency. A tape of the alleged payoff reportedly exists. Let’s see it. The secrecy surrounding these meetings raises the same fundamental question that follows so many Trump officials: Is government power being secretly shaped by those with money and access? The American people deserve to know what kind of person has taken control of immigration actions in Minnesota and whether he can be trusted to wield that power.
Current Status: If we don’t promptly get the materials we are asking for, we are prepared to pursue all legal remedies. If Trump and Co. don’t believe us, they should take a look at our 252 cases and matters.
6. The USD1 Binance-UAE Deal
Less than two months after Trump’s WLFI launched USD1, its stablecoin, a UAE state-backed investment firm announced that it would use USD1 to finance a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance, which was then under SEC investigation. In May, Binance decided to list USD1 – and, days after the announcement, Trump’s SEC dropped its securities case against the exchange. And then there’s Trump’s treatment of Binance’s head Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. He pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2023 and got a Trump pardon this past October. The White House defended Zhao, criticized his prosecution, and blamed the Biden administration for creating a “war on cryptocurrency.“
Current Status: With last week’s latest revelations of the UAE’s crypto influence campaign with the “Spy Sheikh’s” role in WLFI (#3 above), it’s worth keeping an eye on this while we wait for the next shoe to fall.
7. Trump’s Qatari Boeing
In May, Qatar presented Trump and his administration with a $400 million Boeing 747, ostensibly to use as Air Force One — a present reportedly worth more than all foreign gifts bestowed on all former American presidents combined. As my colleagues and I noted in a legal complaint, the Trump administration is apparently illegally transferring nearly $1 billion from a nuclear weapons program at the Defense Department to retrofit the jet, a gross mismanagement of key federal funds. And it will barely have time in the air before Trump’s term ends and it gets “donated” to Trump’s presidential library for his continued use. Meanwhile, after the transfer, Qatar got a guarantee that the United States will defend Qatar through “diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military” measures and a new “military facility” for Qatar’s Air Force at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Trump has defended the transfer of the plane as a legitimate “gift,” and the White House said that “any gift given by a foreign government is always accepted in full compliance with all applicable laws. President Trump’s administration is committed to full transparency.”
Current Status: We’re waiting for the Government Accountability Office to act on our complaint — but it’s hard to imagine a clearer conflict of interest.
8. Melania’s Amazin’ Flop
Amazon’s Melania film had its lavish Washington, D.C., premiere last week, and it went about as expected: a high-profile commercial event designed to elevate — and monetize — the Trump brand. Black carpets, media spectacle, and exclusive distribution through Amazon’s Prime Video platform were deployed to attempt to transform Melania Trump’s story into something in line with the $40 million Amazon paid for the rights. That was about $26 million above the nearest bidder, which raises questions about what Amazon was really paying for here. Unfortunately for Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Melania Trump, and director Brett Ratner (who was already having a bad day after surfacing in the Epstein files), the movie scored a putrid 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers describing it as, “primarily a film about a woman walking into and out of rooms,” and an “unbelievable abomination of filmmaking.”
Current Status: Melania’s 6% rating leaves it in the rarified air of films like 1997’s Mortal Kombat Annihilation (4%), and 2010’s The Last Airbender (5%).
9. Trump’s Foreign Real Estate Boom
Trump is set to more than triple his foreign properties during this term, as real estate developers are working on at least 23 Trump-branded projects. These projects are a global feeding frenzy for foreign governments looking to curry favor with the president. To take only a few examples, Trump is building a hotel, golf course, and residences in Oman on property owned by the government. A Saudi real estate firm (with close ties to the Saudi government) is the Trump Organization’s partner in various real estate deals, including a new Trump Hotel in Dubai and a residential tower in Jeddah. In November, the Trump Organization announced a project in the Maldives with the same Saudi firm. The very next day, Trump met with Saudi Crown Prince and Jared Kushner buddy Mohammed bin Salman and announced an “Economic and Defense Partnership” with the kingdom. Hard to come up with better reasons why the Constitution prohibits the president from accepting foreign emoluments. When asked about possible conflicts of interest in the context of Trump’s then-upcoming trip to the Middle East, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that it was “ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.”
Current Status: Each individual property may constitute an emoluments clause violation. We at Democracy Defenders Fund include leaders of the team that won multiple emoluments cases against Trump in his first term, and we ain’t playing. Watch this space!
10. Trump’s D.C. Renovation Racket
In the middle of the longest government shutdown ever, as federal workers were going without pay and standing in bread lines, Trump ordered the destruction of the historic East Wing to build a massive, $300 million-plus ballroom. And that’s only one of his Washington, D.C., personal vanity projects, which also include renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. When that caused artists and audiences to hemorrhage, Trump suddenly announced he planned to close the center for supposed renovations. We can’t help but wonder if it’s to avoid the additional embarrassment of no one showing up. Trump says he’s raised private money for both these renovations, but the ballroom donors include corporations that have received billions in federal contracts – and about a dozen facing federal enforcement actions.
Current Status: We and partners are litigating the Kennedy Center renaming on behalf of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), with the government’s filing due on March 1. nd we are considering all legal steps to address the closing if it moves forward. Others are litigating the ballroom case, and initial signs point to a tough ruling for the White House.Subscribed
I’ll periodically update this and my other Top 10 Trump trackers. So many scandals, so little time. And in each one, I will also cover the Democracy Movement pushback made possible by your paid subscriptions. And now for our usual review authored by my wonderful colleagues of all this week’s coverage at the Contrarian.
Emptywheel, Analysis: Blood Spatters and Newbie JAG Officers, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D), right, Feb. 7, 2026.
A NYT story detailing the collapse of the Minnesota US Attorney’s office describes that Kash Patel nixed an effort to investigate the blood spatters in Renee Good’s car because doing so would produce evidence contradicting Trump’s claim that Good had run over Jonathan Ross.
The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good’s civil rights.
But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, left, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.
As I said at the time, this is bigger than Kash Patel’s sycophancy. There’s good reason to believe that Greg Bovino took his orders on use of force from Stephen Miller, and Bovino has been in the neighborhood of most of the most problematic uses of force from DHS (he was either on scene at the Good killing, or arrived almost immediately thereafter). And if Miller told Bovino to target protesters, than covering up the shooting of Good would be tantamount to covering up White House complicity in it.
Refusing to test the blood spatters — which may never have happened at this point — amounts to covering up a potential murder, one that may implicate orders the White House issued.
And even as Kash was suppressing any investigation into Good’s killing, Bovino was demanding prosecutions of protesters — precisely the kind of prosecutions that have collapsed in Los Angeles, DC, and Chicago — to “put down” the protests.
At one point, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol leader who was the face of the administration’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, called federal prosecutors, pressing them to charge demonstrators with crimes. When a prosecutor asked what the operation’s end goal was, several people familiar with the call recalled Mr. Bovino saying that he did not intend to “calm it down,” but instead, he said, “We’re going to put it down.”
And sure enough, after Pam Bondi, left, flew to Minnesota personally, eventually DOJ did charge those protesters, the sixteen people Bondi displayed like trophies.
But then, once Bondi left town, her trophies started to fade. Of the 16 people listed in the press release, two still don’t show up in PACER. And of the remaining 14, 11 have been downgraded to misdemeanors (the exceptions are Paul Johnson, Abdikadir Noor, and William Vermie; though there are already signs of paperwork problems in these dockets, and misdemeanor informations could still be filed).
Crazier still, prosecutions these people Pam Bondi portrayed as super dangerous criminals have all been turned over to brand new Lawyers, at least two of whom (John Arboleda and Michael Hakes-Rodriguez) are JAG Officers.
There’s no reason to believe that these prosecutions won’t collapse just like they did everywhere else Stephen Miller’s goons invaded.
Meanwhile, DOJ rolled out their new trophy the other day — a guy fully tattooed as an opponent to fascism. And while the complaint obtained in Detroit includes multiple statements that might be deemed a true threat to ICE or CBP goons and the complaint claims he “conspired to assault law enforcement officers,” it charges no such thing! They’ve only charged him for doxing an ICE supporter — basically the kind of thing that Libs of Tik Tok does before breakfast most days.
1. Gillian Etherington26-mj-56Charged for January 7 conflict with CBP in affidavit attested (by FaceTime) on January 23 by HSI SA Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.
2. Paul Johnson26-mj-81Charged for January 22 conflict with CBP in affidavit attested on January 26 by HSI SA Richard Berger. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance.
3. Matrim Charlebois26-mj-59Charged for January 13 incident at Whipple in affidavit attested on January 23 by HSI SA Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.
4. Ilan Wilson-Soler[no court filings unsealed]
5. Abdikadir Noor26-mj-62Charged for January 12 incident in St. Cloud in affidavit attested on January 23 by HSI Richard Berger; Abdikadir’s name initially misspelled. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance.
6. Margaret Sager[no court filings unsealed]
7. Kirubele Adbebe26-mj-77Charged for January 13 incident at Whipple in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 26 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.
8. Nasra Ahmed26-mj-24Charged for January 14 incident with ICE ERO in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 20 by HSI SA Bronson Day. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.
9. Helicity Borowska26-mj-61Charged for January 16 incident with CBP in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.
10. Joshua Doyle26-mj-80Charged for January 21 incident with HSI at DuPont and Colfax in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 26 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. John Arboleda filed notice of appearance.
11. Nitzana Flores26-mj-57Charged for January 7 incident with CBP by Roosevelt School in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance.
12. Christina Rank26-mj-56Charged for January 12 incident with ICE in Inver Grove Heights in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Michael Hakes-Rodriguez filed notice of appearance.
13. Madeline Tschida26-mj-54Charged for January 16 incident with ICE ERO in Monticello in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.
14. Alice Valentine26-mj-28Charged for January 12 incident in St. Cloud with named Executive Associate Directors of ICE ERO. Affidavit attested by Bronson Day to Douglas Micko via Facetime on January 20. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.
15. William Vermie26-mj-71Charged for January 13 incident on Park Ave in affidavit attested via FaceTime and email on January 23 by Richard Berger. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.
16. Quentin Williams26-mj-70Charged for January 7 CBP invasion of Roosevelt High School in affidavit attested via FaceTime on January 23 by Richard Berger. Downgraded to misdemeanor. Zain Abid filed notice of appearance.
Pro Publica, Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting, J. David McSwane, Feb. 1, 2026. The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.
The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.
The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations.
Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city.
CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good.
Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for a transparent investigation into the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse working at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.
“We must have a transparent, independent investigation into the Minnesota shooting, and those responsible—no matter their title—must be held accountable,” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah wrote on X on Monday.
The agency sent a notice to some members of Congress on Tuesday acknowledging that two agents fired Glock pistols during the altercation that left Pretti dead. That notice does not include the agents’ names. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, said the agents had been placed on leave after the Jan. 24 shooting. And after a week of protests and calls from lawmakers for a review, the Justice Department said Friday that its Civil Rights Division is investigating the shooting. A DOJ spokesperson did not answer questions, including whether DHS has shared materials, such as body-camera footage, with its investigators.
Ochoa is a Border Patrol agent who joined CBP in 2018. Gutierrez joined in 2014 and works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units. Records show both men are from South Texas.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Gregory Bovino, who has orchestrated high-intensity immigration sweeps and arrests in a string of Democratic-led cities since early 2025, was removed from his role as Border Patrol commander at large and reassigned to his former post in El Centro, California.
A spokesperson for DHS declined to answer questions about the two agents and referred ProPublica to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. ProPublica made several attempts to call Ochoa and Gutierrez but neither answered.
Ochoa, who goes by Jesse, graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American with a degree in criminal justice, according to his ex-wife, Angelica Ochoa. A longtime resident of the Rio Grande Valley, Ochoa had for years dreamed of working for the Border Patrol and finally landed a job there, she said. By the time the couple split in 2021, he had become a gun enthusiast with about 25 rifles, pistols and shotguns, Angelica Ochoa said.
DHS’ disclosure to Congress was drawn from an internal review of the agents’ body-camera footage, which has not been released to the public. State investigators, meanwhile, have accused their federal counterparts of blocking them from investigating the shooting.
Note from the editors: ProPublica is publishing the names of the two federal immigration agents involved in the fatal shooting of Minnesota protester Alex Pretti. We believe there are few investigations that deserve more sunlight and public scrutiny than this one, in which two masked agents fired 10 shots at Pretti as he lay on the ground after being pepper-sprayed.
The Department of Justice said it is investigating the incident, but the names of the two agents have been withheld from Congress and from state and local law enforcement.
The policy of shielding officers’ identities, particularly after a public shooting, is a stark departure from standard law enforcement protocols, according to lawmakers, state attorneys general and former federal officials. Such secrecy, in our view, deprives the public of the most fundamental tool for accountability.
Politico, Trump pushes for Nexstar-Tegna merger, Gregory Svirnovskiy, Feb. 7, 2026. The president’s call could disappoint key conservative media operatives opposed to the deal.President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before departing the White House on Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington. | Jose Luis Magana/APBy
President Donald Trump on Saturday urged federal authorities to complete a proposed $6.2 billion merger between media companies Nexstar and Tegna, his latest effort to exert greater influence over the American media landscape and one that could tick off several key conservative media operatives opposed to the deal.
An agreement between the two companies would violate a rule from the Federal Communications Commission limiting how many television stations a single company can operate. But Trump cast it as critical for fighting his opponents in the national news arena.
“We need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar - Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level.”
Approval from the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission is critical for the merger. Perhaps in an effort to curry favor, Nexstar has aligned itself with the administration in the recent past. It joined Sinclair, another conservative broadcasting group, in briefly blocking comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show from airing on its affiliates after White House officials criticized his comments on the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. (Both networks resumed airing the program after discussions with ABC and Disney.)
The FCC and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment on their plans following Trump’s post.
Not all conservatives are on board with the merger, however.
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy has encouraged the administration to keep the cap on network ownership in place. He and other conservatives argued prior to Trump’s post that jettisoning the rule would stymie competition in media and hurt independent cable companies like Newsmax.
“It’s not going to work,” he told POLITICO in November. “The president doesn’t want this, and so I have no doubt that he will not support the FCC going to extraordinary but potentially illegal lengths.”
Charles Herring, the president of One America News Network, a pro-Trump television channel, also signaled his opposition last year.
“Only competition (not consolidation) serves Americans,” he wrote in a post on X last September. “Keep markets open & free. Competition serves the consumer and our democracy.”
Feb. 6
Top Stories
News and Commentary: Major News: Trump Posts Racist Image Depicting the Obamas as Monkeys as Epstein Fall Out Surges, Aaron Parnas, Feb. 6, 2026. There’s a lot of urgent news to cover today. First, Donald Trump posted a blatantly racist image depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as apes, just as Michelle Obama’s documentary is surging while Melania Trump’s film struggles. The timing is not a coincidence. At the same time, the fallout from the Epstein files is accelerating. More On U.S. Politics, Government
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 5, 2026 [], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 6, 2026. The past two days have seen a growing struggle between Democrats, who are demanding accountability from the Trump administration, and Republicans trying to hide what the administration is up to.U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Justice, Courts
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: American Decency Still Lives, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 6, 2026. When pushed far enough, Americans will do the right thing.More On Epstein Files
More Global News
New York Times, Iran Is at Work on Missile and Nuclear Sites, Satellite Images Show, Samuel Granados and Aurelien Breeden, Feb. 6, 2026. Repairs at key missile sites began soon after they were hit by Israeli and U.S. strikes last year, but work at Iran’s nuclear facilities has been slower.More On U.S. Governance, Politics
U.S. Markets, Economy, Jobs, Inflation
U.S. Religion, Culture, Media, Education
President Trump, describing his philosophy of using the U.S. military to attack boats off the coast of Venezuela
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The Hartmann Report, Commentary: Trump's Racist Attack on the Obamas Shows the Moral Collapse of His Presidency, Thom Hartmann, This wasn’t a joke or a mistake but a warning about how racism, silence, and abuse of power are eating away at democracy....
Normally I wouldn’t post such a disgusting, racist image that originated on Elon’s social media sewer, but it’s important for the historical record for Americans to see what the President of the United States reposted last night on his own site — as your and my representative — for the entire world to see.
I’ve been talking into microphones since I did the morning news on WITL in Lansing Michigan in the late 1960s, and I’ve seen a lot of ugly moments in American politics. But every so often something happens that still takes your breath away, not because it’s surprising, but because it’s so painfully revealing.
This latest racist stunt by Donald Trump — reposting a meme on his Nazi-infested social media site in which the Obamas’ faces are superimposed onto the bodies of primates in the jungle set to the 1961 song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens — is one of those moments.
That a popular pro-Trump account on X created this video and it has lived on that platform without consequence is disgusting in and of itself. But Trump — as our president, speaking in our voice — made it infinitely worse last night by promoting it to millions around the world.
Promoting a video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as non-human primates isn’t a joke. It isn’t satire or an accident. It’s the oldest racist smear in the book, dressed up in a cheap meme and now blasted out by a man who once swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
When the president of the United States does something like this, it doesn’t just insult two people. It tells a story about who, according to the most powerful man in the world, belongs in America and who doesn’t.
For centuries, racism in this country has relied on the lie that some people are less than human. That lie has been used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and mass incarceration.
It’s the lie that made it easier for people to look away while their neighbors were brutalized. It’s the lie that justifies ICE’s brutal, racist behavior. When Trump shares imagery that taps directly into that history, he’s not being edgy: he’s reopening wounds that never fully healed.
When the President of the United States signals that this kind of racism is acceptable, it gives permission to others. It tells the kid being harassed at school, the family being targeted by a hate group, and the voter being pushed out of the polling line that the cruelty they’re experiencing is justified. That it’s their own fault.
It tells the bullies and thugs of ICE as they do their “Kavanaugh Stops” — targeting people based on their race — that they’re on the right side of power.
This isn’t just about harm to minorities, although that harm is real and immediate. It’s about what happens to democracy itself when the presidency becomes a megaphone for dehumanization.
Democracy depends on the idea that we’re all political equals. Once you start suggesting that some Americans are animals, that idea collapses. It becomes easier to justify taking away voting rights, ignore court rulings, or shrug when violence follows hateful rhetoric.
I remember a time, during the era of Eisenhower and Kennedy, when the presidency stood as a kind of moral North Star. Even when presidents like Nixon and Clinton failed to live up to it, there was at least a shared understanding that the office itself mattered. That it should pull us together, not rip us apart.
Trump has spent years doing the opposite, from the 1970s when he was busted along with his father for refusing to rent to Black people to his recent use of words like “vermin” and “shitholes” to describe Hispanic and Black people and majority-Black countries. Last night’s post is another brutally clear example of Trump’s deep, lifelong racism.
What’s even more chilling is the silence from Republican leaders and elected officials. If you can’t bring yourself to condemn something this overtly racist, where exactly is your line?
Silence in moments like this isn’t neutrality: it’s complicity. It tells people of color in America, already dealing with the burden of centuries of institutional racism, that their pain is irrelevant and their dignity a plaything in the hands of white people.
I know some people will say we should ignore it, that reacting “just feeds the outrage machine.” Trump’s propaganda princess, Karoline Leavitt, tried to downplay it by telling reporters this morning:
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
But pretending this doesn’t matter is how we normalize it and weaken our shared sense of humanity. And the end point of that is always disaster.
As California Governor Gavin Newsome just posted:
If this doesn’t provoke the 13 white billionaires in Trump’s cabinet — who would all instantly fire anybody in any of their companies who posted such an image on their company’s servers — to start 25th Amendment proceedings or endorse impeachment, it’ll tell us everything about who they are, too.
America is stronger when we recognize each other as fully human. The moment we let that slip, we all lose something precious.
New York Times, Trump Deletes Racist Video of Obamas After Outcry, Erica L. Green and Isabella Kwai, Feb. 6, 2026. The White House press secretary had dismissed criticism of the clip’s racist content as “fake outrage.” But later Friday, the clip disappeared from the president’s social media feed.
President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, then deleted it after an outcry, including from members of his own party.
The clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election. It was the latest in a long pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.
The decision to delete the link from his social media site was an unusual walk-back by the president, whose own press secretary just hours earlier had brushed off criticism of the video.
The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes perpetuates a racist trope, used historically by slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize Black people and justify lynchings. Mr. Trump has a history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants, and he has for years taken aim at the Obamas in particular. Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on official sites. The White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department have all promoted social media posts that echo white supremacist messaging.
The video, which Mr. Trump shared in a late-night posting spree, drew widespread condemnation, including from the president’s own party.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, left — the Senate’s only Black Republican and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s — wrote on X that he hoped the post was fake “because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
Mr. Scott is the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party’s campaign arm in charge of holding the Senate, a key role ahead of the midterms in November.Editors’ PicksWho Is That Masked Man? The Orchids Aren’t Telling.Should I Reach Out to a Young Person Who Ghosted My Elderly Mother?A Father’s Wish Becomes a Daughter’s Fulfillment on the Upper West Side
Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, said the president’s post “is wrong and incredibly offensive.” He said the video “should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”
The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Major News: Trump Posts Racist Image Depicting the Obamas as Monkeys as Epstein Fall Out Surges, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 6, 2026. There’s a lot of urgent news to cover today.
First, Donald Trump posted a blatantly racist image depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as apes, just as Michelle Obama’s documentary is surging while Melania Trump’s film struggles. The timing is not a coincidence.
At the same time, the fallout from the Epstein files is accelerating. More than a dozen powerful figures have already been forced out of their jobs or are now facing intense pressure as new documents expose the depth of their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Before we get into the headlines, I need to say two things.
If this work matters to you, subscribe to support it. Accountability depends on refusing to look away.
Here’s the news:
This morning, Donald Trump posted a racist video on Truth Social portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, continuing a pattern of amplifying demeaning racist content while simultaneously promoting false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and escalating rhetoric that critics warn is tied to voter suppression ahead of future elections. I am going to show you the video below because it is news, although I encourage you not to share or amplify the video. It is no coincidience that Trump decided to do this during Black History Month.
Meanwhile, Michelle Obama’s 2020 Netflix documentary Becoming saw a dramatic 13,000% surge in viewership—jumping to about 47.5 million minutes watched in a single weekend—just as Melania Trump’s heavily funded theatrical documentary debuted to poor critical reception, highlighting a sharp cultural contrast between organic audience enthusiasm for Obama’s personal, community-focused storytelling and the lukewarm response to Melania’s film despite its large budget, aggressive marketing, and political backing.
This is the White House statement following the video release:
As we review the Epstein files, the fall out continues to grow. Here is a list of powerful people who have either lost their job or are facing the possibility of losing their jobs:
Newly released Justice Department emails show Jeffrey Epstein helped arrange a 2015 White House tour for Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, offering deeper insight into Epstein’s close relationships with high-profile figures despite his status as a registered sex offender.
The CEO of lobbying firm Global Counsel, Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, resigned after Jeffrey Epstein’s released email files showed he and co-founder Peter Mandelson had meetings and exchanges with Epstein years after Epstein’s sex-offender conviction, and the firm moved to fully distance itself from Mandelson to protect its reputation.
Newly released Justice Department emails show Andrew (Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor) vouched for Jeffrey Epstein during a 2010 UK state visit to the UAE with Queen Elizabeth II, attempting to introduce Epstein to senior Emirati leaders and advising him on how to present himself, while also discussing ways to work around investment restrictions during Andrew’s role as a UK trade envoy—revelations that deepen scrutiny of Andrew’s continued ties to Epstein after his conviction.
Congress is deadlocked over funding the Department of Homeland Security, with Democrats demanding legally binding limits on ICE and Border Patrol practices and Republicans calling those demands unrealistic, raising the risk of a DHS shutdown as the funding deadline approaches.
ICE agents are increasingly using smartphone-based facial recognition and photography during street operations to identify targets and bystanders, a practice critics say expands government surveillance, risks civil liberties violations, and intimidates citizens despite DHS insisting the technology is lawful and necessary for enforcement.
Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old boy detained with his father by immigration authorities is now suffering nightmares and emotional trauma after their arrest and two-week detention, with the family and advocates saying the incident highlights the lasting psychological harm immigration enforcement can have on young children.
Canada and France opened new consulates in Greenland to signal support for Denmark and Greenland’s sovereignty, strengthen Arctic cooperation, and counter tensions sparked by U.S. efforts to assert greater control over the strategically important, resource-rich territory.
House Democrats erupted after reports that President Trump privately proposed renaming Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station after himself in exchange for releasing $16 billion in frozen Gateway Project funds, denouncing the idea as political extortion, a vanity play that holds critical infrastructure hostage, and vowing to block it in court and Congress while Republicans close to Trump praised the move as deserved recognition.
Hundreds of protesters—mostly students and activists—flooded the streets of Milan ahead of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony to oppose the presence of ICE agents, chanting anti-ICE slogans and criticizing U.S. officials, with demonstrations highlighting global anger over ICE tactics and sparking heightened security and planned follow-up protests during the Games.
Newly released emails contradict Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sworn testimony that his 2019 trip to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines,” showing U.S. embassy and UN officials understood the visit was driven by vaccine-safety concerns and that it helped legitimize anti-vaccine activists ahead of a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, raising fresh accusations that Kennedy misled Congress while now reshaping U.S. vaccine policy as health secretary.
The United States cut off official contact with Poland’s parliamentary speaker after he criticized Donald Trump and opposed nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize, triggering a diplomatic dispute that underscores Poland’s delicate balancing act between maintaining strong U.S. ties and navigating internal political divisions.
CNN has confirmed that at least six children from a Minnesota school district, including a 10-year-old detained on her way to school and held in Texas for nearly a month, were swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, sparking outrage from families and educators who say aggressive ICE operations are traumatizing students, disrupting schools, and detaining children who were complying with the asylum process.
A federal judge ordered ICE to stop making warrantless arrests in Oregon unless there is a clear risk a person will flee, ruling that agents’ “arrest first, justify later” tactics violated due process and describing some enforcement actions as violent and unconstitutional.
Iran and the United States began high-stakes, indirect nuclear talks in Oman—mediated by Omani officials—as tensions rise amid a U.S. naval buildup and Trump’s threat of military action, with Iran insisting negotiations stay narrowly focused on its nuclear program while seeking sanctions relief and security guarantees to avert a broader regional confrontation.
Wayne Madsen Report, Epstein investigations continue to mushroom around the globe, Wayne Madsen, left, Feb. 6, 2026. The Epstein scandal represents the largest international scandal since BCCI.
Worldwide investigations of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and financial operations continue to roil governments around the world. The international scope of the Epstein scandal has not been seen since the Bank of Credit and CommerceInternational (BCCI) affair of the 1980s (chronicled by one author, for example, as "The Dictator-Run Bank That Tells the Story of America’s Foreign Corruption."
Epstein’s recruitment of women and models from Bulgaria have resulted in calls in Bulgaria for a criminal investigation. The demand comes at a time when the country is heading into a snap general election.
Epstein file documents trace Epstein's interest in Bulgaria back to at least 2004, including records of plane tickets for Bulgarian women traveling between Sofia and New York, which were paid for by Epstein. Records suggest that women were recruited via modeling agencies in Bulgaria, with Epstein associates like Daniel Amar Siad involved in sourcing candidates. The files also indicate that associates visited Sofia for meetings with government officials. In 2011, emails show discussions regarding an Epstein contract with a Bulgarian doctor, potentially a plastic surgeon. In 2022, it was reported that a luxury Paris apartment previously owned by Epstein was sold for over €10 million to a Bulgarian businessman, Georgi Tuchev.
A 2010 email from Siad — who claimed to be a manager of a fashion television channel based in Russia — to Epstein states links the Bulgarian with both Epstein and Epstein trafficker Jean-Luc Brunel. In 2022, Brunel is said to have committed suicide in a French jail while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
Brunel told French authorities that Siad was a recruiter of women and girls from fashion agencies across Europe for Epstein via Siad’s modeling agency, NextOne of Sofia (shown above).
Epstein also dealt with Bulgarian women named Irina and Louisa. Last names were redacted by the U.S. Justice Department. In 2004, Epstein flew two Bulgarian women — last names Evtimova and Cherneva on a round trip from Sofia to New York.
A 2011 email from Siad to Epstein stated that the Bulgarian had held meetings in Bangkok with the royal family of Thailand. Siad had also discussed the Bulgarian plastic surgeon planning to open clinics in Bangkok and Hong Kong catering to men who wanted to enlarge their penises.
A 2012 email from Siad to Epstein stated that he had met “the Princess” who arranged for Siad to meet Bulgarian government officials. The Epstein file also mentions Bulgarian Prince Kyril Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the second son of former Bulgarian Tsar and Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
There are also calls for an investigation of Epstein’s operations in Thailand. Photographs believed to have been taken in Phuket, Thailand, in January 2001, appeared to show the former Prince Andrew in the company of a woman, with Ghislaine Maxwell also reported to be a guest during that period. The Epstein affair has roiled Thai politics prior to the nation heading to the polls for the general election on February 8.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: White House Tied Tunnel Funds to Renaming Airport and Train Station for Trump, Michael Gold, Feb. 6, 2026. Trump administration officials offered to release billions of dollars in frozen funding for a rail tunnel under the Hudson River if Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, led a push to rename major transit hubs in New York City and Washington for President Trump, according to four people familiar with the private conversations. Work on the $16 billion Hudson River tunnel project is set to end on Friday because of the funding lapse.
The Trump administration has sought to pressure Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, to help name New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport after President Trump in exchange for releasing billions of dollars he has frozen for a rail tunnel under the Hudson River.
Top administration officials have told Mr. Schumer in recent weeks that the money would be released if he agreed to name the facilities in Mr. Trump’s honor, according to four people familiar with the private conversations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the private discussions.
The push to rename the station and the airport for Mr. Trump comes as the president, who recently put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, has been on a renaming spree and has appeared increasingly preoccupied with his legacy.
The Trump administration began withholding funds for the new tunnel connecting New York City and New Jersey, a $16 billion project, in October. The agency overseeing its construction moved to halt ongoing work on Friday as money was running out.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Schumer met at the White House last month to discuss the frozen funds.
Though he is the top Senate Democrat, Mr. Schumer has no direct oversight over either transportation hub and rebuffed the request, according to two of the people.
The White House and the Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The conversations were first reported by Punchbowl News.
Mr. Trump, known for affixing his name to New York City high-rises and Atlantic City hotels, has appeared to be undertaking a similar drive on a national scale during his second term. Beyond the Kennedy Center, Mr. Trump and his allies have stamped his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace and public-facing federal projects like investment accounts for American children and TrumpRx, a website that will help Americans buy medication directly from drugmakers.
But withholding money from the tunnel over the names of Penn Station, the busiest train station in the country, would be a significant escalation of the effort to ensure Mr. Trump’s legacy, tying it to a project that would have massive ripple effects across the East Coast.
The project, known as Gateway, sits at the heart of the Northeast Corridor rail route that runs from Boston to Washington and is the most-used passenger line in the United States. It includes the construction of a new two-track tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey, which are linked by 116-year-old tunnels in such poor condition that trains are often delayed, creating a bottleneck.
Supporters of the project say the new tunnel would be crucial to avoiding a disruption in rail service around New York City that they believe would have drastic effects on the national economy.
The tunnel has been under construction for more than a year, with the federal government expected to fund about $12 billion of its cost. But the Transportation Department said in October that it would withhold money until the project could be reviewed to make sure that its contracts followed with new federal rules targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
That announcement came in the middle of a 43-day government shutdown, timing that seemed intended to pressure Mr. Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, into making a deal. More recently, White House officials again suggested the fate of the project was tied to negotiations over funding the government.
The Gateway Development Commission, the agency overseeing the construction, sued the federal government this week over $205 million in payments for work on the tunnel. But the halt to construction on Friday could leave roughly 1,000 workers without jobs.
“Work on the Gateway Tunnel is now halted, with federal funding still frozen,” Governor Kathy Hochul, Democrat of New York, said on Friday. “Thousands of jobs on the line. Billions in economic benefits at risk. All because Donald Trump is on a revenge tour.”
Mr. Trump, a former real estate developer who frequently casts himself as a master builder, has also set his sights on redeveloping Dulles Airport in Virginia, which the federal government owns. The Transportation Department said in December that it was soliciting proposals to renovate the facility.
Mr. Schumer could not unilaterally change the airport’s name. Though some House Republicans have advanced a bill that would rename it after Mr. Trump, the measure has yet to advance.
The senator also has little influence over Penn Station, which is owned by Amtrak.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, criticized the Trump administration for threatening the Gateway project. “These naming rights aren’t tradable as part of any negotiations, and neither is the dignity of New Yorkers,” she said in a statement.
More On U.S. Politics, Government
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump at the Pearly Gates, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 6, 2026. Donald Trump posts a lot of election conspiracy theories online, and he posts a lot of racist memes, too. But it’s not every day that he makes an elections-conspiracy-theory post that is also insanely racist.
Yesterday, he shared a one-minute video alleging that mysterious “4G wireless chips” were discovered “embedded” in a 2020 Michigan voting machine, leading to the “transmission of electronic data” and the manufacture of votes for Joe Biden. The video ends with a hard cut to a totally unrelated clip: two seconds of Barack and Michelle Obama’s grinning heads AI-superimposed onto the bodies of dancing apes.
There’s no political benefit to this, and there will be no political price. It’s just the stuff he likes. Happy Friday.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 5, 2026 [], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 6, 2026. The past two days have seen a growing struggle between Democrats, who are demanding accountability from the Trump administration, and Republicans trying to hide what the administration is up to.
Last night, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) published a letter he sent to Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Ratcliffe. Wyden is the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and is a careful, hardworking, and dogged member of Congress. When Wyden speaks, people listen. Ratcliffe was an attack dog for Trump during his first impeachment trial and had no experience with intelligence before Trump forced his nomination to become director of national intelligence through the Senate. Now he is Trump’s appointee to the directorship of the CIA.
Wyden’s letter to Ratcliffe said: “I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.” When Wired senior reporter Dell Cameron, who covers different forms of surveillance, commented, “I don’t like this,” Wyden reposted the comment.
Wyden has a long history of alerting the public in whatever way he can when something bad is going on that he cannot reveal because of its classified nature. This letter appears to be a way to alert the public while also notifying Ratcliffe that the CIA director will not be able in the future to deny that he received Wyden’s letter.
Also last night, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) sent Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SC) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) a letter outlining demands Democrats want incorporated into a measure that will appropriate more funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS is the department that contains Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. Democrats insisted on stripping DHS funding out of the bills to fund the government for 2026 after ICE and Border Patrol agents began to inflict terror on the country.
Those demands are pretty straightforward, but if written into law as required for the release of funds, they would change behavior. The Democrats want federal agents to enter private homes only with a judicial warrant (as was policy until the administration produced a secret memo saying that DHS officials themselves could sign off on raids). They want agents to stop wearing masks and to have their names, agencies, and unique ID numbers visible on their uniforms, as law enforcement officers do. They want an end to racial profiling—that is, agents detaining individuals on the basis of their skin color, place of employment, or language—and to raids of so-called sensitive sites: medical facilities, schools, childcare facilities, churches, polling places, and courts.
They want agents to be required to have a reasonable use of force policy and to be removed during an investigation if they violate it. They want federal agents to coordinate with local and state governments, and for those governments to have jurisdiction over federal agents who break the law. They want DHS detention facilities to have the same standards of any detention facility and for detainees to have access to their lawyers. They want states to be able to sue if those conditions are not met, and they want Congress members to have unscheduled access to the centers to oversee them.
They want body cameras to be used for accountability but prohibited for gathering and storing information about protesters. And they want federal agents to have standardized uniforms like those of regular law enforcement, not paramilitaries.
As Schumer and Jeffries wrote, these are commonsense measures that protect Americans’ constitutional rights and ensure responsible law enforcement, and should apply to all federal activity even without Democrats demanding them.
Thune has said the demands are “very unrealistic and unserious,” and Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the second-ranking Senate Republican, called them “radical and extreme” and a “far-left wish list.” But Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) agreed that agents “need body cameras. They need to remove masks. They need proper training. They need to be conducting operations that are consistent with their mission.”
Trump’s determination to prove that he actually won the 2020 election continues to drive the administration. This morning, in a rambling and often crazed speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump told attendees: “They rigged the second election. I had to win it. I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego, though. Beating these lunatics was incredible, right? What a great feeling, winning every swing state, winning the popular vote. The first time, you know, they said I didn’t win the popular vote. I did.”
The reality that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by about 2.9 million votes explains Trump’s lie that undocumented immigrants voted in the election.
Trump also offered yet another explanation for the presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the FBI raid on a warehouse holding ballots and other election-related materials in Fulton County, Georgia, saying that Attorney General Pam Bondi wanted Gabbard, right, there.
Phil Stewart, Erin Banco, and Jonathan Landay of Reuters reported yesterday that a team working for Gabbard seized voting machines and data in Puerto Rico in what sources told the Reuters reporters was an attempt to prove that Venezuela had hacked the voting machines there. The reporters say that Gabbard’s team was looking at whether the government of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro hacked the election.
There is no evidence for this theory, but it has strong adherents among Trump’s followers. Legal and political analysts, including Asha Rangappa, Norm Ornstein, and Allison Gill, have noted that administration officials might force Maduro, who is currently in prison in the U.S. after a raid in which U.S. forces took him and his wife into custody, to “cooperate” on this lie. In The Breakdown, Gill notes that while Trump has no role in elections, the Supreme Court has said that he must be given deference in the conduct of foreign affairs. He has relied on that deference to justify tariffs, immigration sweeps, attacks on small boats, and so on. It is not a stretch to think he is now trying to interfere with the 2026 election by claiming elections are part of foreign affairs.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Reuters reporters: “What’s most alarming here is that Director Gabbard’s own team acknowledges there was no evidence of foreign interference, yet they seized voting machines and election data anyway. Absent a foreign nexus, intelligence agencies have absolutely no lawful role in domestic election administration. This is exactly the kind of overreach Congress wrote the law to prevent, and it raises profound questions about whether our intelligence tools are being abused.”
Tonight, Matt Berg of Crooked Media reported that the FBI has “summoned state election officials from across the country for an unusual briefing on ‘preparations’ for the midterms” on February 25. A top election official from one state told Berg that it’s the “strangest thing in the world.” The FBI official who sent the email, Kellie Hardiman, used the title “FBI Election Executive.” When Berg asked the FBI for an explanation, the spokesperson wrote: “Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”
On Monday, Dustin Volz and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal reported that Gabbard had bottled up a May 2025 whistleblower complaint without transmitting it to congressional intelligence committees as required by law. Congress members learned about the complaint in November, but the government maintained it was too highly classified to be shared. This was deliberate obfuscation: the Gang of Eight, which is made up of the leaders from both parties in the House and Senate, and the leaders of the intelligence committees from both parties, was set up precisely so that Congress could always be informed of classified information.
Today Gabbard handed over the complaint, after heavily redacting it under claims of executive privilege—which means the president is involved.
The administration’s determination to hide the actions of its own members while exposing opponents has shown dramatically in the redactions in the Epstein files that have been released to date. Officials neglected to redact identifying information about survivors and even sexually explicit photographs of them, while blacking out the names of apparent friends and co-conspirators of the sex offender.
Trump’s name appears throughout the files, and in an attempt to center former president Bill Clinton, rather than Trump, in public discussion of the Epstein files, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) has subpoenaed Clinton and former first lady and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to testify under oath. He says he doesn’t have to do the same for Trump about his relationship with Epstein because Trump is answering questions for reporters.
Yesterday the Clintons agreed to testify. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton posted on social media: “For six months, we engaged Republicans on the Oversight Committee in good faith. We told them what we know, under oath. They ignored all of it. They moved the goalposts and turned accountability into an exercise in distraction. So let’s stop the games. If you want this fight, [Representative Comer], let’s have it—in public. You love to talk about transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a public hearing, cameras on. We will be there.”
Forcing a former president to testify under threat of contempt establishes the precedent that Congress can force past presidents and their spouses and families to testify under threat of criminal charges. Scott Wong, Melanie Zanona, Sahil Kapur, and Ryan Nobles of NBC News reported that Democrats are taking note. Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) told them: “We are absolutely going to have Donald Trump testify under oath.” Maxwell Frost (D-FL), who sits on the Oversight Committee, said that forcing Clinton to testify does indeed set a precedent. “[A]nd we will follow it,” he said. “Donald Trump, all of his kids. Everybody.”
Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL)—who flusters Comer so badly Comer once cracked and told him he looked like a Smurf, a childish insult Moskowitz needled him over for months—said that after Democrats regain control of the House, Republicans will blame Comer for what comes next:
“The folks here are going to run with it everywhere. It will be crypto. It will be their business. It will be all the investments in the Middle East. It’ll be the Qatari plane…. It’s going to be the latest thing with the UAE. It’s going to be all of it…. They are giving a license to these new chairmen in January and that will be Comer’s legacy. So when [Don] Junior and Eric and their children…[are] all here, they can thank James Comer for that.”
It seems likely Trump has already figured out that forcing Clinton to testify opens up some avenues he would rather leave closed. When asked about the Clintons’ testimony at the end of the month, he answered: “I think it’s a shame, to be honest. I always liked him.” Hillary was “a very capable woman.” “I hate to see it in many ways.”
Another court case might tear away some of the administration’s obfuscation, as well. Zoe Tillman of Bloomberg reported today that U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang of the District of Maryland has denied the government’s request to block depositions of Elon Musk and two other former officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in a lawsuit charging Musk with unlawfully dismantling the agency.
Because Musk and the other two “likely have personal, first-hand knowledge of the facts relevant and essential to the resolution of this case,” Chuang said the testimony could go forward. While courts have generally said that “high-ranking government officials may not be deposed or called to testify about their reasons for taking official actions absent ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” Chuang said it was not clear that Musk and the other two were, in fact, high-ranking government officials.
At the same time, the case appeared to meet the criteria for extraordinary circumstances. The government employees who brought the case argue that Musk personally dismantled USAID when he had no authority to do so. The judge noted that the government’s failure to produce documents that explained the decisions killing the agency, as required, suggested that the decisions had been made orally, so the testimony of Musk and the other two men is crucial to the case.
Finally, the last existing arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia expired today. The New START treaty of 2011 capped the number of nuclear warheads each country could maintain. Trump’s account on social media posted that instead of extending the terms of the existing treaty, “we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.” Until that time, though, there is no longer a cap on nuclear weapons for the U.S. or Russia.
U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Justice, Courts
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: American Decency Still Lives, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 6, 2026. When pushed far enough, Americans will do the right thing.
f you want to accomplish anything in politics, you have to have realistic expectations about voters. Ordinary people aren’t deeply informed about policy or politics. They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. A large proportion of voters don’t have strong ideological preferences — not because they’re “moderates,” but because they don’t think ideologically at all. Instead, they think pragmatically – they think about things like the price of eggs and the cost of health insurance. And because the average voter isn’t a policy or data wonk, they are often misled – for example, by claims that crime is rising even when it’s actually falling.
Granted, some voting behavior is motivated by ugly biases. Racism and sexism, homophobia and transphobia, are still important factors in politics. But there’s a difference between political realism and nihilistic cynicism.
Many of my readers are probably aware of the famous confessional by the German pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
I don’t know if Stephen Miller has ever seen these words. But if he has, he has taken them not as a warning but as operating instructions. MAGA’s ethnic cleansing plans — because that’s what they are — were clearly based on the cynical assumption that native-born white Americans wouldn’t rise to the defense of civil liberties and rule of law if state violence was directed at people who don’t look like them.
And for much of Trump’s first year in office many Democrats were reluctant to challenge his immigration policies, because their defeat in 2024 was widely seen as in part a response to surging immigration during the Biden years. Until recently, Democrats tried to keep the national conversation focused on affordability and Trump’s obvious failure to deliver on his promises to bring grocery prices way down.
While the Democratic strategy was an understandable response to a shattering electoral defeat, it rested on a cynical and nihilistic view of American voters: that they couldn’t be trusted to vote against a party that reveled in inflicting cruelty and injustice as long as the price of gasoline fell.
But recent events refute this nihilistic cynicism. Yes, Americans still name the economy as the most important political issue. But moral outrage over the Trump administration’s brutality (and its corruption, but that’s a subject for another post) has exploded as a political force over the past two months.
There was substantial resistance to ICE’s attempts to intimidate Los Angeles and Chicago. But the response since the invasion of Minneapolis (and now all of Minnesota) began in December has been on another level, a mass nonviolent uprising reminiscent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the color revolutions in the former Soviet empire.
MPR News reports that nearly 30,000 Minnesotans have been trained as constitutional observers, with another 6,000 volunteers registered to deliver food, give at-risk families rides, and so on. This is time-consuming, exhausting, dangerousactivism. Yet ordinary Americans in large numbers are willing to do it.
Cell phone cameras and whistles can’t completely stop ICE’s brutality and lawlessness. For some reason I’m especially troubled by tales of the many cars found abandoned in the middle of the street, their windows smashed and their occupants obviously abducted. But the resistance is throwing sand in the gears and producing acute frustration among the masked thugs, who have repeatedly been filmed drawing guns on citizens doing nothing but observing them.
And the public is not on the side of the thugs.
Many commentators have, correctly, drawn parallels between current events and the way violence against protestors led to growing support for the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But that was a gradual process. Only a third of Americans approved of Martin Luther King in 1966, the last available polling before he was assassinated.
By contrast, the Trump/Miller assault on Minnesota has produced a huge, rapid backlash. Here, for example, is the latest Marist Poll: A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.
No doubt Trump would claim that the polls are fake. But harsh criticism of ICE and its actions is cropping up in many usually nonpolitical spaces, from hobbyist forums to, yes, professional wrestling matches.
Most Americans are decent people. They intensely dislike seeing brutal repression in their communities, even if most of the targets of this brutality have brown skins.
And Democrats should, even as a matter of cynical politics — although I hope it’s more than that — honor this decency by standing against the Trump administration’s brutal lawlessness. Of course they should continue to talk about the economy. But Trump’s immigration policies should no longer be viewed as a distraction from kitchen table issues. They have themselves become a major driver of opposition to his regime.
Many pundits have made this point — G. Elliott Morris and Greg Sargent have been especially clear about it. I would add an additional reason Democrats should go all out in opposing Trump’s deportation policies: They are an issue that won’t go away, while some of the economic issues might.
Here’s what I mean: Trump is not a consistent economic ideologue. He may instinctively side with oligarchs against workers, but he’s sometimes willing to coopt progressive ideas — as he did in calling for a cap on credit card interest rates. I don’t think he can turn around negative perceptions of the economy, but he will surely try.
But hatred of and brutality toward people of color are fundamental to Trump’s identity. He and his minions have responded to revulsion against their ethnic cleansing efforts by denying the reality of that revulsion, claiming that all the protesters and resisters are paid activists, and by doubling down on the brutality. I don’t think MAGA will change course; I don’t think it can change course.
So Trump’s war on immigrants is turning into a war against the decency of the American people. And it would be stupid as well as immoral to refuse to choose sides.
The Contrarian, Opinion: Undaunted from the Bench, Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 6, 2026. Judge Ana Reyes calls out Trump regime racism.
An eloquent and bracing federal court opinion issued this week began this way:
On December 2, 1783, then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington penned: “America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.” More than two centuries later, Congress reaffirmed President Washington’s vision by establishing the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. It provides humanitarian relief to foreign nationals in the United States who come from disaster-stricken countries. It also brings in substantial revenue, with TPS holders generating $5.2 billion in taxes annually. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take.
What followed from U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes for the District of Columbia was a literary and legal masterpiece using Noem’s own vicious racism against her in a case challenging the revocation of TPS status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians refugees.
Reyes started by debunking the government’s clumsy attempt to smear the plaintiffs: “Plaintiffs are five Haitian TPS holders. They are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies.’” Instead, Reyes explained, they are a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, a software engineer at a national bank, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department, a college economics major, and a full-time registered nurse. The constant lies and dehumanization of immigrants are both a moral disgrace and, in this case, the regime’s legal Achilles heel.
“Plaintiffs charge that Secretary Noem preordained her termination decision and did so because of hostility to non-white immigrants,” Reyes wrote. “This seems substantially likely.” Reyes pointed to Noem’s own blatantly racist language and failure to conduct any independent review. While the statute allows her ample discretion regarding TPS determination, she does not have “unbounded discretion.” The court therefore found that she failed to clear the low bar that would allow her to deport the Haitian refugees.Subscribed
Reyes then demolished the regime’s refrain that the courts must let the executive branch do whatever it pleases. “To the contrary, Congress passed the TPS statute to standardize the then ad hoc temporary protection system—to replace executive whim with statutory predictability.” (Increasingly, lower courts are rejecting the notion that the executive branch’s actions are unreviewable. It seems that Article III federal judges think there is a role for the federal courts in our constitutional system.)
In addition, Reyes cited the regime’s own travel warnings to demonstrate the irreparable harm that would befall Haitians if they were sent home. “‘Do not travel to Haiti for any reason’ does not exactly scream, as Secretary Noem concluded, suitable for return.” Then, in a tour de force, Reyes shredded Noem’s position that the balance of equities favors the government:
The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste. Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them.
While the statute allows Noem, left, to consider the “national interest” in returning TPS holders, Reyes found that Noem failed to do the bare minimum required by law:
To recap, Secretary Noem’s national interest analysis involved cohorts that she cannot say include any current Haitian TPS holders: individuals who are not in the country, individuals in the country unlawfully, individuals in an over-inclusive database, and individuals already subject to exclusion from the TPS statute. This is not a minor detail. Because her national interest analysis focuses only on cohorts that do not involve Haitian TPS holders, there is no reasoned basis to believe that terminating Haiti’s TPS designation will address any of the concerns she raised. Quite the opposite, since turning around 353,000 lawful immigrants into unlawful ones overnight will further burden the very immigration-enforcement system she claims is already overburdened. This is the type of irrational decision-making the [Administrative Procedures Act] prohibits.
Moreover, Noem’s failure to consider any aspect of Haitians positive impact on the American economy was a dead giveaway. Reyes revealed substantial evidence that Noem (and Donald Trump) want them out for impermissible, racist reasons.
In stunning detail, Reyes recapped Trump’s overt racism. “President Trump has made—freely, at times even boastfully—several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners.” From calling them “illegal immigrants” (TPS gives them legal status) to his accusation they are “poisoning the blood” of Americans to his vile descriptions of immigrants (“not people,” “snakes,” “garbage,” “bad genes,” “probably have AIDS,” a “death wish for our country”) to his stated preference for immigrants from overwhelmingly white Scandinavia to his “false conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were ‘eating the pets of the people’ in Springfield, Ohio,” Trump has flaunted his abject racism. Reyes made the powerful case that Trump’s own words undermine his pretextual reason for ending TPS.
Taking a step back, regardless of the merits of this particular TPS decision, the standard of review, and of other legal technicalities, Reyes laid bare the disgusting, un-American, crude racism that underlies virtually everything this regime does. “To its credit, the Government does not defend President Trump’s derogatory statements. No one rationally could.” Instead, the government argued courts must ignore the president’s own words. Even setting aside Trump’s racist remarks, Noem’s own expressed racism eradicates any legitimate rationale for deporting them, Reyes found. Kristi Noem (Credit: DHSgov)
Reyes’s conclusion is a jaw-dropper:
There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.
Reyes’s legal rigor, fidelity to the facts, and biting observations cut through the smokescreen that blinds too many in the legacy media and gives cover to the entire MAGA Party to condone Trump’s racism.
It is refreshing and hopeful to find a public official who hoists the regime by its own racist petard and shows Americans the moral and legal rot at the heart of its policies. Reyes (as she has done in cases involving trans military personnel and other critical immigration issues) demonstrated that she is an undaunted, unabashed, and uncompromising defender of the Constitution, the rule of law, and truth.
Reyes exemplifies the excellence we see every week from lower court federal judges who are holding the line against a monstrously dishonest, lawless regime. If only we had a majority of Ana Reyes’s on the Supreme Court.
More On Epstein Files
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Don’t Forget Epstein, William Kristol, Feb. 6, 2026. There are so many outrages, it’s hard to keep up with them all. For my part, I’ve been focused this week on the depredations of ICE and the Border Patrol, and on the Trump administration’s plans for election interference. These are important topics. But I did want to write this morning just to remind us all, including myself: Don’t forget Epstein!
This morning’s New York Times has a useful prompt against forgetting. The carefully reported article, “‘Gang Stuff’ and ‘Illicit Trysts’: How Epstein Sought Leverage With the Wealthy,” primarily explores the implications of one document from the Epstein files. It’s a draft letter from Epstein to Leslie Wexner, a billionaire who was both a financial benefactor of Epstein and an apparent beneficiary of Epstein’s sexual predations.
Around 2014, Epstein was contemplating renewing their relationship, which had broken off when Epstein was first indicted in 2007, and when others in the Wexner family had looked into Epstein’s financial dealings with Wexner. In the draft letter, Epstein reminded Wexner, “You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years,” and that “I owe a great debt to you, as frankly you owe to me.” And Epstein wrote, with more than an implication of menace beneath a surface tone of reassurance, that he had “no intention of divulging any confidence of ours.”
As the Times article points out, “the letter fit into a broad pattern in which Mr. Epstein toyed with the idea of telling his past, present and potential financial sponsors that he knew—and was keeping quiet about—their supposed secrets.”
Read the piece for the whole sordid story. You’ll also get brief accounts of Epstein’s relationship with billionaires Bill Gates and Leon Black. And of course there were so many more cases, so many more relationships.
But the Trump Justice Department isn’t interested. On Sunday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that prosecutors’ review of the Epstein sex-trafficking case “is over.” There’s nothing more worth investigating here, he tried to assure us. And on Monday, he added a little lecture for us rubes who didn’t practice criminal defense at elite law firms: “The American people need to understand that it isn’t a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”
Then on Tuesday, President Trump refused to answer questions from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about whether there had been a failure to secure justice for Epstein’s victims, and of course expressed no concern or compassion for those victims. Instead, he told Collins to smile more, and declared it was “really time for the country to get onto something else.”
It’s blindingly obvious that the Trump administration has no interest in our learning more about Epstein. It’s also blindingly obvious that the web of corruption and complicity around Epstein was large and intricate, and that there is much more that we deserve to know about Epstein’s world.
Trump was part of that world. So were many other important men. The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has been a scandal. But the collusion and complicity of a swath of America’s elite over a quarter century in Epstein’s behavior is an even deeper scandal and outrage.
And the continuing lack of interest among many in elite circles in exposing what took place is a further outrage. It would be unfair to say large swathes of American elites are pro-Epstein. But they are effectively anti-anti-Epstein. They’re certainly not interested in doing much of anything to push for the truth to come out about Epstein.
So all honor to those—especially the courageous victims, but also the intrepid journalists and investigators and truth-seekers—who have pursued the truth about Epstein and his world so diligently. They have done so against obstacles of indifference to—even disdain for—their efforts. What will it say about us as a nation if we are not willing to do our best, at long last, to drain this fetid swamp?
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Newly discovered Epstein file swears that Epstein introduced Melania to Trump! Staff and wire reports, Feb. 3, 2026. Well, well, well, well. A new document shows a former assistant of Epstein, who swore to tell the truth under penalty of perjury, says the story of how Trump and his third wife Melania met is false, and the reality is that she was introduced to Trump by none other than millionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“[Redacted] put [redacted] in contact with an agent named PAOLO ZEMPOLI who worked with ‘ID Models,’” the second page of the document begins, referring to Paolo Zampolli, Melania’s former modelling agent, who Trump appointed as “special envoy for global partnerships” last year.
“ZEMPOLI was trying to buy Elite Models with EPSTEIN. EPSTEIN introduced MELANIA TRUMP to DONALD TRUMP.”
This opens up a whole new swathe of questions about Donald Trump and his wife. After all, who among us isn’t provided with girlfriends by our sex-trafficking pedophile best friends?
Investigate, investigate, investigate. We need to clean out the entire DOJ of every one of Trump’s minions and replace them with people who are actually interested in discovering the truth and holding everyone accountable for the deeply disturbing crimes alleged in these files.
Editor's Note: The correct name spelling is Paolo Zampolli, right. 
Since March 2025, he has served as the Trump-nominated United States Special Representative for Global Partnerships. In the mid-1990s, Zampolli founded ID Model Management in New York City. Shown above are photos from Melania Trump's nude modeling career before she married Trump.
2005 article, among other articles, confirms Zampolli brought Melania Trump to the United States in 1996. It was reported that Zampolli met Melania while she was working for Metropolitan Models. Zampolli made a bid to buy Elite Model Management and lost, prompting him to call Donald Trump in December 2004. He went on to form a partnership with the Trump Organization as Director of International Development.
New York Times, ‘Gang Stuff’ and ‘Illicit Trysts’: How Epstein Sought Leverage With the Wealthy, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein, Feb. 6, 2026. Jeffrey Epstein drafted letters to men like the retail billionaire Leslie Wexner in which he hinted at shared secrets.
Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious sex offender, was drafting a letter to Leslie Wexner, the billionaire retail tycoon who had once been his main financial benefactor. Years after their acrimonious split in 2007, Mr. Epstein was contemplating the rekindling of that relationship, and he apparently wanted to remind Mr. Wexner of what he said was their shared history.
“You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years,” Mr. Epstein wrote in a draft of the letter, which was included in the millions of pages of Epstein-related documents that the Justice Department released last week. He noted that “I owe a great debt to you, as frankly you owe to me.” He added that he had “no intention of divulging any confidence of ours.”
It is not clear what Mr. Epstein was hinting at or whether he even sent the undated letter, which was addressed to “Les.” Mr. Wexner — the source of hundreds of millions of dollars of Mr. Epstein’s wealth — has not been charged with wrongdoing.
But the letter fit into a broad pattern in which Mr. Epstein toyed with the idea of telling his past, present and potential financial sponsors that he knew — and was keeping quiet about — their supposed secrets. The messages, written with stray punctuation and spelling errors, veered from menacing to sentimental.
There was the 2013 email that Mr. Epstein sent to himself about the billionaire Bill Gates. The email rattled off the “morally inappropriate” work supposedly done for Mr. Gates, including procuring antibiotics “to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls” and arranging “illicit trysts, with married women.” It is not clear whether the allegations are true, why Mr. Epstein drafted the email or whether it was ever sent to Mr. Gates.
There were the dozens of messages that Mr. Epstein sent to Leon Black, the private equity billionaire, badgering him for millions of dollars and, on at least one occasion, noting Mr. Epstein’s work structuring payments Mr. Black made to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. (Newly released documents show that Mr. Epstein recommended Mr. Black hire an investigator to track the woman’s movements and that he was receiving updates on other women to whom Mr. Black had made payments.)
Other times, Mr. Epstein reassured Mr. Black: “Of course re any non financial issues, I am always there for you and will continue to be the best friend I can be.”
Representatives for the men dismissed Mr. Epstein’s allegations and insinuations as lies. A spokesman for Mr. Wexner said that he never received the letter, and that it “appears to fit a pattern of untrue, outlandish, and delusional statements made by Epstein in desperate attempts to perpetuate his lies and justify his misconduct.” Mr. Gates’s representative called Mr. Epstein “a proven, disgruntled liar” and said that Mr. Gates “unequivocally denies any improper conduct related to Epstein.” And a spokesman for Mr. Black said: “Mr. Black retained Epstein for tax and estate planning. He never felt threatened or blackmailed by Epstein.” Mr. Black has denied assaulting any woman.
Since Mr. Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail in 2019, one of the most enduring conspiracy theories has been that he was gathering dirt on his wealthy, powerful and famous acquaintances that he could use for blackmail or other purposes. No proof of that has emerged. But the recently unearthed missives to men like Mr. Wexner suggest that Mr. Epstein seemed to revel in claiming to know his friends’ secrets — and that he recognized how such secrets might empower him.
New York Times, Norway Rallies Behind Royals, Despite Dismay Over Epstein Links, Lynsey Chutel, Feb. 6, 2026. The future queen’s links to Jeffrey Epstein, and her son’s rape trial, have disappointed many Norwegians. But there is still widespread support for the monarchy.
It’s been a rough week for Norway’s royal family.
Newly released files showed how chummy Crown Princess Mette-Marit was with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Then her son was arrested for assault, just before he went on trial for rape in a separate case.
Royal historians say this is the worst crisis the royal family has suffered since the dynasty was established in 1905. But polls, interviews and votes in Parliament show most Norwegians still support the monarchy. Many have voiced anger and disappointment at the crown princess’s relationship with Mr. Epstein, but they aren’t ready to kick her out of the palace.
“This is definitely the most controversial — and if one thinks that it keeps evolving — the most scandalous thing that the Norwegian royal family has been through since the establishment of the royal dynasty.” said Ole-Jorgen Schulsrud-Hansen, a historian who wrote a book about the royal family and who once gave tours of the palace.
Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, is on trial facing 38 criminal charges, including four counts of rape and six of filming people without their consent. He has also been charged with physically attacking and harassing a former partner. Mr. Borg-Hoiby pleaded not guilty to the charges of rape and to five of the filming counts. He pleaded guilty to some of the assault accusations.
Mr. Borg Hoiby, 29, was 4 years old when his mother married Crown Prince Haakon, and many Norwegians have watched his repeated run-ins with the law with sympathy for her. Journalists packed the courtroom when the trial began on Tuesday, but the royal family was absent. Instead, they sent a message of support for his accusers.
Global News
New York Times, Iran Is at Work on Missile and Nuclear Sites, Satellite Images Show, Samuel Granados and Aurelien Breeden, Feb. 6, 2026. Repairs at key missile sites began soon after they were hit by Israeli and U.S. strikes last year, but work at Iran’s nuclear facilities has been slower.
Iran appears to have rapidly repaired several ballistic missile facilities damaged in strikes last year, but it has made only limited fixes to major nuclear sites struck by Israel and the United States, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests.
The uneven pace of reconstruction offers clues about Iran’s military priorities as the United States amasses forces near it and President Trump weighs new military action. If the United States were to attack, Iran would most likely retaliate with ballistic missiles targeting Israel and U.S. assets in the region.
The United States and Iran were expected to meet in Oman on Friday in an attempt to stave off another conflict. The scope of the talks were not immediately clear, but Iran’s nuclear program was likely to be a key focus.
Experts who closely track Iranian nuclear and missile programs corroborated the analysis by The Times, which looked at around two dozen locations struck by Israel or the United States during the 12-day conflict last June. The Times found construction work at more than half of them.
Foreign Policy, Costa Rica Elects a Trump Ally, Catherine Osborn, Feb. 6, 2026. Why the country chose a tough-on-crime candidate for president.
Venezuela’s brash, big-government political movement of Chavismo—named for former President Hugo Chávez—is fighting for its survival in the wake of the U.S. capture of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, last month. But to the north, a different flavor of Chavismo is on the rise.
On Sunday, Costa Rican voters chose Laura Fernández, the handpicked successor of outgoing right-wing President Rodrigo Chaves, to be their next leader. Fernández vowed to double down on Chaves’s policies and even suggested she could install him in her cabinet.
Chaves will leave office with an approval rating of nearly 60 percent; Fernández was elected with a more than 14 percent margin over her nearest challenger. Chaves’s popularity is striking considering that his 2022 victory was a surprise to many observers. In an election marked by low turnout, Chaves edged ahead by bashing more centrist parties as corrupt elites.
In office, Chaves cut public spending and erected new barriers to asylum. But he struggled to carry out much of his policy wish list, frequently butting heads with the legislature.
Fernández will not have the same problem: Sunday’s election delivered her a congressional majority. She has pledged to privatize public banks and finish building a maximum-security prison that Chaves began. Like her predecessor, Fernández has signaled close cooperation with the United States.
More On U.S. Governance, Politics
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, above right, unleashes the most blistering attack to date on “bootlickers” Kristi Noem, left, and Stephen Miller, center, by comparing them to the vilest characters in fiction.The gloves came off and the brass knuckles went on…“A sycophant is more than just a ‘yes-man,’” Tillis wrote on X. “It refers to someone who acts excessively servile toward someone important in order to gain an advantage. They aren't just being nice, they are using excessive flattery, often insincerely, to get what they want, whether that's a promotion, social status or favor.”“
Tillis has been harshly critical of Noem for her disastrous handling of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene as well as her shameful and disgusting attempts — spearheaded by Miller — to smear Alex Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” after he was murdered by federal agents.
New York Times, TrumpRx, the president’s online drugstore, opens for business, Rebecca Robbins and Margot Sanger-Katz, Feb. 6, 2026 (print ed.). The TrumpRx website is meant to be an entry point for consumers to search for their medicines and then direct them to manufacturers’ websites to buy the drugs directly.
President Trump announced the debut of a website on Thursday night to help Americans use their own money to buy prescription drugs.
The government website, TrumpRx.gov, will not sell medications. Instead, it provides an entry point for consumers to search for their drugs and then buy them elsewhere, either from pharmacies or websites offered by major manufacturers to buy medications directly.
New York Times, Trump posts a video portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, Isabella Kwai, Feb. 6, 2026. President Trump late Thursday night shared a video that contained a brief clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election.
It was unclear if Mr. Trump was aware that the clip had been included in the video before he shared it. It was unclear how the clip was made, although it appeared to have been generated by A.I. The clip appeared to have been taken from a video that was shared in October by a user on X whose watermark is shown, with the caption “President Trump: King of the Jungle,” and an emoji of a lion.
In that video, several high-profile Democrats — including former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former vice president Kamala Harris — were shown as zebras, giraffes and other animals, while Mr. Trump was depicted as a lion. The Obamas, in the clip, were shown as apes. The video ended with the animals bowing down to Mr. Trump.
In response to questions about the clip, Karoline Leavitt, right, the White House press secretary, called it “fake outrage.”
She added: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”
The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes perpetuates a racist trope promoted by slave traders and segregationists, who used the characterization to dehumanize Black people and justify lynchings and other atrocities. President Trump has a history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women, immigrants and people of color.
The press office of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California condemned Mr. Trump’s post, saying it represented “disgusting behavior by the President.” Mr. Newsom added: “Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump and his administration have frequently mocked or leveled false claims at Mr. Obama.
In response to the clip, Ben Rhodes, a former official during the Obama administration, called Mr. Trump “a stain on our history.”
Good Authority, Political Commentary: Women in Congress are wealthier than men in Congress, John Sides (Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, studing elections and public opinion), Feb. 6, 2026. Here is a fact that I think most of us didn’t know: Women members of Congress are wealthier than men in Congress.
That is the central finding of a new article by political scientists Rachel Bernhard, Andrew Eggers, and Marko Klašnja, titled “A Rich Woman's World? Wealth and Gendered Paths to Office.” They built a database of U.S. House members’ wealth from 1980 to 2018, drawing on their financial disclosures.
They find that women in the House are 50% wealthier than men in the House, adjusting for both party and decade. Here’s a graph showing the trend over time in inflation-adjusted dollars, separately for each party and gender.
This “gender wealth gap” is puzzling. In general, women are less wealthy than men. And the literature on women in politics has often found that they confront disadvantages that men do not have. So, what is going on here?
Some possible explanations did not pan out. It’s not that women are elected from districts that just tend to elect wealthier candidates, period. And it’s not that women are more likely to have high-prestige, high-earning career paths prior to their election; indeed, if anything it is the opposite. Women are also not more likely to come from political dynasties, nor do they earn more while in Congress (such as by investing their salaries, earning royalties, and so on). Finally, the gap can’t be explained by other demographic factors, like occupation, age, or race.
Instead, the explanation stems from characteristics of the household: Women members of Congress are more likely to have a high-earning spouse. As the authors put it, they’re part of a “power couple.” Men members tend to come from very different households—ones in which their wives “take on flexible, lower-paying work and a disproportionate share of household responsibilities.” Women who want to run for Congress are therefore more likely to either not have childcare responsibilities or have the wealth to hire others to help with childcare.
All of these findings speak to an important question: why women continue to be underrepresented in political office. An important part of that literature argues that women are simply less likely to run in the first place and that family obligations may be an important part of their calculus. The “gender wealth gap” is consistent with that idea. Women who want to run for office are more likely to need household wealth that helps them manage those obligations. Men who run for office don’t face that challenge to the same extent. They can just rely on their wives.
The authors conclude with this sobering statement: “Not only is it not a rich woman's world, but it looks like we have not come very far from the advice women would have heard a century ago: ‘marry well.’”
Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Women Hate ICE & Trump's Poll Numbers Are Plummeting, Rick and Andrew Wilson, Feb. 6, 2026. Immigration has fallen apart as an issue for them. The economy has fallen apart as an issue for them. Trump's behavior has fallen apart as an issue for them.
Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: 'MAGA Was All A Lie': Marjorie Taylor Greene's Confession, Brian Daitzman, Feb. 6, 2026. MTG's very public breakup with Trump is a sign of the civil war brewing in MAGA.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, shown above in a campaign photo, was not a critic on the sidelines. She was one of MAGA’s loudest carriers, a true believer who embraced January 6, trafficked in conspiracy narratives, and amplified movements that produced real social harm—from mass death during the pandemic to the erosion of trust in shared reality. So when she now says “MAGA was all a lie,” it is not a partisan attack. It is an internal reckoning with a movement that mobilized belief at enormous human cost, and then failed when belief was asked to govern.
On the January 28, 2026 edition of The Kim Iversen Show, Marjorie Taylor Greene declared that “MAGA was all a lie.” The revelation landed with unusual force, not because it was shocking, but because of who said it. Political movements routinely attract defectors, dissenters, and apostates. What they rarely confront is repudiation from figures who once functioned as living proof of the movement’s sincerity.
Greene was not a marginal ally of MAGA; nor a late convert hedging her bets. She was, for a critical period, one of its clearest internal embodiments—an unfiltered carrier of its insurgent identity, affect, and moral claims. When such a figure concludes that the governing reality negates the founding promise, the problem is no longer messaging. It is legitimacy.
Greene’s standing inside MAGA was forged during its most confrontational phase. Her rise coincided with the movement’s rejection of institutional restraint, party hierarchy, and reputational caution. She aligned herself openly with the January 6 milieu, framed herself as an enemy of the “swamp,” and absorbed political and social costs that more strategic actors avoided.
She did not merely echo MAGA’s slogans; she enacted its posture.
That posture included proximity to MAGA-adjacent spaces that embraced maximalism over coalition-building. In 2022, Greene spoke at Nick Fuentes’s America First Political Action Conference, an event where the crowd openly praised Vladimir Putin and chanted his name—an episode widely reported at the time. The significance of that appearance was not endorsement of every sentiment expressed there; it was what it signaled about Greene’s location within the movement’s cultural core. She was not operating at a sanitized distance. She was inside the affective center of gravity.
“What MAGA is really serving in this administration is their big donors … those are the people that get the special favors.”(02:17–02:39)
This matters because political authority inside movements is not distributed evenly. Some figures hold office; fewer carry symbolic weight. Greene did both.
Her credibility derived less from legislative accomplishment than from perceived authenticity. She presented herself as a true believer, unafraid of stigma, willing to confront enemies without euphemism. For supporters, that authenticity mattered more than polish. It created trust.
When such a figure later concludes that the movement’s outcomes betray its promise, the critique cannot be dismissed as opportunism or elite panic. It must be taken seriously as an internal signal.
“I was a true believer. Absolutely. Bottom line, true believer. America first.”(00:37–00:42)
Crucially, Greene’s repudiation is not a rejection of MAGA’s motivating language or its voters. She does not claim the slogan itself was fraudulent, nor that those who believed in it were naïve. She describes herself as a sincere believer. What she rejects is the translation of mobilizing myth into governing reality.
In her telling, MAGA promised “America First” and delivered foreign entanglements, donor accommodation, and continuity with the very elite dynamics it claimed to oppose. That distinction—between intent and outcome—is analytically important. It reframes the charge from deception to failure.
Understanding why that failure feels so acute requires attention not only to policy outcomes but to the belief ecosystem that sustained MAGA’s moral certainty. Movements are held together by more than platforms; they rely on shared interpretive frameworks. For segments of MAGA’s base, conspiracy narratives such as QAnon provided such a framework. QAnon did not function as a conventional evidentiary system. It offered a story: hidden elites abused power, institutions were complicit, and a dramatic reckoning was imminent. Within that worldview, politics was not incremental; it was apocalyptic. Compromise was not pragmatism; it was betrayal.
“After we won the election in 2024, a few months in, MAGA started turning into whatever Donald Trump—whatever country Donald Trump said it was about.”(01:29–01:41)
This belief infrastructure mattered because it shaped expectations of governance.
A MAGA victory was not merely supposed to produce different tax rates or regulatory priorities. It was supposed to expose corruption, punish elites, and rupture the status quo. When real-world disclosures emerged—most recently the large-scale release of Epstein investigative materials—they were filtered through this framework.
Major reporting has emphasized that these releases include enormous volumes of unverified material and public tips, and that references to prominent figures do not amount to corroborated wrongdoing. Officials have said the material does not support new prosecutions. For believers, the evidentiary nuance was beside the point. The expectation was that a MAGA government would act as an instrument of revelation. When it did not, the same belief framework that had fueled certainty instead magnified disillusionment.
This is where Greene’s intervention becomes structurally significant. She does not accuse hidden saboteurs of blocking the truth. She does not blame staff or the bureaucracy alone. She gestures, instead, toward a movement that, once in power, reabsorbed donor incentives and institutional constraints.
In doing so, she collapses one of MAGA’s most reliable escape hatches: the claim that failure can always be attributed to enemies within. If the problem is not merely sabotage, then responsibility must be reassigned. Greene’s rhetoric stops short of a full reckoning, but it moves decisively away from conspiracy comfort.
The timing of this rupture also matters. It occurs amid signs of electoral stress.
Recent polling places Donald Trump’s approval in the high 30s, with notable erosion even among Republicans and declining support for his agenda. While claims that this represents the “lowest ever” point require careful longitudinal comparison, the direction is unambiguous.
The coalition that delivered victory in 2024 has softened.
For professional politicians, such signals trigger recalculation. Public distancing by some Republicans does not require a coordinated plot to be intelligible; it is consistent with ordinary risk management under conditions of weakening approval.
U.S. Markets, Economy, Jobs, Inflation
New York Times, The Dark Side of A.I. Weighs on the Stock Market, Mike Isaac, Joe Rennison and Maureen Farrell, Feb. 6, 2026. The prospect of disruptions from artificial intelligence has hung over the economy for years. But this week advances in software tools precipitated a sell-off on Wall Street.
A washout in the stocks of software companies has been flowing through Wall Street this week, as investors realized that the threat of artificial intelligence displacing businesses had arrived.
While the prospect of A.I. disruptions has hung over the economy for years, a new set of tools released this week by a San Francisco start-up forced a sudden reckoning on Wall Street.
Software companies most at risk from the new tools were the hardest hit, as well as the investment funds that lend to these companies. But the sell-off helped push down the broader market. By Thursday, the S&P 500 turned negative for the year after falling on six of the past seven days.
A.I. has been like rocket fuel for stocks, driving prices to record highs in recent years. But since October that exuberance has been fading, as some realities of this transformative technology have begun to sink in.
Not only are investors growing worried that A.I. could render certain businesses obsolete, they are also questioning the growing piles of money that companies are spending on A.I. On Thursday, investors were spooked by Amazon’s revelation that it planned to spend $200 billion on A.I. and other large investments this year, exceeding analysts’ predictions by $50 billion; shares fell more than 11 percent in after-hours trading.
This week, Google’s parent, Alphabet, said it would spend as much as $185 billion this year, and last week Meta said its capital expenses, in large part to support A.I., could reach $135 billion.
In the software sector, the catalyst for this week’s sell-off was the release Tuesday by Anthropic, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence firm, of free plug-in software tools that allow companies to automate functions like customer support and legal services.
Because they were created as “open source” software, any company can download the tools without paying for them. These plug-ins could replace the tools that companies currently sell to businesses.
Another area vulnerable to A.I. are providers of “software-as-a-service,” or SaaS, a mode of delivering subscription-based computer programs over the internet instead of buying and installing them locally on one’s computer. New, free software models from A.I. companies have the potential to replace not only the SaaS business model but also much of the work force behind it.
U.S. Religion, Culture, Media, Education
Emptywheel, Analysis: DOJ Over-Seized Hannah Natanson’s Garmin Device and Other Reporting Materials, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right,), Feb. 6, 2026. Materials released in WaPo reporter Hannah Natanson’s bid to retrieve her devices last week:
There have been two strands of important reporting on the materials.
First, on security, Runa Sundvik wrote up what security features that Natanson, shown above, used succeeded and what failed.
Then 404 Media described that the FBI had thus far failed to get into Natanson’s personal phone because she had it in lockdown mode (they got her Signal texts, instead, by using her finger to access her work laptop).
To those security concerns I will note that my concerns about Natanson’s description of how she (attempted) to protect her sources proved prescient.
I shuddered when I read this article from Hannah Natanson in real time, in December, which was the first I really took notice of the name behind a flood of important reporting on Trump’s attack on the government.
[snip]
[I]n telling that story, Natanson told how she protected the anonymity of her sources.
[snip]
After consulting Post lawyers, I developed what we felt was the safest possible sourcing system. If I planned to use someone in a story, I asked them to send me a picture of their government ID, then tried to forget it. I kept notes from reporting conversations in an encrypted drive, never writing down anyone’s name. To Google-check facts and identities, I used a private browser with no search history. I retitled every Signal chat by agency — “Transportation Employee,” “FDA Reviewer,” “EPA Scientist” — until the app, unable to keep up, stopped accepting new nicknames. (Then I started moving contacts into two-person group chats, which I could still rename.)
Three weeks later, FBI seized the phone on which all those contacts were labeled with aliases. When they searched her home, she was 
logged into the Slack on which she had shared all those leads with colleagues. They seized the encrypted drive on which she had her notes.
In short, she publicly revealed where to look for everything else, and three weeks later, Trump agents came and took it all.
Seven paragraphs of the search warrant affidavit detail things Natanson said in the article, and from that foundation, used it to establish probable cause to go get her Signal chats, including preserving those she had set to delete.
Meanwhile, Charlie Savage has provided other important coverage: noting that the affidavit failed to mention the Privacy Protection Act, and describing that the AUSA involved, Gordon Kromberg, may have some ethical exposure if he knew of the PPA and failed to alert the Magistrate Judge who authorized the warrants.
The Justice Department failed to tell a magistrate judge about a 1980 law protecting journalists in its application materials for a warrant to search a Washington Post reporter’s home last month as part of a leak investigation, an unsealed court filing shows.
Gabe Rottman, the vice president for policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which had asked the judge to unseal the materials, called that omission significant.
“By not alerting the judge to the existence of a federal law that is supposed to limit searches for reporting materials, it may have greased the skids for the judge agreeing to the warrant when otherwise the judge might have scrutinized it more carefully,” Mr. Rottman said.
The 1980 law, the Privacy Protection Act, says “it shall be unlawful” for investigators to search for or seize journalistic work product and documentary materials unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing certain crimes related to those materials.
Kromberg was one of the prosecutors on the Julian Assange case, so has been steeped in the boundaries between national security and journalism cases for a decade. Additionally, the FBI agent, Keith Starr, confidently cited what journalists “are required” to do with their sourcing notes (when describing that he wanted to go get those records) with no citation to any source of knowledge besides his training and experience, claiming expertise about journalism I doubt he has. So both should be expected to know there is a specific prohibition on seizing journalist work project.
The failure to account for the PPA (though the response graciously claims to be adhering to it going forward, while describing many ways it is not) is fairly critical, given how they seem to have over-seized material based on what they showed probable cause to collect. For example, the affidavit only renews my suspicion that DOJ used the Aurelio Perez-Lugones investigation as a pretext to go seize Natanson’s notes of her other reporting.
I already raised concern that they seized her Garmin device, for example.
It’s the Garmin that really gets me. According to the declaration Natanson submitted in a bid to get her stuff back, she only communicated with Perez-Lugones via Signal or phone. The FBI is trying to obtain evidence about other people she met with, face-to-face.
The affidavit accords with this. Starr established probable cause to get Natanson’s Signal texts by laying out that she and Perez-Lugones had never met in person during the four weeks they had him under surveillance before arresting him.
35. Alternatively, my training and experience has included witnessing or learning of hand delivery of paper documents by individuals who are involved in the unlawful transmission of classified information. From December 12,2025, until January 8,2026, the FBI maintained physical surveillance of Perez-Lugones to observe any potential in-person meetings between Perez-Lugones and Natanson. The FBI physical surveillance provided coverage every day from 6:00 a.m. to l0:00 p.m., including holidays and weekends. Additionally, since December 17, 2025, the FBI maintained closed-circuit television (“CCTV”) surveillance of Perez-Lugones’ residsnce for around the clock coverage of any comings and goings by Perez-Lugones. Neither FBI physical surveillance nor CCTV surveillance have observed any meetings between Natanson and Perez-Lugones. Hence, it is my professional assessment that Perez-Lugones transmitted classified information to Natanson exclusively via electronic means.
If they only communicated via electronic means, then there’s no purpose to seizing the Garmin, which would show where she went and might help show with whom she met in person. Nevertheless, FBI agents specifically instructed her not to take her Garmin with her when she left the FBI to conduct their search.
That’s not the only thing that the FBI over-seized, and the other is more pertinent to Savage’s concerns.
As noted above, the FBI made copies of Natanson’s Signal texts, to prevent any from being automatically deleted. Rozharvsky described that they did this for every single conversation that continued after October 1.
[T]his process preserved the entirety of all Signal conversations, in which there was a new message or alert on or after October 1, regardless of the date of the message, notification, or attachment.
Among the other things I surmised that DOJ might be seeking, in addition to any non-public materials that Perez-Lugones shared, this story about a Greenland-related slush fund is dated October 9 (there’s a third topic that Starr describes to be particularly sensitive, in addition to the invasion of Venezuela and the preparation and aftermath, that is redacted in the affidavit; the story about Russia is the only one classified TS/SCI). WaPo’s interview with Social Security whistleblower Chuck Borges is dated October 20 and linked a September 4 story. A story about Trump’s expansion of the Park Police is dated October 31.
To the extent to which Natanson’s reporting for those stories was done via Signal, the entire reporting thread would have been preserved in the FBI treatment.
It’s not just that DOJ did not alert the Magistrate Judge that they were seizing reporting materials in violation of the PPA. It’s that they seized far more of Natanson’s reporting materials than justified given their probable cause statement.
President Trump, describing his philosophy of using the U.S. military to attack boats off the coast of Venezuela
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:The President and His Ministers, Andrew Egger, right, 
Feb. 6, 2026. For American Christians not all-in on MAGA, yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast was one long parade of bleakness and despair.
There was the outrageous presence of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who cast his authoritarianism and barbarity as a God-blessed spiritual struggle against his country’s Satanist gangs. There was the full-service tongue-bath for Donald Trump from speaker after speaker: Televangelist Trump ally Paula White called him “the greatest champion of faith that we have ever had,” a man who has “brought religion back to this nation and beyond.” And there was Trump’s own ordinary barrage of tasteless, cruel obscenity, including in his mockery of the very idea that Democrats would attend the event: “I don’t know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat, I really don’t,” he said.
But the most interesting moment of the breakfast came when Trump turned briefly to another topic: the contemplation of his own soul.
Unsurprisingly, at his age, Trump has the afterlife on his mind a lot. It pops up at odd times: He’ll be mid-rant about criminal illegals, or the dastardly fake news, or America’s Dawning Golden Age, and suddenly he’ll be giving himself a spiritual scorecard: “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he’ll muse; or “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven. I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound.”
But yesterday, surrounded by spiritual leaders, political sycophants, and the spiritual leaders who are his biggest political sycophants, Trump offered the clearest formulation yet of his own bespoke soteriology. Don’t worry, he reassured the audience: He’d been mostly kidding when he said he wasn’t heaven-bound. “I really think I probably should make it,” he said. “I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people.”
Hey, you can’t deny the guy’s got a way with words. It’d be hard to come up with a better formulation of Trump’s attitude toward American evangelicalism, its attitude toward him, and why their partnership has become so dangerous for the country.
Trump, whose ignorance of Christianity led to a series of memorable gaffes when he arrived on the political scene a decade ago—citing “Two Corinthians” and dodging questions about his favorite Bible verse—hasn’t seemed to make much spiritual progress in the intervening years. Here he was yesterday, talking about the speaker of the House: “Mike Johnson is a very religious person. He does not hide it. He’ll sometimes say to me at lunch, ‘Sir, may we pray?’ I’ll say, ‘Excuse me? We’re having lunch.’”
In Trump’s view, guys like Johnson are inside the church in a way he is not. But it’s the very fact that he’s outside—unconstrained by the moral scruples that guys like Johnson have¹—that makes his particular service to the church valuable. He sees himself as Christianity’s Punisher, the guy who will blacken his own soul to do what must be done to protect the righteous. Yesterday, while discussing his ongoing military campaign against Islamists in Nigeria, he summed it up this way: “When Christians come under attack, they know [their attackers] are going to be attacked violently and viciously by President Trump. I know it’s not a nice thing to say, but that’s the way it is.”
That violently and viciously isn’t just rhetorical window-dressing. This is the service Trump explicitly offers to conservative Christians: There’s dirty work that needs doing. Let me be the one to do it for you. And it isn’t just a political pitch. Trump sincerely seems to believe he has reached a moral accommodation with God for his unique services rendered. “I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people.”
This is part of what makes Trump-brand Christianity as a cultural and political force so dangerous. Trump’s political project is seen by the MAGA faithful as utterly righteous, the work of God on earth against the forces of Satan. But he has broad license to transgress all moral boundaries as he does that work. When he does so, it doesn’t cause MAGA Christians to reevaluate whether he’s actually on the side of the angels. Instead, it makes them perversely grateful that he’s doing it so their hands can be clean.
None of this, it should probably go without saying, is compatible in the slightest with the teachings of actual Christianity. Sin is sin, the faith teaches, no matter whom it’s directed against: “Whatever you do to the least of these,” Jesus taught, “you do to me.” The world isn’t divided into “perfect people” on one (political) side and agents of Satan on the other: “All have sinned,” Paul wrote, “and fall short of the glory of God.” Everyone, presidents included, is called to see their own sin with an unsparing eye, feel it in their bones, fall to their knees for forgiveness, spend their lives struggling to turn from it.
Trump doesn’t do this. He doesn’t think he’s obliged to. And why would he? None of the “spiritual leaders” that surround him seem particularly uncomfortable with their arrangement. The loudest Christians in his life have nothing but praise for the way he conducts his business: “the greatest champion of faith that we have ever had.”²
Many of these advisers, it should be said, do not actually believe this is a real pathway to paradise. In her personal time, Paula White has a more traditional view: “Heaven and hell . . . it’s real whether you believe in it or not,” she recently reminded her followers. So what must one do? “Open up your heart for God to come in through his son Jesus Christ. Say, Father God, forgive me for my sin. . . . I receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.”
Trump plainly thinks he’s going to heaven. I wonder: Does Paula White agree?
AROUND THE BULWARK
How Big Is MAGA, Really? Trump is governing like he has a huge mandate. The numbers disagree, observes MONA CHAREN.Quick Hits
SCHEDULE F ARRIVES: The federal workforce hasn’t been much in the news lately—certainly not like during the heyday of DOGE—but that may be about to change. Yesterday, the White House finalized a long-planned policy rule removing civil-service protections from around 50,000 career federal employees working in what the White House considers “policy-related” roles. Such employees will now serve, like the government’s 4,000-odd political appointees, at the will of the president.
The new rule also reorganizes the whistleblower process for the employees in question, whose complaints will no longer be handled by an external office—the independent Office of Special Counsel—but by their own agencies. The New York Times has more:
In a statement announcing the final rule, the Office of Personnel Management said that political patronage, loyalty tests and political discrimination in the federal work force were “explicitly” prohibited. The rule, which is expected to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, describes the new job category as “career jobs filled on a nonpartisan basis. Yet they will be at-will positions excepted from adverse action procedures or appeals.” . . .
But critics question whether the government can be taken at its word after a year of retributive firings, including the dismissal of several whistle-blowers.
The rule amounts to “a huge increase of at-will employment with an administration that has demonstrated a contempt for nonpartisan expertise,” said Max Stier, the chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes an effective federal work force. “Their track record does not justify trust, and our history as a country demonstrates that these kind of changes lead to worse government results, not better.”
Read the whole thing.
SEE TULSI RAID: The White House just can’t seem to keep its story straight about why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was hanging around during the FBI’s raid last week of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia. As we noted yesterday, Trump told NBC News in an interview Wednesday night that he didn’t know why Gabbard had attended the raid. But Gabbard herself contradicted that claim in a letter to Senate Democrats this week, in which she wrote that Trump had “specifically directed my observance of the execution of the Fulton County search warrant.”
During his free-associative speech at yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast, Trump changed his story again—although his new story no more aligns with Gabbard’s claims than his old one did. In his latest telling, it was Attorney General Pam Bondi who told Gabbard to attend: Gabbard “took a lot of heat . . . because she went in at Pam’s insistence,” Trump said. “Pam wanted her to do it.”
WATCH YOUR BACK, KEVIN: Donald Trump may have picked his guy to be the next Fed chair, but it’s plain he’s keeping Kevin Warsh on a short leash. During a swanky dinner at the Alfalfa Club last Saturday, Trump said he expected Warsh to lower interest rates—and joked that he’d sue him if he didn’t.
At least, it was probably a joke. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent didn’t seem confident enough to rule a lawsuit out during testimony before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday.
During the hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked Bessent if he could rule out that Warsh would be sued or investigated by the Department of Justice if he failed to cut interest rates. “That is up to the president,” Bessent said.
The prophet Jeremiah records the judgment of God against such ministers: “From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”
Feb. 5
Top Stories
More On U.S. Politics, Elections
U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights
The Hartmann Report via RawStory, Terrible history shows what Trump's migrant 'camps' really are — and what comes next, Thom Hartmann, Feb. 5, 2026. As people testified before Congress on Tuesday about the brutality and violence they’d suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call “detention centers.”More Epstein Files Scandals
A newly released email alleges that Jeffrey Epstein arranged for two girls to be buried at his New Mexico ranch after they were strangled during sex acts
Evening News and Views: More BOMBSHELL Epstein Files Released as White House PANICS About Trump’s Future, Aaron Parnas ,Feb. 5, 2026. New Significant Epstein Documents Revealed as White House Struggles to Shift the Public Narrative. U.S. Markets, Economy, Jobs, Inflation
Feb. 5, 2026. Notes on an interesting day, Global News
New York Times, Ukraine-Russia Talks End With Little Progress and Hints of an Impasse, Kim Barker, Feb. 5, 2026. American negotiators trumpeted plans for a prisoner swap, but that was small recompense for months of diplomatic efforts by the Trump administration.
Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Epstein-Putin link evidence of a through-line of Soviet / Russian kompromat going back to Robert Maxwell and Brezhnev, Wayne Madsen, below left, Feb. 4, 2026. Pedophilic blackmail operations benefited USSR, Russia, Israel, and Czechoslovakia.
The revelations from the Department of Justice’s forced release of some of the files it maintained on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities point to an ongoing Russian kompromat operation that has targeted Western political, business, and public figures dating back to the days when Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, was an intelligence asset for the Soviet KGB and Czechoslovak StB. Kompromat is Russian for “compromising material” and refers to damaging information—real, fabricated, or exaggerated—used for blackmail, manipulation, or discrediting targeted individuals.
In the 1960s, Robert Maxwell’s publishing empire, centered on Pergamon Press, allowed him to cultivate relationships with British cabinet ministers, civil servants, and foreign diplomats. His newspapers made him a regular presence in elite political and social circles. Maxwell was also elected as a Labor Party MP, which expanded his political and social sphere of influence.
Maxwell, shown above, hosted lavish parties attended by politicians, business leaders, and foreign dignitaries and his wealth and flamboyance made him a fixture in London’s upper class.
This is noteworthy because it would be copied and expanded by the individual who inherited Maxwell’s network, Jeffrey Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell would serve as a bridge to her father’s intelligence remit of using elite networking and blackmail in the service of the Kremlin, and, to an equal extent, of Israel. Robert Maxwell maintained close ties with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the KGB. Maxwell was paid by the KGB to publish pro-Soviet literature and secured exclusive rights to publish Soviet scientific journals.
Was Robert Maxwell murdered?
As Robert Maxwell’s daughter, Ghislaine was afforded special access to London’s elite social world. After Ghislaine’s father’s rather suspicious 1991 death in the Canary Islands on board his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, she moved to New York with significant social capital at her disposal.
Robert Maxwell, a native of Czechoslovakia, has been referred to as an intelligence triple agent and even a rare quadruple agent. That is because he had high-level contacts in Britain’s MI6, Mossad, KGB, and the Czechoslovak StB. Undoubtedly, the StB contacted Maxwell in 1977 when up-and-coming New York real estate mogul Donald Trump married a Czechoslovakian-born woman and StB asset, Ivana Zelníčková. It was a marriage that would have not only attracted Czechoslovakia’s top spies but also those of the KGB in Moscow. Robert Maxwell would have served as the Warsaw Pact’s intelligence agencies’ conduit to Trump. Wednesday May 3, 1989 Trump attends a ... Time Warner cable executive Steve Ross, Trump, U.S. Senator John Tower, CBS newsman Mike Wallace, and Maxwell, 1989
The Epstein files contain a reference to Robert Maxwell’s ties to the Mossad. Epstein wrote that Maxwell threatened to expose all Mossad operations, presumably including the blackmail operations Epstein took control via Ghislaine, unless he was paid £400 million to save his collapsing media empire that included 400 companies. In a 2018 email, Epstein refers to Robert Maxwell’s political pull, writing, “In that time, he [Maxwell] had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, to Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin and to the corridors of power throughout Europe.”
Epstein added, “Maxwell passed on all the secrets he learned to Mossad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities and insatiable appetite for a luxurious lifestyle and women.” As far as Maxwell’s intelligence work for Mossad, Epstein wrote, “[Maxwell] told his controllers who they should target and how they should do it. He appointed himself as Israel’s unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Bloc.” Epstein’s subject line states that Maxwell “was passed away,” a reference to his 1991 death not being from a sudden heart attack.
From the 1960s to 1991, the United Kingdom had been a treasure trove of compromised high-profile pedophiles ripe for blackmail by Maxwell. Institutional abuse and cover‑ups involved churches, children’s homes, schools, the BBC, and political parties. Victims weren’t believed, powerful men were protected, and Maxwell and his Soviet, Czechoslovak, and Israeli controllers successfully took full advantage of kompromat vulnerabilities. Powerful pedophiles subjected to Maxwell blackmail included Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, who served from 1970 to 1974; BBC celebrity Jimmy Savile; Labor and Liberal MP Cyril Smith; Conservative MP Peter Morrison, who was also private secretary to Margaret Thatcher; senior diplomat and intelligence officer Peter Hayman; and Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens. Britain as a major pedophile honeypot would continue to present kompromat opportunities after Epstein took over Maxwell’s blackmail operations.
Cross-party pedophiles were discovered in the House of Common, House of Lords, and other important institutions. The perpetrators included Lord Janner (Greville Janner), a Labor peer and former MP who died in 2015 while facing 22 charges of historical child sex abuse against boys, spanning from the 1960s to the 1980s. Liberal MP and BBC Radio broadcaster Clement Freud, a grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was a serial pedophile who owned a villa in Praia da Luz, Portugal. In June 2016, British detectives investigating the 2007 disappearance of 3-year old Madeleine McCann in Portugal reviewed potential links to Clement Freud, who had died in 2009. In 2016, three women made public allegations of child sexual abuse and rape by Freud. In 2022, Lord Ahmed (Nazir Ahmed) was found guilty of child sex offenses, including attempted rape of a girl and serious sexual assault against a boy, in the 1970s. In 2024, longtime BBC News presenter Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. Image of The Search for Madeleine McCann in Portugal Is Over, Police Say - The New York Times Disappearance of 3-year old Madeleine McCann in Portugal was linked to a major UK pedophile ring
The involvement of these high-profile individuals in pedophilic activities presented Maxwell and his Soviet, Czechoslovak, and Israeli controllers in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s with excellent kompromat and, later, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell with continued opportunities on behalf of the Russian FSB and SVR, as well as Mossad,
After settling in New York, Ghislaine (shown holding a photo of her father) quickly became a fixture in Manhattan’s high‑society scene. She attended charity galas, art events, and elite parties where she met financiers, politicians, and celebrities, including Donald Trump and his Czechoslovak wife Ivana. After hooking up with Epstein, who had taken over Robert Maxwell’s blackmail operations and was wealthy in his own right thanks to the financial portfolios he managed for retail multi-billionaire Les Wexner and Bear Stearns chairman Ace Greenberg, the duo expanded their circle to include Wall Street billionaires, political donors, academics, and global business leaders.
Although Donald Trump is not the only high-profile politician to have been implicated in the Maxwell/Epstein pedophilic blackmail operation, he is the most powerful. Russian and Israeli intelligence own Trump, lock, stock, and barrel. It is also quite evident that Trump’s theft of some of the most highly-classified intelligence documents in possession of the U.S. government was in the service of those who hold blackmail information on Trump and those in his first and second administrations. Vladimir Putin’s name appears more than a thousand times in what the Justice Department has released with heavy redactions.
That represents 3 million redacted files out of a total of over 6 million. The Trump regime is withholding over 3 million files. It is very likely that what is being withheld involves what the FBI, CIA, and other agencies discovered about Putin’s stranglehold over Trump and members of his two administrations. And, judging from what files have been released, Putin’s and Binyamin Netanyahu’s blackmail operations reach into the highest echelons of other governments.
The “Esptein Files” is not merely limited to a list of those involved with child sex trafficking and pedophilia and, perhaps, much worse, involving Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jean-Luc Brunel, Donald Trump, and other close associates of Epstein. The Epstein Files are a gateway to decades-long child sexual abuse involving politicians and celebrities in the UK, Australia, Canada, the United States, and other countries dating back to the 1960s.
The child abuse scandals involve U.S. politicians and other celebrities with underage congressional pages and child orphans that were reported in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the late 1980s and early 1990s, the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. Perpetrators range from former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and U.S. Representatives Mark Foley and Matt Gaetz in more recent years to U.S. Representatives Dan Crane and Gerry Studds in 1983. Their vulnerability to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s blackmail operations were never examined for resultant national security damage.
The current list of influential players in the Epstein circle is a virtual “Who’s Who” of blackmail opportunities reaching into scores of offices of heads of state and government around the world:
Ehud Barak (right, Former prime minister of Israel)Tony Blair (right, former prime minister of the UK)
Elon Musk (right, almost trillionaire bankroller of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign)
Clarence Thomas (Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: President Strips Job Protections From 50,000 Federal Workers, Staff Reports, Feb. 5, 2026. What We’re Covering Today.
The Trump administration finalized a new policy on Thursday that would strip job protections from up to 50,000 federal workers, a move that would make it easier for President Trump to remove or discipline them, in his latest effort to dismantle the federal work force.
Until now, the roughly 4,000 people appointed by the president, known as political appointees, were the only federal workers who could be fired at will. The policy issued on Thursday allows the administration to expand that number to include career employees whom the administration considers to also have policy-related roles. For these employees, any whistle-blower complaints would be handled by their agencies internally and not the independent office of special counsel as it has been in the past.
The 255-page rule did not say precisely which positions would be affected - the White House is currently reviewing the positions submitted by agencies and will ultimately decide, Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, said on Thursday. In announcing the final rule, the office responded to criticism of such a move by saying that political patronage, loyalty tests and political discrimination in the federal work force were “explicitly” prohibited.
Political appointees work in positions that determine policies and promote the administration’s agenda. The White House has not responded to questions about how many of those 4,000 positions are currently filled.
The announcement represents another push in the administration’s campaign to reshape the federal work force, which has included mass firings, layoffs, pressured resignations and early retirements. In total, more than 352,000 employees left the federal government in 2025, according to the most recent data from the Office of Personnel Management. The announcement is also the latest step the administration has taken to replace nonpartisan civil servants with employees who are ideologically aligned with the president.
Mr. Kupor, in a statement, said that the policy “restores a basic principle of democratic governance: those entrusted with shaping and executing policy must be accountable for results.”
He added: “This rule preserves merit-based hiring, veterans’ preference and whistle-blower protections while ensuring senior career officials responsible for advancing President Trump’s agenda can be held to the same performance expectations that exist throughout much of the American work force.”
White House advisor Stephen Miller, above left.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: What Trump REALLY Thinks About Stephen Miller, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 5, 2026. A secret transcript exclusive to The Bulwark reveals more than Trump ever would.
As we send this newsletter, Donald Trump is speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Before he came on, his buddy, Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele, right, warmed up the crowd with some stories about how “God worked a great miracle through our hands” in his war against Satan-worshiping gangs that the “global mainstream media” refused to cover.
Then televangelist Paula White-Cain (shown above in a file photo and below as part of pastoral blessing of Trump by politically aligned religioujs leaders) came on to gas Trump up as “the greatest champion of faith that we have ever had in the executive branch,” who had “brought religion back to this nation and beyond.”
White House advisor Paula White-Cain, shown also below right, and MAGA pastors praying for Trump in the Oval Office
And then—glory hallelujah!—came the big guy himself, to offer his latest thoughts on whether he’s likely to get to heaven: “I really think I probably should make it. I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people.” Happy Thursday.
More Epstein Files Scandals
A newly released email alleges that Jeffrey Epstein arranged for two girls to be buried at his New Mexico ranch after they were strangled during sex acts
Daily Mail Thursday, Jeffrey Epstein 'ordered two "foreign girls" strangled to death during "rough, fetish sex" to be buried near his ranch', person claiming to be a former worker alleged, Adam Pogrund, Feb. 5, 2026. Jeffrey Epstein ordered the burial of two 'foreign girls' near his ranch after they were strangled to death during 'rough, fetish sex', according to an email released in the latest Epstein files.
The email, sent by a person claiming to have worked for Epstein, also includes links purporting to show the late paedophile engaging in sex with underage girls.
The correspondence, first sent to a man named Eddy Aragon on November 21, 2019, before being forwarded onto the FBI , was released as part of three million documents from the Epstein files published by the US Department of Justice on Friday.
In the email, titled 'Confidential: Jeffrey Epstein', the person, whose name has been redacted, claimed to have 'been there and seen it all, as a former staff at the Zorro.'
They alleged the girls were buried on the orders of Epstein and 'Madam G', believed to be Ghislaine Maxwell, at Zorro Ranch, the sex offender's sprawling New Mexico property which has long been reported to have served as one of his private playgrounds for sexual abuse and trafficking.
In the email, they wrote: 'Edward. This is sensitive, so it will be the first and last email depending on your discretion.
'You can choose to take it or trash it but this comes from a person that has been there and seen it all, as a former staff at the Zorro.
'The material below was taken from Jeffrey Epstein home as my insurance in case of future litigation against Epstein. SORRY NO QUESTIONS.Jeffrey Epstein ordered the burial of two 'foreign girls' near his ranch after they were strangled to death during 'rough, fetish sex', a person claiming to be a former worker has alleged
Jeffrey Epstein ordered the burial of two 'foreign girls' near his ranch after they were strangled to death during 'rough, fetish sex', a person claiming to be a former worker has alleged The person who sent the email claimed to have been employed at Zorro Ranch (pictured), Epstein's sprawling estate
The person who sent the email claimed to have been employed at Zorro Ranch (pictured), Epstein's sprawling estateThe email, sent on November 21, 2019 to Eddy Aragon, was forward to the FBI
The email, sent on November 21, 2019 to Eddy Aragon, was forward to the FBITRENDINGNancy Guthrie sheriff shares terrifying new details of investigation19.3k viewing nowNancy Guthrie was selected for abduction in advance, FBI profiler says160.5k viewing nowTrump backs Bill and Hillary Clinton amid Epstein probe in GOP rebuke5.2k viewing now
They added: 'What is damning about Jeffrey Epstein is yet to be written. Did you know somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G? Both died by strangulation during rough, fetish sex.'
The sender also included links to videos which claimed to show Epstein having sex with minors, threesomes and sex with underage girls.
They then demanded a payment of one Bitcoin in return for the video and information.
The email was forwarded onto the FBI just three months after Epstein died while being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Documents released as part of the Epstein files also show the paedophile financier intended to leave his Zorro estate to his Belarusian girlfriend Karyna Shuliak.
Epstein bought Zorro Ranch in 1993 from Bruce King, a former three-time New Mexico governor.
The 13 square miles of high desert include a 26,700-square foot luxury estate, guest lodges, staff dwellings and several outbuildings.
It also has a firehouse, horse stables, a seven-bay heated garage, a greenhouse to grow fresh produce, a cattle grazing operation and private air strip, a hangar and a helipad.The person who sent the email alleged the girls were buried on the orders of Epstein and 'Madam G', believed to be Ghislaine Maxwell
The person who sent the email alleged the girls were buried on the orders of Epstein and 'Madam G', believed to be Ghislaine Maxwell
Epstein owned the property until his death. His estate listed it in 2021 for $27.5 million.
That price was later dropped to $18 million and the ranch sold for an undisclosed price in 2023 to a limited liability corporation that renamed the property the San Rafael Ranch, but whose owner is shrouded in secrecy.
Epstein used Zorro Ranch as an isolated getaway and playground for VIP guests who were able to come and go more discreetly than they could even to Little St James, his private Caribbean island off St Thomas.
Civil filings claim that the compound hosted the former Prince Andrew, who was accused by Virginia Giuffre who produced photographs and written statements showing she visited the compound during the time she was trafficked as a teenager between 2000 and 2002.
The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Views: More BOMBSHELL Epstein Files Released as White House PANICS About Trump’s Future, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 5, 2026. Important News Update: New Significant Epstein Documents Revealed as White House Struggles to Shift the Public Narrative.
I have major new developments from the Epstein files to walk you through, even as the White House is urging the public to move on from discussing them. At the same time, the Treasury Department has confirmed that taxpayers could be on the hook for a potential $10 billion settlement to Donald Trump if he prevails in his IRS lawsuit, and the president appeared to shift blame onto Tulsi Gabbard over the FBI raid in Georgia.
This evening, I also sat down with DCCC Chair Suzanne DelBene for an in-depth conversation about the November elections, whether she is concerned about interference, and how the battlefield looks in the most competitive races across the country.
The Epstein files are the most important story right now. Despite that, some media outlets already seem eager to look away. I am not. I am reviewing every document and pushing for real accountability for survivors. Subscribe to support my work.Subscribed
Here’s the news:
Attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein survivors say a Justice Department document release failed to properly redact victims’ names and personal details despite promises to fix the issue, leaving survivors publicly identifiable for days after millions of pages were posted under a new transparency law and raising concerns that the privacy harm is permanent.
CBS has confirmed that newly released Justice Department records reveal conflicting FBI and inspector general interpretations of blurry jail surveillance footage showing an orange-colored figure moving toward Jeffrey Epstein’s cell tier the night before his death, contradicting official claims that no one entered the area and raising fresh questions about gaps, inconsistencies, and unexamined evidence in the investigation that ruled his death a suicide.
This email suggests Jeffrey Epstein wanted to do a "coffee with Don Jr" in 2019. If true, this would be a bombshell. Why would this be a bombshell? Few reasons. First, Trump was President and his DOJ was already investigating Epstein at the time. Second, this was months before Epstein was indicted and died. Third, this was allegedly years after Trump cut off ties with Epstein. If that's the case, why is your son, right, getting coffee with him?
'From:J J
More concerning Don Jr., now showing that Epstein was sending Jr. clips.
It appears as though Jeffrey Epstein was working to organize something (possibly a massage) for Elon Musk in 2012.
From: Jeffrey Epstein
In 2020, Elon Musk said he had no recollection of Epstein getting a tour at SpaceX. Here is an email showing that he got the tour.
This is an email in which the sender of the email asks Jeffrey Epstein the name of the gynecologist that he sent his “victims to.” The New York Times previously reported that the “izmo” email was Epstein’s brother. Full file here.
'To: From: Sent: Subject: Jeffrey Epstein Wed 12/12/2012 5:03:46 PM Re: ? ny? ny? On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 11:59 AM, izmo <
Another communication that should not be redacted, but is.
Newly released Epstein files reveal that Steve Bannon repeatedly communicated with Jeffrey Epstein in 2018–2019 about raising money and building support for far-right and Eurosceptic parties across Europe—including efforts tied to figures like Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen—prompting political backlash and calls for investigations, though there is no evidence Epstein directly funded these parties and those implicated deny wrongdoing.
Newly scrutinized financial records show that Jeffrey Epstein shorted the Russian ruble five days before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, raising questions about whether he had advance knowledge of the move.
Scott Bessent confirms that taxpayers will pay Donald Trump $10 billion if he wins his lawsuit against the IRS.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump is bothered by an investigation into Bill Clinton because the two men have “shared a good relationship.”
Donald Trump offered shifting explanations for DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s presence at the FBI raid in Georgia, saying it was urged by Attorney General Pam Bondi after previously claiming he didn’t know why she attended, even as Gabbard told Congress that Trump personally directed her to observe the execution of the Fulton County search warrant. I broke it down here, I also interviewed Alex Vindman who is running for Senate in Florida:
Karoline Leavitt defended Donald Trump’s claim that Tulsi Gabbard joined an FBI raid on a Georgia election center at the urging of Pam Bondi, saying election security and protection from foreign interference fall within Gabbard’s duties.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to guarantee that ICE agents would not be present near polling locations in November.
The White House said it is open to negotiating some Democratic demands in talks over a full-year Department of Homeland Security funding bill, though Leavitt dismissed other requests as unrealistic “non-starters” without specifying which ones.
The Trump administration advanced a rule to reclassify certain civil service jobs, a move the Office of Personnel Management says would allow agencies to more easily fire federal workers for misconduct or poor performance, while critics warn it could also be used to remove employees deemed disloyal.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said investigators believe Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of a “Today” show host, is still alive as the search enters its fifth day.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said additional U.S. sanctions on Russia hinge on progress in talks to end the war in Ukraine, adding he is considering measures targeting Russia’s so-called shadow fleet.
U.S.-led talks between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi ended a second day without a ceasefire breakthrough, though the sides agreed to exchange 157 prisoners each; U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said major negotiations remain ahead.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, right, said President Donald Trump “would much prefer” a Kid Rock performance over Bad Bunny for the Super Bowl LX halftime show:
Authorities say Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last accounted for returning home around 9:48 p.m. Saturday; overnight her doorbell camera and pacemaker app disconnected, and after she missed church Sunday morning, her family reported her missing just after noon as investigators confirmed her DNA was found at her home and the search continues with no suspect identified.
Guan Heng, 38, who secretly filmed detention facilities in China’s Xinjiang region and later published the footage, was freed from U.S. immigration detention after more than five months when an immigration judge granted him asylum, citing a well-founded fear of persecution; his release followed public and congressional pressure after he was initially targeted for deportation, and he has since reunited with his mother in New York.
The corrupti financier, sex trafficker and companion of global elites Jeffrey Epstein is shown above in an undated photo released by the Justie Department with the face of an apparent teen or young woman blacked out.
Raw Story, Epstein's 2016 Christmas Day email batters president's denials: 'With all the Trump boys', Adam Nichols, Feb. 5, 2026. A newly released email from the Justice Department's Epstein Files reveals that convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein claimed to be in Palm Beach with "all the trump boys" on Christmas Day 2016 — a month after Donald Trump's election victory.
In the December 25 message to Bill Gates' advisor Boris Nikolic, Epstein wrote, "im in palm with all the trump boys. . = fun."
Nikolic responded early on December 26: "Have fun!!"
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The email, which was reported by the Daily Beast, did not clarify specific details. Epstein did not elaborate on what "palm" referred to, though both he and Trump owned luxury residences in Palm Beach, Florida. Who was included in his "all the trump boys" was also not specified in the correspondence.
Whether the meeting occurred remains unknown, as does whether Trump attended. Media reports indicate Trump spent the holiday period at his Mar-a-Lago residence. According to a Washington Post pool report, Trump attended Christmas Eve services in Palm Beach, with the service ending after midnight before he returned to Mar-a-Lago to celebrate with family and friends.
If Epstein's statement reflected actual plans with Trump or his associates, it would suggest contact between them just weeks before Trump's January 2017 inauguration — substantially later than Trump's public timeline regarding their relationship.
When asked about Epstein following his 2019 death, Trump stated: "I don't think I've spoken to him in 15 years, I wasn't a fan." Trump has claimed he severed ties in the early 2000s after Epstein allegedly recruited young workers from Mar-a-Lago's spa, including Virginia Giuffre, who later accused Epstein of abuse.
In a 2002 magazine profile, Trump had characterized Epstein differently, calling him a "terrific guy" who was "a lot of fun to be with" and observing that "many" of the women around him were "on the younger side."
A White House spokesperson responded: "Epstein is a known liar and only the hacks at the Daily Beast—including disgraced Daily Beast employee Michael Wolff who was very close with Epstein—would believe his wild allegations."
Melania Trump, left, future U.S. First Lady shown in an undated photo with Ghislaine Maxwell and three girls whose faces were redacted by the Justice Department.
The email appears in the Justice Department's public release of Epstein records under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The 3.5 million released pages include official case files and public tips. The Justice Department cautioned that some documents contain "untrue and sensationalist" claims that are "unfounded and false," particularly those involving Trump.
Additionally, the files contain a confidential FBI source memo alleging Trump visited Epstein's home for lunch in spring 2015 and maintained close contact after the election. The White House denied this allegation: "This is nothing more than a false allegation that has no basis in reality." Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein.
Epstein died by apparent suicide in a New York jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. He had previously pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges involving underage girls.
Byline Times, A New Order & Trump in Power Investigative Analysis: Jeffrey Epstein ‘Co-Owned’ Palantir Founder’s Valar Venture Fund as Palantir Entered UK Government, Nafeez Ahmed, Feb. 4, 2026. The Russian connected convicted sex trafficker co-owned a fund founded by Peter Thiel, now embedded in Britain’s most critical infrastructure with the help of Peter Mandelson
The Metropolitan Police investigation into Peter Mandelson over the leaking of sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein has established an unambiguous principle: those who seek to compromise the UK’s secrets to a foreign intelligence-linked sexual predator forfeit their access to power.
Mandelson, right, was sacked as US Ambassador, has resigned his membership of the Labour Party, and has been forced to quit the House of Lords over ongoing revelations about his relationship to Epstein.
He now faces potential criminal charges for misconduct in public office.
Yet, the same convicted sex offender who received state secrets from Mandelson, was simultaneously a “co-owner” through a significant limited partnership investment of a Silicon Valley venture fund controlled by Peter Thiel – the billionaire founder of defence analytics giant Palantir Technologies, which now holds more than £670 million in UK Government contracts spanning nuclear weapons systems, NHS patient records, Ministry of Defence operations, and police intelligence databases. More than 100 documents from the files released by the US Department of Justice, seen by Byline Times, reveal that Thiel personally solicited and maintained a business partnership with Epstein that stretched from 2014 through 2019, all the way up to Epstein’s final arrest.
During this period, Epstein was a “co-owner” of Thiel’s Valar fund, receiving “confidential” and “time-sensitive” investment opportunities from Valar Ventures, facilitating meetings between Thiel and Russian intelligence operatives, and building what former MI6 Russia desk head Christopher Steele assessed as a fortune originating from Russian organised crime.
The timeline reveals a concerning convergence: Mandelson leaked the UK’s secrets to Epstein between 2009 and 2010.
Four years later, Thiel urged Epstein to meet the principals of his firm, Valar Ventures, with a view to confirming the sex offender’s multi-million investment. The following year, Epstein invested $15 million in Valar Ventures and became a co-owning limited partner in a Valar Ventures-managed fund.
In 2018, Palantir hired Mandelson’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel, to facilitate the company’s penetration of UK Government contracts – at the same time Epstein remained an active Valar partner receiving confidential investment opportunities from Thiel’s fund.
If Mandelson’s links to Epstein disqualifies him from holding power, why does the company controlled by Epstein’s business partner retain access to Britain’s most sensitive national security infrastructure?
The Thiel-Epstein Business Partnership: Documents seen by Byline Times reveal the depth and duration of Peter Thiel’s personal business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a partnership that continued years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The documents squarely contradict Thiel’s suggestions that he was not close to Epstein.
Thus far, little was known about Epstein’s investment in a major fund founded and chaired by Peter Thiel, which was characterised as a distant association. However, in reality, the documents show that Epstein quickly – but secretly – became a co-owner of Thiel’s fund.
On 15 November 2014, Thiel personally emailed Epstein, soliciting $10-20 million for Valar Ventures, a venture capital fund Thiel had founded to invest in fintech and financial services companies globally. READ IN APP (Screenshot via Rumble.com)
Politico, Brad Karp resigns as chair of Paul, Weiss amid Epstein fallout, Gregory Svirnovski, Feb. 5, 2026. The lawyer has come under fire for a series of email exchanges he had with Epstein, after the sex offender’s first stint in prison.Brad Karp leaves federal court.
Brad Karp, the longtime chair of one of the nation’s premier law firms, has resigned from Paul, Weiss amid backlash over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the latest development for top officials whose relationship with the late sex offender were uncovered in newly released Department of Justice files.
“Leading Paul, Weiss for the past 18 years has been the honor of my professional life,” Karp said in a statement. “Recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm.”
Karp was replaced as chair by veteran lawyer Scott Barshay, though he will remain involved in client service at Paul, Weiss.
Karp had come under fire for a series of email exchanges he had with Epstein, which came several years after the millionaire served his first stint in prison for solicitation of prostitution with a minor and was branded a sex offender.
A federal case was formally dismissed in August 2019 following Epstein’s death by suicide in jail while awaiting trial. Karp has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
In one email dating back to July 2015, Karp thanked Epstein for “including me in an evening I’ll never forget” at the financier’s home, writing that it “was truly ‘once in a lifetime’ in every way.”
Epstein responded, writing that there “are many many nights of unique talents,” and promising Karp that he’d be invited often.
In another set of emails from 2016, Karp attempted to use Epstein to connect his son to the filmmaker Woody Allen for a job.
Paul, Weiss directed POLITICO to a statement in PR Newswire announcing the changes.
In a statement sent to POLITICO before Karp’s resignation, a spokesperson for Paul, Weiss stated that the firm maintained strong boundaries with Epstein.
“Paul, Weiss was retained by Leon Black, then the CEO of the firm’s longtime client Apollo, to negotiate a series of fee disputes with Jeffrey Epstein that spanned several years,” the spokesperson said. “The firm was adverse to Epstein and at no point did Paul, Weiss or Brad Karp ever represent him.”
More On U.S. Politics, Elections
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 4, 2026 [Trump-Planned Federal Elections Takeover?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 5, 2026. On the heels of last weekend’s special election in Texas, President Donald J. Trump has called for his administration to take over the polls before the 2026 midterm elections.
On Saturday, Democrat Taylor Rehmet, above left, flipped a state Senate seat in Texas that had been held by a Republican since the early 1990s, and he did so by a margin of 14.4 points in a district Trump won in 2024 by 17 points. The 32-point flip has Republicans “in full-out panic mode,” as reporter Liz Crampton put it in Politico yesterday.
Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: “You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
Last week’s release of some of the Epstein files has shown just how thoroughly Bannon plays his audience for power. Even while he was portraying himself to his audience as a populist defender, he was working closely with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to launder his image and craft political messages.
On Tuesday, Bannon echoed Trump’s lie that undocumented immigrants corrupt the polls, saying that only about 20% of real voters select Democrats. This lie about undocumented immigrants voting has been part of the Republicans’ rhetoric since 1994, the year after Democrats under President Bill Clinton passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the so-called Motor Voter Act, which made it easier to register to vote at certain state offices. In 1994, Republicans accused Democrats of winning elections by turning to “illegal,” usually immigrant, voters.
Republican candidates who lost in the 1994 midterm elections claimed that Democrats had won only through “voter fraud.” In 1996, Republicans in both the House and the Senate launched yearlong investigations into what they insisted were problematic elections, one in Louisiana and one in California. Ultimately, they turned up nothing, but keeping the cases in front of the media for a year helped to convince Americans that Democratic voter fraud was a serious issue.
Trump and his allies have put this political myth into hyperdrive. Political operative Roger Stone launched a “Stop the Steal” website during the 2016 Republican primaries to argue that a “Bush-Cruz-Kasich-Romney-Ryan-McConnell faction” intended to steal the Republican nomination from Trump. After Trump got the nomination, the Trump camp wheeled out the “Stop the Steal” idea for the 2016 race against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and have used it ever since to spread the idea that Trump, and other Republicans, can lose only if Democrats cheat.
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), right, is in on the game. In 2024 he told reporters, “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.” Yesterday, defending Trump’s demand for federal control of elections, he went further: “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on Election Day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost…. It looks on its face to be fraudulent.” Then he added the same caveat Republicans have used since 1996: “Can I prove that? No.”
And there’s the rub: there is never any proof of such claims. In 2016, fact-checkers established that, for all of Trump’s insistence that the 2016 election was marred by voter fraud—he claimed “millions” of undocumented immigrants voted illegally—there was virtually no voting by undocumented immigrants in that election. Douglas Keith, Myrna Pérez, and Christopher Famighetti of the Brennan Center reached out to 42 jurisdictions across the nation with the highest population share of noncitizens in the states Trump claimed had returned fraudulent numbers.
Election officials in 40 of those jurisdictions told the journalists that they had had no instances of noncitizen voting. Two said they referred only about 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting. If all of those were, in fact, illegitimate votes, it means that out of 23.5 million votes cast in their jurisdictions in the 2016 general election, about 30—or 0.0001 percent—of those votes were problematic.
The MAGA furor over undocumented voting reflects something different than a genuine concern that undocumented immigrants are flooding into U.S. polling booths. It shows that MAGA leaders realize that the white nationalism they use to turn out their supporters is increasingly unpopular across the nation and that the only way to stay in power is to define those who vote for the other party as illegitimate voters.
For decades now, Republican politicians have used racism and sexism to turn out voters, claiming that the growing economic divisions in society were the fault of Democrats who wanted to redistribute the tax dollars of hardworking white Americans to undeserving Black Americans, people of color, and women. Once in power, those leaders rigged the economy to move money not downward but upward, moving nearly $80 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1% from 1975 to 2023.
But now the extremes of the racism that are driving raids by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol are horrifying most Americans, while the open looting of the system by a few very wealthy individuals, led by the president, at the same time Republican lawmakers are killing public programs has proved too much for all but the firmest MAGA supporters.
MAGA leaders’ solution is to reject the results of any election that doesn’t put them in charge.
In North Carolina in the 1890s, a fusion movement brought together members of the Populist Party, who tended to be white, and Republicans who, in that post–Civil War era, tended to be Black. While the two groups didn’t agree on everything, they did agree on economic reforms to address a growing concentration of wealth, investments in education, and protection of voting rights. In response, the Democrats in charge of the North Carolina legislature in that era tried to kill the movement by cracking down on voting rights and passing a law that gave the legislature more authority over local governments.
It didn’t work. In 1896 the Fusionists won control of the state legislature, the governorship, and statewide offices. Out of 120 House members, only 26 were Democrats. Out of 50 members of the state Senate, only 7 were Democrats.
In the 1898 elections, the Democrats ran a full-throated white supremacy campaign. “It is time for the oft quoted shotgun to play a part, and an active one,” one woman wrote, “in the elections.” They threatened Black voters to keep them away from the polls, and when even that wasn’t enough, they tampered with the election results.
Blocking Fusion voters from the polls and threatening them with guns gave the Democrats a victory, but in Wilmington the biracial city government had not been up for reelection and so remained in power. There, about two thousand armed white Democrats overthrew the Fusion government. They agreed that the town officials had been elected fairly, but they rejected the outcome of the election nonetheless, insisting that the men voters had put in charge had no idea how to run a government.
In a “White Declaration of Independence,” they announced that they would “never again be ruled, by men of African origin.” It was time, they said, “for the intelligent citizens of this community owning 95 percent of the property and paying taxes in proportion, to end the rule by [Black men].” They accused the white men who had worked with the Black Republicans of exploiting black voters “so they can dominate the intelligent and thrifty element in the community.” Indeed, the Democrats later maintained, they had not had to force the officials to leave their posts; the officials recognized that they were not up to the task and left of their own accord. As many as three hundred Black Americans were killed in this “reform” of the city government.
This coup made its way into American culture. Three years after it, North Carolina writer and Southern Baptist minister Thomas Dixon popularized this revision of the past with his book The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, which portrayed Black voters as tyrants out to redistribute all the wealth and power in the South from white landowners to themselves.
At the climax of the novel, a gathering of leading white men echoed the Wilmington coup when they issued “a second Declaration of Independence from the infamy of corrupt and degraded government. The day of [Black] domination over the Anglo-Saxon race shall close, now, once and forever.” The book sold more than 100,000 copies in its first few months. In 1905, Dixon published The Clansman, which was even more popular than its predecessor.
In 1912, film director D.W. Griffith turned The Clansman into The Birth of a Nation, and the recasting of a white nationalist coup as a heroic defense of the people of the United States was underway.
When Bannon says “we will never again allow an election to be stolen,” the echoes from the past are unmistakable. But it seems significant that the coup leaders in 1898 issued their declaration after they had already won. Issuing it ahead of time in 2026 seems more like an attempt to rally flagging supporters while terrorizing opponents to keep them from turning out to vote. It is one thing to overthrow a town government in a time before modern communications could organize resistance; it is quite another to overthrow a nation of 348 million people who are forewarned.
Today the Supreme Court ruled that California may use the new congressional maps voters adopted as a response to the Texas legislature’s partisan gerrymandering of that state to favor Republicans. The Trump administration pushed the Texas redistricting but opposed California’s. Now, based on the 2024 election results, the two states could cancel each other out, although the Republicans’ Texas gerrymander assumed that Latino voters who swung to Trump in 2024 would stay there.
Latino support fueled Rehmet’s win on Saturday, bringing that assumption into question.
Emptywheel, Analysis: The Emirates Didn’t Bribe Trump–They Purchased Him, Emptywheel (Dr. Marcy Wheeler, right), Feb. 5, 2026. Last weekend, WSJ had a blockbuster story describing that, days before Trump’s inauguration, the Emirates’ spy chief bought almost half of Trump’s cryptocurrency bribery machine, World Liberty Financial. Then, last year, Trump approved the sale of Nvidia chips to UAE, in spite of concerns that they would, in turn, share the technology with China.
Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities.
The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, right, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been 
named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said.
The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh”—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president, the government’s national security adviser, as well as the leader of the oil-rich country’s largest wealth fund. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money that spans from fish farms to AI to surveillance, making him one of the most powerful single investors in the world.
The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.
Under the Biden administration, Tahnoon’s efforts to get AI hardware had been largely stymied over fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China. Of particular concern was one of Tahnoon’s own companies, the AI firm G42, which had stoked alarm among intelligence officials and lawmakers over its close ties to the sanctioned tech giant Huawei and other Chinese firms. The company said it severed ties with China in late 2023, but concerns persisted.
Trump’s election reopened the door for him. In the months that followed, Tahnoon met multiple times with Trump, Witkoff and other U.S. officials, including in a March visit to the White House where the sheikh told officials he was eager to work with the U.S. on AI and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter.
I recommend reading the story in conjunction with this superb visualization NYT did late last year, which covered some of the same relationships. As the NYT visualization makes clear, this massive scandal interlocks with a bunch of other ones (for example, the roles of Howard Lutnick and David Sacks in it; other parts of this visualization include Justin Sun’s role in initially funding the bribery machine).
But the story is all the more breathtaking when you contextualize the past history.
Most importantly, remember that Tom Barrack, left, was prosecuted — but acquitted (for reasons that may have had to do with evolving Foreign Agent law, that may have stemmed from damage Bill Barr did to the investigation, which arose from the Mueller investigation, or even for simple venue problems) — for the way in which, after installing Paul Manafort to run Trump’s campaign in 2016, Barrack intervened to make Trump’s policy much more Emirate friendly.
Along the way to his acquittal, Barrack (who is now Ambassador to Turkey and who doesn’t even show up on NYT’s superb visualization) argued that among the reasons he couldn’t be a Foreign Agent is because Trump knew and approved of what he was doing. In other words, it didn’t matter that we, the voters, didn’t know from a FARA filing that the Emirates had key leverage over the Trump campaign and Trump generally, because Trump knew, though kept it secret.
That is effectively what happened with this payment.
I believe that Tahnoon, the guy who made the payoff to Trump last year, is Emirati Official 2 in the Barrack indictment. If that’s right, then Barrack crafted his public comments to meet Tahnoon’s needs, approved of a 100-day plan to cater to Emirate needs that Barrack drafted, and visited the White House in May 2017.
And while we have always focused closely on Manafort’s role in crafting pro-Russian policies in advance of the first Trump term, Manafort was working with Barrack on policies — including a foreign policy speech — to please the Emiratis, too.
Of course, the Emiratis were always intimately involved in the Russian cultivation (and I still suspect the $10 million suspected bribe that went through Egypt was actually a pass-through from others). Child sex predator George Nader is the one who first set up the meetings with Kiril Dmitriev who would have been, and remains now, the key handler for the effort to co-opt the United States. Dmitriev is not in the NYT graphic either.
The Witkoffs, though, are all over the NYT visualization. Even as Steve Witkoff’s sons were getting a cut of this crypto corruption, he was secretly serving as “envoy,” not so much to make peace in the Middle East and Ukraine, but to obtain goodies for Trump’s family and friends that would convince Trump to betray the Western order.
The relationship, as described, involves a UAE to China tie — which is only exacerbated by the role of Justin Sun, who originally funding Liberty Media, only to have UAE turn that investment into cash before Trump re-entered the White House.
And that’s interesting because another key Trump advisor, in addition to Manafort (and Jared Kushner) appears in the Barrack indictment, in conjunction with a September 2017 pitch: Steve Bannon. And Bannon, of course, was named as a co-conspirator in a different (successful) indictment that may have tied Emirati and Chinese interests, that of Guo Wengui. Dan Friedman has explained that fraud.
Shortly after Bannon’s 2017 ouster from the Trump White House, he began working for Guo (shown together above) as an adviser and consultant, helping the mogul craft an image as a fearless CCP critic and launch a series of nonprofit and media organizations the men claimed aimed to “take down the CCP.” Wang, Guo’s top assistant since he entered the US, was closely involved in that effort. Guo’s organizations also supported Trump and regularly pushed bizarre false claims about Covid and the 2020 election.
Prosecutors charged last year that Guo’s political posturing was a con. They allege that Guo used the organizations he launched with Bannon “to amass followers who were aligned with his purported campaign against the Chinese Communist Party and who were also inclined to believe [Guo’s] statements regarding investment and moneymaking opportunities,” so that he could defraud them. They charge that he pocketed hundreds of millions in supposed investments and used them to fund a lavish lifestyle that included a $3.5 million Ferrari, a $26 million mansion, a $30 million yacht, a $140,000 piano, and two $36,000 mattresses.
Bannon has not been charged in the case, but in a filing last month, prosecutors labeled him a “co-conspirator” and noted that he received at least $1 million in funds they alleged Guo misappropriated from investors.
And there’s one other earlier (potential tie). Remember when Alexander Smirnov was trying to avoid trouble for criminally framing Joe and Hunter Biden starting in August 2023, he described developing close ties with Russian spies in the context of — starting in May 2023 — peace talks. He met those spies not in Russia or Israel (whence he first started acting as an informant). He met them on an oligarch’s yacht in a different Middle East country, probably UAE, via which Smirnov had business ties to Trump. That is, it appears that the guy who criminally framed the Bidens as part of the same effort as the “laptop” operation in which Bannon was central was involved in the front end of these same Dubai-based efforts to betray the Western order.
Smirnov was sprung from prison last year, just as the indictment against guy who handled Barrack’s relationship with the Emirates back in 2016 got dismissed last year.
Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, shown at left in a file photo, laid into Trump for betraying MAGA, with his focus on the Middle East. She described a Scooby Doo mask coming off, as Trump put foreign interests first.
“It’s the foreign countries. They are running the show here. It’s the major big corporations and what is best for the world. That’s really what MAGA is. We are seeing war on behalf of Israel, we are seeing the people in Gaza, innocent people in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of them completely murdered so that they can build some new real estate development. Money can pour in and everybody can get rich there in the new Gaza,” she told Iversen.
“And we’re seeing a whole plan play out, which is really a new world order. It’s a new way of doing business. And that’s the — it’s kind of like the ‘Scooby-Doo’ meme where … they pull the mask off the bad guy,” Greene continued.
The Emirates bought themselves a President, secretly, just before he took office. But that effort has been part of a ten year process.
Far-right pocaster Sarah C. Stock displayed a photo of her and her husband's marriage being blessed by Pope Leo. Shown separately is her podcast co-host Elijah Schaffers, her reputed lover and boss despite their show's heavy focus on sin-free living. As reported by Poprant: Elijah Schaffer, CEO of RiftTV and outspoken conservative commentator, is at the center of a viral controversy involving Sarah Stock, now known as Sarah Setka. What started as social media rumors about an alleged affair has quickly exploded online, drawing scrutiny to Schaffer's personal life, his business, and the claims surrounding Stock.
False Flag! via The Bulwark, Propaganda Analysis: A Shocking Sex Scandal Rocks the Trad Right, Will Sommer, above, Feb. 5, 2026. Sex, lies, and audiotape—and the hypocrisy of the trad lifestyle project.
THE ONLINE RIGHT HAS BEEN SHAKEN this week by a recording that suggests far-right podcaster Elijah Schaffer—one of the biggest proponents of traditional or “trad” family values—may have had an affair. Even more scandalous: that the affair was with his employee Sarah Stock, an e-girl¹ and influencer so ostensibly traditional that her marriage was blessed by the pope himself.
One MAGA figure has dubbed it the “trad hoe scandal.” Others have said it’s proof you can never trust an “e-girl.” Many more are starting to suspect that their trad heroes may not be so trad after all.
To understand how we got here, let’s go back a bit.
For much of the past decade, Schaffer has been a regular presence on the far-right conservative media scene, as a podcaster, commentator, and, in his latest incarnation, as CEO of the outlet the RiftTV. Schaffer and various sidekicks would often discuss trad values, of which he—married in 2020 and now the father of two young children—was not just an outspoken supporter but presumably an exemplar.
A few months ago, Schaffer, above, took a mysterious month-long absence from his livestreamed show on Rumble, the right-wing video platform. And when he returned last week, on January 26, he looked rough. Schaffer admitted his face was unusually red—he blamed the lights in his new studio—and said he had developed a “permanent black eye” from crushing mental stress that, as he put it, would cause lesser men to commit suicide.
Schaffer certainly had plenty to be stressed about. FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend is suing him for suggesting she’s a Mossad agent. He claimed that people were trying to kill him.
But unbeknownst to his listeners, something else was weighing on Schaffer. Despite being one of the digital right’s most vocal boosters of traditional families, he had filed for divorce from his wife four days earlier.
Ditching his usual material aimed at whipping up hate toward Indian immigrants and Muslims, Schaffer instead used his return show to launch into a baffling rant straight out of family court. He vowed that he wouldn’t give up his sons “without a few shots fired.” He told his viewers that he wasn’t necessarily speaking metaphorically.
“I’m not going to go down without—without, you know, a few shots fired,” Schaffer said. “Figuratively, of course, we’re saying. But physically too, if needed.”
Then Schaffer appeared to address his estranged wife.
“Mama bear, mama bear, fuck you!” Schaffer said. “What about dad? What about dad? Don’t fuck with me! Don’t fuck with my kids. Don’t fuck with my income, don’t fuck with my ability to take care of my kids. I will fuck you up.”
The monologue grew stranger. Schaffer urged his fans to learn from him and overcome their addictions, their thoughts of suicide, their impulse to commit criminal behavior, and their “sexual proclivities.” Still, he couldn’t help but lament how far his star had fallen.
“I’d really like to regrow, and like, get back to where I was a couple years ago,” he said.
WHY WOULDN’T HE? Schaffer was once a rising star on the right—not as a commentator on trad issues, but as an ad-libbing political loudmouth. His coverage of the 2020 riots in the wake of George Floyd’s murder propelled him into a job hosting a popular show for mentor Glenn Beck’s network, The Blaze. Schaffer’s boozy, racist frat-boy persona was a hit, and it seemed that not even asserting that Mormons like his boss Beck would burn in hell could stop him. He literally was in Nancy Pelosi’s office on January 6th—and saw his stature grow because of it. But in 2022, Schaffer was fired from the Blaze after allegedly groping a coworker. He also provoked another harassment lawsuit against the outlet from his female cohost.
This was when he took his trad turn: Schaffer emerged from that initial disgrace by becoming a vocal family man, touting his wife and children frequently on social media, and shaming other influencers who didn’t have strong marriages and households. It worked for a time. But it apparently wasn’t enough to stave off financial trouble for the RiftTV, an online channel Schaffer launched last May. The platform has seen its public staff list dwindle in the last few months.
“This job has destroyed me, and I’m not even very popular!” Schaffer said during a January 28 show.
Worse was to come. On Monday, Schaffer posted a bizarre video that showed him wandering around empty hotel conference rooms as they were flooded with water.
“No one believes me that my life doesn’t make any sense right now,” Schaffer said, seemingly in a daze, as water gushed from the ceiling and soaked his shoes.
On Tuesday, Schaffer made strange X posts about his family being “kidnapped” and claimed the FBI was out to murder him, prompting worries on the right that he himself had hurt or endangered his own family.
In a mark of how twisted the online right has become, far-right YouTuber Jean-François Gariépy, whose own wife disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 2023 and was never found, wondered openly whether Schaffer was smart enough to murder his spouse without being discovered.
“Poor Elijah,” Gariépy asked. “Does he have the brains to get away with it?”
Fortunately, Schaffer’s family members appear to be safe. But the scandal engulfing him only grew wider.
RIGHT-WING PROVOCATEUR Milo Yiannopoulos, above, posted recordings and transcripts on social media on Tuesday that, he said, raised questions about Schaffer’s hypocrisy and mental instability.
In one recording, a man that sounds very much like Schaffer supposedly talks about having a drinking problem. Another purports to feature Sarah Stock, who for the last year has been a “political commentator, street interviewer, debater, and contributor” for RiftTV. That recording captures part of a conversation between an unnamed man who is not Yiannopoulos and a woman as she describes some sort of sexual relationship with Schaffer that began at the Conservative Political Action Conference (presumably in February 2025). The woman, who Yiannopoulos claims is Stock, says that she had a sexual encounter with Schaffer after he offered her Benadryl and shots of alcohol, prompting her to black out.
Yiannopoulos is a notoriously shifty figure. That said, the same audio recordings were also sent to me (not from him). And while I have not been able to authenticate them, neither Schaffer nor Stock has directly denied them. On Wednesday, Stock did post on X that many of the claims about her were false. But she also apologized broadly for her actions.
“There are mistakes/unwise decisions I have made that I deeply regret,” Stock wrote. “I apologize to everyone who has been scandalized by this.”
Then she deleted her X account entirely.
Neither Schaffer nor Stock responded to requests for comment.
Stock, who became a right-wing Catholic influencer after converting to the faith less than a year ago, gained some prominence online after she delivered a racist rant during a YouTube debate show featuring liberal commentator Sam Seder. Since then, she has been a fierce opponent of extramarital sex, denouncing “fornication.”
Stock is also a familiar figure to False Flag readers because of the drama that started last year when she posted a picture of her engagement ring. Rival influencers deemed the diamond far too small, setting off a vicious round of female MAGA infighting.
Stock’s alleged affair with Schaffer ended once she got engaged, according to the recording. But on the MAGA right, the widely discussed episode has dented both her and Schaffer’s images as strict moralists.²
In fact, the brewing scandal has provoked what can only be described as an outpouring of schadenfreude. Both Schaffer and Stock have made many enemies on the online right, in part because of their vigorous moral policing. Much of the criticism that has been directed at the pair has centered on the fact that Stock apparently entered into a sexual relationship with a married man right before she decided to have her own marriage blessed by Pope Leo.
“The trad stuff is performative BS,” declared MAGA influencer “Emily Saves America,” who had clashed with Stock in the diamond-size debate.
Sydney Watson, Schaffer’s former Blaze cohost who sued the company over his alleged harassment, posted a picture of an intrigued Pepe the Frog character peeking through blinds. RiftTV personalities dropped their affiliations with the site listed on their X accounts. Even an Indian account on X dredged up an old attack Schaffer made on the Hindu god Vishnu, declaring that his current scandal vindicated the Hindu pantheon.
“Never speak on Vishnu ever again!” it declared.
And yet, some people were likely not terribly surprised to see Schaffer involved in a scandal like this. Back in 2022, sassy right-wing influencer Christian Walker accused Schaffer of cheating on his wife at a Republican event.
“Not even a year ago at a conservative conference, he did my friend four times in one night, unprotected, while he was married!” Walker said at the time.
Schaffer had also made numerous strange, thirst-trap style photos in recent months. In a November Instagram post captioned with a message about how much he loved his family, the photo showed him smoking an old-timey pipe while wearing an Orthodox Christian cross. But this was immediately followed by a steamy shirtless selfie that cut off right above his groin. (I’ll spare you the actual image.)
Schaffer’s downfall isn’t just a personal Shakespearean tragedy—a modern adaptation set in the most idiotic corner of our hyper-online world. It also adds fodder to the right’s ongoing civil war. Yiannopoulos, who plays a sort of mythic trickster role in MAGA media, hates white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes. In the hierarchy of the online right, Schaffer is a restless vassal of the far more successful Fuentes—meaning Yiannopoulos can undermine Fuentes by going after Schaffer. (No surprise, then, that in one of the recordings Yiannopoulos releases, there’s discussion about how Schaffer quietly “talks so much shit” about Fuentes out of envy.)
But the biggest damage may have been inflicted on the online trad brand as a whole. Conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey complained that the affair demonstrated that women posing as tradwives had become a “fetish” for right-wing men.
Far-right commentator Vrillium—who recently cut ties with Schaffer after being exposed himself for making posts years earlier about being gay—summed it up. “It’s all bullshit,” he said of the trad lifestyle.
U.S. Immmigration, Civil Rights
The Hartmann Report via RawStory, Terrible history shows what Trump's migrant 'camps' really are — and what comes next, Thom Hartmann, right, Feb. 5, 2026. As people testified before Congress on Tuesday about the brutality and violence they’d suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call “detention centers.”
Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:
“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”
Jails are where people accused of crimes but still waiting for their day in court are held, as Merriam-Webster notes:
ALSO READ: Republicans squirm as they feel heat on Trump gun rights switcheroo
“[S]uch a place under the jurisdiction of a local government for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”
But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:
“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”
The British originated the term “concentration camp” to describe facilities where “rebel” or “undesirable” civilians were held in South Africa during the Second Anglo‑Boer War (1899–1902) to control and punish a rebellious population.
They were facilities where the “bad elements of society” were “concentrated” into one location so they could be easily controlled and would lose access to society and thus could not spread their messages of resistance against the British Empire.
The Germans adopted the term in 1933 when Hitler took power and created his first camp for communists, socialists, union leaders, and, by the end of the year, Hitler’s political opponents. They Germanized the phrase into “Konzentrationslager” and referred to the process of their incarceration as “protective custody.”
The first camp was built at Dachau just weeks after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and by the end of the year there were around 70 of them operating across the country.
When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986-87, we visited Dachau with our three children. The crematoriums shocked our kids, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps (which were all located outside Germany to ensure deniability).
The ovens at Dachau were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera or other disease, much like the 35+ people who’ve recently died in ICE’s concentration camps.
When American friends would visit us and we’d take them to Dachau (we lived just an hour up the road) they’d invariably be surprised when I told them that by the time of the war there were over 500 substantial camps and an additional few hundred very small ones all over the country.
“How could the people not know what was going on?” they’d ask.
The answer was simple: the people did know. These were where the “undesirables,” the “criminal troublemakers,” and the “aliens” were held, and were broadly supported by the German people. (It wasn’t until 1938, following Kristallnacht, that the Nazis began systematically arresting and imprisoning non-political Jews, first at Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.)
By the end of his first year, Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings.
By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America, and Trump, Homan, Miller, and Noem hope to more than double both numbers in the coming months.
In Tennessee, the Guardian reports that Miller has been coordinating with Republican leaders to create legislation that would turn every local cop, teacher, social worker, and helper in the state into an official agent of ICE and criminalize efforts by cities to refuse cooperation. It also makes it a felony crime to identify any of ICE’s masked agents or disclose conditions within the concentration camps to the public.
Germans didn’t have the benefit of warnings from a fascist history they could look back on; much of what Hitler did took them by surprise, as I’ve noted in previous articles.
In 2026 America, however, operating with the benefit of historical hindsight, entire communities are rebelling at Trump’s effort to beat Germany’s 1933-1934 prisoner numbers.
In city after city, Americans are organizing to deprive ICE of their coveted spaces, putting pressure on companies not to sell and on cities and counties not to permit any more concentration camps.
Because immigration violations are labeled “civil,” people in ICE concentration camps are stripped of many of the normal constitutional protections that apply to people in criminal incarceration. This has created a legal black hole that ICE and the Trump regime exploit, where indefinite imprisonment, abuse, and medical neglect flourish with little to no oversight or accountability.
Human rights organizations like the ACLU describe pervasive patterns of abuse in ICE detention: hazardous living conditions, chronic medical neglect, sexual assault, retaliation for grievances, and extensive use of solitary confinement.
Detainees who have committed no crime other than being in the United States without documentation report being shackled for long periods, packed into freezing, overcrowded cells under constant fluorescent light, and denied hygiene and timely care. Meanwhile, GOP-aligned private prison companies are making billions off the program.
Inspections and oversight are inconsistent: one recent investigation found that as detentions and deaths surged in 2025, formal inspections of facilities actually dropped by over a third. ICE regularly refuses to allow attorneys, family members, and even members of Congress to access their concentration camps; the issue is now being litigated through federal courts.
History shows us that once a nation builds a mass detention apparatus, it never remains limited to its original targets. Future generations of Americans — our children and grandchildren — won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all.
Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem. And that’s exactly what ICE is building now.
History isn’t whispering its warning: it’s shouting.
Poprant: Did Bad Bunny wear a bulletproof vest to the 2026 Grammys due to safety concerns? Fans say, 'Lord protect him at the Super Bowl' Staff and wire report, Feb. 4, 2026. Fans speculate Bad Bunny (shown above with a graphic of one of his comments) wore a bulletproof vest at the 2026 Grammys, raising safety concerns ahead of his historic Super Bowl LX halftime show.
The Puerto Rican star, known for his political outspokenness, will be the first primarily Spanish-language solo artist to headline the halftime stage.
New York Times, Surge in Immigration Cases in Minnesota Pushes Prosecutors and Judges to Brink, Alan Feuer, Mattathias Schwartz and Zach Montague, Feb. 5, 2026. Remarks by a prosecutor opened a revealing window onto how the courts in the state are buckling under the weight of a deluge of cases arising from the Trump administration’s campaign.
When it all became too much — the crippling case load, the lack of training and, most of all, the immigrants themselves who had been languishing in jail — Julie T. Le let loose in front of the judge.
Ms. Le, a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, knew that he was angry. She understood that she and her colleagues had violated his orders to release people illegally detained in the state last month. But she had already tried to quit her job, and no one would replace her, so what else could she do?
“The system sucks. This job sucks,” Ms. Le exclaimed. While she wanted to improve things, she was just one person, she explained, working around the clock to grapple with the onslaught of cases stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“Fixing a system, a broken system, I don’t have a magic button to do it,” she said. “I don’t have the power or the voice to do it. I only can do it within the ability and the capacity that I have.”
Ms. Le’s outburst on Tuesday at a hearing in Federal District Court in St. Paul was an extraordinary expression of personal frustration from a lawyer on the front lines of the White House’s aggressive immigration sweeps.
The remarks cost her her job at the Justice Department, where she had been working on a temporary basis to help handle habeas corpus petitions, or court filings that compel the government to justify holding someone in custody. But they also opened a window onto a broader problem: how the courts in Minnesota are buckling beneath the weight of a deluge of cases arising from the statewide campaign that the administration has called Operation Metro Surge.
The turmoil in the courts has demoralized prosecutors, outraged judges, exhausted defense lawyers — and left many immigrants languishing in detention in violation of court orders.
“The individuals affected are people,” said Jerry W. Blackwell, the federal judge who convened Tuesday’s hearing. “They live in their communities. Some are separated from their families.”
When agencies like the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement ignore judicial orders to release immigrants under their control, Judge Blackwell said, it is an affront not merely to personal liberty, but to the entire criminal justice system.
“The D.O.J., the D.H.S. and ICE are not above the law,” the judge declared. “They do wield extraordinary power, and that power has to exist within constitutional limits.”
White House advisor Stephen Miller, above left.
Emptywheel, Analysis: The Minnesota Lawyer Backlog Arises from ICE Kidnappings, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D), right, Feb. 5, 2026. By now you’ve heard about Julie Le, the ICE lawyer temporarily serving in (and now reassigned away from) the Minnesota US Attorney’s office to deal with the flood of paperwork in the wake of the invasion, who begged a judge to hold her in contempt so she could get some sleep.
The fuller context of her statement captures her frustration with her unsuccessful efforts to get ICE prisoners released.
I did put in my resignation from the job too, but they couldn’t find a replacement. So I gave them a specific time and — to get it done. If they don’t, then by all mean, I’m going to walk out. And before I walk out, I was able to release another individual, a juvenile. That kind of like a step — like a barrier. Like, Wait, Julie, stop. You need to go back and get more people out. That’s why I’m still here. I am here just trying to make sure that the agency understand how important it is to comply with all the court orders, which they have not done in the past or currently.
I am here as a bridge and a liaison between the one that in jail, because if I walk out — sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep. I work days and night just because people still in there.
And, yes, procedure in place right now sucks. I’m trying to fix it. As you can see the e-mail that I sent to you, it has been improving, a great improvement.
But there’s a detail of this that is getting missed in some of the coverage (though Chris Geidner’s account is great).
The problem here is not just that ICE is blowing off judicial orders.
The problem is that there are so many orders because the detentions are illegal in the first place. As Judge Jerry Blackwell explained,
[W]hat you cannot do is to detain first and then sort out lawful authority later. Continued detention is not lawful just because compliance with release orders is administratively difficult or because an operation has expanded beyond the Government’s capacity to execute it lawfully.
[snip]
[T]he requirements that the Court has in place exist because individuals were being detained without lawful authority.
[snip]
[W]e’re here to sort out whether the detentions were lawful or not and to issue orders for release if we find the detentions were not lawful and to oversee that that gets executed. And when that does not happen, then here we are.
[snip]
And I know that the Government has a concern about the growing number of requirements that the Court puts in place upon release of individuals. That happens because of the things we learn. For example, if we say, release the person immediately, then we learn that, having transported him to El Paso or New Mexico, you don’t bring him back. We learn that somebody is put out on the street with just the clothes on their backs and have to figure out how to get back here when they should not have been arrested here in the first place, let alone flown halfway across the continent of North America. And have to — so now we have to address that. We have to now say, Bring them back.
And then we say, All right, so you brought them back. We can’t have them released when it’s minus 14 outside. And so now we have to address that. Don’t release them in the circumstances that might endanger their health or safety.
And so once that’s addressed, then we learn they’ve been released, but now conditions have been imposed. That somebody who should not have been arrested in the first place is now being told, You’re going to be released if you wear an ankle monitor, which the Court didn’t order because the person was unlawfully detained in the first place. Then we have to go back and address that now. And I hear the concerns about all the energy that this is causing the DOJ to expend, but, with respect, some of it is of your own making by not complying with orders.
It is not, as NYT claimed in a story that never once mentions the unlawful nature of these snatches, simply the “Surge in Immigration Cases” that has caused these legal problems.
It’s that so many of them are, as Kira Kelley, a lawyer representing one of these plaintiffs, described, “so many people being detained without any semblance of a lawful basis.”
In an NBC event misleadingly called an interview yesterday, Tom Llamas let Trump repeatedly claim that the people ICE is snatching in Minnesota are hardened criminals (something NBC only partially fact-checked after the fact). Hell, Llamas let Trump excuse the Renee Good and Alex Pretti murders because of that false claim (before Trump went on to conflate their murders with Stephen Miller’s murderboats, again).
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
Uhhm, I learned that uhhhh maybe we could use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough. These are crim— we’re dealing with really hard criminals. But uh look, I’ve called the people. I’ve called the governor. I’ve called the mayor. Spoke to ‘em. Had great conversations with them. And then I see them ranting and raving out there. Literally as though a call wasn’t made. We’ve done a great job everywhere. The only place there’s been a little inflammation has been — really it’s not in Minnesota ‘cause we’re — we’ve done well with crime —
[snip]
TOM LLAMAS:
You mentioned Renée Good and — and not al — and Alex Pretti’s not being angels. Do you think any of that justified what happened to them, though?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
No. I don’t. I — it should’ve not happened. It was a very sad — to me it was a very sad incident, two incidents. And, you know, they mention the one now. They don’t mention the other. Well, I think they were both sad. And — you know who feels worse about it than anybody? The people of ICE. They’re strong, tough —
TOM LLAMAS:
Yeah.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
— people. And they have to be tough because we’re dealing with hardened criminals.
TOM LLAMAS:
Right.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
We’re dealing with people — you know, jails have been emptied into our country from all over the world. From Venezuela, where we had great success, you will admit.
TOM LLAMAS:
Mm hmm.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
But from Venezuela, from the Congo in Africa, from all over the world, jails — the jail population —
TOM LLAMAS:
Yeah.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
— was emptied into our country. If we don’t have strong people, you’re not getting ‘em out.
[snip]
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
Yeah, I did. And — and Tom is great. Tom is a superstar — but — you do thousands of arrests. You arrest thousands of rapists. You arrest thousands of the worst people. You arrest the drug dealers. I mean, we had drug kingpins. We had murderers. Thousands, no incident. We bring ‘em back to their country. Two people it’s bad. I hate it. I hate —
TOM LLAMAS:
Yeah.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
— even talking about it. Two people out of tens of thousands, okay?
TOM LLAMAS:
Mm hmm.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
And you get bad publicity. Nobody talks about all of the murderers that we’re taking out of our country. They don’t talk about —
TOM LLAMAS:
But it was two Americans who died, you know —
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
They don’t talk about we have the smallest drugs — as an example, we’ve been very tough on the waters. And soon, you know, pretty much overall —
TOM LLAMAS:
The w— the — the waters?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
But if you look at— if you look at the waters where we knock out boats —
TOM LLAMAS:
Oh.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
— each boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives. We’re doing a job like nobody’s ever seen before. I just got off the phone with President Xi and he is amazed at how well the United States —
But the crime here is not from most of the people being snatched. The crime is the unlawful detention of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people.
Stephen Miller invaded Minnesota, a country with far fewer undocumented immigrants than most of the rest of the country, with 3,000 paramilitary agents, based on a trumped up fraud claim. In part because there weren’t may undocumented immigrants to snatch, they instead snatched all manner of people lawfully present in the United States.
That’s why there’s such a backlog of detainees about whom judges have issued orders, orders that ICE has blown off. They’re kidnapping people legally in the country.
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Despite rhetoric, feds continue aggressive crackdown in Minneapolis, Judd Legum, right, and Noel Sims, Feb. 5, 2026. After the brutal killing of Alex Pretti on January 25 — the second fatal shooting of an American citizen by federal agents in the Minneapolis area — the Trump administration sought to advance a narrative that it was changing course.
President Trump dispatched border czar Tom Homan to be his point person for the operation. On January 26, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described Homan as someone adept at “cooperating with state and local authorities.” In a Fox News appearance on January 27, Trump said that Homan would “de-escalate a little bit.” Trump even allowed that Pretti’s death was “a very sad situation.” Arriving in Minneapolis, Homan himself promised “massive changes.”
Mainstream media organizations, as Popular Information reported, largely accepted this narrative.
The Associated Press reported that Trump “shifted toward a more conciliatory approach,” describing Trump’s new policy as an “about face.” A New York Times headline declared: “Trump Changes Course in Minnesota.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was “convinced“ to “change course” after “Republican lawmakers and other allies raised concerns that he was squandering public support for his signature campaign issue.” Axios took readers “[i]nside Trump’s pivot on Minnesota.” But on the ground, little actually changed. Thousands of federal agents continued their aggressive tactics and clashed with citizen observers. On January 30, Trump returned to his incendiary rhetoric, describing Pretti, an ICU nurse, as an “agitator” and “insurrectionist.”
On Wednesday, Homan announced that 700 federal officers would leave Minneapolis. But, even after that drawdown, about 2,300 federal personnel would remain. Homan described the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis as a “success” and gave no indication of when it would end.
Homan blamed the “bloodshed” on the “hateful rhetoric“ of anti-ICE protesters, not the federal officers who pulled the trigger. He tied any further drawdowns to a decrease in “rhetoric” criticizing the administration’s actions.
“We’re not surrendering the president’s mission on a mass-deportation operation,” Homan concluded.Caught on tape: The reality of the Minneapolis crackdown
In the week since Homan took over Operation Metro Surge, there have already been several documented instances of federal agents using aggressive tactics against Minnesota residents.
A viral video posted to social media on Tuesday showed several ICE agents surrounding a vehicle with handguns drawn and pointed at the driver and passenger.
The Associated Press, which said one of its photographers witnessed the incident, reported that activists in multiple vehicles had been trailing ICE officers. According to the AP, agents ordered the activists out of their vehicles at gunpoint, threatened to use pepper spray on nearby reporters, and handcuffed at least one person face-down on the ground.
The video shows an ICE agent telling a reporter that one of the people arrested had made a gesture as if he was reaching for a weapon. The video also shows at least one agent continuing to point his gun at a passenger as they exit the vehicle with empty hands in the air.
Aggression against observers trailing federal immigration agents in their cars has been a common tactic, before and after Homan’s takeover.
In another incident that took place on January 29, agents pursued a woman in her car who had been tracking them and recording on a dash cam. Video footage shared by the woman with Minnesota Public Radio shows a red vehicle pulling in front of the woman’s car and stopping abruptly before three agents exit the vehicle. All three point handguns at the woman, who is on the phone and tells another person to call 911.
Minnesota Public Radio reported that the woman was arrested and driven for 20 minutes by the agents before they turned around and released her at a local police station.
Another video from Tuesday, which was posted by the AP, shows several protesters and ICE agents gathered in what appears to be a public park. The video shows ICE agents chasing, tackling, and pointing guns at protesters who appear to be unarmed.
Toward the end of the video, agents throw what appear to be tear-gas canisters toward protesters and two loud explosions are heard, which the person recording the video says may be a device like a stun grenade or sound cannon.
U.S. Markets, Economy, Jobs, Inflation
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary:Crypotocrash, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 5, 2026. Notes on an interesting day,
I don’t normally post in the evening, but I thought I’d offer three quick notes on an … interesting day in the crypto market.
First, today’s price action shouldn’t change your view about Bitcoin’s usefulness or lack thereof. If, like me, you consider the whole thing a delusion — BTC isn’t a medium of exchange, nor is it a reliable store of value — then you already knew that and the fact that we seem to be having a Wile E. Coyote moment isn’t information about the fundamentals. (There are no fundamentals.) If you have some story about why this aging financial innovation is actually useful — do tell — you should HODL through the panic.
Incidentally, some readers insisted that HODL stands for “hold on for dear life.” No, it doesn’t. That’s a retcon intended to make it sound more respectable. The term comes from a post on a crypto message board from an investor so panicked that he misspelled HOLD. See link in this morning’s post.
Second, the fact that BTC is now lower than it was before the 2024 election is significant in two ways. It shows the limits of political favor — all the boasts about making American a crypto superpower, all the deregulatory talk and pardons for cryptocriminals, in the end couldn’t defy gravity.
But it also means that everyone who bought Bitcoin in the belief that Trump would make Bitcoin greater than ever has lost money, in many cases a lot of money. So this is another case of ETTD: everything Trump touches dies.
Finally, this crash may have political consequences. At least some young men supported Trump because they believed that he would enhance their crypto investments, and have remained favorable because he seemed to be delivering. I don’t know how many bitterly disillusioned bros there will be now, but there will be some.
And in general the whole “Say what you like about Trump, but markets are up” mindset must be under severe strain.
Are we having fun yet?
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Is This Crypto’s Fimbulwinter? Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 5, 2026. Political power may not be enough to save the crypto cult.
This newsletter is often focused on depressing stuff: Scandals, lies of the powerful, scams that defraud the public. But today I thought I’d offer a change of pace and talk about what is happening to cryptocurrency.
OK, maybe I’m not offering a change of pace after all.
Cryptocurrencies are, roughly speaking, assets where “ownership” is defined not by legal title but by possession of a digital key — a long number — validated by the blockchain, a decentralized record-keeping system. If you know a crypto asset’s key — whether you purchased it, stole it by hacking, or kidnapped someone and tortured him until he revealed it — the asset is yours.
Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was introduced in 2009, which makes it just two years younger than the original iPhone. It was promoted by enthusiasts as the future of money, a replacement for the dollar and other official currencies. It hasn’t made any visible progress toward filling that role: Bitcoins are awkward and costly to trade, and they have never been a widely accepted means of payment anywhere, not even in El Salvador, which made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021 and devoted substantial resources to promoting it before largely giving up last year.
These days most talk about cryptocurrencies as money focuses on stablecoins, tokens that are pegged to the dollar, which are indeed used for some payments. However, the core use case even for stablecoins appears to be criminal activity. And stablecoins account for only a small fraction of the total market capitalization of all crypto assets, shown in the chart at the top of this post. Bitcoin still accounts for more than half the total value of cryptocurrencies in circulation.
This description makes it seem as if cryptocurrency is a failed innovation. I mean, aren’t 17 years of unsuccessfully trying to turn it into a working form of money enough? Yet demand for cryptocurrencies has driven their prices incredibly high, and these prices have repeatedly bounced back from huge setbacks. In 2022 a series of bankruptcies and scandals led to a crypto “winter” that wiped out two-thirds of the industry’s market cap. Yet prices stabilized and gradually began to rise again, soaring to new heights by last fall.
But now we’re in the midst of another crypto winter. Both Bitcoin and total crypto market cap are down about 40 percent from their peaks.
People in the industry are predicting that this winter will also be temporary. Because of course they are. The truth is that nobody knows. Analyzing crypto prices isn’t like, say, analyzing housing prices in the Naughties, where you could compare prices with fundamentals — because with crypto there are no fundamentals, it’s vibes all the way down.
But let me give you three reasons this crypto winter may be different, why it might be Fimbulwinter — in Norse legend, the catastrophic winter that precedes Ragnarok, the end of all things.
First, Bitcoin and to a lesser extent other cryptocurrencies have long been sustained by their cult followings, investors with a deep emotional attachment to its future. Cultists HODLed — not an acronym for anything, just a frantic misspelling of HOLD — when prices fell, and piled in to buy more. But recently crypto hoarders like Strategy and BitMine — companies that issue stock and debt and use the proceeds to buy crypto — have become major players. And I doubt that investors will have the same mystical belief in Strategy shares that they used to have in Bitcoin itself, which means that faith will no longer put a floor under prices.
Second, the best case for Bitcoin has always been the argument that it can in effect become digital gold. After all, gold, like Bitcoin, is an asset that is awkward to transfer and isn’t useful as a means of payment in the modern world. Yet gold has retained its historic role as a perceived safe haven, an asset people buy when the world looks uncertain and dangerous. If Bitcoin could take over even part of that traditional role, its value could make sense.
But over the past few months we’ve been experiencing a lot of turmoil and uncertainty, leading to widespread talk about a “debasement trade” in which investors doubt whether dollars are still the safe haven they used to be. And the verdict so far is that the future replacement for gold is … gold. Investors have piled into the yellow stuff even while dumping Bitcoin, which is acting like a speculative tech stock rather than a safe haven.
Most importantly — and ironically, given the libertarian ideology that used to be pervasive in the crypto world — crypto has become very much a political asset. In 2024 the industry invested huge sums getting Donald Trump elected and in general electing friendly politicians, and since then has spent even larger sums directly enriching Trump and his family.
These investments have paid off. Some of the payoffs have involved the president’s pardon power: In November Forbes — Forbes! — published an article titled “Trump’s crypto cronies: They sent the president money — and got off easy.”
But there was also a huge financial payoff: Crypto-friendly policies and the perception that the U.S. government would actively promote crypto assets helped fuel a huge rise in the prices of Bitcoin and other assets. The chart at the top shows that a large part of the rise in crypto values since the previous crypto winter came in a post-election surge. As I wrote last October, crypto has become a Trump trade.
Now almost all of that surge is gone. Bitcoin sold for about $69,000 just before the 2024 election; it reached a peak of almost $125,000; but just before this post went live it was under $71,000. How much of that reversal reflects Trump’s cratering approval and doubts about whether he can or will deliver the crypto-friendly policies the industry wants? It must be part of the story. And crypto is unlikely to regain the level of political influence it had a few months ago.
Should we be worried about the new crypto winter? Michal Burry, of Big Short fame, has created a stir by warning that Bitcoin’s fall could cause a “death spiral” in asset prices. But I think this is exaggerated: Crypto is still a fairly small piece of financial markets, and, without getting into too much detail, crypto hoarders like Strategy may eventually be forced to sell, but they won’t be facing immediate margin calls.
In fact, if we’re going to have a crypto crash, best to get it over with now, before the industry becomes too big — or too politically powerful — to fail.
New York Times, Carney Stakes Canada’s Auto Future on E.V.s as It Pulls Away From the U.S., Ian Austen and Jack Ewing, Feb. 5, 2026. Prime Minister Mark Carney announced several measures Thursday aimed at making Canada a global leader in electric vehicles and rescuing an industry ravaged by U.S. trade policy.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada announced on Thursday a sweeping plan to offer billions of dollars in incentives and tax breaks for auto industry investment designed to help turn Canada into a global leader in electric vehicles.
The new policies, Mr. Carney said, were meant to transform Canada’s economy and make it less reliant on a single trade partner after President Trump’s economic assaults and threats on Canada’s sovereignty have frayed relations between the two nations.
“We must take care of ourselves,” Mr. Carney told reporters at an auto parts factory near Toronto. “We cannot control what others do.”
Canada’s auto industry, which employs about 125,000 workers, is vital to the country’s economy and is closely intertwined with the United States. Mr. Carney’s effort to stake the country’s future to electric vehicles is part of his campaign to stand up to the United States, which has won him plaudits at home and abroad.
“Canada is an auto nation, the auto industry is central to our story,” Mr. Carney said. “The auto industry is the core pillar of the Canadian economy.”
Mr. Trump has inflicted significant pain on Canada’s auto industry, which exports about 90 percent of its vehicles to the United States, imposing a 25 percent tariff on Canadian vehicles. Mr. Trump has said he does not want cars sold in the United States to be made in Canada and wants to drastically increase domestic production.But Mr. Trump’s dismantling of the trade policies that have knitted together the North American auto industry has led to a sense of urgency for Canada to look for alternative markets and strategies.
Canada’s plan aligns the country with a shift to electric vehicles that is well underway in Europe and China. But Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress are doubling down on vehicles powered by fossil fuels, eliminating incentives that encouraged people to buy electric vehicles.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada announced on Thursday a sweeping plan to offer billions of dollars in incentives and tax breaks for auto industry investment designed to help turn Canada into a global leader in electric vehicles.
The new policies, Mr. Carney said, were meant to transform Canada’s economy and make it less reliant on a single trade partner after President Trump’s economic assaults and threats on Canada’s sovereignty have frayed relations between the two nations.
“We must take care of ourselves,” Mr. Carney told reporters at an auto parts factory near Toronto. “We cannot control what others do.”
Canada’s auto industry, which employs about 125,000 workers, is vital to the country’s economy and is closely intertwined with the United States. Mr. Carney’s effort to stake the country’s future to electric vehicles is part of his campaign to stand up to the United States, which has won him plaudits at home and abroad.
“Canada is an auto nation, the auto industry is central to our story,” Mr. Carney said. “The auto industry is the core pillar of the Canadian economy.”
Mr. Trump has inflicted significant pain on Canada’s auto industry, which exports about 90 percent of its vehicles to the United States, imposing a 25 percent tariff on Canadian vehicles. Mr. Trump has said he does not want cars sold in the United States to be made in Canada and wants to drastically increase domestic production.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Canada? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
But Mr. Trump’s dismantling of the trade policies that have knitted together the North American auto industry has led to a sense of urgency for Canada to look for alternative markets and strategies.
Canada’s plan aligns the country with a shift to electric vehicles that is well underway in Europe and China. But Mr. Trump and Republicans in Congress are doubling down on vehicles powered by fossil fuels, eliminating incentives that encouraged people to buy electric vehicles.
U.S. Media, Education, Culture
Meidas Touch Network, Opinion: esponse to My Letter to Jeff Bezos, Ben Meiselas, right, co-founder and editor of the Meidas Touch Network, Feb. 5, 2026. Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos (shown above) and the leadership of The Washington Post after they announced they were firing more than one-third of their newsroom.
Some of the best journalists in America. Investigative reporters. Writers who dedicated their lives to holding power accountable. Reporters who worked in war zones, some of whom learned they were fired not from an editor or a phone call, but from a form email sent by Human Resources. In some cases, while they were still stranded overseas.
That is corporate cruelty and journalistic malpractice along with obedience and complicity in fascism.
I sent my letter to Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post leadership to make sure they understood the magnitude of their betrayal and to plant a clear flag for independent journalism at a moment when too many legacy institutions are openly capitulating to fascism.
Let’s stop dancing around the truth.
Donald Trump is a fascist. His movement is authoritarian. And his goal is to turn American media into state-aligned regime media, something closer to Putin’s Russia than a democracy. What we are watching now is compliance with a fascist regime.
We’ve seen this surrender at The Washington Post. We’ve seen it at CBS. We’ve seen it across corporate media. These institutions believe silence and complicity will protect them. That obedience will spare them. That if they stop challenging power, power will protect and favor them.
That belief is pathetic and dangerous.
And it’s failing.
Because independent media is not retreating. It’s growing. And the MeidasTouch Network is leading that growth.
We are powered by one of the strongest pro-democracy communities anywhere.
We have on-the-ground reporters in Minneapolis, in Washington, D.C., and across the country. We have sent reporters to Greenland. We have sent reporters to Ukraine. We operate internationally. We run a sprawling network of shows, podcasts, and platforms covering breaking news, legal analysis, and accountability journalism, including a dedicated channel in Canada, with more countries coming next.
While legacy media cuts and collapses, we expand. We hire more reporters. We add more writers and editors and staff. We reach roughly a billion views a month across our digital platforms, and we’re still growing.
So yes, the death of The Washington Post as a serious independent institution is devastating for democracy. But their collapse is not the end of journalism. It’s proof that the old model is finished.
Since publishing my letter, I’ve received thousands of messages from readers, journalists, veterans, teachers, parents, and people more energized than ever to fight back against this fascist project and the media ecosystem enabling it.
Independent journalism is under attack precisely because it works. And because the MeidasTouch Network has become the largest pro-democracy media outlet in the country, we are a target as well.
But understand this clearly.
Jeff Bezos’s silence is not neutrality. It’s complicity. History will remember who stood up when fascism demanded obedience and who surrendered.
If you believe the press should challenge power instead of serving it, now is the moment to act.
Become a paid subscriber now to this Substack. Not as a gesture, but as a declaration that independent journalism will not be surrendered to authoritarianism. Let’s send a message to Jeff Bezos.
This fight is real. And together, we are winning it.
Global News
New York Times, Ukraine-Russia Talks End With Little Progress and Hints of an Impasse, Kim Barker, Feb. 5, 2026. American negotiators trumpeted plans for a prisoner swap, but that was small recompense for months of diplomatic efforts by the Trump administration.
After just three hours, Russia, Ukraine and the United States declared themselves done with the latest round of peace talks on Thursday, offering scant sign of progress toward ending a war that is grinding toward a fifth year despite the Trump administration’s diplomatic interventions.
A familiar pattern played out as two days of negotiations wrapped up in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Everyone said the talks were productive. More talks were planned. Yet with little to show for them but an announced exchange of prisoners of war, the major sticking points in any peace deal appeared a long ways from being unstuck.
Officials did not say what was discussed behind closed doors. A louder message came a day before the talks, when Russia unleashed another huge attack on Ukraine’s power grid during a frigid winter.
The delegations in Abu Dhabi had been expected to focus on the two main obstacles to a peace deal: the fate of Ukrainian-controlled territory in the east and guarantees over Ukraine’s postwar security.
Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of staff for President Volodymyr Zelensky and a member of Ukraine’s negotiating team, told a Ukrainian news outlet that the talks were “really constructive.” He spent more time praising the Emirates and the United States, however, “for the high-quality organization and mediation.”
PoliticusUSA, Trump's Mental Decline Reaches New Stage At National Prayer Breakfast, Jason Easley, right, Feb. 5, 2026. Trump's Mental Decline Reaches New Stage At National Prayer Breakfast. Trump's mind apparently can't deliver remarks that are on topic and appropriate for the venue any longer, as Trump ranted and raved conspiracies and forgot names at the National Prayer Breakfast.
It used to be that Donald Trump would try to tailor his ranting and raving for his audience and his topic, but that minimal ability has evaporated as Trump continues to age.
The combination of the White House keeping Trump under wraps, because they won’t let him too close to the general public out of fear that he will be booed, and Trump’s obviously declining stamina and energy.
Trump was actually standing to give his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, which is itself newsworthy because his events have been increasingly taking place with the president seated.
PoliticusUSA’s news and opinions are 100% independent. Support our work by becoming a subscriber.Subscribed
A man who ran for a return to the White House on the false idea that he had the stamina, energy, and mental sharpness to do the job has been proven to have none of those qualities, so the United States has found itself saddled with a leader who looks to be increasingly in decline.
For anyone who doesn’t want to believe that Trump is in decline, here was his first Prayer Breakfast speech as president in 2017:
Trump spoke for less than 19 minutes. There were lots of references to prayer, God, religion, and even a quote from Thomas Jefferson.
What the nation watched nine years later was an astounding portrait of a president in decline.
Story continues below.
In 2026, Trump rambled for an hour and fifteen minutes. Little of what the president said had anything to do with religion.
Here is an example of what Trump was like in this speech:
That a interview would be talking about. Right? But I saw that and I saw his love for the military. I was obvious he was always looking to protect soldiers. And I said, you know, he’s a really smart guy. If I ever get this thing, I, I didn’t get it. She wasn’t easy. You know, they rigged the second election. I had to win it.
I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would’ve had a bad ego for the rest of mine. Now I really have a big ego. The beating these, beating these lunatics was incredible, right? What a great feeling. Winning every swing state. Winning the popular vote the first time. You know, they said, I didn’t win the popular vote.
I did. But they said, so they’d always say, they would always thought they’d introduce me, war while Donald Trump did not win the popular vote. You know, I’m sitting up being introduced by a Democrat or somebody. And he said, why Donald Trump did not win the popular vote. He won the presidency. Here he is. I said, that was terrible.
I said, we gotta, and we won the popular vote by a lot. We didn’t wanna play any games. This has been a much different, we had a great first term, we had the greatest economy in history, but this one’s gonna blow it away already. It’s blown everything away. We have $18 trillion coming into our country, blowing everything away.
But, uh, we had a great first term. We rebuilt the military. You know, uh, Biden gave a little chunk of it to, uh, Afghanistan brilliantly. He left left tanks and planes and, you know, little things. I said, why didn’t you fly the planes out? He said, well, nobody thought of it. You could have fly. He says, it’s very hard to remove the equipment.
Really? You couldn’t fly an airplane. Buy 150, brand new, $150 million. Brand new airplane. Sir, I think it’s better to leave it. Why it’s more cost effective, so we leave ‘em a brand new jet. I said, these people are crazy, but we have it under control now, like you’ve never seen and our military’s never been stronger.
And you saw that with the B-2 bombers in Iran and, and you saw it with recently with Venezuela, where we’re getting along fantastically with leadership, but really fans become a great relations. I don’t think there’s been anything quite like it ever. In fact, we have 50 million barrels of oil flight, floating right now over to Houston.
And we’re, uh, you know, we’re working with them really well. It’s, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything. The cooperation that we have is, and it’s great for them because they.
Unlike what the mainstream media does for Trump, I didn’t clean up or interpret his transcript. Those are his words, stumbles, slurs, and all, as he spoke them, transcribed straight from his mouth.
Trump tried to introduce the president of Congo, but couldn’t remember his name:
This is what the media and Republicans are trying to sell to the American people as normal.
Trump’s decline seems to be accelerating, which is why it is essential that his enablers be voted out of Congress, and the Legislative Branch is returned to being a check on this president by the voters in November.
Feb. 4
Top Stories
The Parnas Perspective, News Updates and Commentary: Bombshell Epstein Documents Vindicate Survivor as DOJ in Chaos Over ICE Failing to Follow Court, Orders, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 4, 2026. Tonight is one of the most important updates I have shared with you. We can now say clearly that Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an Epstein survivor, has been vindicated. Newly uncovered documents show that Andrew, formerly known as Prince Andrew, and Ghislaine Maxwell likely lied about the 2001 photograph with Giuffre. For years she was doubted and smeared. Tonight, the truth is on record.
At the same time, the Justice Department appears to be in serious turmoil, with attorneys quitting, overwhelmed, and struggling to hold together a system that is visibly cracking. These developments together underscore why accountability and survivor-centered reporting matter.
This will be my final update of the night, as I am not feeling well and need to rest. Before I sign off, I want to thank you sincerely for your support. I am proud of the work we are doing, and it is only just beginning. Our coverage has always been survivor-first, and tonight shows why that commitment matters.
Here’s the news:
Newly released Epstein-file emails seriously undermine years of denials by Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell: a 2015 draft statement shows Maxwell explicitly admitting she introduced Andrew to Virginia Giuffre in London in 2001 and that the infamous photo of Andrew with his arm around the then-17-year-old Giuffre (above) was real, contradicting claims it was fake and Andrew’s insistence he never met her.
Further documents indicating Andrew maintained warm contact with Jeffrey Epstein years after claiming to cut ties—has intensified pressure on Andrew, prompted Giuffre’s family to say her account has been vindicated, and renewed calls for criminal accountability. The statement further makes clear that Maxwell knew that Epstein abused children.:
Despite that, Maxwell proceeded to lie in a deposition, under oath, later that year:
Bill Gates said he regrets ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein and denied new allegations in the Epstein files as false, while his ex-wife Melinda French Gates (shown together before their divorce) said his relationship with Epstein raised painful questions about their marriage, prompting calls from lawmakers including Nancy Mace for Gates to testify.
Several Los Angeles officials, including county supervisor Janice Hahn and city council members, are calling for Casey Wasserman to step down as chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics after newly released Epstein files revealed 2003 emails between Wasserman and Ghislaine Maxwell, arguing his continued leadership would distract from preparations and athletes; Wasserman said he deeply regrets the correspondence, which predated Maxwell’s crimes, denied any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and apologized for any association while maintaining he should remain in his role.
In honor of Black History Month, I sat down with Dr. Earl Lewis from the University of Michigan where we spoke about Brown v. Board of Education and the impacts of Brown in the 70 years since the historic decision:
President Donald Trump said the fatal Minneapolis shootings by federal immigration agents led him to consider a “softer touch” on immigration enforcement while maintaining a tough stance, as he ordered the withdrawal of hundreds of agents from Minnesota amid backlash and disputes with state and city leaders.
JD Vance asked if he planned to apologize to Alex Pretti's family. His answer: For what?
New York Times, Trump’s Call to ‘Nationalize’ Elections Adds to State Officials’ Alarm, Nick Corasaniti, Feb. 4, 2026. Some top state election officials, who run voting across the country, worry that the federal government has become hostile to them and their work.
President Trump’s declaration that he wants to “nationalize” voting in the United States arrives at a perilous moment for the relationship between the federal government and top election officials across the country.
While the executive branch has no explicit authority over elections, generations of secretaries of state have relied on the intelligence gathering and cybersecurity defenses, among other assistance, that only the federal government can provide.
But as Mr. Trump has escalated efforts to involve the administration in election and voting matters while also eliminating programs designed to fortify these systems against attacks, secretaries of state and other top state election officials, including some Republican ones, have begun to sound alarms. Some see what was once a crucial partnership as frayed beyond repair.
They point to Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, his continued false claims that the contest was rigged, the presence of election deniers in influential government positions and his administration’s attempts to dig up evidence of widespread voter fraud that year, even though none have ever been found.
The worry, these election officials say, is that Mr. Trump and his allies might try to interfere in or cast doubt on this year’s midterm elections. The president is urgently trying to defend the Republican majorities in Congress, and the political environment has appeared to grow less friendly to his party.
New York Times, Fulton County in Georgia Challenges the F.B.I.’s Seizure of 2020 Ballots, Nick Corasaniti and Richard Fausset, Feb. 4, 2026. The county filed a motion demanding the return of ballots and other election materials that were seized by the F.B.I. in a highly unusual move by the Trump administration.
Fulton County in Georgia took legal action on Wednesday demanding that the federal government return ballots and other election materials from the 2020 presidential contest that the F.B.I. seized last week.
The motion was filed under seal in federal court in Georgia, according to Jessica Corbitt, a spokeswoman for Fulton County. The motion also seeks the unsealing of the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant that allowed F.B.I. agents to conduct an extraordinary search of the county’s election headquarters.
At a news conference on Wednesday morning, Robb Pitts, the chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, cast the legal action as a means of upholding the Constitution, as well as the rights of Fulton County voters.
“We will fight using all resources against those who seek to take over our elections,” he said. “Our Constitution itself is at stake in this fight.”
The move follows a chaotic week in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta and is Georgia’s most populous county, after F.B.I. agents conducted an extraordinary search and took away pallets of ballots and other materials.
New York Times, Supreme Court Clears Way for California Voting Map, Abbie VanSickle, Feb. 4, 2026. The state’s Republican Party had asked the justices to step in and block the new congressional maps, which give an advantage to Democrats, before the midterms.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for California to use a new congressional map designed to help Democrats for the midterm elections.
The justices rejected an emergency request by the California Republican Party to override an appeals court and block the map before the November vote. The decision is a victory for Democrats, who had devised the plan after President Trump pushed Republican-led states to redraw their maps to help the G.O.P. pick up seats in the election.
The unsigned order did not include a vote count or the court’s reasoning, which is typical in such emergency decisions.
“Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said in a statement on Wednesday. “He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.”
The California Republican Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dispute is the latest challenge to a state congressional map to come before the justices in recent months.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Border Czar Plans to Pull 700 Agents From Minnesota, Staff Report, Feb. 4, 2026. What We’re Covering Today:
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
The Parnas Perspective, News Update and Commentary: Major Human Trafficking Investigation Opened as Epstein Fallout Grows While Trump Demands the Public Move On, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 4, 2026. Overnight brought major developments in the fallout from the Epstein files.
A human trafficking investigation has now been opened following their release. At the same time, Donald Trump is telling Americans to “get on to something else” and move on from the files altogether, even as Steve Bannon openly claims ICE will be stationed at voting sites in November.
My review of the Epstein files continues today. I have already examined thousands of documents, and I am pushing relentlessly for accountability and the truth. That effort has not gone unnoticed. It has triggered escalating attacks from those who clearly do not want these facts exposed. I am not stopping. Not now. To everyone who has reached out with messages of support, thank you.
Here’s the news:
Donald Trump sparked backlash by saying the U.S. should move on from the Epstein files and “get on to something else,” signaling a desire to shut down further scrutiny despite ongoing revelations and public demands for accountability.
In a tense exchange, journalist Manu Raju pressed House Oversight Chair James Comer, right, on why Donald Trump—named more than 1,000 times in the Epstein files—has not been asked to testify under oath, with Comer deflecting by noting Trump has answered informal questions and countering by pointing to the lack of sworn testimony from Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton on Epstein.
Lithuania has launched a human-trafficking investigation after newly released U.S. files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referenced prominent Lithuanians, prompting prosecutors to assess potential crimes, international links, and public fallout including cultural boycotts, amid calls for scrutiny from President Gitanas Nausėda.
Poland launched a preliminary inquiry into whether Jeffrey Epstein may have operated as part of a Russian intelligence “honeytrap” network, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk citing newly released U.S. Justice Department files, alleged contacts linked to Kraków, and reporting that raises questions about possible ties to Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence—claims authorities stress remain unproven and under review.
Newly released Epstein-related emails show Rebecca Taibleson—now a Trump-appointed judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals—previously advising her uncle, physicist Lawrence Krauss, on responding to sexual-misconduct allegations while she was a federal prosecutor, with Krauss later forwarding her analysis to Jeffrey Epstein, though it’s unclear whether Taibleson knew her advice was shared.
Meidas Touch Network, GOP Candidate Hoping for Trump’s Endorsement Gave Away Free Melania Tickets, J.D. Wolf, Feb. 4, 2026. Andy Barr ,above,used a theater buyout for a campaign event.
A GOP Senate candidate’s decision to give away free tickets to a Melania Trump film as part of a campaign event highlights the increasingly blurry line between MAGA political organizing and Trump family business ventures.
On Facebook, GOP Senate candidate Andy Barr framed the free ticket giveaway as a celebration of the first lady. Barr, who currently serves in congress, has been trying to secure Donald Trump’s endorsement.
While campaigns often offer free food or swag, distributing tickets to a commercial film tied to a living political figure, and promoting it as part of a Senate campaign, raises ethical questions about soft vote-buying and the proper use of campaign funds.
It also raises questions about box office results for the Melania documentary, a film that has been met with mockery, empty theaters, and mediocre sales.
However, that hasn’t stopped the MAGA political machine from promoting the movie as a huge success.
Furthermore, the decision to give away tickets undercuts claims of organic success for the film itself. Packing a theater with campaign volunteers and MAGA activists on someone else’s dime makes boasts of a “packed house” largely meaningless as a measure of public demand.A group photo from Andy Barr’s free Melania movie event
A group photo from Andy Barr’s free Melania movie event
If the campaign paid for the tickets, donors may reasonably question why their money was meant to promote a movie rather than a Senate bid.
Perhaps the key to a Trump endorsement is buying out theaters and then giving away Melania movie tickets for free. We will see if Barr’s move pays off for him.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 2, 2026 [Court Battles Over Trump Powers], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 4, 2026. Yesterday, the day before Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes stopped that termination until a pending court case worked its way through the courts.
At stake first of all were the lives of about 353,000 Haitians living legally in the United States since the catastrophic Haitian earthquake of 2010, whom the termination of that status would render undocumented overnight. The impact on their lives would also affect their families, friends, and employers. Also at stake, though, is Trump administration officials’ rejection of both facts and the rule of law on which the United States was founded in order to advance their white nationalist ideology.
As Judge Reyes explains, Congress established Temporary Protective Status in 1990 to change previously haphazard executive decisions about whether to receive immigrants from disaster-stricken countries that left recipients unclear about their immigration status. In its place, Congress created “a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics.” It established criteria and a process for designating a country under TPS, accepting applications for immigration under TPS, and reviewing that designation periodically to determine if that designation should be extended. The system leaves to the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to evaluate those extensions.
And yet, the judge explains, Secretary Noem (shown above in a file photo) ignored the process and the criteria, instead relying on ideology. On December 1, 2025, Noem posted: “I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Noem’s statements echo those of President Donald J. Trump, who referred to Haiti as a “sh*thole” country and tried to end TPS for people from Haiti beginning in 2017. During the 2024 campaign, Trump falsely accused Haitian immigrants of “eating the dogs,” “eating the cats,” and “eating the pets” of people who live in Springfield, Ohio. He insisted he would revoke Haiti’s TPS designation and send immigrants “back to their country.”
Five Haitian TPS holders sued to stop the administration from ending their protected status, claiming Noem ignored the legal procedures because of her “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” Reyes says Noem did indeed ignore the law and that it “seems substantially likely” she did so because of her white nationalist ideology, noting that Noem has terminated all twelve TPS designations that have reached her desk.
But, as Reyes points out, the facts simply don’t match their ideology. TPS holders participate in the workforce at the exceptionally high rate of 94.6%. Far from being “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” the plaintiffs in the case challenging Noem’s decision are a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, a software engineer at a national bank, a toxicology lab assistant, a college economics major, and a registered nurse.
When Noem claimed that it was “contrary to the national interest” to permit about 350,000 Haitian immigrants to stay in the country until it is safe to go back to Haiti, Reyes noted, she characterized them as criminals without any actual evidence. She also ignored the public’s interest in the fact that Haitian TPS holders pay $1.3 billion a year in taxes, and that through their work in sectors that are desperate for laborers, they add about $3.4 billion to the U.S. economy annually. They are deeply embedded in their communities, and tearing them out would shatter families and worksites.
“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Reyes wrote as she decided against the Trump administration. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither…, she pounds X ([formerly known as] Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”
In the conflict between reality and white nationalist ideology, reality appears to be gaining ground. Americans do not like federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol terrorizing their streets, detaining children, and shooting American citizens. As G. Elliott Morris noted in Strength in Numbers on Sunday, a new Fox News poll shows that Americans support Democrats over Republicans on a generic ballot at higher percentages than they have since the survey began: 52% of the vote for Democrats to 46% for Republicans. That 52% for Democrats is the highest support recorded for either party; Democrats hit the poll’s previous high in October 2017 at 50%. Morris notes Democrats are “firmly in ‘wave’ territory” for November’s elections.
Republicans are trying to regain support by seeming to back off their extremism, although they are not backing far: not a single Republican showed up for a public forum held today in Washington, D.C., by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) and other Democrats on ICE violence. At the hearing, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot five times by federal agents, told her story; so did Aliya Rahman, another U.S. citizen detained by ICE; and so did the brothers of U.S. citizen Renee Good, killed by federal agents.
Representative Garcia showed a picture of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is a key instigator of the ICE attacks, and said: “There’s probably no single person in this government [who] has done more damage…and more harm to people across this country, immigrants and U.S. citizens…than this man right here, and it’s our job…to hold him responsible for the crimes that are happening to United States citizens.” A new Data For Progress poll shows that 51% of American voters think Miller should be removed, while only 33% think he should not.
But lawmakers have at least had to adjust their actions to acknowledge the fury of American voters at the behavior of federal agents.
Today the House passed the budget to fund the government except for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was funded only for two more weeks to give Congress time to hash out terms for funding the department that Democrats will accept. Republicans had been clear they did not want to separate out DHS funding. Ultimately, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) had to accept the separation in order to prevent a long-term shutdown, and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) got enough Republicans to go along that the measure, without DHS funding, passed. Trump signed it later in the day.
As of yesterday, the head of the “Weaponization Working Group,” created in the Department of Justice on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first day in office to punish the people Trump insisted had weaponized the legal system against him, has been removed. Right-wing lawyer Ed Martin had been a leader in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and had claimed those convicted for crimes relating to that attempt had been unfairly prosecuted. Once in power, he had turned the department’s resources toward prosecuting those Trump perceived to be enemies, including former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
So unpopular has it become to be associated with Trump that an attempt to distract from plummeting ticket sales and artists’ boycotts after he took over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and put his name on it may be behind Trump’s Sunday night announcement he is closing the venue, claiming it needs two years of renovations.
As voters turn against the administration, Trump is openly working to rig the 2026 election to guarantee Republicans win.
On Wednesday, January 28, FBI agents raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, walking away with 700 boxes of ballots, tabulation tapes, and other election-related material from the 2020 election. Marc Elias of Democracy Docket noted that the warrant came from Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Albus should not have had anything to do with a raid in Georgia, but Bloomberg reported that Attorney General Bondi appears to have appointed Albus a special assistant to the attorney general, giving him the ability to operate across the nation. Elias points out that this gives Albus dramatic power over future elections.
The raid was significant not just because the FBI took the ballots Trump has complained about for years—ballots that have been counted three times—but also because Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was there. The DNI has no law enforcement role in our system; she is supposed to coordinate and oversee the agencies in the U.S. intelligence community. At first, officials tried to suggest she was there by chance, but yesterday William K. Rashbaum, Devlin Barrett, and Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times reported that she met with some of the FBI agents who had conducted the raid. During the meeting, she reached Trump on her cell phone and he spoke to the agents himself.
David Laufman, who served in the Justice Department in both Democratic and Republican administrations, told the New York Times reporters: “It is extremely dangerous to our democracy and a shocking abandonment of years of sound policy for the president to be directly involved in the conduct of domestic criminal investigations, especially one that seeks to redress his personal grievances and to make the director of national intelligence an instrument of his political will.”
Then, yesterday, Trump told former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, who has gone back to podcasting, that he loses elections only because Democrats import undocumented immigrants to vote. This is bonkers. Voting by undocumented immigrants, or any noncitizens, is both illegal and incredibly rare, but Trump has made it part of his standard rhetoric since 2016.
He said to Bongino: “These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally, and the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and the county votes, we have states that I won that show I didn’t win. Now you going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order, the ballots? You’re going to see some interesting things come in. But, you know, like the 2020 election. I won that election by so much.”
Although the Constitution gives control of elections exclusively to the states, at a bill signing in the Oval Office today, Trump doubled down on his call for Republicans to “nationalize” elections.
U.S. Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Don’t Look Now, But Dems Are Winning the DHS-Funding Fight, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 4, 2026. Whether they’ll recognize it as a victory is another question.
If you’re stressed out at work this week, console yourself that you’re handling it a bit better than Justice Department attorney Julie Le, who told a Minnesota federal judge yesterday she’s been so overwhelmed by the immigration-related habeas corpus motions assigned to her that she’d like to be held in contempt just so she could get some sleep.
“The system sucks,” she said, according to local news. “This job sucks.” That’s something we can all agree on. Happy Wednesday.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Time to Play Hardball, Andrew Egger, right, Feb. 4, 2026. All last year, conventional wisdom among the Democratic base was that the party’s political leaders are feckless cardboard cutouts unable to mount an effective opposition to Donald Trump’s authoritarian advance.
But as congressional Democrats navigate a spending fight over the Department of Homeland Security this week, the end result is shaping up to bejust the opposite—even if the naysaying has persisted. The fight is going about as well as anyone could have hoped.
Yesterday, the House passed a spending bill reopening the government after a few days of partial shutdown. The bill funds the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, and Treasury until this fall. The Department of Homeland Security, however, is funded only for an additional two weeks under the package.
To some progressives, even this is an intolerable concession. Speaking ahead of the vote, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) summed up the line of thought: “Not only should ICE receive NO funding, it should be abolished.”
Should ICE be abolished? That’s a policy fight Democrats will get to have among themselves if they’re lucky enough to win unified control of government in the next few years. But the idea that it is an achievable policy aim in the immediate term is a fantasy. Shutting down the government for enormous periods of time might be good for raising public awareness of a given issue, but it doesn’t magically create consensus for your view. Democrats’ shutdown play last year couldn’t even squeeze Republicans into reinstating a status-quo Obamacare subsidy; the idea that they’d have better luck vaporizing ICE is ridiculous. The cherry on top is that even shutting down the government indefinitely wouldn’t starve ICE of funds, given the gobs of cash already appropriated for the agency by last year’s Big Beautiful Bill.
But Democrats do have an advantage they never had with the subsidy fight: widespread squeamishness among elected Republicans about the way DHS is conducting its business. Republican leaders had hoped to whisk DHS funding quickly and unobtrusively into law by pairing it with a host of other 2026 appropriations bills. But thanks to a number of defections within their own party, they were forced to strip DHS out of the package. Democrats, in the end, got about the closest thing to an ideal set up: the appropriations bills they did end up passing include policies that seemed utterly unachievable during the heydays of DOGE. There’s increased funding for NIH, global HIV programs, federal K-12 school programs, and more. There’s also specific funding levels outlined in these bills, which are meant to protect against future administration efforts to claw back the money through executive actions or rescissions.
On top of all that, Democrats will now get the fight they should want: a hardball negotiation over DHS funding alone.
The asks that House and Senate Democrats are making for this fight are not insignificant. Chuck Schumer laid them out last week: They want to see an end to ICE’s most openly lawless enforcement practices, including invading homes without judicial warrants and conducting aimless roving enforcement sweeps. They want a “uniform code of conduct and accountability” enforced by independent investigators. And they want to ban masks and compel body cameras on immigration officers.
If it were up to me, I’d add one more demand: Any DHS deal should allocate a pile of money for new immigration judges. One of the more quietly ridiculous components of this administration’s immigration agenda has been its deliberate refusal to address the immigration-court backlog, the actual source of so many of our preexisting immigration-enforcement problems. Instead of fixing the problem, Republicans have tried to use our shortage of immigration judges as an excuse to cut judges out of the process entirely: “Imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant—an additional warrant—to go and apprehend people who we know are here illegally,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said yesterday. “How much time would that take? We don’t have enough judges. We don’t have enough time.” Well, here, Democrats should say: Let us help you out in this department.
This is not like the last shutdown fight. Democrats aren’t just trying to raise public awareness of this issue, or cultivate some goodwill among their base by demonstrating their willingness to fight, or move the Overton window closer to their ideal ICE legislation for some indeterminate point in the future. ICE is terrorizing America’s streets right now. Democrats have the ability and the leverage to play hardball for some of these reforms right now. A win is right there for the taking—if they don’t decide to call it a loss.
U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Culture
Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC (Washington Post photo).
New York Times, Washington Post Begins Laying Off More Than 300 Journalists, Benjamin Mullin, Katie Robertson and Erik Wemple, Feb. 4, 2026. The layoffs will cut into The Post’s local, international and sports coverage, and reduce the number of all its employees by about 30 percent.
The Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs that are expected to decimate the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage.
The company is laying off about 30 percent of all its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom, the people said.
The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently.
Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said on a call Wednesday morning with newsroom employees that the company had lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers’ needs. He said that all sections would be affected in some way, and that the result would be a publication focused even more on national news and politics, as well as business and health, and far less on other areas.
“If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape,” Mr. Murray said. “And after some years when, candidly, The Post has had struggles.”
Mr. Murray further explained the rationale in an email, saying The Post was “too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product” and that online search traffic, partly because of the rise of generative A.I., had fallen by nearly half in the last three years. He added that The Post’s “daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years.”
“Even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience,” he said.
The Post’s sports section will close, though some of its reporters will stay on and move to the features department to cover the culture of sports. The Post’s metro section will shrink, and the books section will close, as will the “Post Reports” daily news podcast.
Mr. Murray told the staff that while The Post’s international coverage also would be reduced, reporters would remain in nearly a dozen locations. Reporters and editors in the Middle East were laid off, as well as in India and Australia.
Peter Finn, the section’s editor, requested that he be laid off rather than be involved in planning the cuts once he learned about their scope, according to two people with knowledge of his decision.
As emails notifying employees that they were laid off began landing in inboxes, journalists at The Post began notifying their colleagues that their positions had been cut. “Eliminated,” "Eliminated,” “Eliminated,” their messages to one another read.
Mr. Bezos hired Will Lewis as publisher in late 2023 to find a path to profitability for The Post, which had been suffering from declining audiences and sagging subscriptions. Mr. Lewis has experimented with several changes to transform the organization, notably embracing artificial intelligence to power comments, podcasts and news aggregation.
Much of his tenure has been tumultuous, including a shake-up of newsroom leadership and scrutiny of his ties to a phone-hacking scandal while he worked for News Corp. Just before the 2024 presidential election, Mr. Lewis announced a new policy from Mr. Bezos ending presidential endorsements by The Post’s editorial board, which blocked a drafted endorsement of the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. Hundreds of thousands of Post subscribers canceled their subscriptions in response.
In a staff meeting in 2024, Mr. Lewis warned that The Post was in trouble. “We are losing large amounts of money,” he said. “Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.”
Washington Post Chief Executive William Lewis (Washington Post photo by Elliott O'Donovan).
Status, Bezos’ WashPost Bloodletting, Oliver Darcy, Feb. 4, 2026. As The Washington Post cleaved off a third of its workforce, chief executive Will Lewis and owner Jeff Bezos were nowhere to be found—leaving the storied institution to profusely bleed while its top leaders hid from accountability.
On Wednesday morning, staffers at The Washington Post were jolted awake by a 6 a.m. email from Executive Editor Matt Murray and the head of human resources, instructing them to stay home for a Zoom meeting to announce “some significant actions across the company today.” The message confirmed what many at the Jeff Bezos-owned news organization had feared for months: the mass layoffs longanticipated since the fall had finally arrived.
During the 8:30 a.m. all-staff call, Murray detailed a “broad strategic reset” at the newspaper that he said would result in a “significant staff reduction.” Murray, The Post’s top editor, delivered the news alone to the legion of staffers watching at home on their computers, many nervously waiting to learn whether they would survive the cuts.
The sweeping cuts to the storied publication, which impacted one-third of the workforce, hit nearly all news departments on some level, with some sections reduced so heavily that they were effectively shuttered, Status has learned. Among those hardest hit: The sports department was closed, with most of its roughly 45 staffers laid off. The international desk, with reporters deployed to war zones and hot spots around the world, was gutted. The 40-person metro desk was decimated. The Post also closed its books section and suspended the “Post Reports” podcast. All of the paper’s staff photographers were laid off, as well as the majority of the video team. Elsewhere across the newsroom, the team tasked with covering the technology industry was hollowed out, eliminating some three-quarters of the 20-person desk, including most of the San Francisco bureau, and notably, The Post’s Amazon beat reporter.
“It's biblically bad,” one Post journalist told Status, adding, “It will be a miracle if they can put out a paper tomorrow because no one is working." Another staffer called it a “death knell,” while a senior editor described the layoffs as…
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: JFK's niece shreds Trump over his disgusting attack on reporter Kaitlan Collins for being a "young woman" who doesn't "smile" after she asked him about the Epstein files.
Our nation has lost so much of the dignity it once had...
"In years past, this sort of behavior would have been unimaginable from a president of the United States. Unimaginable," Maria Shriver wrote on X. "There are other words to describe this, but you can simply watch it and feel it yourself."
"This is being done in public. The press is being attacked in public and private," she continued. "Having a free press is critical to our democracy. Having a president that knows how to answer questions with class, professionalism, and intelligence is critical to our culture and society."
Shriver, the daughter of JFK's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, shared the clip of Collins and Trump that went viral yesterday as "Smilegate."
"You talked about Democrats who were in [the Epstein files]. Elon Musk was also in there, and so was your Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and correspondence that he had with him," Collins said to Trump in the Oval Office. "Did you read those new files that were published by the Department of Justice?"
"No I didn't uh... I have a lot of things I'm doing. A lot of things I'm doing. I don't know," said Trump. "You mentioned two names. I'm sure they're fine. I'm sure they're fine. Otherwise, it would have been major headlines."
New York Times, Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance,’ Vimal Patel, Feb. 4, 2026. Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain.
College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, senior administrators and students themselves.
In Oklahoma, a student disputed an instructor’s grading decision, drawing the notice of a conservative campus group, Turning Point USA, that has long posted the names of professors criticized for bringing liberal politics into their classrooms. The instructor was removed.
In Texas, a student recorded a classroom lesson on gender identity that led to viral outrage and the instructor’s firing. Now, Texas has set up an office to take other complaints about colleges and professors.
And several states, including Texas, Ohio and Florida, have created laws requiring professors to publicly post their course outlines in searchable databases.
The increased oversight of professors comes as conservatives expand their movement to curb what they say is a liberal tilt in university classrooms. In the last couple of years, they have found sympathetic ears in state legislatures with the power to pressure schools, and their efforts have gained momentum as the Trump administration has made overhauling the politics and culture on campuses a focus.
But all of this, some professors and free-expression groups say, is leading to a wave of censorship and self-censorship that they argue is curbing academic freedom and learning.
New York Times, The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets, Ken Belson, Updated Feb. 4, 2026. The N.F.L. claims Guardian Caps reduce the risk of concussions. The company that makes them says, “It has nothing to do with concussions.”
The N.F.L. claims the cartoonish caps reduce the risk of getting a concussion, convincing some players that they are worth wearing. The company that designed and manufactures Guardian Caps, though, makes no such claim.
U.S. Crime, Courts, Justice
New York Times, Man Convicted of Trying to Assassinate Trump Gets Life Sentence, David C. Adams and Patricia Mazzei, Feb. 4, 2026. Federal prosecutors told the judge that Ryan Routh, above, had “plotted painstakingly” to ambush Donald J. Trump in 2024 at his golf course near West Palm Beach.
A man who plotted to kill Donald J. Trump at one of his Florida golf courses during the 2024 election campaign was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, the maximum penalty for attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate.
Ryan W. Routh, 59, an itinerant building contractor from North Carolina, sat quietly as Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., right, announced his sentence.
A 12-member jury convicted Mr. Routh last September after an unusual, lopsided trial in which Mr. Routh represented himself. The jury also found him guilty of assaulting a federal officer for pointing his semiautomatic rifle at a Secret Service agent, and of several firearm violations. Mr. Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen after the verdict was read in court.
Last month, federal prosecutors recommended a life sentence, saying that Mr. Routh had “plotted painstakingly” to stake out Mr. Trump at the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach. They also noted that he had not expressed remorse for his actions.
“Routh’s crimes of conviction reflect careful plotting, extensive premeditation and a cowardly disregard for human life,” the prosecutors wrote. “Routh remains unrepentant for his crimes, never apologized for the lives he put at risk, and his life demonstrates near total disregard for law.”
Mr. Routh, a former roofing contractor from Greensboro, N.C., never fired a shot during the thwarted assassination attempt on Sept. 15, 2024. A Secret Service agent spotted him outside a fence near the sixth hole while Mr. Trump was golfing nearby. The agent fired; Mr. Routh fled in his car and was caught shortly after. It was the second assassination attempt against Mr. Trump in 2024, as he was running for a second term.
Mr. Routh’s sentencing was delayed after he requested a lawyer to help him prepare. His lawyer, Martin L. Roth, asked the court to consider setting aside the sentencing guidelines and instead sentence his client to 27 years in prison. Mr. Roth argued that such a term would serve as sufficient punishment.
“Defendant would be in custody into his 80s and would not pose any threat to cause harm to the public,” Mr. Roth wrote.
Through his lawyer, Mr. Routh objected in particular to the prosecutors’ classification of the assassination attempt as a “federal crime of terrorism.” Such a categorization would have required the defendant’s conduct to be “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,” the lawyer said.
New York Times, Unrest in Minneapolis: Prosecutor Fired After Voicing Frustration With Immigration Caseload, Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush and Hamed Aleaziz, Feb. 4, 2026. The prosecutor, Julie T. Le, told a judge that she and her colleagues in the U.S. attorney’s office were overwhelmed by the White House’s immigration operation in Minnesota.
Three federal officers, viewed from behind, carry a person. The only visible part of the detailed person is their shoes.
A federal prosecutor in Minneapolis was fired from the U.S. attorney’s office on Wednesday after she expressed exasperation with the crippling case load arising from the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, according to three people familiar with the matter.
In an extraordinary outburst, the prosecutor, Julie T. Le, told a judge during a hearing on Tuesday in Federal District Court in St. Paul that she and her colleagues in the local U.S. attorney’s office were completely overwhelmed by the number of cases they had been forced to handle because of the White House’s widespread immigration sweeps in Minnesota. At one point, she sardonically told the judge that she would welcome being held in contempt of court because it would allow her to get a good night’s sleep.
Ms. Le’s painfully personal remarks came as the judge, Jerry W. Blackwell, was grilling her about why she and other prosecutors had ignored his orders in five separate cases to free immigrants he had determined were illegally detained by federal agents.
“What do you want me to do?” Ms. Le asked the judge at one point. “The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.”
“Fixing a system, a broken system,” she went on, “I don’t have a magic button to do it. I don’t have the power or the voice to do it. I only can do it within the ability and the capacity that I have.”
Ms. Le, who works as a lawyer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, volunteered in January to join the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota to handle the deluge of cases filed by immigrants challenging their arrests by federal agents. Over the next several weeks, she found herself overseeing about 90 immigration cases.
After her remarks in court, Ms. Le’s temporary post at the U.S. attorney’s office was ended, according to the people familiar with the matter. It remained unclear whether she had also been fired from her job at ICE.
The episode involving Ms. Le opened a revealing window on how the federal courts in Minnesota have reached a breaking point and are buckling under the weight of hundreds of cases arising from the statewide immigration campaign the Trump administration has called Operation Metro Surge.
The turmoil in the courts has demoralized prosecutors, outraged judges, exhausted defense lawyers — and, all the while, left scores of immigrants languishing in detention in violation of both judicial orders and their constitutional rights.
“The D.O.J., the D.H.S., and ICE are not above the law,” Judge Blackwell said during the hearing on Tuesday. “They do wield extraordinary power, and that power has to exist within constitutional limits. When court orders are not followed, it’s not just the court’s authority that’s at issue. It is the rights of individuals in custody and the integrity of the constitutional system itself.”
Global News
New York Times, A Century Ago, the U.S. Accepted Danish Control of Greenland. Here’s How, Amelia Nierenberg, Feb. 4, 2026. In 1917, the United States bought Caribbean islands from Denmark and agreed to respect Denmark’s hold over Greenland. The deal resurfaced with President Trump’s recent threats to seize Greenland.
President Trump’s recent fixation with Greenland has brought attention to a little-known snag. Over a century ago, the United States had all but promised to keep its hands off the island.
In 1917, it agreed to respect Denmark’s control of Greenland, then a Danish colony, in return for a deal to buy the Danish West Indies, a group of islands in the Caribbean.
Legal experts say the deal still binds the U.S. government. That is unlikely to constrain Mr. Trump. He has pulled out of multiple treaties and made clear that he feels limited only by his own morality, not by international law. He has backed down, for now, from a previous threat to seize the territory.
Still, as Danes and Greenlanders worry about Mr. Trump’s next steps, the 1917 agreement helps shed light on an era of superpower territorial expansionism that he seems intent on reviving.
The deal to purchase three islands in the Caribbean — then the Danish West Indies, now in the U.S. Virgin Islands — was ratified by the American government in January 1917.
The islands, which lie off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast, had been coveted by the United States for at least half a century, mostly for commercial and military reasons.
The U.S. paid $25 million in gold for the islands, one of the final expansions of U.S. territory after a 19th century dominated by the “manifest destiny” idea of growth. In the 1800s, the United States grew by more than 70 million people and 29 states, as the government acquired most states west of Kentucky and south of South Carolina.
“That was the last time that you could do something like that,” Astrid Nonbo Andersen, a historian at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said of the 1917 purchase, before World War I ushered in new concepts of nation and self-determination.ImageAn aerial view of lush green islands rising from calm blue waters under a partly cloudy sky. Numerous white boats are anchored in a bay in the midground.Coral Bay and East End in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, in 2024.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times
Previous U.S. attempts to buy those Caribbean islands had fallen through. But in 1916, the United States — which had not yet entered World War I — worried that Germany might invade Denmark, allowing Germany to station troops and a military fleet in the Caribbean, Dr. Andersen said.
Native Greenlanders demolish Trump in this brilliant music video
Feb. 3
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U.S. Markets, Jobs, Economy, High Tech
More On U.S. Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: 10 Years of Trump, and the Alarm Keeps Going Off, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 3, 2026. Every day of the past decade has felt like Groundhog Day.U.S. Immigration, Rights, Propaganda, Justice
More On U.S. Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Era of Trump, William Kristol, Feb. 3, 2026. Trump has been the dominant figure in American political life for a decade. The only presidents of comparable historical heft in the past century have been Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected four times to the presidency and then succeeded by his vice president, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan, elected twice and then succeeded by his vice president, George H.W. Bush.
And Trump? I’m afraid it’s hard to deny that he is by far the most consequential figure of American politics in the twenty-first century so far. His legacy will be negative. He’ll be known for inspiring a riot at the Capitol, not for legislation passed in the Capitol. His legacy would be a destructive one—ending the American-led world order abroad, and destroying the guardrails that have heretofore protected, however uncertainly and awkwardly at times, constitutional government at home. But he may turn out to be as important a historical figure as FDR or Reagan.
The Epstein Files
U.S. Education, Media, Culture, Arts
More Global News
Meidas Touch Network, Trump Sends Deceptive Tariff Check Email to Supporters ...Again, J.D. Wolf, Feb. 3, 2026. The message shows an AI image of Trump holding up cash.
Donald Trump and the Trump/Vance campaign are again fundraising off a fictional “tariff rebate check,” sending another early-morning email on February 1 claiming recipients must confirm their name before Trump signs their check.
The message, sent at 3:16 a.m., features an image of Trump holding up cash, warns of an “11:59 PM DEADLINE,” and declares itself “the only tariff rebate email authorized by President Trump.” Despite the official tone and imagery, there is still no legislation authorizing any rebate, tariffs remain in legal limbo, and Trump has no authority to issue checks to the public.
New York Times, Police Search X’s Premises in France as Prosecutors Summon Elon Musk, Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, Feb. 3, 2026. The move followed a yearlong investigation into X and escalated a wider standoff between European officials and American tech companies over the regulation of social media.
The French police searched the premises of X in France on Tuesday as prosecutors issued a summons to the social media company’s owner, Elon Musk (shown above in a file photo), raising the stakes in a yearlong investigation into the platform that has heightened a wider trans-Atlantic dispute over how to regulate tech companies.
The cybercrime division of the Paris prosecutor’s office is investigating X in relation to seven accusations, including complicity in distributing images of a child of pornographic nature, denial of crimes against humanity and fraudulent extraction of data, according to a statement on Tuesday from the city’s chief prosecutor, Laure Beccuau.
The investigation was opened after Éric Bothorel, a French centrist lawmaker, wrote to the prosecutors with concerns over X’s algorithm, the digital process that organizes data on the platform. The case was expanded after further accusations that Grok, the platform’s A.I. chatbot, was spreading Holocaust denial claims and sexual deepfakes, Ms. Beccuau said in the statement.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After the investigation began last year, the company said in a public statement in July that it “categorically denies” accusations about its algorithm and use of data. It said the investigation was “politically-motivated” and a distortion of French law “in order to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech.” The statement added that X would not cooperate with the French authorities’ demands.
The search on Tuesday marked an escalation in a broader dispute between European governments and American tech companies — one that has revealed sharp trans-Atlantic differences over the definition of free speech and the question of whether and how to regulate social media platforms. The issue has become particularly tense under the Trump administration, which has spoken and acted increasingly aggressively against Europeans it associates with the push to regulate American tech firms.
In recent years, the European Union has enacted sweeping regulations over the companies, whose platforms pervade modern communication, threatening them with fines unless they police their platforms for illicit content, misinformation and hate speech.
In December, the European Union issued the first fine under its new Digital Services Act, penalizing X with $140 million for violations. Last week, European Union regulators announced an investigation into X over the spread of sexualized images generated by Grok.
Europeans see their actions as a democratic prerogative necessary to protect citizens from abuse. The Trump administration sees the fines as an unfair money grab from American companies and considers the regulations to be an attack on free speech. Though there are very few restrictions on speech in the United States, in countries like France there are criminal penalties for hate speech, Holocaust denial and attacks on religion.
Mr. Bothorel, the lawmaker, praised the prosecutors’ moves on Tuesday, saying on social media: “In Europe, and particularly in France, the rule of law means that ‘no one is above the law’ and that European regulations, transposed into French law, apply to everyone.”
The prosecutor’s statement on Tuesday said that people associated with X, including Mr. Musk and Linda Yaccarino, the company’s former chief executive, had been summoned to speak to the French authorities.
Elon Musk, right, joins Donald Trump in a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).
Emptywheel, Analysis: Elon Musk Under Investigation for Trafficking Child Sexual Abuse Material, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D), right, Feb. 3, 2026. Make no mistake. Elon is trying to use his fascist machine to support far right parties and political violence in Europe. And then he decided to start disseminating non-consensual porn and child sexual abuse material, outsourcing all agency to his robot creation. Which gave French authorities cause to execute a warrant.
I’ll be honest. I been thinking that Elon Musk stubbornly refused to do anything about his Grok CSAM machine as a provocation to Europe.
After all, when the European Commission fined Elon for fraudulent violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA) for misrepresenting the Blue Check as verification, covering up his ad repository, and refusing to give researchers access to public data, he and allies misrepresented the nature of the fine, falsely claiming this was about censorship. That same month, Elon’s allies in the Administration sanctioned five Europeans, including the father of the DSA, Thierry Breton, and Elon’s nemesis, Imran Ahmed, whose Center for Digital Hate Elon has sued repeatedly.
That month, December, is when Grok’s CSAM appetite went into overdrive.
But WaPo reported just yesterday that Elon’s unwillingness to impose protections on his AI and CSAM machine arises in significant part from an effort to chase “user active seconds” to make xAI more relevant as compared his AI rivals.
Since leaving his role overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service in May, Musk has become a constant presence at xAI’s offices — at times sleeping there overnight — as he has pressed to increase Grok’s popularity, according to two of the people. In meeting after meeting he has championed a new metric, “user active seconds,” to granularly measure how long people spent conversing with the chatbot, according to two of the people.
As part of this push for relevance, xAI embraced making sexualized material, publicly releasing sexy AI companions, rolling back guardrails on sexual material and ignoring internal warnings about the potentially serious legal and ethical risks of producing such content, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen former employees of X and xAI, as well as multiple people familiar with Musk’s thinking — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retribution — and documents obtained by The Post.
At X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter that Musk purchased in 2022, safety teams repeatedly warned management in meetings and messages that its AI tools could allow users to make sexual AI images of children or celebrities that might violate the law, according to two of the people. Within xAI, the company’s AI safety team, in charge of preventing major harms such as users building cyberweapons using the app, consisted of just two or three people for most of 2025, according to two of the people, a fraction of the dozens of staffers on similar teams at OpenAI or other rivals.
As one after another country (including, timidly, Ireland) started investigating, Elon claimed ignorance, like he often does.
That behind-the-scenes shift in xAI’s philosophy burst into public view last month, when Grok generated a wave of sexualized images, placing real women in sexual poses, such as suggestively splattering their faces with whipped cream, and “undressing” them into revealing clothing, including bikinis as tiny as a string of dental floss. Musk appeared to egg on the undressing in posts on X.
Grok also generated 23,000 sexualized images that appear to depict children, according to estimates from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
California’s attorney general, Britain’s communications regulator and the European Commission have opened investigations into xAI, X or Grok over the features, which regulators allege appear to violate laws against AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery and child sexual abuse material.
In the wake of the “undressing” scandal, Musk said he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.”
“When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state,” he said last month. “There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”
In spite of Elon’s lip service, Reuters is out, today, with a story reporting that Xitter remains worse than other social media sites.
After Musk’s social media company X announced new curbs on Grok’s public output, nine Reuters reporters gave it a series of prompts to determine whether and under what circumstances the chatbot would generate nonconsensual sexualized images.
While Grok’s public X account is no longer producing the same flood of sexualized imagery, the Grok chatbot continues to do so when prompted, even after being warned that the subjects were vulnerable or would be humiliated by the pictures, the Reuters reporters found.
[snip]
The Reuters reporters – six men and three women in the U.S. and the UK – submitted fully clothed photos of themselves and one another to Grok between January 14 – 16 and between January 27 – 28. They asked the chatbot to alter the images to depict them in sexually provocative or humiliating poses.
In the first batch of prompts, Grok produced the sexualized images in response to 45 of 55 instances. In 31 out of those 45 cases, Grok had also been warned that the subject was particularly vulnerable. In 17 out of the 45 cases, Grok generated images after being specifically told they would be used to degrade the person.
Five days after first seeking comment, Reuters ran a second batch of 43 prompts. Grok generated sexualized images in 29 cases. Reuters could not determine whether the lower rate reflected model changes, policy changes, or randomness.
And that’s important background to the search of Xitter in Paris. What had started as an investigation into things specific to Europe — data and algorithmic abuse — expanded to include Xitter dissemination of CSAM.
The raid and the summoning of Musk – which could further increase tensions between Europe and the U.S. over big tech and free speech – are linked to a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction by X or its executives.
In a statement the Paris prosecutor’s office said it was widening that investigation following complaints over the functioning of X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.
The probe will now also investigate alleged complicity in the “detention and diffusion” of images of a child‑pornographic nature and the violation of a person’s image rights with sexually explicit deepfakes, among other potential crimes.
Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino were summoned to a hearing on April 20. Other X staff were also summoned as witnesses.
To be sure, Elon is treating this as if the EU were undermining his efforts to spread fascism via machine.
On the same day France searched Xitter, Jim Jordan (a man with a history of protect sexual abuse) released a second report fabricating claims of censorship in Europe, including in ways that affect elections.
Some of these are downright absurd, both because they claim interference in fuddy-duddy elections like Ireland’s and targeting Tik Tok. Think about that?!?! The US has literally demanded Tik Tok restructure because of security and data collection concerns, and after Trump’s billionaire buddies took over it immediately started censoring more aggressively than Europe ever has.
The Ireland mention, in particular, is a gratuitous complaint about a few meetings, but it’s there because Ireland plays a key role in regulating most US social media companies by dint of their location here.
And of course, Jordan and his sex abuse cover-up specialists wildly misrepresented the fine against Elon, citing their own tweet as source.
In December 2025, the European Commission issued its first fine under the Digital Services Act, targeting X for a litany of ridiculous violations in an obviously pretextual attempt to penalize the platform for its defense of free speech.61 The European Commission fined X €120 million—slightly below the statutory cap of six percent of global revenue—for alleged violations including “misappropriating” the meaning of blue checkmarks by changing how they were awarded. 62
61 Commission Decision of 5.12.2025 pursuant to Articles 73(1), 73(3) and 74(1) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act); Case DSA.100101, DSA.100102 and DSA.100103 – X (formerly Twitter), C(2025) 8630 final; see Ex. 302 (hereinafter “X Decision”); see also House Judiciary GOP (@JudicaryGOP), X (Jan. 28, 2026, 4:09 PM), https://x.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/2016619751183724789. 62 Id
Make no mistake. Elon is trying to use his fascist machine to support far right parties and political violence in Europe.
And then he decided to start disseminating non-consensual porn and child sexual abuse material, outsourcing all agency to his robot creation. Which gave French authorities cause to execute a warrant.
New York Times, The Numbers, and Questions, Behind Musk’s Mega-Merger, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced, Niko Gallogly, Brian O’Keefe and Ian Mount, Feb. 3, 2026. The combination of SpaceX and xAI will create a rocket-and-A.I. giant. But investors and experts have concerns about the consequences of the deal.
The biggest merger in history, with an asterisk, just happened: SpaceX has acquired xAI to create a $1.25 trillion giant. It’s an all-stock deal — and 
the stock is private (and privately valued, hence the asterisk), though SpaceX plans to go public later this year.
All this was orchestrated by one person, Elon Musk, who controls both firms. It would make SpaceX a vertically integrated company for putting data centers in space and then using them for artificial intelligence services. There are questions about whether SpaceX needs xAI and about whether it complicates the SpaceX I.P.O. story, but it certainly helps Musk’s investors in xAI (some of whom previously invested in the social media site X, which xAI acquired).
There’s also a long-term antitrust question: If data centers in space become a reality — if and Musk has a near-monopoly on them — would other A.I. model makers be able to use them? More below.The big questions about Musk’s big deal
Elon Musk had a busy Monday, combining his SpaceX rocket company and his xAI artificial intelligence start-up to create the world’s most valuable private enterprise,.
Musk described the merged company as “the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.” The deal transpired before a long-planned I.P.O. for SpaceX that could happen this summer.
But investors and others are raising questions about what the merger actually accomplishes, especially for SpaceX, which was already riding high and now has a more complicated story to sell to investors.
The details: The deal valued SpaceX at about $1 trillion, up from the roughly $800 billion cited in December; xAI was valued at $250 billion, slightly up from its last fund-raising round. (The move required SpaceX to issue about $250 billion of new stock, drastically diluting the stakes of existing investors.)
Musk argues that the combined company will be better able to set up space-based A.I. data centers, which in theory can transcend the limitations on power use and physical land needs of Earth-based ones. “In the long term, space-based A.I. is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk wrote in a memo to employees that SpaceX also issued publicly.
The optimist case: The combined company makes SpaceX “a lot more attractive” to investors because it eliminates distractions for Musk, Andrew Rocco, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research, told DealBook.
SpaceX, which reportedly earned about $8 billion on more than $15 billion in revenue last year, could funnel cash to the money-losing xAI, which has already raised $42 billion from investors since its founding in 2023, according to Pitchbook. (Bloomberg previously reported that xAI was burning through about $1 billion a month.)
There are concerns, too:
SpaceX, which has been seeking to raise a record $50 billion from its I.P.O., had a relatively clean story to tell: It’s the world’s biggest rocket company and satellite internet operator, and it’s very profitable. But SpaceX must now explain to prospective investors why it also has a deeply unprofitable A.I. arm (one that includes X, a social network that has frequently run afoul of government regulators.)
Making celestial data centers a reality requires solving complex problems including how to cool them (radiators to do so might need to be bigger than tennis courts) and how to shield them from cosmic radiation. A big issue is cost, with experts reckoning that the price of shipping components to space would need to fall about tenfold. Google projected that this might happen in the 2030s; Musk estimated on Monday that it might happen in two to three years.
Michael Sobel, an investor whose firm buys secondary stakes in privately held companies, told The Information that he has heard from SpaceX shareholders who have some questions about the deal. Many are open to its logic and trust Musk, he said, “but they’re like, ‘Hmmm.’”
New York Times, Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections, Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti, Updated Feb. 3, 2026. The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections.President Trump has long been fixated on the false claim that voter fraud is rampant in the United States.
President Trump called in a new interview for the Republican Party to “nationalize” voting in the United States, an aggressive rhetorical step that was likely to raise new worries about his administration’s efforts to involve itself in election matters.
During an extended monologue about immigration on a podcast released on Monday by Dan Bongino, his former deputy F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump 
called for Republican officials to “take over” voting procedures in 15 states, though he did not name them.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Under the Constitution, American elections are governed primarily by state law, leading to a decentralized process in which voting is administered by county and municipal officials in thousands of precincts across the country. Mr. Trump, however, has long been fixated on the false claims that U.S. elections are rife with fraud and that Democrats are perpetrating a vast conspiracy to have undocumented immigrants vote and lift the party’s turnout.
Mr. Trump’s remarkable call for a political party to seize the mechanisms of voting follows a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections, as he and his allies continue to make false claims about his 2020 defeat.
Last week, F.B.I. agents seized ballots and other voting records from the 2020 election from an election center in Fulton County, Ga., where his allies have for years pursued false claims of election fraud. The New York Times reported on Monday that Mr. Trump had spoken on the phone to the F.B.I. agents involved in the Fulton County raid, praising and thanking them.
The Justice Department, which has been newly politicized under Mr. Trump, is demanding that numerous states, including Minnesota, turn over their full voter rolls as the Trump administration tries to build a national voter file.
In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that tried to make significant changes to the electoral process, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship and demanding that all mail ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day. But that effort has largely been rebuffed by courts.
On social media, Mr. Trump has pushed for even more drastic changes. In August, he wrote that he wanted to end the use of mail-in ballots and potentially the use of voting machines.Editors’ PicksBook Club: Read ‘Wuthering Heights,’ by Emily Brontë, With the Book ReviewHow Weight Lifting Took Over America28 Things to Do in New York City in February
The president’s claims of election fraud have been debunked over and over, by both independent reviews and Republican officials. A review of the 2024 election by the Trump administration that began last year had found little evidence of widespread voting fraud by noncitizens as of last month, The Times reported.
Mr. Trump’s escalated remarks about elections come at a moment when Democrats have outperformed the G.O.P. in a series of contests. New Jersey and Virginia elected Democratic governors in landslides in November, and on Saturday, a Democrat won a special election for a Texas State Senate seat by 14 percentage points in a district Mr. Trump had carried by 17 points in 2024, an enormous swing.
Sensing that Republicans were vulnerable to the traditional midterm backlash against the party in power, Mr. Trump last year kick-started an extraordinary effort to gerrymander congressional maps to give his party an edge. The push, which started in Texas but has since expanded to both Democratic- and Republican-controlled states, became a central part of the president’s midterm strategy.
Mr. Trump has made little secret of his interest in expanding the federal government’s role in administering American elections. Last month, he told The Times that he regretted not dispatching the National Guard to seize voting machinery after the 2020 election.
During his interview with Mr. Bongino, Mr. Trump tied his desire for partisan control of voting mechanisms to his administration’s agenda to find and deport undocumented immigrants from American cities.
“If Republicans don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican,” he said, referring to undocumented immigrants. “It’s crazy how you can get these people to vote. If we don’t get them out, look, Republicans will never win another election.”
There is no evidence that a significant number of noncitizens have voted in any American election. A 2024 audit by Georgia’s secretary of state found that just 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote in Georgia were not citizens, and only nine had ever voted.
More On U.S. Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: 10 Years of Trump, and the Alarm Keeps Going Off, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 3, 2026. Every day of the past decade has felt like Groundhog Day.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s populist insurgency against Donald Trump continues!
The former congresswoman told a radio interviewer yesterday that the president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was “all a lie”: “What MAGA is really serving in this administration, who they’re serving, is their big donors,” she said. “The big, big donors that donated all the money and continue to donate to the president’s PAC and donate to the 250th anniversary and are donating to the big ballroom.”
As we keep finding reason to say: When she’s right, she’s right. Happy Tuesday.
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: The plot to undermine the 2026 elections, Judd Legum, right, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims, Feb. 3, 2026. The Trump administration is engaged in a multi-pronged effort to undermine the integrity of and confidence in the 2026 election.
At the center of the effort is President Trump himself. In a Monday appearance on Dan Bongino’s podcast, Trump said:
Minnesota is a mess. There’s something in the water up there. I won the state three times, but I got no credit for it. I won that state three times but it’s a rigged state. Really rigged badly with the Somalians, and the Somalians and the theft.
The Democratic presidential candidate won Minnesota in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which he continues to make repeatedly, have been exhaustively debunked.
In his podcast appearance, Trump went on to suggest that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting” because “we have states that I won that show I didn’t win.” The Constitution says that the “times, places, and manner of holding elections“ will be determined by the states.
Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in the 2026 midterms are not just rhetorical. On January 28, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election office. The agents executed a warrant to seize records related to the 2020 election.
Former President Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020. But, without any factual backing, Trump has claimed that he was the true winner. On January 2, 2021, in a recorded call, Trump famously pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,779 additional votes — enough to make him the winner — in Fulton County.
The warrant authorized the seizure of physical ballots, voting machine “tabulator tapes,” voter rolls, and electronic data, which Trump administration officials claimed constituted evidence of a crime.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), was on site during the Fulton County raid. The DNI has no role in domestic law enforcement and is supposed to be focused on foreign intelligence gathering. According to the Wall Street Journal, she has “spent months investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost.”
While the raid is unlikely to uncover any actual evidence of wrongdoing, it does demonstrate Trump’s willingness to use the full spectrum of federal government power to interfere with state election administration and advance his political interests.A national voter purge
Beginning in May, the Department of Justice (DOJ) began sending letters to state officials requesting complete, unredacted voter rolls containing sensitive information on voters, including drivers license and social security numbers.
The Trump administration has claimed it has authority to ask states for their voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires states to maintain accurate lists of their registered voters and make certain records available to the public. The DOJ is arguing that it needs to inspect state voter rolls to “ensure that states have proper voter registration procedures and programs to maintain clean voter rolls containing only eligible voters in federal elections.” However, The NVRA does not require states to disclose sensitive voter data to the public or to the federal government. In reality, the Trump administration is creating a national voter roll in order to purge what it alleges is widespread voter fraud by noncitizens.
At times, the administration has admitted this purpose openly. In a statement to Democracy Docket, about an agreement with the DOJ to use some of the voter data, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson wrote that the goal of using the data is to “prevent illegal aliens from corrupting our republic’s democratic process and further ensure the integrity of our elections nationwide.”
The actual number of noncitizens who illegally vote in U.S. elections is very small. However, any attempt to purge voters would likely lead to many eligible voters being removed from the voter roll, as has already played out in states purging their own voter rolls.
In August 2024, for example, Alabama’s Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced that he wanted “to ensure that Alabama has the cleanest and most accurate voter file in the country.” So, he removed over 3000 people from the state’s voter roll that he claimed were non-citizens. However, it turned out that over 700 of those people had recently become citizens and were eligible to vote.
As of the end of January, at least 44 states and Washington D.C. received requests from the DOJ for their voter rolls. Eleven states, all led by Republicans, have said they will comply with this request. Twenty-four states and Washington D.C., mostly led by Democrats, have been sued by the DOJ for refusing to provide voter rolls. (These lawsuits are rife with errors, including being addressed to the wrong officials and citing laws that do not exist.)
In Minnesota, the DOJ has recently turned to a new tactic for getting sensitive voter information. On the same day that Alex Pretti was shot and killed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in Minneapolis, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz stating that he could “bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota” if he cooperated with the federal government on “common sense solutions.”
One proposed solution was turning over the state’s voter rolls to the Trump administration. The letter made no attempt at explaining how sharing voter data would help reduce tensions between federal agents and Minnesota officials and residents. Instead, it was an effort to leverage the killing of U.S. citizens by CBP officers to advance the administration’s plans to disrupt future elections.Voter suppression by presidential fiat
The Trump administration has also attempted to use executive orders to overhaul and federalize the election system. On March 25, Trump signed an executive order, entitled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” that instructs the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form. It also requires that the Secretary of Defense add a proof of citizenship requirement to the voter registration form used by military and overseas voters. The executive order does not mention birth certificates as a valid proof of citizenship, instead listing a passport, military ID, or a government-issued ID that indicates citizenship. This would require most people to use a passport to prove their citizenship, something only around half of Americans have.
Additionally, the order instructs the Attorney General to take action against states that count mail-in ballots mailed prior to Election Day that were received afterward, a practice that is allowed by more than a dozen states. The order also instructs federal agencies, including the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to review state voter registration lists and records for instances of voter fraud. States that do not comply with parts of the order are at risk of losing federal funding.
It is already against the law for noncitizens to vote, and studies have found that noncitizen voting is incredibly rare. A proof of citizenship requirement could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. A 2023 study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 21.3 million people, or over nine percent of voters, “don’t have proof of citizenship readily available.”
Multiple judges have since blocked much of Trump’s executive order. Last week, a federal judge permanently blocked two parts of the order “that sought to impose proof-of-citizenship rules.” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly argued in the ruling that Trump’s attempts to control elections were unconstitutional. “Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
The Trump administration has floated additional executive orders related to election administration. In August, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was “going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” and “Seriously Controversial” voting machines. “WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” Trump wrote. Trump went on to falsely claim that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.”
In November, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the White House was “working on an executive order to strengthen our elections in this country,” suggesting that the order would relate to mail-in voting.
The Epstein Files
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Newly discovered Epstein file swears that Epstein introduced Melania to Trump! Staff and wire reports, Feb. 3, 2026. Well, well, well, well. A new document shows a former assistant of Epstein, who swore to tell the truth under penalty of perjury, says the story of how Trump and his third wife Melania met is false, and the reality is that she was introduced to Trump by none other than millionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“[Redacted] put [redacted] in contact with an agent named PAOLO ZEMPOLI who worked with ‘ID Models,’” the second page of the document begins, referring to Paolo Zampolli, Melania’s former modelling agent, who Trump appointed as “special envoy for global partnerships” last year.
“ZEMPOLI was trying to buy Elite Models with EPSTEIN. EPSTEIN introduced MELANIA TRUMP to DONALD TRUMP.”
This opens up a whole new swathe of questions about Donald Trump and his wife. After all, who among us isn’t provided with girlfriends by our sex-trafficking pedophile best friends?
Investigate, investigate, investigate. We need to clean out the entire DOJ of every one of Trump’s minions and replace them with people who are actually interested in discovering the truth and holding everyone accountable for the deeply disturbing crimes alleged in these files.
Editor's Note: The correct name spelling is Paolo Zampolli, right. Since March 2025, he has served as the Trump-nominated United States Special Representative for Global Partnerships. In the mid-1990s, Zampolli founded ID Model Management in New York City. Shown above are photos from Melania Trump's nude modeling career before she married Trump.
2005 article, among other articles, confirms Zampolli brought Melania Trump to the United States in 1996. It was reported that Zampolli met Melania while she was working for Metropolitan Models. Zampolli made a bid to buy Elite Model Management and lost, prompting him to call Donald Trump in December 2004. He went on to form a partnership with the Trump Organization as Director of International Development.
Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi, center right, joins other Trump administration officials in boasting in February 2025 outside the White House that they held in their hands "The Epstein Files" in binders that they would soon release. That was a year ago.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Top Trump DOJ official claims “it’s not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein” in shocking defense of the pedophile and his pedophile accomplices! Staff and wire reports, Feb. 3, 2026. There you have it, folks. After years and years of screaming about pedophile cabals, child sex predators, and grooming, the right-wing is now hand-waving away heinous acts of sexual violence as “partying.”
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, right, appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show to carry water for pedos and his pedophile boss, Donald Trump.
The white supremacist host asked Blanche “Is there any chance that any of these individuals who partied with Epstein and engaged in relations with minors will be prosecuted? Any chance?”
Blanche replies, “I'll never say no. And we will always investigate any evidence of misconduct. But as you know, it is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. And so as horrible as it is, it's not a crime to email with Mr. Epstein.”
“Some of these men may have done horrible things, and if we have evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will, but it's also the kind of thing that the American people need to understand that it isn't a crime to party with Mister Epstein.”
Todd, what the f*ck do you think was going on at those parties? Given all we know about Epstein and the shocking crimes he and his accomplices committed, it almost certainly was a crime to participate in his parties!
It is shocking and revolting to see the Department of JUSTICE try to minimize the mass sex trafficking and rape of young girls as “partying.”
He needs to resign immediately and be replaced with someone who will actually enforce the law and carry out prosecutions against everyone involved.
Implicated In The Epstein Files: Steve Tisch, principal owner of the New York Giants football team and scion of a family long prominent in entertainment, shown in a 2018 photo.
New York Times, N.F.L. Says It Will Look Into Steve Tisch’s Ties to Epstein, Ken Belson and Jenny Vrentas, Feb. 3, 2026. Recently released emails reveal that Jeffrey Epstein sought to connect Mr. Tisch, whose family is a part-owner of the New York Giants, with multiple women.
The National Football League said on Monday that it would look into the New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch’s involvement with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after the connection between the two men was revealed in documents released by the Justice Department.
“We are going to look at all the facts, we are going to look at the context of those, we are going to try to understand that,” Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, said at a news conference in San Jose, Calif., days before the Super Bowl. Mr. Goodell, though, stopped short of saying the N.F.L. would open a formal investigation into Mr. Tisch’s actions at this point.
Mr. Tisch, 76, was one of the prominent new names made public in the millions of documents the Department of Justice made public on Friday in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The documents showed the two men communicating frequently in 2013, with Mr. Epstein seeking to connect Mr. Tisch with multiple women. Their exchanges were often crude, with Mr. Epstein often describing women by their ethnicity or anatomy, and Mr. Tisch on more than one occasion using slang terms to ask if a woman Mr. Epstein wanted to connect him with was a sex worker.
The N.F.L., which waited three days before commenting on Mr. Tisch’s interactions with Mr. Epstein, finds itself in a not unfamiliar position of having to address questionable conduct of a team owner.
The league’s personal conduct policy covers both illegal activities and behaviors that may tarnish the reputation of the N.F.L., America’s largest and most popular professional sports league. Mr. Goodell suggested that the league was still fact-finding to determine if it would open an investigation into potential policy violations.
In the past, the league has responded cautiously to issues that involve the personal conduct of its team owners.
The league, for example, did not penalize Robert Kraft, the New England Patriots owner, in 2019 after he was charged with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting sex, part of a wide-ranging investigation into possible human trafficking in South Florida. Mr. Kraft challenged the charges, which were ultimately dropped.
Mr. Tisch said in a statement last Friday that he’d had a “brief association” with Mr. Epstein that he deeply regretted, and that the women they had discussed were adults. There is no indication in the files that any of the women Mr. Epstein sought to connect Mr. Tisch with were underage.
The Giants, one of the league’s most storied franchises despite their recent on-field struggles, must also grapple with Mr. Tisch’s ties to Mr. Epstein, but the team has not made any public statements about if or how it is addressing Mr. Tisch’s position with the organization.
Mr. Tisch, who has worked as a movie producer, is the representative for his family, which owns 45 percent of the team. He has served as the team’s chairman and executive vice president since 2005, after the death of his father, Preston Robert (Bob) Tisch, the president of Loews Corporation, who had purchased half the franchise in 1991. Both of his siblings are board members, and his brother, Jonathan, is also treasurer of the team.
The Tisches are a prominent New York family. Bob’s brother, Laurence, was chairman of CBS, which was part-owned by Loews and is a longtime broadcast partner of the N.F.L. Laurence Tisch’s granddaughter Jessica is New York City’s police commissioner
Steve Tisch’s footprint in N.F.L. circles is relatively light. The Giants co-owner and president John Mara, whose family bought the franchise in 1925, has been more involved in the day-to-day running of the team, though Mr. Tisch used his private plane to fly in the Giants’ new head coach, John Harbaugh, for his interview with the team.
In the past, team owners have been penalized by the league for bad behavior, though these instances involved either misconduct toward N.F.L. employees or a conviction.
The Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay was suspended for six games and fined $500,000 in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. During his suspension, Mr. Irsay had to stay away from the team facilities, games and social media.
Meidas Touch Network, Massie and Greene Clap Back After Trump Attacks Massie's Wife Over Epstein Files, Troy Matthews, Feb. 3, 2026. Trump is REALLY sensitive about Massie's calls for tranparency on the Epstein files.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) clapped back against Donald Trump after the president attacked his wife in a post on Truth Social, Monday. Trump called Massie's wife a "Radical Left flamethrower" and suggested Massie's efforts to seek transparency in the Epstein case is tied to him becoming a liberal as a result of their marriage, saying Massie "didn't know what he was getting into."
Massie was quick to point out that his wife voted for Trump three times, but also that she had pushed Massie to ask Attorney General Pam Bondi to release additional Epstein files.
"So now he’s attacking my wife who voted for him three times," Massie posted. "Maybe someone told him she’s actually the one who suggested I ask Pam Bondi in person at a dinner when we would get Phase 2 of the Epstein files. Bondi said there were no more files. As they say, the rest is history."
Massie's ally in the fight for Epstein transparency—former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene—was quick to slam the president and his allies for attacking Massie, who is a loyal Trump Republican on every issue except for his fight to force the administration to release the evidence of the massive global pedophile ring, in which Trump is mentioned thousands of times.
Greene,left, pointed to the recent upset victory of Democrat Taylor Rehmet in deep red Texas as a warning sign for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms.
"President Trump treats those who support him the most like crap," Greene wrote. "Losing elections to Democrats in super red districts, like TX senate, where Trump endorsed, should be sending warning alarms across the President’s desk. But instead he’s attacking REPUBLICAN Thomas Massie with one of the most conservative voting records in the House and his new wife with a three time MAGA voting record."
"And all the weak Republicans in the House stay silent refusing to utter even a word of support for their 'friend' Thomas Massie," Greene continued. "Shame on every one of you. Cowards. You make me sick."
Meidas Touch Network, White House Advisor Pushed Bulk Sales for Melania Movie, J.D. Wolf, Feb. 2, 2026. Supporters are encouraged to buy group tickets and private screenings, raising questions about ethics and actual attendance.
Bulk sales of the new documentary Melania: Twenty Days to History are being promoted through emails from the National Faith Advisory Board (NFAB), a faith coalition led by Paula White-Cain, shown above in the White House, who also served as a senior advisor in the White House Faith Office. The film had a $7 million opening weekend.
The message encourages supporters to purchase group tickets and private theater buyouts, directing them to a custom sales portal which offers private screenings for groups of more than 30 people. Recipients are encouraged to watch the movie to "support our first lady," because "supporting this film is about standing up for grace over the noise, dignity over distortion, and for the truth.”
The message then provided a link to purchase "a group of tickets" or to set up "private screenings." The customer service email for the group sales page has an Amazon domain, the same company that paid nearly $75 million to acquire and promote the movie.
A FAQ page indicates that buying out a showing of Melania varies but can "typically range from $1,500–$3,000” with "final quotes come directly from the theater." Private screening implies that the theater is empty except for the party intending to watch the movie. In order for this to happen, seats are paid for and count toward box office sales, yet could remain empty.
The industry doesn’t publicly report attendance for bulk group sales.
In other words, while the theater buyouts count as box-office sales, it is not clear how many of those seats are actually filled with attendees. It also is not clear if this group sales process is being used to inflate box office numbers for the Melania movie. It raises questions.
White House advisor Paula White-Cain, shown also below right, and MAGA pastors praying for Trump in the Oval Office
Concerning the promotion of the group sales by a person at the White House, the overlap of a roles raises ethical and transparency questions. White-Cain is both a Trump administration appointee and the leader of a group affiliated with the Trump campaign, prompting concerns about whether a federally connected figure is promoting a commercial project tied to the First Lady.
Also, without independent data on attendance versus purchased seats, the reported sales of the film are suspect, as they may reflect coordinated bulk buying more than actual audience interest.
New York Times, Peter Attia ‘Ashamed’ After Epstein Emails Become Public, Maggie Astor, Updated Feb. 3, 2026. The longevity influencer said he “never witnessed illegal behavior” but would not defend his crude remarks about women and comments on Jeffrey Epstein’s “outrageous” life.
The physician and longevity influencer Peter Attia is facing criticism after correspondence between him and the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released on Friday as part of a large tranche of files related to Mr. Epstein.
Dr. Attia’s name appears in more than 1,700 documents, some of which include direct correspondence in the mid-2010s between him and Mr. Epstein, a disgraced financier who had at that point already pleaded guilty to prostitution charges. Mr. Epstein would later be charged with trafficking underage girls for sex.
Dr. Attia, who is in his early 50s, said in a lengthy statement posted on X on Monday that he “never witnessed illegal behavior and never saw anyone who appeared underage” in Mr. Epstein’s presence. He added that he “was never on his plane, never on his island, and never present at any sex parties.”
Some of the emails, though, show the two men speaking crudely about women, and Dr. Attia said Monday that he was embarrassed and ashamed of himself. “Whatever growth I’ve had over the past decade does not erase the emails I wrote then,” he said.
In one email on Feb. 19, 2016, titled “confirmed,” Dr. Attia wrote to Mr. Epstein: “Pussy is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.” A couple of days earlier, he had offered his medical services to Mr. Epstein and asked, “Have you decided if you’re interested in living longer (solely for the ladies, of course)?”
Dr. Attia has become highly influential in recent years among people seeking to improve their health. He hosts a popular podcast, wrote a best-selling book and runs a health practice that charges more than $100,000 for personalized exercise, nutrition and preventive testing programs; he is also a prominent backer of David protein bars. Just last month, CBS News hired him as a contributor.
CBS did not respond to requests for comment about the documents or the future of Dr. Attia’s relationship with the company. However, David said on Tuesday that Dr. Attia had stepped down as its chief science officer. (Dr. Attia was interviewed at The New York Times’s Well Festival last May.)
Some of the messages that have drawn the most attention are vague. Among the 1,700-plus documents is an email exchange dated June 24, 2015. Dr. Attia initiated it with an email to Mr. Epstein under the subject line “got a fresh shipment”; it is not clear what he was referring to. Mr. Epstein replied, “me too,” with a photo that is redacted in the released document. Dr. Attia responded, “Please tell you found that picture on line…bastard,” to which Mr. Epstein said, “fraid not.”
Dr. Attia then wrote: “You the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul…”Editors’ PicksTips for Lowering Your Credit Card Interest RateThey Went to the Woods Because They Wished to Live DeliberatelySlumping in the West, the Art Trade Eyes the Gulf
In his statement, Dr. Attia said that the shipment he had been referring to was the medication metformin — a diabetes treatment that some people use to try to slow the effects of aging — and that Mr. Epstein’s photo had been “of an adult woman.”
“Reading that exchange now is very embarrassing, and I will not defend it,” Dr. Attia wrote in his statement. “I’m ashamed of myself for everything about this. At the time, I understood this exchange as juvenile, not a reference to anything dark or harmful.” He added that his reference to being unable to tell anyone about Mr. Epstein’s “outrageous” life was about “the discretion commanded by those social and professional circles–the idea that you don’t talk about who you meet, the dinners you attend and the power and influence of the people in those settings.”
Other documents show Dr. Attia saying that he goes “into JE withdrawal when I don’t see him” and suggesting that he wants to visit Mr. Epstein’s island.
Dr. Attia emphasized in his statement that he had never visited Mr. Epstein’s island or ranch. But in a series of emails from 2015, an assistant made plans for Dr. Attia to visit Mr. Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico, going so far as to book plane tickets before Mr. Epstein said the scheduled dates no longer worked for him.
New York Times, Colleges See Major Racial Shifts in Student Enrollment, Stephanie Saul, Feb. 3, 2026. An analysis finds that flagship state universities, as well as less selective colleges, had major increases in Black and Hispanic students following a ban on race-conscious admissions.
The Supreme Court ruling in 2023 banning race-conscious college admissions led to declines in Black and Latino admissions at highly selective universities. At many other schools, the opposite occurred, according to a new analysis.
Overall, freshmen enrollment of underrepresented minority groups increased by 8 percent at public flagship universities. The analysis, by a nonprofit organization, Class Action, concludes that those schools were among institutions that benefited as a result of higher rejection rates for Black and Hispanic students at the nation’s 50 most selective schools.
At those top 50 schools, Black freshmen enrollment was down by 27 percent and Latino enrollment down by 10 percent.
The data from Class Action, which works to promote equity in education, was based on 2024 federal enrollment figures released in January covering more than 3,000 colleges and universities.
Data released publicly by a smaller number of schools have hinted that highly selective schools admitted fewer Black and Latino students following the Supreme Court decision, but the report was one of the first efforts to analyze the impact of the decision on enrollment demographics across a broad swath of the nation’s colleges.
While the data covers only freshmen enrollment the first year after the Supreme Court decision went into effect, it bolsters the prediction by some education experts that the decision would create a chain of consequences. Highly qualified Black and Latino students, who might have been admitted to the Ivy League and other similar schools before the Supreme Court decision, enrolled in less-selective schools as a result of the decision, potentially leading to a “cascade” of less qualified minority students enrolling in even less selective institutions.
Some research suggests that the phenomenon, called a “cascade” effect and identified in California following a statewide ban on affirmative action in 1998, may have long-term effects on employment opportunities and earnings for the students who ended up in the least selective institutions.
The new report concludes that the Supreme Court decision reduced the number of students of color at institutions with the highest graduation rates and largest median incomes after graduation, a result that the authors said could lead to persistent racial inequities in income.
While public flagship universities were the biggest beneficiaries of the shift, four-year public colleges overall also gained, with Latino freshman enrollment increasing 7 percent and Black freshman enrollment growing 4 percent.
New York Times, Trump’s Kennedy Center Shutdown Plan Jolts Workers and Performers, Adam Nagourney and Julia Jacobs, Feb. 3, 2026. The administration’s announcement to shut the center for a major overhaul led to a swirl of confusion and anxiety among performers and patrons about its future.
The abrupt announcement by President Trump that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would close this summer for a two-year construction project plunged the Washington cultural institution into uncertainty Monday, raising questions about where its orchestra would play and what would happen to its subscribers and its hundreds of employees.
“We’re kind of in shock right now,” said Anne Vantine, the president of a union local that represents box office workers. She said she had spent much of the night after the president’s announcement fielding calls and texts from Kennedy Center employees who were fearful of losing their jobs.
Leaders of the National Symphony Orchestra, who had not joined an exodus of performers protesting Mr. Trump’s actions at the center — which included the Washington National Opera — told its musicians that the center had assured them it would help find other venues where they can perform while the renovation takes place.
“The Center’s administration is committed to the National Symphony Orchestra and its role in Washington, D.C. and beyond,” the officials, Joan Bialek and Jean Davidson, said in a note to musicians, orchestra staff and the orchestra’s board of directors. “We are now working on a formal plan and will share more with you in the weeks to come.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement asserting that the center was dilapidated and needed to be closed and renovated into a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex” caught center executives, patrons, musicians, and even some members of the institution’s board of directors by surprise. The closing date, on July 4 as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, is just five months away.
His approach is a marked shift from the painstaking way cultural institutions typically approach a project like rebuilding an established concert hall. The key, several orchestra executives said, was to develop step-by-step plans to minimize the disruption for audience members, contributors and orchestra members.
“We had planned for years in advance of our construction,” said Deborah Borda, who served as president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic during the $550 million rebuilding of what is today David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. “It was very difficult and it was hard on the orchestra.”
Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump appointed to lead the Kennedy Center, has described the closure as a temporary, strategic move intended to accelerate necessary renovations on a “decrepit” building. In an email to employees on Sunday, he promised that more clarity on “staffing and operational changes” would be coming.
The decisions have the potential to affect a raft of workers, including musicians, actors, stagehands, artistic programmers, security personnel and specialists in costuming, hair and makeup. It was unclear whether the center’s marquee event — the Kennedy Center Honors, which Mr. Trump hosted in December — would move forward during the shutdown.
Legal Schnauzer, Words such as "rape," "murder," and "forcing oral sex" are directed toward President Donald Trump in claims from the DOJ's Jeffrey Epstein document dump, Roger Shuler, right, 
Feb. 3, 2026. Donald Trump twice is accused of taking actions that meet the legal definition of rape in documents from last Friday's Department of Justice (DOJ) release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Trump also was accused of being present for the murder of a newborn, according to a report from Mediaite. The complaints come in the form of uncorroborated tips to the FBI.
Writer Zachary Leeman notes that after their initial appearance, the complaints mentioning Trump were removed from the DOJ website with a “page not found” message being given to people trying to search for them. The complaints, however, have been widely copied and shared on social media. As of last night, a search still produces a "page not found" message.
As for the allegations against Trump, Leeman reports under the headline "Latest Epstein Files Include Wild Trump Allegations, including rape":
In a complaint made by a friend, the president was accused of forcing a 13-14-year-old to perform oral sex on him.
“[Redacted] reported an unidentified female friend who was forced to perform oral sex on President Trump approximately 35 years ago in NJ. The friend told Alexis that she was approximately 13-14 years old when this occurred, and the friend allegedly bit President Trump while performing oral sex. The friend was allegedly hit in the face after she laughed about biting President Trump. The friend said she was also abused by Epstein,” the complaint reads. In the “response” column, it is noted that an investigator was sent to Washington to conduct an interview.
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, acts of rape include "oral sex forced upon a victim." All of the claims against Trump are disturbing, but on a scale of depravity, the following would get my vote to be at the top:
Another complaint — for which there was no contact information provided — alleged that “calendar girls” parties at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago involved genital measurements for children.
“Jeffrey Epstein would bring the children in, and Trump would auction them off. He measured the children’s vulva and vaginas by entering a finger and rated the children on tightness,” the complaint reads.
The person alleged people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump were present at these parties.
The word "sickos" comes to mind as a descriptor for any person who would directly engage in, or be present for, such behavior. Per the FBI, acts of rape include "vaginal or anal penetration without consent."
Reading about other incidents involving Donald Trump does not get any more pleasant. Leeman writes:
Another in Epstein’s orbit made allegations of “sex trafficking” and murder. The unidentified person was following up on a tip given to the NYPD in which the person said they were raped at 13. The person also alleged Trump regularly paid them to perform sexual acts and claimed he was present when her newborn child was murdered.
“Complainant reported Donald Trump participated regularly in paying money to force her to perform sex acts with him and alleged Trump was present when her uncle murdered her newborn child,” notes on the complaint read.
According to the paperwork, there was “no contact made.” That apparently means no investigation was conducted.
Another incident involved a famed figure in the world of television. From the Mediaite report:
One complainant claimed they witnessed a “sex trafficking ring at the Trump Golf Course” in Rancho Palo Verdes, California between 1995 and 1996. The person alleged Ghislaine Maxwell, a former Epstein associate now serving 20 years for sex trafficking, was a “madam” and “broker” for deals involving girls.
The person claimed they witnessed Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host Robin Leach “strangle a young girl” at a party. The person also told of a threat from Trump’s head of security if she “ever talked.” She claimed he said she would “end up as fertilizer for the back nine holes like the other c*nts” if she spoke about what she had seen.
We are left with the following question: Who are the worst people in all of this -- Trump himself or the people he has been known to hang out with? Either way, it's a grim scenario, especially with the president of the United States involved.
U.S. Immigration, Rights, Propaganda, Justice
New York Times, Immigration Officers in Minneapolis Will Wear Body Cameras, Noem Says, Madeleine Ngo, Feb. 2, 2026 (interactive). The change comes as the federal government has provided accounts of fatal shootings that have sometimes conflicted with local officials and witness videos.
All immigration officers on the ground in Minneapolis will be equipped with body cameras, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Monday.
Ms. Noem, shown below, said that the change would be effective immediately and that the program would be expanded nationwide “as funding is available.”
“We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country,” she said in a social media post.
The announcement came in response to concern and outrage among many Americans, including lawmakers in Congress, over aggressive tactics that federal officers have used to advance President Trump’s immigration crackdown. It follows stumbles in federal officials’ accounts of fatal shootings involving federal agents, which have sometimes conflicted with those of local officials and witness videos.
Shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Good last month in Minneapolis, federal officials said she tried to run over law enforcement and the officer was acting in self defense. State and local officials quickly disputed that account, and a New York Times analysis of available footage of the encounter found no indication that the officer was run over.
Some officers in Minnesota have already been wearing body cameras. After federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen, Department of Homeland Security officials said there was body camera footage from multiple angles, which investigators would review.
A preliminary review by Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog office, based on body camera footage and other agency documentation, found that Mr. Pretti was shot by federal officers after resisting arrest, but did not indicate that he brandished a weapon during the encounter, as Ms. Noem had earlier claimed. Department of Homeland Security officials said shortly after the shooting that Mr. Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
A New York Times analysis of witness videos of the shooting found that Mr. Pretti, who had a firearms permit, had appeared disarmed before he was killed. Federal officials have not publicly released body camera footage of the shooting.
Ms. Noem said the policy change on Monday came after she spoke with Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar; the Immigration and Customs Enforcement director; and the Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said it “wasn’t my decision” but added that body cameras “generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
Lawmakers from both parties are open to providing additional funds for body cameras. The House last month passed a spending bill that would provide $20 million for purchasing body cameras for federal immigration officers after Democrats pressed for restrictions on ICE. But lawmakers have yet to reach an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security as Democrats push for a broader overhaul.
The department received a large infusion of funding last year after Congress approved roughly $170 billion over four years for immigration enforcement.
The agency has sent thousands of officers and agents to Minnesota, saying the enforcement operation is necessary to crack down on illegal immigration and promote safety. The Trump administration has similarly deployed immigration officers to Chicago, Maine and New Orleans in recent months.
In October, a federal judge in Illinois ordered federal agents already equipped with body cameras to turn them on while conducting immigration arrests and interacting with residents in the Chicago area.
Late last year, ICE told a nonprofit watchdog that it had found “no records” of body camera footage produced during its operation in Chicago. That claim raised questions as to whether the administration was fully complying with the court order and contradicted the fact that it had previously submitted video footage to a judge. In a statement in December, the Department of Homeland Security said “ICE never violated the court order.”
A portrait of Nekima Levy Armstrong, who is wearing a pink blazer. Nekima Levy Armstrong was arrested for protesting in St. Paul, Minn. She said she learned about the doctored photograph of her while she was in jail, during a phone call with her husband (New York Times photo by Victor J. Blue). Green
New York Times, ‘They Couldn’t Break Me’: A Protester, the White House and a Doctored Photo, Erica L. Green, Feb. 3, 2026. President Trump and the White House regularly circulate imagery that has been manipulated by A.I. But the photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong was different.
When Nekima Levy Armstrong was transported from the federal courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., to the Sherburne County Jail with three layers of shackles on her body — around her wrists, waist and feet — it was the closest, she said, that she had ever felt to slavery.
Still, she walked calmly, her face resolute, her head held high.
But if you saw a photograph that the White House disseminated of Ms. Levy Armstrong, who was arrested for protesting at a church service, you would not know it.
The White House posted a manipulated photo of her arrest to its official social media account, depicting Ms. Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist, as hysterical — tears streaming down her face, her hair disheveled, appearing to cry out in despair. “ARRESTED” was emblazoned across the photo, along with a misleading description of Ms. Levy Armstrong as a “far-left agitator” who was “orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”
While President Trump and the White House regularly circulate imagery altered by artificial intelligence, including demeaning and racist deepfakes, it is usually so over the top that the goal seems more about cartoonish mockery than outright deceit.
The photograph of Ms. Levy Armstrong was different. It has the hallmarks of brazen disinformation from the top level of government: smearing and humiliating one citizen in order to influence public opinion, while sending a warning to other critics to beware of crossing the administration. And it adds a new, social media-era dimension to Mr. Trump’s long record of distortions and lies in the service of his policies and political standing.
Ms. Levy Armstrong, a 49-year-old mother of four, said she learned about the photo while she was in jail, during a phone call with her husband. When she saw it for herself after she was released the next day, she said, she was “disgusted.”
The exaggerated features and the darkened skin, she said, reminded her of when the bodies of enslaved people were left disfigured to deter uprisings on plantations, or during Jim Crow when racist propaganda would depict Black people as caricatures. She said she remained “cool, calm and collected” during both her arrest and the transport to jail.
“They couldn’t break me by arresting me,” Ms. Levy Armstrong said, “so they doctored an image to show the world a false iteration of that time to make me look weak.”
“Reducing my image to some scared crying woman was just so degrading, and it just shows how far the office of the president has fallen,” Ms. Levy Armstrong said. “The presidency, the White House is supposed to symbolize the world’s greatest superpower, but instead they acted like a $2 tabloid.”
When asked about the doctored image, which The New York Times independently confirmed had been manipulated, the White House was unapologetic. Kaelan Dorr, the deputy communications director, brushed it off last week as a “meme.”
“Enforcement of the law will continue,” Mr. Dorr wrote on social media, reposting the doctored photograph. “The memes will continue.”‘A Trophy for MAGA’
The Justice Department sought to prosecute Ms. Levy Armstrong under a law that bars using or threatening force and physical obstruction to interfere with or intimidate someone worshiping at a religious institution. But she now faces charges of “conspiracy against rights,” which had been used to protect Black people from harassment by the Ku Klux Klan.
Six other protesters and two journalists, including Don Lemon, also face charges for their roles in the protests, alarming First Amendment experts. Attorney General Pam Bondi has pointed to the cases as evidence that the administration does “not tolerate attacks on places of worship.”ImageA church surrounded by pine trees in the snow.Ms. Levy Armstrong was arrested for protesting a pastor at Cities Church in St. Paul who is also an ICE official.Credit...Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Ms. Levy Armstrong, who is an ordained pastor, said that she led the protest on Jan. 18 at Cities Church to stand up for immigrants’ right to worship without fear of arrest. A leader at the church, David Easterwood, is the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office for enforcement and removal operations in St. Paul. Mr. Easterwood, who was not present at the time of the protest, has been named in a lawsuit challenging aggressive enforcement tactics.
Protesters interrupted the church service with chants of “ICE out” and “Hands up, don’t shoot.” When the pastor yelled, “Shame!” at her from the pulpit, Ms. Levy Armstrong began to lead a chant of “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old woman who was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in early January.
Videos posted on social media show the protest bringing the service to a halt and congregants moving to leave, as the chants continue and worship music begins to play.
The protest lasted about 20 minutes, Ms. Levy Armstrong said.
Four days later, on Jan. 22, federal officers arrested Ms. Levy Armstrong at a downtown Minneapolis hotel, just minutes from the federal courthouse. While her husband filmed the encounter, she asked the agents to treat her with “dignity and respect.”
She asked one of the agents why he was filming the arrest.
“It’s not going to be on Twitter,” the agent assured her.
“We don’t want to create a false narrative,” the agent added.
She said she responded that she did not want to be a “trophy for MAGA.”
But soon after her arrest, an image of Ms. Levy Armstrong was on Twitter. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, posted an arrest picture of Ms. Levy Armstrong, apparently without digital manipulation. But within hours, the doctored photo that the White House posted had ricocheted around the country. It has been viewed more than six million times.
In a social media post 48 hours before her arrest, Mr. Trump called the church protesters “agitators and insurrectionists” who should be “thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”VideoThe photograph posted to the X account of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, compared with an altered image posted to the White House’s account on X.
Legal experts said that the fake image could hurt the Justice Department’s case against Ms. Levy Armstrong. Her lawyers could use it to accuse the Trump administration of making what are known as improper extrajudicial statements.
In a court filing, Ms. Levy Armstrong’s lawyer pointed to the doctored photo as an example of political persecution and what he called an effort to “defame her” as part of the government’s “fascist offensive against the American people.”
But even if the case is not airtight legally, the social media campaign is a potent signal to protesters that they will pay a very public price for standing up to the administration.‘We Don’t Know What to Believe’
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who researches digital forensics, deepfake imagery and misinformation, said that the White House response was a troubling escalation in its use of artificial intelligence.
“I think reasonable people can say that this one was really different, because the photo was real, and it was A.I.-modified to change her facial expression, and it was not labeled such, and it wasn’t at all obvious from the context that it was a meme, as the White House wanted to say,” he said.
Mr. Farid, who is also the co-founder and chief science officer at GetReal Security, a firm that identifies A.I. misinformation, added that posting fake content alongside official business not only risked eroding the public trust — it could also backfire.
“If you are so seamlessly intermixing real and fake, why should I believe anything you do?” he asked. “Where are we as an electorate when we don’t know what to believe anymore?”
Some scholars said the doctored photo was the latest example of a history of racialized propaganda that has been weaponized against Black people, especially in eras in which they are challenging the government.
“It goes back to the images of slavery, but also of Jim Crow abuse by law enforcement, and that abuse with impunity to send a message to the Black community as a whole that we are going to not only assault but humiliate Black people who join in protest effort across the country,” said Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a law professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.‘A Wake-Up Call’
Ms. Levy Armstrong, who spent more than a decade as a law professor, has had prominent roles in protests over the last decade.
She went to Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 as a legal observer after the shooting death of Mike Brown, and went on to help organize Black Lives Matter protests after his death. She also led protests against police killings of Black men by the police, including Philando Castile, Jamar Clark and George Floyd.
White House advisor Stephen Miller, above left.
New York Times, Pretti Shooting Thrusts Border Patrol’s History of Aggressive Tactics Into View, Eileen Sullivan and Jazmine Ulloa, Feb. 3, 2026. Officials have struggled to provide oversight of the agency, even as local communities and civil rights groups have documented episodes of violence.
It happened in a remote area near Laredo, Texas, not far from the Rio Grande in May 2018. Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez, 20, of Guatemala, was walking with a group of other migrants when a Border Patrol agent spotted them in the brush. Most of the others ran, but Ms. Gomez, unarmed, took a step forward. The agent shot her in the head.
Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol’s parent agency, initially said that she and others were throwing blunt objects at the agent, but later changed its description, no longer describing her as an assailant. The F.B.I. reviewed the case and declined to pursue criminal charges, according to a lawsuit filed by her family.
The incident was one of many brutal and violent episodes in the 100-year history of the Border Patrol, which has typically operated on the furthest edges of the country, outside of the view of many Americans.
The fatal killing of protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month reflects what critics say is a longstanding ethos of aggressiveness that permeates the agency and was imported into U.S. cities through President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Despite multiple efforts over the years to provide greater oversight of the agency, there is still not data available about how the use of force by Border Patrol agents compares to that of other federal law enforcement officers. But local communities and civil rights groups have documented a long pattern of aggressive tactics that raises questions about how frequently the Border Patrol uses excessive force.
“There have been concerns over use of force policies within C.B.P. for many years,” said Dan Herman, a former adviser on accountability and transparency at the agency during part of the Biden administration.
Former officials say the Border Patrol’s insular culture and often a lack of consequences for its actions have stymied efforts to bring more transparency and discipline, even as new policies on training and use of force were put in place.
Then Mr. Trump made the Border Patrol a central player in immigration enforcement, deploying agents to cities across the country last year. At the helm was Greg Bovino, an outspoken sector chief who joined in 1996 and rose through the ranks of the agency into leadership positions.
“Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to,” Mr. Bovino told agents in Los Angeles in August. “It’s all about us now.”
New York Times, Chaos in Minneapolis Exposes an Internet at War With Truth, Stuart A. Thompson, Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers, Feb. 3, 2026. Technological advances and an erosion of trust have transformed the way news unfolds online, distorting shared reality.
The deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of law enforcement have plunged the country into a political crisis much like the one after the police killing of George Floyd in the same city in 2020.
Now, though, advances in technology and an erosion of trust are distorting realities, both online and off, like never before.
Enormous changes have transformed the internet in the six years since Mr. Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Artificial intelligence tools did not exist for general use in 2020; now they are everywhere. Social media has become even more toxic. Efforts to moderate it have loosened.
The influencers behind some of the most pernicious digital lies, who once toiled in the dark corners of the internet, are now emboldened, promoted on major platforms and even mimicked by some of the most powerful people in the country.
All of these forces came together with newfound intensity in the opening weeks of the year. After federal immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, A.I. fakes of the victims spread, genuine videos were viewed with suspicion, a Democratic lawmaker displayed an altered image on the Senate floor and online sleuths misidentified random people as being the agents involved in the shootings. The federal government spread an altered image and backed provably false narratives.
Experts fear that Americans are losing their ability to distinguish between fact and fiction — and that fewer people seem to care about the difference. The online churn that now accompanies any major news event obscures the common reference points that once helped guide the country forward. With technology, impudence and apathy all colliding at once, the shock to American attitudes toward reality — and the public consensus required by the democratic experiment — may be a permanent one, experts said.
“In moments past, we thought that this online fever would break, and now it is a systemic feature rather than a bug,” said Graham Brookie, the senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies online communities. “This is just how it is right now — we’re all collectively navigating that for the worse.”
Although these volatile forces have been amassing for years, the collective threat they posed remained largely theoretical. Even compared with the informational chaos of 2020, which included Covid-19 conspiracy theories and baseless claims of election fraud, facts and truth now face a far more hostile environment. Disinformation watchdogs are under increasing political pressure from Republicans, and researchers have lost funding.
The audience for fact checks is far outstripped by interest in false and misleading posts. Initiatives at social media platforms such as X and Facebook to limit or remove such content have been slashed or abandoned, leaving the digital sewage to flow directly to users.
Social media is flooded with so much dubious content, such as realistic dupes of celebrity events, that many users appear to be worn down by the effort required to establish what is genuine.
The result: an “authenticity collapse,” said Alon Yamin, the chief executive of Copyleaks, which offers tools to detect the presence of A.I. in content.
“The internet is lying by default, and the media ecosystem is just flooded with content that you know looks real, sounds real but is definitely not real,” he said. “There is a danger here of almost losing touch with reality.”
In 2020, Mr. Floyd’s murder was also shadowed by falsehoods, but they were mostly limited to conspiracy theories shared in p
More On U.S. Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Era of Trump, William Kristol, right, Feb. 3, 2026. I know that we’ve referred to the “Trump era” many times. But for some reason it struck me anew how long and how historically important this era is. It’s not a blip, a fever that breaks, or a temporary aberration. It’s part of American history—a sizable part.
Ten years ago, in early February 2016, it was still unclear that Trump would be that year’s Republican nominee. On February 1, he placed second in the Iowa caucuses. But the rest of February featured Trump victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. And then on March 1, Super Tuesday, Trump won seven of the eleven contests and was well on his way to the nomination. And then the general election. And then so on, for the next ten long years.
It’s sad but true: Trump has been the dominant figure in American political life for a decade. The only presidents of comparable historical heft in the past century have been Franklin D. Roosevelt, left, elected four times to the presidency and then succeeded by his vice president, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan, elected twice and then succeeded by his vice president, George H.W. Bush.
FDR and Reagan are surely the figures around whom historians will organize their accounts of America in the twentieth century. FDR led us out of the Depression and to victory in World War II. Reagan took us out of the malaise of the 1970s and to victory in the Cold War. Without getting into a million historical debates, I think it would be hard to quarrel with the claim that they are the dominant figures of American politics in the twentieth century.
And Trump? I’m afraid it’s hard to deny that he is by far the most consequential figure of American politics in the twenty-first century so far. His legacy will be negative. He’ll be known for inspiring a riot at the Capitol, not for legislation passed in the Capitol. His legacy would be a destructive one—ending the American-led world order abroad, and destroying the guardrails that have heretofore protected, however uncertainly and awkwardly at times, constitutional government at home. But he may turn out to be as important a historical figure as FDR or Reagan.
Our era—Trump’s era—is an unfortunate one in the history of the American republic. It’s a dangerous one. And let’s be honest, it’s a disgraceful one.
In his great 1838 speech “On The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” Lincoln entertained the possibility that our system of self-government would face a threat from someone who would belong “to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle,” from “an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon.” Lincoln asked, “Is it unreasonable then to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us?” And he feared that we wouldn’t be strong enough to resist the assault of such a figure on our institutions.
One thing that’s so disgraceful about the present moment is that we don’t face some kind of world-historical or formidable foe of the sort Lincoln imagined. We have been unable to defeat the designs of a second-rate demagogue and grifter, aided by third-rate bigots and authoritarians, and surrounded by fourth-rate opportunists and conspiracists.
And all of this is happening not after the great shocks of a depression or a world war, not at a time when the country was reeling from earth-shattering events and was unprepared to deal with new threats. The rise of Trump came at a time of relative peace and prosperity. We have no excuse for having succumbed to the degree we already have.
What Lincoln said back in 1838 remains the case today. We found ourselves
under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of . . . a political edifice of liberty and equal rights.
All we had to do, as Lincoln put it, was to transmit this noble edifice “undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”
It would be a dreadful thing to be the generation that failed in this task. To this terrible failure would be added the humiliation of defeat by such unworthy and unimpressive opponents.
So if fighting the good fight for this republic means having to spend another three years—or more—feeling like we’re enduring one Groundhog Day after another, so be it. We can’t expect a magical Bill de Blasio–like moment of dramatic relief. But fighting such a fight is a small price to pay for what’s at stake. And one day, we hope and trust, we will prevail, and the era of Trump will be no more.
As Sarah always remind us, the authoritarians want us tired, doubtful, and demoralized. How do we stay happy warriors for the next ten years, if that’s what it takes?
AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick Hits
THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD: Are Donald Trump and his mooks going to try to steal the midterm elections? Saying that’s a real danger is the sort of thing that can still somehow get you accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome—even though Trump himself is saying more openly than ever that he’d like to do just that.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump said Monday to Dan Bongino, who left podcasting last year to become deputy FBI director and left the FBI this year to get back to podcasting. “We should take over the voting in at least fifteen places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
This would be breathtaking stuff from anybody even with zero additional context. To say the federal government ought to seize control of state elections is a straightforward assault on the plain text of the Constitution. And to say one of the two major parties should administer them is a ludicrous attack on the very idea of free and fair elections.
And of course, the actual context makes it worse, since this isn’t just some schmuck saying this: It’s the president of the United States, one who has never admitted he actually lost any election at any level, who has himself tried to steal a presidential election before, and whose fantasy view of what a “fair” election would look like flies past the absurd and into the surreal. Here he was in the same interview talking about the blue state of Minnesota, which hasn’t voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 1972: “I won that state three times, but I got no credit for it. I won that state three times, but it’s a rigged state. Really rigged badly.”
We’ll just keep asking: Does that sound like the sort of guy who’s going to sit back and let the people vote for a blue wave?Subscribed
NO SPRINGFIELD CRACKDOWN YET: In recent weeks, many have speculated that the site of the next major ICE crackdown could be Springfield, Ohio. The city’s population of Haitian migrants, legally in the country on temporary protected status, became the target of astonishingly racist attacks during the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump and JD Vance spread invented social-media rumors that Haitians had been kidnapping and eating local pets.
But the crackdown seems unlikely to arrive quite on schedule. The TPS authorization for Haitians was originally set to expire today, after Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem revoked the protected status back in November. Last night, however, a federal judge temporarily blocked that change from going into effect, ruling that Noem had not based her decision on an assessment of whether it would be safe for Haitians to return to Haiti but on her “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” Legally, Judge Ana Reyes ruled, that was a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act—but she made it clear that it was a gross moral violation as well.
DHS has promised to appeal: “Supreme Court, here we come,” wrote spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
IT’S FOR YOU AND IT’S THE PRESIDENT: That the FBI raided a Fulton County election office last week hunting for 2020 Georgia election irregularities is shocking enough on its own. But according to a new New York Times report, the shocking stuff didn’t end there:
Behind closed doors, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, met with some of the same F.B.I. agents, members of the bureau’s field office in Atlanta, which is conducting the election inquiry, three people with knowledge of the meeting said. They could not say why Ms. Gabbard, who also appeared on site at the search, was there, but her continued presence has raised eyebrows given that her role overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies does not include on-site involvement in criminal investigative work.
What occurred during the meeting was even further outside the bounds of normal law enforcement procedure. Ms. Gabbard used her cellphone to call Mr. Trump, who did not initially pick up but called back shortly after, the people said.
The president addressed the agents on speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking them for their work on the inquiry, the three people said.
What we’re seeing in Trump 2.0 isn’t just the collapse of any sort of wall of separation between the Justice Department and the White House. It’s the abandonment even of any pretense of impartiality. Trump lives in a world where he doesn’t think he will pay the slightest political price for even the most astonishing political corruption. Guess we’ll soon find out if he’s right.
U.S. Markets, Jobs, Economy, High Tech
New York Times, Former Farming Leaders Warn U.S. Agriculture Could Face ‘Widespread Collapse,’ Linda Qiu, Feb. 3, 2026. A group of past government officials and the former heads of farming associations issued a dire warning to members of Congress.
Current economic conditions and Trump administration policies could lead to “a widespread collapse of American agriculture,” a bipartisan coalition of former Agriculture Department officials and leaders of farm groups warned in a letter on Tuesday.
The letter to the heads and ranking members of the House and Senate agricultural committees was signed by 27 influential figures in the farming sector, including former heads of powerful associations representing corn and soybean farmers and officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations. It expressed dismay at the “damage done to American farmers.”
While there are many reasons for increasing farm bankruptcies and decreasing profits, “it is clear that the current administration’s actions, along with congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” the letter warned.
The signatories called on Congress to relax tariffs for the agriculture sector, expand international markets, pass a new farm bill and restore funding for agriculture research and staffing.
“Our farmers and ranchers can compete with the world, but they can’t compete with the world with a chaotic set of policy circumstances,” one of the signers, Jon Doggett, the former chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association, said in an interview.
The letter began as informal conversations between retired colleagues about the Trump administration’s economic policies harming the farm economy, Mr. Doggett said. While many farmers share those concerns, Mr. Doggett worried that “we’re not having those conversations in an open and meaningful way.”
“We really want to see more open, frank conversations with room to disagree, so that we can move forward on policy initiatives that are in the best interest of farmers and ranchers across the United States,” he said.
U.S. Education, Media, Culture, Arts
New York Times, Trump’s Kennedy Center Shutdown Plan Jolts Workers and Performers, Adam Nagourney and Julia Jacobs, Feb. 3, 2026. The administration’s announcement to shut the center for a major overhaul led to a swirl of confusion and anxiety among performers and patrons about its future.
The abrupt announcement by President Trump that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would close this summer for a two-year construction project plunged the Washington cultural institution into uncertainty Monday, raising questions about where its orchestra would play and what would happen to its subscribers and its hundreds of employees.
“We’re kind of in shock right now,” said Anne Vantine, the president of a union local that represents box office workers. She said she had spent much of the night after the president’s announcement fielding calls and texts from Kennedy Center employees who were fearful of losing their jobs.
Leaders of the National Symphony Orchestra, who had not joined an exodus of performers protesting Mr. Trump’s actions at the center — which included the Washington National Opera — told its musicians that the center had assured them it would help find other venues where they can perform while the renovation takes place.
“The Center’s administration is committed to the National Symphony Orchestra and its role in Washington, D.C. and beyond,” the officials, Joan Bialek and Jean Davidson, said in a note to musicians, orchestra staff and the orchestra’s board of directors. “We are now working on a formal plan and will share more with you in the weeks to come.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement asserting that the center was dilapidated and needed to be closed and renovated into a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex” caught center executives, patrons, musicians, and even some members of the institution’s board of directors by surprise. The closing date, on July 4 as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, is just five months away.
His approach is a marked shift from the painstaking way cultural institutions typically approach a project like rebuilding an established concert hall. The key, several orchestra executives said, was to develop step-by-step plans to minimize the disruption for audience members, contributors and orchestra members.
“We had planned for years in advance of our construction,” said Deborah Borda, who served as president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic during the $550 million rebuilding of what is today David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. “It was very difficult and it was hard on the orchestra.”
Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump appointed to lead the Kennedy Center, has described the closure as a temporary, strategic move intended to accelerate necessary renovations on a “decrepit” building. In an email to employees on Sunday, he promised that more clarity on “staffing and operational changes” would be coming.
The decisions have the potential to affect a raft of workers, including musicians, actors, stagehands, artistic programmers, security personnel and specialists in costuming, hair and makeup. It was unclear whether the center’s marquee event — the Kennedy Center Honors, which Mr. Trump hosted in December — would move forward during the shutdown.
New York Times, Trump Drops Demand for Cash From Harvard After Stiff Resistance, Michael C. Bender, Michael S. Schmidt and Alan Blinder, Feb. 3, 2026 (print ed.). The Trump administration has lowered the bar for a deal with the university, backtracking on its insistence on a $200 million payment to the government, The New York Times has learned.
President Trump has backtracked on a major point in negotiations with Harvard, dropping his administration’s demand for a $200 million payment to the government in hopes of finally resolving the administration’s conflicts with the university, according to four people briefed on the matter.
Harvard has been the top target in Mr. Trump’s sweeping campaign to exert more control over higher education. Hard-liners in his administration had wanted Harvard to write a check to the U.S. Treasury as part of a deal to address claims that university officials mishandled antisemitism, The New York Times previously reported. But Harvard, wary of backlash from liberal students and faculty, has rejected the idea.
Trump administration officials have indicated in recent days that the president no longer expects such a payment, according to the Harvard and Trump officials briefed on the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The White House’s concession comes amid sagging approval ratings for Mr. Trump, and as he faces outrage over immigration enforcement tactics and the shooting deaths of two Americans by federal agents in Minnesota. A deal with Harvard would hand the president a victory at a difficult time in his presidency.
But those same factors could also torpedo a deal, as some Harvard leaders now consider the risk of backlash even higher if they are seen as having any hand in easing the pressure on Mr. Trump, according to one person familiar with their thinking.
Some connected to the university, however, think Harvard has no option but to eventually cut a deal. The administration has repeatedly attempted to cut off research grants, which would be an untenable crisis. Like many major research universities, Harvard relies on federal funding for its financial model.
Harvard’s top governing board was scheduled to meet Monday and was expected to discuss Mr. Trump’s concession on money, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. A Harvard spokesman declined to comment about the latest shift in the talks.
“Negotiations with Harvard are ongoing,” said Madi Biedermann, the acting chief of staff for the Education Department. “The administration’s goal with Harvard, as with all its work on higher education, is to ensure campuses properly enforce civil rights laws, students are learning in an environment free from harassment and intimidation and campuses once again prioritize truth-seeking and merit.”An Encounter at Davos
The latest chapter in the saga between Harvard and the White House opened two weeks ago in a tiny town in the Swiss Alps.Editors’ PicksA Family of Three in a SoHo Loft Without WallsYahya Abdul-Mateen II Starts His Days With This Podcast36 Hours on Vieques, P.R.
Mr. Trump had visited Davos to speak at the World Economic Forum, where he crossed paths with Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire investment executive who has taken a role in the negotiations between Harvard and the White House. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Schwarzman to call him about the deal, according to four Trump administration and Harvard officials involved with the negotiations who were briefed on the matter.
The two men spoke last week, the people said, and Mr. Trump made clear he would no longer demand a $200 million payment from the university if that concession would secure the deal. The two sides have discussed additional terms, including provisions that affirm Harvard’s commitment to following federal law.
Linda McMahon, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, conveyed a similar message to Mr. Schwarzman last week in a separate conversation, saying that the administration was willing to forget about the fine, the officials said. Mr. Schwarzman declined to comment.
The Times reported in July that Harvard was willing to spend $500 million on work force programs as part of the deal. But the university rejected a more recent push by hard-liners in the administration to require the university to make $200 million of that a direct payment to the government, believing it would jeopardize its independence.
The administration’s new position may have found a more receptive audience last year, when top Harvard officials, including Dr. Alan Garber, the president of the university, had a strong desire to cut a deal that preserved the school’s ability to compete for federal research grants.
Recently, some top Harvard officials have grown uneasy about striking any deal while the administration’s actions are drawing scrutiny and rebukes. University negotiators also observed as other deals with the administration have gone awry.
For instance, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania agreed to deals that appeared to resolve issues between the school and the administration. Penn agreed to align its policies to the administration’s strict definitions of gender, while Brown agreed to similar changes plus $50 million of spending on work force programs.
But the administration later returned to both universities, asking leaders to sign on to a “compact” that would have offered greater access to research funding in exchange for an embrace of Mr. Trump’s policies. Both universities rejected the offer.
In another example, early in Mr. Trump’s second term, major law firms avoided federal sanctions after signing deals with the administration in which they agreed to do pro bono work. Mr. Trump then told the firms the pro bono requirements could be satisfied by tending to his personal legal problems. The firms later started doing free work for the Commerce Department.Harvard’s CalculusHarvard has also seen that it can survive bombardment from the White House.
Last year, a federal judge in Boston both restored Harvard’s federal funding and rebuffed the administration’s effort to block international students from enrolling. Though the administration launched a variety of civil investigations into the school, none of the inquiries have turned into criminal investigations. And the administration, despite threats, has not followed through on having the university disqualified as a federal contractor.
Dr. Garber’s leadership, meanwhile, is being praised, including by rival universities.
On Tuesday, Dr. Garber, who became president of Harvard in 2024, was honored by Yale University as a “legend in leadership,” in large part because of his pushback on the White House.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Yale School of Management professor who announced the award, described Dr. Garber as “American higher education’s most consequential defender of academic freedom.” (Yale also presented an award to James E. Ryan, the former president of the University of Virginia who was forced out under pressure from Mr. Trump’s Justice Department.)
In a lengthy email to the Harvard community on Thursday, Dr. Garber made no direct reference to the university’s negotiations with the Trump administration. But writing that “no institution can solve the hardest problems alone,” he argued that Harvard needed to “strengthen collaborations with other colleges, universities, research organizations and industry partners.”
More Global News
New York Times, On Eve of Peace Talks, Russia Hits Power Plants in Frigid Ukraine, Maria Varenikova, Feb. 3, 2026. Missiles overnight targeted electrical facilities in Kyiv and other parts of the country, according to local authorities, despite President Trump’s request for a pause.
A day before scheduled peace talks with Ukraine, Russia resumed attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure on Tuesday, striking power plants with missiles in several regions as temperatures plunged to minus-13 degrees Fahrenheit in the capital, Kyiv.
The attacks ended an informal, short-lived “energy cease-fire” between Russia and Ukraine that officials had called a confidence-building gesture for peace negotiations. The talks have entered a new phase as Russian and Ukrainian officials have begun meeting face to face for the first time in months.
On Thursday, President Trump said that he had asked President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to halt attacks for a week. Mr. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, confirmed the pause but said it would last only until Sunday.
The revived strikes on Ukraine’s energy system are part of a major campaign this winter intended to freeze Ukrainians into submission. Russia hit power plants in at least six regions on Tuesday, including Kyiv, officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that the attacks revealed Russia’s true intentions, with peace negotiations set to continue on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.
“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people is more important to Russia than turning to diplomacy,” Mr. Zelensky said on social media. He added that Russia had used 70 missiles and 450 drones in the overnight attacks. It was the largest bombardment of Russian missiles in more than a year.
New York Times, China’s Generals Are Disappearing, Amy Chang Chien, Agnes Chang and Chris Buckley, Feb. 3, 2026. For three years, Xi Jinping has been cleaning out his military elite, bringing high-level dismissals and disappearances to nearly every arm of the military.
Feb. 2
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: This Isn’t What De-escalation Looks Like, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Feb. 2, 2026. Think you’ve lost your capacity to be shocked by stories of Donald Trump’s open corruption?
Try this one on for size: The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that a UAE sheikh bought a 49 percent stake in the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial last year, four days before Trump’s inauguration, with a cool $187 million flowing immediately and directly into Trump-family coffers. Another $31 million went to the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s U.S. envoy to the Middle East. Happy Monday.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Deal to End Government Shutdown Faces Turmoil in House, Staff Reports, Feb. 2, 2026. What We’re Covering Today.
Mr. Trump said after a call with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, rright, that the two countries had agreed to lower tariffs between the two countries. Mr. Trump said India had agreed to stop buying Russian oil and increase purchases of American goods, but he offered only sparse details. U.S. tariffs on goods from India would drop to 18 percent from 50 percent, he said.The U.S. government partially shut down over the weekend, as part of a continuing clash over the Trump administration’s immigration policies after federal agents killed two American citizens in Minnesota.
The Senate on Friday passed legislation to fund much of the government and keep the Department of Homeland Security running for two weeks while Republicans negotiated with Democrats on new limits they were demanding on federal immigration agents.
But the agreement did not come together in time to avert a lapse in funding on Saturday morning, and its fate was uncertain in the House, which still must clear the measure and send it to President Trump’s desk to fully reopen the government.
House Republican leaders, who have a minuscule majority and many rank-and-file members opposed to the deal, do not plan to bring it up before Tuesday. Still, Mr. Trump has endorsed the agreement, putting pressure on his own party to embrace it.
The current shutdown is much more limited in scope than last year’s 43-day closure, when hundreds of thousands of federal employees were furloughed and many others worked without pay.
Here’s what to know about the partial shutdown: Why have parts of the government shut down?
The previous government shutdown ended in November with a measure to fund the federal government at the same spending levels through Jan. 30. In the meantime, members of Congress negotiated and began passing the spending bills for the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30.
Then came the unrest in Minnesota, where the Trump administration launched a wide-ranging immigration crackdown led by the Department of Homeland Security. In January, federal agents shot and killed two unarmed U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — in Minneapolis, prompting public outrage.
In response, Democrats in Congress blocked the broader spending package — which included $64.4 billion for D.H.S. — saying they would not hand any more funding to the department without substantial reforms.
They demanded that the homeland security funding be removed from the rest of the deal while they worked out a separate compromise with Mr. Trump and Republicans for restrictions on the administration's immigration crackdown.
By Friday, a deal had been reached. The Senate passed a bipartisan spending package to fund most of the government and keep D.H.S. running for two weeks while Democrats and Mr. Trump continue to negotiate.
But the House could not pass the compromise deal before a lapse in federal funding that started on Saturday morning.
Which departments are affected?
This shutdown — even if it lasts longer than Tuesday — will be less sweeping in its impact than the last one, which led to the mass furloughing of government employees and ensnared funding for welfare programs.
This time, lawmakers have agreed on much of the funding for next year, meaning that fewer departments will be affected. Funds for some key benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — widely known as food stamps — have already been appropriated.
But the package that has been held up funds a broad swath of the government. The Department of Homeland Security includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration. Also on hold is $838.7 billion in defense spending, as well as money for the departments of Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, Transportation and State.When will the partial shutdown end?
Speaker Mike Johnson, right, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he was confident the House would pass the spending package “at least by Tuesday.” Republican leaders issued a schedule on Monday morning that indicated the package would not receive a vote before then, and left the precise timing uncertain.
The House Rules Committee was expected to meet on Monday afternoon to tee up the vote.
Mr. Trump has appeared eager to avoid another lengthy shutdown and instructed Republicans to back the deal. But it is fragile and could still fall apart. Many in his party are livid at the notion of making concessions to Democrats on immigration enforcement, and unhappy with the broader spending package, the product of bipartisan negotiations that rejects many of the deepest cuts that the G.O.P. wanted.
At the same time, many House Democrats do not want to vote for a package that includes any homeland security money — even one that keeps spending flat for two weeks and holds out the possibility of new restrictions on ICE tactics.
Could another shutdown be ahead?
Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, said in an interview with The New York Times that Mr. Trump called him last week to negotiate a way forward to avoid yet another government shutdown.
“He says, ‘Chuck, I hate shutdowns. I don’t like shutdowns. We’ve got to stop them,’” Mr. Schumer said as he recalled his conversation with Mr. Trump. “And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, the thing you have to do is rein in ICE.’”
If the legislation passes as expected, it will fund the bulk of the government through Sept. 30. But the Department of Homeland Security will have just two weeks of funding, lasting until Feb. 13. Democrats are demanding guardrails on its immigration operations — including unmasking federal agents, ending indiscriminate sweeps and requiring warrants for stops and arrests — in exchange for funding it for the rest of the year.
Negotiations over those limits promise to be thorny. Many Republicans are vehemently opposed to reining in ICE. If no deal can be reached and Democrats stick to their demands, the Department of Homeland Security could shut down starting on Feb. 14.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release the monthly jobs report on Friday as scheduled because of the partial government shutdown, an agency spokeswoman said Monday.
The statistical agency, which is part of the Labor Department, suspended operations when funding lapsed over the weekend. Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner, said the report would be “rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding.”
The latest delay comes as the agency was still struggling to get back on schedule following the monthlong lapse in funding last fall. That shutdown led to the bureau to cancel the October jobs report outright and led to other disruptions that made it difficult for economists and policymakers to assess the state of the labor market.
Trump National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard is shown at center participating in a highly unusual raid in Georgia whereby federal authorities seized truckloads of 2020 ballots and other voting records from the majority Democratic Fulton County, home to Atlanta, in suspected preparations for federal efforts to suppress voting in the mid-term 2026 elections as Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, above left, and Democratic Congressman Jim Hines, above right, raise question about why a top official with no law enforcement background or mandate would be participating in a raid of local voter records collections -- especially when top Republican officials in Georgia stated that the Trump lost the 2020 election in a fair contest there
New York Times, Trump Had Unusual Call With F.B.I. Agents After Election Center Search, William K. Rashbaum, Devlin Barrett and Julian E. Barnes, Feb. 2, 2026. Tulsi Gabbard’s role in brokering the call and President Trump’s decision to directly press frontline agents on the inquiry are outside the bounds of typical procedure, The Times has learned.
By any measure, the F.B.I.’s search of an election center in Fulton County, Ga., last week was extraordinary. Agents seized truckloads of 2020 ballots, as President Trump harnessed the levers of government to not only buttress his false claims of widespread voter fraud, but also to try to build a criminal case against those he believes wronged him.
What happened the next day was in some ways even more unusual, The New York Times has learned.
Behind closed doors, Tulsi Gabbard, right, the director of national intelligence, met with some of the same F.B.I. agents, members of the bureau’s field office in Atlanta, which is conducting the election inquiry, three people with knowledge of the meeting said. Neither could say why Ms. Gabbard, who also appeared on site at the search, was there, but her continued presence has raised eyebrows given that her role overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies does not include on-site involvement in criminal investigative work.
What occurred during the meeting was even further outside the bounds of normal law enforcement procedure. Ms. Gabbard used her cellphone to call Mr. Trump, who did not initially pick up but called back shortly after, the people said.
The president addressed the agents on speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking them for their work on the inquiry, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.
The supervisor of the squad, which investigates allegations of public corruption and civil rights violations and developed the evidence for the search, primarily fielded Mr. Trump’s queries, the people said. One U.S. official said the call was fairly short, perhaps just a minute long, and compared the conversation to a pep rally or a coach giving an encouraging halftime speech to his players. That person said the president gave no substantive direction to the investigators.
Mr. Trump personally ordered Ms. Gabbard to go to Atlanta for the search, and coordinated her actions with Andrew Bailey, one of two deputy F.B.I. directors, according to the U.S. official.
A White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, defended the administration’s efforts in Georgia. “President Trump pledged to secure America’s elections, and he has tasked the most talented team of patriots to do just that,” Mr. Ingle said, adding: “President Trump has full confidence in his entire team. D.N.I. Gabbard and F.B.I. Director Patel are working together to implement the president’s election integrity priorities, and their work continues to serve him and the entire country well.”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment. The F.B.I. declined to comment on an open investigation.
Even for a president who has radically transformed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. by trampling over their political independence and using them as tools for personal retribution, Mr. Trump appears to be taking that kind of involvement to a new level. Rather than going to senior department or F.B.I. officials, Mr. Trump spoke directly to the frontline agents doing the granular work of a politically sensitive investigation in which he has a large personal stake.
Last month, the president, in declaring once again that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, left little doubt about his intentions.
“People will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” he said in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, denied that Mr. Trump had played any role in the search or that he had been briefed on the inquiry.
“I don’t believe he was involved,” he said. “This is a criminal grand jury investigation, and I can’t comment on it.”
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist's rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.
The Parnas Perspective, Political News, Commentary, Trump Upset After Being Called out at Grammys as More, Significant Allegations Surface in Epstein Files, Aaron Parnas, right, Feb. 2, 2026. I stayed up late reviewing additional Epstein files and what I found was both critical and deeply disturbing.
Donald Trump is furious that the Grammys called him out and is now threatening to sue Trevor Noah. At the same time, the Department of Justice distributed child sexual abuse material to the public, including nude images of children, in a staggering violation of the law. New Epstein files also reveal fresh allegations involving Trump and other powerful, wealthy figures.
Because of the work I am doing to review and expose these files, I have become a target. The attacks have been aggressive, but they are not surprising. People close to this White House do not want the Epstein files to stay in the news cycle. They want silence. They will not get it.
I am not stopping. Not now, not ever. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has reached out with support and encouragement. It means more than I can put into words. If you want to help sustain this work and expand its reach, please consider subscribing or gifting a subscription. Let’s keep building this together and keep the truth in the light.
Here’s the news:
Overnight, the Department of Justice took down another file that I sent to the DOJ where it failed to redact the faces of more than one dozen Epstein survivors. I have spent the past 24 hours emailing with the DOJ in an effort to remove files that have publicly identifying information of survivors. If the DOJ won’t protect the survivors, we have to.
An Epstein file referencing an FBI presentation created after mid-2025 alleges that Jeffrey Epstein instructed an accuser to give Harvey Weinstein a massage, during which Weinstein allegedly demanded she remove her shirt and threatened to have others force her when she refused; the document also notes allegations involving Donald Trump and Prince Andrew. The full file is here.
The Department of Justice redacted Donald Trump’s face in the Epstein files. At the same time, the DOJ failed to redact the faces, names, and other personal information of more than one dozen survivors. Here is the file the DOJ failed to redact Trump’s name in:
May be a Twitter screenshot of text that says 'Steve Bannon 02:35:25 pm The 'Main Line' WASPs want to learn about nationalism before they are devoured htt:/:/w/.ototeoso/o/o woi/o/ 223572 P'
An Epstein files release by the U.S. Department of Justice mistakenly published dozens of unredacted nude photos showing survivors with faces visible, prompting outrage from survivors and lawyers after The New York Times alerted officials. The images, tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s personal collection and properties, were later removed or redacted, but victims said the disclosure was deeply harmful and retraumatizing, citing broader, inconsistent failures to protect victims’ identities while shielding powerful figures’ names.
An Epstein file suggests Jeffrey Epstein helped arrange a 2018 interview between Elon Musk and The New York Times, citing a message attributed to NYT financial reporter and Epstein associate Landon Thomas that praised the booking: “The Elon get was epic. You delivered!”
An Epstein file contains messages claiming Jeffrey Epstein did not die by suicide and asserting links to a broader international case, stating: “Just heard about Epstein… we don’t believe it was suicide… you need to listen to what we have as evidence,” and adding, “This case… is most certainly connected to yours… Prince Phillip is small fry compared to what we have uncovered,” suggesting alleged proof of wider, more powerful figures being involved. Here is the full file.
An Epstein file includes a line item reading “Quote for massage room walls in fur is $21,800,” documenting an expensive furnishing request tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s properties and adding to records detailing the lavish and unusual expenditures associated with his residences.
ABC News has confirmed that lawyers for more than 200 alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein are asking federal judges to order the U.S. Department of Justice to immediately take down its Epstein files website, arguing that massive redaction failures exposed victims’ names, addresses, and financial details, including those of minors. The attorneys call the disclosure an “unfolding emergency,” saying thousands of errors in recent releases have caused ongoing, irreversible harm and harassment.
Donald Trump harshly criticized the Grammy Awards telecast as “virtually unwatchable” and threatened legal action against host Trevor Noah after a joke linking Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, insisting he never visited Epstein’s island, denying any wrongdoing despite references to him in Justice Department files, and calling the remark false, defamatory, and grounds for a lawsuit.
At the Grammy Awards, many of music’s biggest stars openly protested the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, wearing “ICE OUT” pins and using acceptance speeches to denounce U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, share immigrant family stories, and condemn recent enforcement actions and deaths—marking a stronger, more coordinated political stand than earlier awards shows and reflecting growing cultural backlash against mass deportations. This is what Bad Bunny had to say ahead of his halftime show at the Super Bowl this weekend:
Mike Johnson, right, is racing to prevent a prolonged partial government shutdown as Congress battles over funding and oversight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With backing from Donald Trump, Republicans are advancing a short-term funding extension for the Department of Homeland Security, while Democrats demand stricter limits on ICE practices such as ending roving patrols, requiring warrants, and forcing agents to identify themselves.
A measles outbreak forced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to halt all movement at the South Texas Family Residential Center, quarantining detainees after confirmed infections and intensifying concerns about health and safety for detained families, including children, amid a nationwide surge in measles cases and mounting criticism of the administration’s detention policies following high-profile arrests tied to immigration operations in Minneapolis.
The Guardian has confirmed that construction has resumed on four major offshore wind projects after federal judges rejected efforts by Donald Trump’s administration to halt them on national security grounds, allowing nearly five gigawatts of clean energy—enough to power about 3.5 million homes—to move forward on the US east coast.
A public health crisis is developing in Minneapolis as fear of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and federal enforcement in the Twin Cities has driven many residents — including U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents — to avoid routine and emergency healthcare, skip appointments, delay care, or rely on alternate services like home visits and telehealth.
Israel has agreed to a limited reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, allowing a small number of wounded and ill 
Palestinians to leave each day under joint security checks, offering modest relief after months of isolation as tens of thousands still await medical evacuation and broader ceasefire talks inch forward.
Israel plans to seize and redevelop a large historic archaeological site near Sebastia in the occupied West Bank, prompting Palestinian outrage that the project—backed by far-right ministers—is a pretext for land expropriation and settlement expansion that would cut residents off from key heritage, tourism income, and olive groves.
Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter after “seeing his shadow” during the annual Groundhog Day ceremony at Gobbler’s Knob, where tens of thousands gathered for the long-running tradition popularized by the film Groundhog Day.
Donald Trump, in a collages with Russia's Vladimir Putin and Jeffrey Epstein (image via The Hartmann Report)
The Hartmann Report, Political Analysis On The Manchurian Billionaire: How Trump’s Rise Mirrors Every Classic Intelligence Takeover, Thom, Hartmann, right, Feb. 2, 2026. Debt, ego, sexual compromise, and fear: why Trump’s behavior makes sense only when you realize he’s been in Putin's pocket for years…
The British newspaper Daily Mail is out with a deeply researched investigative report, the result of a long collaboration between columnists Glen Owen and Dan Hodges, along with Mark Hookham (Assistant Editor Investigations), and Daisy Graham-Brown (Investigative Reporter).
It’s shocking in its detail and its implication that Putin has basically owned Trump for years, even before he ran for president in 2016.
They note of last week’s partial (about 50%) Epstein document release:
“The files include 1,056 documents naming Russian President Vladimir Putin and 9,629 referring to Moscow. Epstein even seems to have secured audiences with Putin after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.”
Essentially, they’re arguing that Epstein was running an operation on behalf of the KGB/Putin that lured wealthy and powerful men to Epstein’s New York and Palm Beach mansions and his island where they were surreptitiously filmed having sex with underage girls.
That material was then presumably passed along to Putin, who used it for leverage when he needed it:
“Intelligence sources believe Epstein was running ‘the world’s largest honeytrap operation’ on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates.”
In return for giving Putin videos of wealthy, famous men in criminally compromising positions, Putin reportedly arranged for massive amounts of corrupt Russian money to be handed to Epstein to launder in the US.
Such money typically comes from illicit drug and oil deals, outright theft, sanctions evasions, and Russian organized crime oligarchs (including Putin and his associates) and is frequently laundered in this country using real estate. It’s the Mafia’s favorite, too.
America has the most lax and largely useless real estate transaction laws in the developed world, so a main way to launder such dirty cash is through cash-based real estate transactions (which are illegal in almost every other developed country).
And we know that Trump and his sons, when US and European banks refused to loan him any more money after his multiple bankruptcies, started taking in enough money to ensure the survival of his little real estate empire and it was all coming from Russia.
As Don Jr. told wealthy attendees to a 2008 real-estate conference:
“In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S., Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”
Similarly, Eric Trump told a friend, who later testified about it:
“‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’”
This is one of the reasons Senator Ron Wyden, the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee (that oversees US banking) has been demanding access to Epstein’s finances and even introduced legislation (the Produce Epstein Treasury Records Act) to require that disclosure, which Republicans are currently blocking.
That alone is worth a call to your two US senators.
The documents released last week included a series of email conversations between Epstein and senior European officials close to Putin. This is way beyond Gary Hart and Monkey Business; this is the President of the United States being in the pocket of a foreign power and profiting from it. They pretty much openly suggest Epstein knew about ways to “handle” Trump:
“Other messages revealed Epstein claimed he could give the Kremlin valuable insight into Mr Trump ahead of a summit with Putin in Helsinki. …
“In a June 2018 exchange, Epstein indicated that Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, ‘understood Trump after our conversations.’ …
“Earlier that month Epstein had also messaged Steve Bannon, a Trump ally, to tell him Mr Jagland was due to meet Putin and Lavrov and was then staying overnight with him at his mansion in Paris.” [Emphasis added]
Epstein, of course, died under deeply suspicious circumstances in jail while Trump was president (and now Epstein’s partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved to a country club type of facility where she reportedly spends the days training puppies). As Republican consultant Harlan Hill noted on Twitter at the time of Epstein’s supposed suicide:
“Dead men tell no tales. Just as Jeffrey Epstein starts to name names, he decides to kill himself? Mkay. Totally believable.”
So, if Epstein had given Putin video of Trump having sex with underage girls, and Trump knows it and has for decades, how might that have changed Trump’s behavior?
— Might it provoke him to hang a photo of Putin in the White House?— Or go along with Putin’s daily slaughter of Ukrainian children?— Give Putin’s top diplomat information that burned a spy and an anti-Russia operation?— Tell the world that he trusts Putin over the US intelligence services?— Put a Putin-friendly conspiracy fan in charge of all US intelligence?— Severely damage NATO, a perpetual thorn in Putin’s side?— Shatter our alliances with the EU and other democratic nations in ways that may well last for generations?— Refuse to make America’s dues payments to the UN, causing that body to have to shut down, perhaps permanently, this summer?— Steal US intelligence secrets, including top-secret nuclear information, and put it in a place where Russian spies or their associates can easily access and photocopy it?— Unleash ICE in a way that turns Americans against each other leading to the “Second US Civil War” that Russian media and Putin’s #2 man (Medvedev) have been gleefully predicting?— Gut America’s soft power around the world by shutting down USAID, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands mostly children, in the Third World while opening opportunities for Putin and Xi to pick them up as new alliances?
In 2019 The Washington Post revealed that, throughout his first presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Russia’s President Putin (over 20 have been identified so far, including one just days before the 2020 election).
The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documents more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings, all just leading up to the 2016 election.
The manager of his 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort — who was previously paid tens of millions by Vladimir Putin’s people to install a pro-Putin puppet as Ukraine’s president in 2010 — has admitted that he was regularly feeding secret inside-campaign strategy and polling information to Russian intelligence via the oligarch who typically paid him on their behalf.
Throughout the campaign, he regularly let Russia know where Trump needed specific types of help, and how, and when.
With that help, an army of bots, shills, and trolls were unleashed on social media to successfully swing the young white male vote toward Trump.
Trump pardoned Manafort, which got him out of prison. He’s still fabulously rich from his work for Russia and his unpaid efforts to elect Trump.
As The New York Times noted in 2020:
“[I]nvestigators found enough there to declare that Mr. Manafort created ‘a grave counterintelligence threat’ by sharing inside information about the presidential race with Mr. Kilimnik and the Russian and [pro-Russian] Ukrainian oligarchs whom he served.”
There is no known parallel to this behavior by any president in American history — one could argue it easily exceeds Benedict Arnold’s audacity — and criminally bringing stolen top secret documents to Mar-a-Lago is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Washington Post reported that Trump had a habit of carrying top-secret information that could severely damage our national security, leaving it in hotel rooms in hostile nations.
Was he bringing these documents with him to sell? Or just to show to leaders or oligarchs in those countries to impress them? Or because Putin told him to?
Trump doesn’t put all that effort into hauling things around unless he’s terrified.
“Boxes of documents even came with Trump on foreign travel,” The Post noted, “following him to hotel rooms around the world — including countries considered foreign adversaries of the United States.”
When Robert Mueller’s team tried to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia and his possibly sharing sensitive military information with Putin, they were stonewalled.
The Mueller Report identified ten specific instances of Trump trying to obstruct the investigation, including offering the bribe of a pardon to Paul Manafort, asking FBI Director Comey to “go easy” on General Flynn after Flynn’s dinner with Putin, and directing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s ability to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.
As the Mueller Report noted:
“The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.
“For instance, the President attempted to remove the Attorney General; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions un-recuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.”
It adds, detailing Trump’s specific Obstruction of Justice crimes:
“These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”
There are, after all, credible assertions from American intelligence that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, celebrating a victory they believed they made happen.
And apparently Putin and his intelligence operatives had good reason to be popping the champagne in November, 2016. They were quickly paid off in a big way.
In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Ambassador in what he thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting” (the Russians released the photo to the press), resulting in MOSAD having to “burn” that spy.
The undercover agent was apparently working in Syria that year against the Russians, who were embroiled in the midst of Assad’s Civil War and indiscriminately bombing Aleppo into rubble (creating a brown-skinned refugee crisis in Europe, which both Putin and Orbán exploited).
That, in turn, prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime American spy buried deep in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump handing him over to Putin.
As CNN noted (when the story leaked two years later):
“The source was considered the highest level source for the US inside the Kremlin, high up in the national security infrastructure, according to the source familiar with the matter and a former senior intelligence official.
“According to CNN’s sources, the spy had access to Putin and could even provide images of documents on the Russian leader’s desk.”
The CIA concluded that the risk Trump had burned or was about to burn our spy inside the Kremlin was so great that — at massive loss to US intelligence abilities that may even have otherwise helped forestall the invasion of Ukraine — they pulled our spy out of Russia in the first year of Trump’s presidency, 2017.
Similarly, when they met in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin talked in private for several hours and Trump ordered his translators’ notes destroyed; there is also concern that much of their conversation was done out of the hearing of the US’s translator (Putin is fluent in English) who may have been relegated to a distant part of the rather large empty ballroom in which they met.
The Washington Post reported, after a leak six months later, that when Trump met privately for those two hours with Putin the CIA went into “panic mode.” A US intelligence official told the Post:
“There was this gasp’ at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia headquarters. You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock.”
Three weeks after Trump’s July 16, 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Senator Rand Paul made a solo trip to Moscow to personally hand-deliver a document or package of documents from Trump to Putin. Its contents are still unknown, although Paul told the press it was a “personal” letter of some sort.
Senator Paul has also consistently taken Trump’s and Putin’s side with regard to the Ukraine war: he single-handedly blocked a $40 billion military aid package in the Senate. When the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, he responded with a call for the repeal of the Espionage Act, which Jack Smith was prepared to charge Trump under. Senator Paul further suggested the FBI may have “planted” Secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Ten days after Paul’s trip to Moscow, The New York Times reported that the CIA was worried because their sources inside Moscow had suddenly “gone silent”:
“The full reasons the sources have gone silent are not known,” the Times reported, but Trump having intentionally burned a man working for the FBI — whose job at that time was to find and reveal Russian agents involved in or close to the Trump campaign — may also have had something to do with it:
“[C]urrent and former officials said the exposure of sources inside the United States has also complicated matters,” noted the Times. “This year, the identity of an F.B.I. informant, Stefan Halper, became public after [Trump-loyal MAGA Republican] House lawmakers sought information on him and the White House allowed the information to be shared. Mr. Halper, an American academic based in Britain, had been sent to talk to Trump campaign advisers who were under F.B.I. scrutiny for their ties to Russia.”
Things were picking up the following year, in 2019, as Putin was planning his invasion of Ukraine while Trump was preparing for the 2020 election.
In July 2019, Trump had conversations with five foreign leaders during and just before a presidential visit that month to Mar-a-Lago; they included Putin and the Emir of Qatar.
In one of those conversations, according to a high-level US Intelligence source, Trump “made promises” to a “world leader” that were so alarming it provoked a national security scramble across multiple agencies.
As The Washington Post noted in an article titled “Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress”:
“Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint [against Trump] was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.”
On the last day of that month, July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin.
The White House spokespeople told Congress and the press that Trump said that he and Putin discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…
But the following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Trump had that week asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”
Perhaps just by coincidence, months after Trump left office with cases of classified documents, The New York Times ran a story with the headline Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants:
“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week,” the Times’ story’s lede began, “about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.
“The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.”
In the years since, Trump continues to maintain a close relationship with Putin; most recently he revealed that he’d asked “a favor” of the Russian dictator to “pause” his murderous, war-crime bombing of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine “for one week.” Putin, being in the power position, chose to laugh at Trump and continued his assault on the nation, although he did throw Trump a bone by pausing his hits on Kiev for a few days.
These aren’t just “a few bad judgment calls” or a president with “strange foreign policy instincts.” These stories (and literally hundreds of others) point to a man who’s behaved, consistently and predictably, like someone under leverage, someone whose personal fear of exposure of some sort of major crime — like the ones we know Epstein was holding over other billionaires — outweighs his loyalty to the nation he swore to serve.
If Americans don’t demand real investigations, genuine accountability, and impeachment and jail time for what sure looks like the greatest counterintelligence failure in our history, we may lose what’s left of our democracy before the 2028 elections can fix things.
If Democrats can take control of either branch of Congress and if Schumer and Jeffries get spine transplants and begin a serious investigation into Trump’s destruction of the United States and our historic role in the world, they’ll have enough to keep them busy for years.
This is not about politics or personality. It’s about whether a country can survive being led by someone who looks captured and compromised by a foreign power. If even half of this is true, then staying quiet is the same as going along with it.
We must demand real investigations and real consequences, or accept that the presidency can be bought, blackmailed, and used against the country itself.
Let your elected officials know your thoughts on this, and don’t forget to demand your elected Republicans step up and defend America, too. You can reach your member of Congress and both your Senators via the congressional switchboard at: (202) 224-3121.
More On Epstein-Trump Files
Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Steve Bannon (left to right, file photos).
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Jeffrey Epstein says he saw Trump walking around in “his undies” at his house in a disgusting email to Steve Bannon about a woman he called “Kneepads!” Staff and wire reports, Feb. 2, 2026. The latest drop of files from the archpedophile Epstein contains some truly shocking exchanges, particularly with Trump’s former consigliere Steve Bannon.
In one text thread, Epstein discusses Madeleine Westerhout, a Trump advisor from his first term that Trump was apparently having sexual relations with.
EPSTEIN: Do you know Marianne , Donalds new friend ? Madelaine. Westerhut . Very funny
BANNON: She is the receptionist-- good kid ; grundoon-- cam from rnc
EPSTEIN: Kneepads. Doing Gods work
BANNON: LMAO
EPSTEIN: Hes much more calm, but the sight of him in the residence in his undies is hard to fathom . Ill give you details when I see you .The two things he dreads at the moment is that an email from his ex. Saying he has small dick. And his transcript.
BANNON: The staying away from family over holidays huge tell
EPSTEIN: Thats for Madeline 😊
“Grundoon” is a reference to the gibberish-speaking diapered groundhog from the comic strip Pogo. It is a favorite insult of Bannon’s to refer to his subordinates.
Madeline would later resign in disgrace after getting drunk and leaking to the media that Trump didn’t want to be seen with his daughter Tiffany because she was overweight.
These texts would heavily imply that Trump was visiting Epstein’s mansion and having sex with women or girls there while he was president the first time.
We need a full investigation into the depths of Trump’s debauchery and hold him accountable for ALL his crimes — especially the shocking allegations found in the Epstein files.
Former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, shown in a file photo by Karen Smith via Flickr.
New York Times, The Epstein Files: Oversight Chairman Rejects Clintons’ Offer for Epstein Testimony, Annie Karni, Feb. 2, 2026. Bill Clinton agreed to an interview he had long resisted, but Representative James Comer, the Oversight Committee chairman, signaled he would go forward with holding the former president in contempt.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, on Monday rejected an offer from Bill and Hillary Clinton to testify in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, just days ahead of an expected House vote on holding them in criminal contempt of Congress.
For months, the Clintons have been adamant that they would not comply with subpoenas from the Republican-led committee that they have described as invalid and legally unenforceable, and part of a plot to target them as President Trump’s political adversaries. They had promised to fight Mr. Comer on the issue for as long as it took.
But after some Democrats joined Republicans on the House Oversight Committee to recommend charging them with criminal contempt, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Justice Department for prosecution, the Clintons appeared to capitulate.
In a letter on Saturday to Mr. Comer, which was obtained by The New York Times, their lawyers said Mr. Clinton would agree to sit for a four-hour transcribed interview with the entire committee — something he had previously described as an inappropriate and unprecedented request to make of a former president.
The lawyers asked that Mrs. Clinton, who has said she never met or spoke to Mr. Epstein, be allowed to make a sworn declaration instead of testifying. But they said that she, too, would submit to an in-person interview if the committee insisted on it, “with appropriate adjustments for the paucity of information she has to offer in this matter,” according to the letter.
On Monday morning, Mr. Comer flatly rejected the offer, calling it “unreasonable” and arguing that four hours of testimony from Mr. Clinton was inadequate given that he was a “loquacious individual” who might seek to run out the clock.
“Your clients’ desire for special treatment is both frustrating and an affront to the American people’s desire for transparency,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter to the Clintons’ lawyers on Monday that was also obtained by The New York Times.
In that letter, Mr. Comer also rejected the demand from Mr. Clinton that the scope of the interview be limited to matters related to Mr. Epstein. Mr. Comer said the former president “likely has an artificially narrow definition in mind” of what matters would be related to the Epstein investigation.
Mr. Comer said in his letter that he harbored concerns that Mr. Clinton would refuse to answer questions about “his personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, ways in which they sought to curry favor with powerful individuals and alleged efforts to utilize his power and influence after his presidency to kill negative news stories about Jeffrey Epstein.”
Mr. Clinton was acquainted with Mr. Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019, but has said he never visited Mr. Epstein’s private island and cut off contact with him two decades ago. Mr. Clinton took four international trips on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003, according to flight logs.
A spokesman for the Clintons did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Comer’s letter, or how they planned to proceed.
The offer from the Clintons represented a near-total surrender after they made a defiant stand just weeks ago, vowing to fight back against an investigation they said was unfairly targeting them and holding them to a different standard from others.
“Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences,” the Clintons wrote in a lengthy letter to Mr. Comer on Jan. 13. “For us, now is that time.”The Clintons have been attempting to negotiate with the House Oversight Committee behind the scenes to find a way for Mr. Comer to spare them the contempt vote. They agreed that Mr. Comer could interview Mr. Clinton under oath, an offer that the chairman also rejected, insisting that the former president appear before the entire committee for an open-ended, transcribed interview.
In recent days, a member of the Clintons’ legal team went so far as to track down Mr. Comer’s cellphone number and reach out to resolve how the Clintons could answer his committee’s questions, according to a person familiar with the negotiations
Mr. Comer never responded.
And even after the Clintons said they would agree to a transcript, Mr. Comer said there was no deal.
Mr. Comer said in his letter that the latest offer had to be considered “in light of your clients’ demonstrated reluctance to provide testimony” and his concern that Mr. Clinton did not actually want to answer any questions, at all.
Philippe Reines, a longtime adviser to the Clintons, said that “Comer is refusing to accept ‘Yes.’”
But he said he blamed the House Democrats who sided with Republicans this month and voted in favor of recommending that the House hold the Clintons in contempt. The drawn-out saga may still result in the Clintons facing a contempt vote in the House as early as Wednesday.
“Republicans are gonna Republican,” Mr. Reines said. “It’s the Democrats who are disappointing, navel gazing like this is a legitimate exercise in law and democracy.”
Nine Democrats on the Oversight Committee joined Republicans in support of holding Mr. Clinton in contempt, while three Democrats backed holding Mrs. Clinton in contempt, teeing up votes on the House floor.
If it comes to the House floor, a vote to hold the Clintons in criminal contempt is expected to pass. Many Democrats have been reluctant to be seen as defending anyone associated with the convicted sex offender — especially party figures who carry as much baggage as the Clintons.
After the House vote, criminal referrals would go to the Justice Department to prosecute the contempt charges, which can carry penalties including a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for as long as a year. In a letter they wrote to Mr. Comer in January, the Clintons accused him of potentially bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a politically driven process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”
DW (Germany), Norway's crown princess, Mette-Marit, is embroiled in a scandal after her name appeared more than 1,000 times in the latest tranche of Epstein files to be released, Staff and wire reports, Feb. 2, 2026.
"I showed poor judgment and I deeply regret having had any contact with Epstein. It is simply embarrassing," the 52-year-old told news agency AFP in a statement. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said he "agreed" that Mette-Marit exercised poor judgement.
Norwegian media published messages between the princess and the US sex offender that date back to 2011 – three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
In one of the emails, the princess asks Epstein if it was "inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old son's wallpaper."
In another, in response to the sex offender saying he was on a "wife hunt" in Paris, Mette-Marit said the French capital is "good for adultery" and "Scandis [are] better wife material."
Despite claims of "not having checked Epstein’s background more closely," the royal told Epstein in a message in 2011 that she had "googled" him and that "it didn't look too good," with a smiling emoji at the end of the sentence. In 2013, she stayed at his house in Florida for four days, although Epstein wasn't there at the time.
The revelations come as Mette-Marit's eldest son, Marius Borg Hoiby, goes on trial this week facing 38 charges, including rape. He has denied most of the charges.
More On U.S. Politics, Governance
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Will Lose the Midterms. Unless..., William Kristol, right,Feb. 2, 2026. Politically, January went out with a bang. Almost 100,000 voters turned out Saturday in a special election for a Fort Worth–area Texas state senate seat.
The result was startling: Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a 33-year-old union leader and Air Force veteran, won by more than 14 points in a Republican district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in November 2024.
This wasn’t some sort of under-the-radar race. Both national parties were engaged. Trump posted three separate get-out-the-vote messages on social media in the two days before the election for the Republican candidate, Leigh Wambsganss. The Republican Party of Texas worked hard for Wambsganss, and her campaign and allied groups massively outspent Rehmet.
I know, I know: Don’t overinterpret the results of one special election on a Saturday at the end of January, when turnout was less than half of what it will be in November. On the other hand: The swing toward the Democrat throughout this large urban-suburban-exurban district in an important swing county was both striking and uniform. And this result didn’t come out of nowhere. It fits a pattern of Democratic overperformance in special elections throughout the nation over the past year, including the results in Virginia and New Jersey this past November.
This coming November is a long way away. But you’d have to say at this point that a blue wave in 2026 looks more likely than not. The House is very likely to go Democratic, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t by a substantial margin.
And Democrats winning control of the Senate now has to be considered a real possibility. The kind of swings we’ve been seeing, combined with early polling in states like Iowa, Kansas, Alaska, and Texas, suggests that Senate seats in these and other states could be in play, along with the more obvious likely Democratic pickups in Maine and North Carolina.
Trump could deal with losing the House, though it would be an inconvenience. But losing control of both houses of Congress would be a far greater blow. Senate and House majorities working together can pass legislation and coordinate investigations. Trump can veto their bills and resist their inquiries, but having both the Senate and the House makes the contest something closer to an even match. And of course a Senate majority can block presidential appointments—including, perhaps especially, judicial nominations.
The last time a party in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress lost both those houses in a midterm was in 2006. That result marked the end of the political potency of the Bush administration.
Republicans and MAGA groups, Trump and his supporters, will spend a fortune to prevent such an outcome. But money only goes so far if the voters want change and a check on an unpopular president.
It’s hard to see how Trump fixes his unpopularity. But it’s easy to see how Trump will try to tilt the electoral playing field. His Justice Department has already been seeking to interfere in state and local elections in many, often unprecedented ways. So far Democratic state officials have fought back effectively, and the courts have tended to support their resistance. But that fight will continue. And in red states, the state-level resistance will be less potent or non-existent—and Democrats will need to win House and Senate seats in red states. And even in blue states, as we’ve seen in Minnesota, it’s not easy to restrain a determined federal government.
So as the Trump administration is well aware, their easiest path to keeping political control will be to intimidate voters, corrupt the vote count, and in general subvert free and fair elections in the blue cities where Democrats will need high turnout and big margins for a successful election day.
Trump may try to enlist the military in this effort. But even if Pete Hegseth succeeds in doing real damage to the non-political traditions of the U.S. military, that would be tricky to pull off. What Trump really needs is a paramilitary force at his disposal. What he needs are troops who aren’t scrupulous about staying strictly within the limits of the law. What he needs are large, well-armed, and unchecked militias that he can deploy as he chooses on the streets of cities, with very little transparency or accountability. What he needs are organizations that already have a history of not being too finicky about obeying the law, and that are now recruiting people who have far less interest in law enforcement than loyalty to Trump’s political agenda, and who are willing to cooperate with like-minded vigilante groups outside the government.
In other words, what Trump needs is a rapidly growing and lavishly funded Department of Homeland Security, with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a Border Patrol unlimited in their deployments, unaccountable to others, and subject to his own direction.
Curbing Trump’s ability to create, marshal, and deploy such an ICE and Border Patrol, to the degree possible, is the key task ahead. Otherwise last Saturday’s special election will stand merely as a sad reminder of what might have been, not as a herald of what could be.
AROUND THE BULWARK
How Can I Save Democracy? Protect Democracy founder IAN BASSIN joins The MONA CHAREN Show to talk about victories and setbacks in the effort to thwart authoritarianism America-style, and what each person can do to preserve free and fair elections going forward.Quick Hits
STOP THE MUSIC: Since he seized the reins of the Kennedy Center and slapped his own name on the building last year, Donald Trump has barely stopped making bombastic promises about how damn good he’s about to make it. “Wait until you see it a year from now!!!” he posted last month.
“A year from now”? Sorry, Trump must have meant “in 2029.” Yesterday, he made a remarkable announcement: The Kennedy Center will be closing this summer, he said, “for an approximately two year period of time,” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” to turn the center into “a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.” Okay then!
Trump has been irked by the obvious failure of his approach to MAGAfy the Kennedy Center, which has seen ticket sales crater and artists frequently back out of performances over the past year. Whether performances will actually cease remains to be seen—the latest round of the “I guess we’re gonna find out if he’s allowed to do this” game Trump has been forcing us all so often to play. If he does in fact succeed in shutting the place down, D.C. enjoyers of fine live entertainment can at least console themselves that Trump’s plan to stage an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout on the White House lawn seems to be going forward without a hitch.Subscribed
AUSAs WANTED, INQUIRE WITHIN: The Kennedy Center isn’t the only institution that Trump and his goons have swaggered into only to discover it’s a little trickier to run than they thought. The Justice Department’s shortage of top legal talent—sparked by a year of mass firings and resignations amid constant ideological purges—is apparently reaching a crisis point. How can you tell? Well, check out this X post from Stephen Miller ally and recently departed Justice Department Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle:
If you are a lawyer, are interested in being an AUSA, and support President Trump and anti-crime agenda, DM me.
We need good prosecutors. And DOJ is hiring across the country. Now is your chance to join the mission and do good for our country.
There’s the obvious corruption angle here, of course: It’s flabbergasting that, just one year into Trump 2.0, we’ve already shredded the norm of Justice Department independence to such a degree that administration allies are openly saying that only Trump supporters need apply to career roles. But the more striking thing might be that Team Trump feels the need to be grubbing for AUSA applications on X at all.
Since Mizelle advertised that his DMs are open, we reached out to him—not for a job, but for an interview. He has yet to reply.
RON GRABS THE MIC: Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s shock win in a ruby-red Texas Senate district this weekend has shaken loose some interesting responses. “A swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned. “Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms.”
DeSantis, for readers who might be too young to remember, is a politician who was once thought of as the Next Big Thing in Republican politics, before Trump trampled him like a parade of elephants in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. Since then, DeSantis has receded from the political consciousness, leapfrogged in the 2028 conventional-wisdom sweepstakes by figures like JD Vance and Marco Rubio. But he has something Rubio and Vance lack: Unlike them, he isn’t lashed to the wheel of the current administration. If Trump keeps floundering around and shedding support, guys like DeSantis might smell opportunity—the sort of opportunity that could incentivize them to start encouraging the party to finally move beyond the era of The Donald.
New York Times, Judge Hands Trump a Fifth Loss in His Effort to Halt Offshore Wind Projects, Maxine Joselow, Feb. 2, 2026. The court ruled that construction can restart on a wind farm off the coast of New York State. The Trump administration had ordered work to stop in December.
A federal judge on Monday struck down the Interior Department’s order to halt work on a multibillion-dollar wind farm off the coast of New York State, the fifth time the courts have ruled against the Trump administration’s efforts to throttle the country’s offshore wind industry. The administration is now 0-5 in its effort to stop wind farms under construction along the East Coast.
Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, right, issued a preliminary injunction that would allow the developer of the New York project, known as Sunrise Wind, to restart construction while the broader legal battle unfolds.
In December, the Interior Department ordered all work to halt on Sunrise Wind and four other wind farms off the East Coast. To justify the sweeping move, officials cited a classified report by the Defense Department that they said found the projects to be a national security threat.
But Judge Lamberth, who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, said he was unpersuaded by the government’s claims about national security after reviewing the classified report under seal. He said the actions of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had caused “irreparable harm” to the developer of Sunrise Wind.
“Purportedly new classified information does not constitute a sufficient explanation for the bureau’s decision to entirely stop work on the Sunrise Wind project,” Judge Lamberth said while ruling from the bench after a two-hour court hearing.
Upon learning of the ruling, many energy executives had a feeling of déjà vu. It was the fifth time in the past three weeks that a federal judge had rebuked the Trump administration’s crusade against the five wind farms under construction in federal waters along the East Coast.
The previous four rulings allowed work to continue on Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, Empire Wind off New York, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia and Vineyard Wind off Massachusetts. Judge Lamberth also presided over the case brought by Revolution Wind.
U.S. Media, Free Speech
The Contrarian, Opinion: Arresting Two Journalists Is Pure Fascism, Jennifer Rubin, right, Feb. 2, 2026. Pam Bondi (shown above) must go.
The arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for simply covering a protest at a St. Paul, Minn., church personify theTrump regime’s accelerated sprint toward fascism. These arrests also remind us that no one has been more instrumental than Attorney General Pam Bondi in the assault on Americans’ civil liberties and the rule of law domestically and internationally.
Facing a political debacle that threatens to destroy the remainder of Trump’s presidency, the regime doubled down in a display of tyrannical petulance. Bondi, you may recall, failed twice to get warrants for Lemon’s and Fort’s arrests. The federal magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence refused to sign off on warrants for their arrest.
The Justice Department’s bizarrely inappropriate effort to get the 8th Circuit to order the warrants’ signing (via a writ of mandamus) failed. Having struck out twice and earning a tongue-lashing from Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, the Justice Department scrounged up a grand jury to indict Lemon and others.
Press advocacy organizations, Democratic leaders, Lemon’s former colleagues at CNN, and civil liberties groups denounced the attempt to criminalize core First Amendment activity. “Don Lemon’s arrest is an egregious violation of the 1st amendment. Reporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public,” said Public Citizen Co-President Lisa Gilbert in a written statement. “This arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, right, was among the first to blast the Trump regime. “The arrest of journalists for going into a church in the course of reporting is shocking enough, but what’s even more alarming is that it’s no secret that Don Lemon is a Trump critic,” she said in a written statement.
After release without bond in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, Lemon told reporters: “I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now.” He added, “There is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.”
On his show that night, Lemon thanked former CNN colleagues but admonished legacy media journalists to stop enabling Trump:
[CNN journalists] need to tell Warner Brothers Discovery stop playing and get your hands out of the newsroom.
CBS needs to tell Paramount and David Ellison and whatever get out of our newsroom, get out of our journalism!
Bari Weiss, take your hands off of it! Let the journalists be the journalists…. [T]hat goes for every single corporate entity that owns a journalistic organization. Let the journalists be the journalists because they’re going to save our democracy!
Lemon, below left, reminded media and other institutions that “the way to stand up to a bully, to a tyrant is not to bend the knee. It’s not to acquiesce. It is to metaphorically punch them right in the nose.” He went on: “And you need to introduce not only Donald Trump and the folks who work for him and his administration but the corporate overlords and the gatekeepers, you need to introduce them to the word ‘no’!”
It is virtually inconceivable that the government will prevail in prosecution of Lemon and Fort. Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote for The Guardian that the two statutes cited in the indictment — one prohibiting conspiracies to interfere with exercise of constitutional rights and the other barring intentional interference with religious worship — do not remotely apply.
“The journalists, of course, didn’t conspire with anyone to do anything nefarious. They simply documented news,” Stern explained. “It’s ironic that Lemon and Fort are accused of exactly what the Trump administration actually did — intimidating those who exercise core constitutional freedoms, like documenting news.” The other statute requires intent to interfere with a religious service, “not the lawful documentation of news events by journalists who neither plan protests nor participate in them.” He added, “Journalists follow the news — they don’t decide where it happens,” which explains why no attorney general ever “personally involved herself in pursuing vindictive criminal charges against journalists the administration doesn’t like, who merely covered a protest.”
In the short run, this unconstitutional outrage will make Lemon and Fort journalist rock stars, furthering their reach. But the ripple effect may be much greater.
The massive crowds that turned out on Friday for the ICE Out protests, including in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles, show that Americans will not be mollified by half-steps and vague promises (e.g., sending “Border Czar” Tom Homan to Minneapolis, reversing a decision to not conduct a civil rights investigation into Alex Pretti’s killing). Lemon’s and Fort’s arrests (coupled with the incomplete release of more heavily redacted Epstein files and the seizure of Fulton County, Ga., voting materials) will intensify the rage sweeping across the country, driving Trump’s horrid polling numbers even lower, and giving Bondi the edge in the “Cabinet secretary most deserving of impeachment” contest.
The latest arrests follow other vindictive prosecutions of Trump enemies (e.g., Letitia James, James Comey). She has refused (reversed in Pretti’s case) to investigate the regime’s killings or cooperate with local law enforcement; her DOJ attorneys habitually defy court orders; she dissembled about and delayed the still-incomplete release of the Trump-Epstein files; and she dispatched Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to confer with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was then moved to cushy quarters, during the pedophile coverup. These dwarf any predecessor’s misdeeds. (She also repeatedly insults lawmakers and refuses to answer their questions during oversight hearings, purged DOJ attorneys believed by the Trump regime to be “disloyal” and solicited new hires based on loyalty to Trump’s agenda, and oversaw the Office of Legal Counsel’s bogus justifications for extrajudicial killings on the high seas and the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president.)
Voters must hold accountable every senator who confirmed Bondi. Democrats should vow that once in the majority they will conduct exacting oversight of the Justice Department, pursue Bondi’s impeachment, and ensure she and her accessories are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law and face disbarment. Democrats must commit to a top-to-bottom housecleaning of DOJ and the imposition of stringent professional standards and penalties for misconduct.
Although it is too soon to say if Trump’s social media rant vowing to stay away from protests in major cities signals an actual retreat (deploying tear gas in Portland suggests ICE’s reliance on violence continues), Lemon’s and Fort’s arrests must not stand. All Americans must ensure that these cases mark the beginning of the end of Bondi’s disastrous career and the ruinous era of DOJ corruption.
U.S. Immigration Enforcement, Abuses
New York Times, Small Businesses in Minneapolis Serve a City in Crisis. ‘This Is Our New Normal,’ Talya Minsberg, Feb. 2, 2026. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, business owners work to lift up a community that has been roiled by the presence of thousands of immigration agents.
In the aftermath of the shooting on Jan. 24, the employees of Glam Doll opened their doors and began giving away doughnuts and coffee as clouds of tear gas spread through the streets. A medical station was set up in moments.
Allison Bross, the owner of b. Resale, next to Glam Doll, did much the same. Medical gear was quickly brought in, food was delivered, hand warmers appeared at the front of the door and personal protective gear came soon thereafter.ImageA woman stands between racks of clothing in a resale store.Allison Bross inside b. Resale, a shop located near where Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents.Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
Businesses across the city have fundamentally changed their mission in the weeks since immigration agents descended on Minnesota. That new mission — to care for those too afraid to leave their homes and for those protesting on their behalf — has only intensified in the days since Mr. Pretti was killed.
For the business owners, the return has been twofold. There is pride in helping your community, they say, that goes beyond serving those who walk through their doors. And that sense of duty has resulted in overwhelming support from strangers and customers alike, expressed in emails, orders placed from around the world and donations to help keep the businesses afloat.
Never have they been prouder to be Minnesotan, they said.
“This is what Minneapolis does: It shows up,” Ms. Bross said. “I mean, we’ve done it for decades.”
New York Times, Immigration Officers in Minneapolis Will Wear Body Cameras, Noem Says, Madeleine Ngo, Feb. 2, 2026. The change comes as the federal government has provided accounts of fatal shootings that have sometimes conflicted with local officials and witness videos.
All immigration officers on the ground in Minneapolis will be equipped with body cameras, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Monday.
Ms. Noem said that the change would be effective immediately and that the program would be expanded nationwide “as funding is available.”
“We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country,” she said in a social media post.
The announcement came in response to concern and outrage among many Americans, including lawmakers in Congress, over aggressive tactics that federal officers have used to advance President Trump’s immigration crackdown. It follows stumbles in federal officials’ accounts of fatal shootings involving federal agents, which have sometimes conflicted with those of local officials and witness videos.
Shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Good last month in Minneapolis, federal officials said she tried to run over law enforcement and the officer was acting in self defense. State and local officials quickly disputed that account, and a New York Times analysis of available footage of the encounter found no indication that the officer was run over.
Some officers in Minnesota have already been wearing body cameras. After federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen, Department of Homeland Security officials said there was body camera footage from multiple angles, which investigators would review.
A preliminary review by Customs and Border Protection’s internal watchdog office, based on body camera footage and other agency documentation, found that Mr. Pretti was shot by federal officers after resisting arrest, but did not indicate that he brandished a weapon during the encounter, as Ms. Noem had earlier claimed. Department of Homeland Security officials said shortly after the shooting that Mr. Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
A New York Times analysis of witness videos of the shooting found that Mr. Pretti, who had a firearms permit, had appeared disarmed before he was killed. Federal officials have not publicly released body camera footage of the shooting.
Ms. Noem said the policy change on Monday came after she spoke with Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar; the Immigration and Customs Enforcement director; and the Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
On Monday, Mr. Trump said it “wasn’t my decision” but added that body cameras “generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
Lawmakers from both parties are open to providing additional funds for body cameras. The House last month passed a spending bill that would provide $20 million for purchasing body cameras for federal immigration officers after Democrats pressed for restrictions on ICE. But lawmakers have yet to reach an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security as Democrats push for a broader overhaul.
The department received a large infusion of funding last year after Congress approved roughly $170 billion over four years for immigration enforcement.
The agency has sent thousands of officers and agents to Minnesota, saying the enforcement operation is necessary to crack down on illegal immigration and promote safety. The Trump administration has similarly deployed immigration officers to Chicago, Maine and New Orleans in recent months.
In October, a federal judge in Illinois ordered federal agents already equipped with body cameras to turn them on while conducting immigration arrests and interacting with residents in the Chicago area.
Late last year, ICE told a nonprofit watchdog that it had found “no records” of body camera footage produced during its operation in Chicago. That claim raised questions as to whether the administration was fully complying with the court order and contradicted the fact that it had previously submitted video footage to a judge. In a statement in December, the Department of Homeland Security said “ICE never violated the court order.”
New York Times, Measles Hits ICE Family Detention Center in Texas, Pooja Salhotra, Feb. 2, 2026. The Department of Homeland Security has imposed a quarantine on a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, after two detainees contracted the disease.
The Dilley Immigration Processing Center, also called the South Texas Family Residential Center, is about 70 miles south of San Antonio and is currently the main detention center in the country that houses families, including young children. It is not clear whether the measles cases affected children or adults.
The two cases were confirmed on Saturday, and health services personnel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately took steps to control the spread of the infection, including by quarantining everyone suspected of making contact with the infected, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a homeland security spokeswoman.
The incidents bring together two of the most contentious issues of President Trump’s second term: his aggressive effort to deport undocumented immigrants and the rise of measles as his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., installs vaccine skeptics in the government. Measles outbreaks hit West Texas and New Mexico last year, before infecting hundreds of children in South Carolina this winter.
Those outbreaks may now be colliding with immigration sweeps that have sent detainees around the country to the huge detention facilities in Texas. About 70,000 people are in detention across the United States, with nearly 18,000 of them in Texas. That total is up from the 40,000 detained before Mr. Trump took office last January.
The Dilley facility has come under particular scrutiny after a 5-year-old Ecuadorean boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was held there with his father after they were arrested outside their home in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, on Jan. 22. Images of their apprehension circulated widely and prompted outrage across the Twin Cities. Inside the facility, detainees protested.
A federal judge demanded their release, and both were back home in Minnesota on Sunday.
Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Boy Who Cried ‘De-escalation,’ Andrew Egger, right, Feb. 2, 2026. Is ICE “de-escalating?” That was the word on the street last week, as the White House suddenly realized its messaging—our cops are a law to themselves and anyone who disagrees is a terrorist—wasn’t landing so well and began speaking in more neutral tones about ICE’s operations in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
This was significant. After all, this White House rarely admits any need to change course. But pivoting on messaging is one thing; actually de-escalating ICE operations is another. So far, we’ve seen little evidence of that.
On Saturday, for instance, we got a remarkable story out of the small Minnesota town of St. Peter, an hour south of the Twin Cities. A legal observer was driving behind an ICE vehicle and recording them with her dashcam when multiple ICE vehicles boxed her in and forced her to stop. Video then shows multiple ICE agents piling out of their car, immediately drawing their guns, pointing them at the observer, and screaming at her to “get out of the car.”
When the observer refused, the agents dragged her from her vehicle, put her into one of theirs, and began driving her back toward the Twin Cities, the woman later told MPR News, before appearing to change their minds and dropping her instead at the St. Peter police station.¹ The chief of police then gave her a ride home in his squad car.
“He started talking to me like he just couldn’t [believe] how terrible it was, what was happening,” the woman said. “And he was so sorry and so scared for me and that type of thing, and [he] was so upset by what they’re doing to our community.”
Naturally, the Department of Homeland Security had its own take on events. In multiple social-media posts Saturday, DHS called the woman “an agitator” who had been “stalking and obstructing law enforcement” before she “began driving recklessly including running stop signs, nearly colliding with multiple vehicles, and driving directly at law enforcement in an attempt to ram their vehicle.”
Is it possible events unfolded as DHS described them? Sure, maybe. But the woman’s dashcam video shows none of this, DHS has a well established track record of lying through its teeth about such interactions, and boxing in a moving vehicle to force it to stop doesn’t tend to work if the driver’s willing to “ram” you. (In the video, she just pulls over.) Although DHS’s post casually accuses the woman of committing multiple felonies, they eventually just decided to drop her off without further incident—an odd move, if those felonies actually occurred.
As stories like these keep emerging, it’s worth contemplating what “de-escalating” actually means. The fact that the White House is suddenly willing to use the word means nothing if its orders to ICE haven’t changed.
Even if those orders do change, these systems now have a logic of their own. The Department of Homeland Security spent the last year building ICE into something that looks less like a disciplined law enforcement agency than a small paramilitary force—trawling the nation for the meatheads most susceptible to “WHICH WAY, AMERICAN MAN”–style propaganda, training them quickly and poorly, and dispatching them armed into America’s streets. Even if the White House’s sudden stated desire to “de-escalate” is sincere, what do they think is going to happen as this force keeps getting in tense, weapons-out encounters with civilians?
And it’s not just ICE. Over the weekend, ProPublica reported the identities of the two agents who shot Alex Pretti. Both are longtime veterans of Customs and Border Patrol, not new recruits. The gung-ho, low-constraint border enforcement culture of that agency has now been deployed into America’s streets. Compared to those agents’ long-honed instincts, what are a few White House statements about “de-escalation”?
And all that is to assume the desire to “de-escalate” is actually sincere, rather than just a cheap PR dodge to get the White House through the Alex Pretti scandal as painlessly as possible. On Saturday, Trump promised to deploy his immigration enforcement agencies to protect federal buildings that are “being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists” in “various poorly run Democrat Cities” around the country.
“Please be aware that I have instructed ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property,” the president wrote. “There will be no spitting in the faces of our Officers, there will be no punching or kicking the headlights of our cars, and there will be no rock or brick throwing at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors. If there is, those people will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”
Does this statement make it sound like the president sees ICE and the Border Patrol as bodies limited to the specific legal task of enforcing immigration law? Or does he seem instead to view them as a general-purpose “Patriot Warriors” squad to be deployed anywhere and for any purpose he sees fit?
New York Times, A Legal Tool for Holding ICE Agents to Account, Hiding in Plain Sight, Adam Liptak, Feb. 2, 2026. A proposal in a 1987 law review article could address a gap that makes it all but impossible to sue federal officials for violating the Constitution.
The key to holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents accountable for constitutional violations may lie in a 1987 law review article by a young law professor named Akhil Reed Amar.
“I think it was a good idea then,” he said last week, “and it’s only taken more than half a lifetime for people to actually read the thing.”
The article has, in truth, been quite influential. It has been cited, for instance, in seven Supreme Court opinions. But it was also 96 pages long and 
touched on many issues.
“I was actually trying to do a bunch of different things — and get tenure,” Professor Amar, right, now a leading constitutional scholar at Yale Law School, said of the article, “Of Sovereignty and Federalism.”
His central point for present purposes was that state legislatures can authorize lawsuits against federal officials for violating the Constitution. If that is right, such state laws would close an odd gap in federal law that — broadly speaking — allows such suits against state and local officials, like police officers, but not against federal ones, like ICE agents.
Congress authorized the first kind of lawsuit in an 1871 law that most people call Section 1983. But Congress has not enacted legislation allowing suits against federal officials for violating the Constitution.
“It’s an enormous problem that federal officials are in some ways the hardest people to hold accountable for violating people’s constitutional rights, even harder than state and local officials,” said Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a former solicitor general of Illinois.
The Supreme Court tried to address the gap in 1971 in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, allowing the victim of an unconstitutional search by federal agents to sue them. But the court has essentially abandoned that approach, saying instead that Congress must act if suits against federal officials are to be allowed.
The Trump administration promptly sued, saying the law violated the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which generally prohibits states from enacting measures at odds with federal law. Whether to allow lawsuits against federal agents for violating the federal Constitution, the administration’s complaint said, “is a policy choice for Congress.”
Professor Amar said aspects of the Illinois law might be problematic. But its core idea, he said, is sound.
“States can’t just generally regulate ICE conduct, because the federal government gets to regulate that,” he said. “But states can provide remedies against federal officials when federal officials violate federal constitutional rights.”
Whether that is correct is a complicated question in light of another federal statute, and it has not yet gotten sustained judicial attention. But Judge Justin Walker, who was appointed to of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President Trump, did consider the matter in a 2023 concurring opinion in a case arising from a protest outside the White House in 2020.
Citing Professor Amar’s article, Judge Walker concluded that “nothing would stop a state from creating a new cause of action allowing plaintiffs to directly allege federal constitutional violations.”
More On U.S. Courts, Law, Justice, Crime, Secrecy
New York Times, How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive, Jodi Kantor, Feb. 2, 2026. Amid calls to increase transparency and revelations about the court’s inner workings, the chief justice imposed nondisclosure agreements on clerks and employees.
In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.
The chief justice, right, acted after a series of unusual leaks of internal court documents, most notably of the decision overturning the right to abortion, and news reports about ethical lapses by the justices. Trust in the institution was languishing at a historic low. Debate was intensifying over whether the black box institution should be more transparent.
Instead, the chief justice tightened the court’s hold on information. Its employees have long been expected to stay silent about what they witness behind the scenes. But starting that autumn, in a move that has not been previously reported, the chief justice converted what was once a norm into a formal contract, according to five people familiar with the shift.
Over the years, journalists and authors have sought to penetrate the court, and the justices have tried varying methods to guard its secrets. Some generations of clerks, but not others, said they were asked to sign a different kind of confidentiality pledge.
The New York Times has not reviewed the new agreements. But people familiar with them said they appeared to be more forceful and understood them to threaten legal action if an employee revealed confidential information. Clerks and members of the court’s support staff signed them in 2024, and new arrivals have continued to do so, the people said.
The 2018 version of a code of conduct distributed to law clerks at the Supreme Court (New York Times photo).
A spokeswoman for the court declined to comment about the nondisclosure agreements. She also did not respond to a question about whether the justices have been asked to sign the contracts.
The people who described the agreements spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about court matters.
The justices are accustomed to controlling what the public knows about their work, sealing nearly everything but their oral arguments and written opinions behind a high wall of secrecy. Courts are excluded from the open records laws that require many other government bodies to maintain and make available internal information.
The justices claim their papers belong to them, not the government or the public, and generally arrange to have them locked away until long after their deaths. The court releases no visitor logs to reveal who meets with the justices.
But in 2022, in a shock to many at the court, someone leaked a draft of the court’s decision overturning the federal right to abortion to Politico, which published the document weeks before the justices had intended to make it public. The court conducted an investigation of its staff but mostly spared the justices, and the source was never publicly identified.
More recently, The Times has been regularly publishing stories illuminating the court’s inner workings, including accounts of sensitive debates among the justices.
In September 2024, The Times published an article describing how the chief justice pushed to grant President Trump broad immunity from prosecution. The article quoted from confidential memos by the chief justice and other members of the court who applauded his reasoning. Weeks later, the chief justice abruptly introduced the nondisclosure agreements, after the term had begun.
Before then, the chief justice — fond of referring to court members and employees as a family — relied on softer measures to preserve confidentiality, delivering a lecture to clerks at the start of each term and distributing a written code of conduct to them.
“The law clerk owes the appointing Justice, all other Justices, and the Court as an institution, duties of complete confidentiality, accuracy and loyalty,” instructed a 2018 version obtained by The Times, in which every page is labeled “confidential — for authorized internal use only.” The final page mentioned that breaches could lead to “appropriate sanctions,” but did not specify what those might be.Some Supreme Court clerks who served in past decades also recall being asked to sign a document agreeing to abide by the court’s rules of confidentiality. A version of the agreement was introduced in the years after a former clerk published a rare tell-all book in 1998, they said. Those clerks said the documents did not amount to legal nondisclosure agreements.
Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the federal courts, said other judges have also used those kinds of pledges in the past though he and others did not believe they were currently in widespread use. He said the Judiciary’s code of conduct includes confidentiality requirements.
New York Times, Why The Times Is Expanding Its Supreme Court Coverage, Interview by Patrick Healy, With Jodi Kantor, Adam Liptak, Ann E. Marimow and Abbie VanSickle, Feb. 2, 2026. How four reporters are examining the most secretive branch of government — and the nine justices who shape the law.
For decades The New York Times assigned one reporter to cover the Supreme Court, focusing chiefly on legal arguments and decisions. Now The Times has expanded that aperture to look further at the incredible power of the nine justices and how the least transparent branch of government operates.
Think about the reporting on the closed-door discussions on Trump presidential immunity or the Dobbs abortion case or on the private splits among the liberal justices. Or the reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas’s ties to wealthy conservatives, the questions surrounding the justices’ lucrative book deals or the controversial flags outside Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s homes. Tracking the cases before the court remains a major part of our coverage, but we are going more deeply behind the scenes, into the heart of how the justices use their influence and shape the law.
To do this work, The Times has built out its Supreme Court reporting team.
Adam Liptak, who practiced law for 14 years, has been the dominant and authoritative voice on the beat since he began covering the court in 2008. He has just taken on a new role, chief legal affairs correspondent, and will soon start writing a weekly newsletter, The Docket, about the most pressing legal questions of the day.
Global News
New York Times, U.S. and Iranian Officials to Meet as Trump’s Threats Loom, Ben Hubbard and Farnaz Fassihi, Feb. 2, 2026. President Trump’s Middle East envoy and his son-in-law were expected to meet Iran’s foreign minister in Istanbul on Friday amid tensions between the countries.
Senior U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to meet in Istanbul on Friday for talks aimed at de-escalating the crisis between their countries, according to two current regional officials and a former one who were familiar with the planning.
The talks, they said, aim to bring together Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy; Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law; and Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, the officials said. Also expected to attend are senior officials from Turkey, Qatar and Egypt.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. They included a regional official, a senior Iranian official and a former Iranian diplomat.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If the talks happen, they will mark a rare face-to-face encounter between U.S. and Iranian officials at a time when military threats by Mr. Trump, and the refusal of Iran’s leaders to accept his demands, have brought the two countries to the precipice of war, spreading fear across the region.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has threatened to bomb Iran if its embattled leaders, who last month crushed mass protests with lethal force, did not yield to his demands. Those include Iran’s ending its nuclear program, accepting limits on its ballistic missiles and halting its support for proxy militias around the Arab world.
So far, Iran’s leaders have said that they would not negotiate while under threat, while vowing a harsh response to any American attack.
New York Times, He Can’t Stop Needling Trump, Even Days Before a White House Meeting, Annie Correal and Max Bearak, Feb. 2, 2026. President Gustavo Petro of Colombia and President Trump have had a tense relationship that escalated into threats by Mr. Trump, before easing. Anything could happen at their Feb. 3 meeting.
As he prepared for his first face-to-face visit with President Trump, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, left, had been on his best behavior, focused mainly on combating groups involved in the drug trade — Mr. Trump’s stated priority for leaders across Latin America.
But just days before Tuesday’s meeting, he appeared to lapse into an old habit: lobbing verbal mortars at Mr. Trump.
In public remarks last week, Mr. Petro, an avowed leftist, spoke of “genocide in Gaza,” criticized the mistreatment of migrants in the United States and said that Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, had been “kidnapped” by the United States and should be returned to Venezuela to stand trial.
The comments alarmed his advisers as well as experts, heightening fears that the visit could go less smoothly than Mr. Petro’s recent, nearly hourlong call with Mr. Trump did. That could have long-lasting ramifications in a region already reeling from Mr. Maduro’s capture.
The meeting between the two leaders — arranged after Mr. Trump threatened Mr. Petro with military action — is meant to de-escalate tensions, diplomats said. It is also meant to address topics such as “the fight against transnational organized crime, especially on the border,” according to Colombia’s foreign ministry.
But that plan could easily veer off course given that both presidents share a common trait: a willingness to speak their minds no matter the consequences.
“In a word, they’re unpredictable,” said Julio Londoño Paredes, a retired Colombian Army lieutenant colonel, diplomat and former foreign minister who is part of a group of foreign policy advisers who met with Mr. Petro to prepare for the visit.ImagePresident Trump, in a blue suit and blue tie, leans over a desk, mouth open, looking at a multi-line phone.
New York Times, Gaza Crossing to Egypt Reopens in Step Forward for Fragile Cease-Fire, Isabel Kershner and Bilal Shbair, Feb. 2, 2026. Israel and Egypt had disagreed for months about how to resume operations at the Rafah border crossing, which has been largely closed since May 2024.
The sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt reopened on Monday after being largely closed for 20 months, a step forward in Israel’s cease-fire with Hamas.
The reopening of the crossing, in the Rafah area of southern Gaza, will for the first time allow some Gazans who fled during the two-year war to return, but only in limited numbers for now. It is also expected to expedite the exit of thousands of sick and wounded people waiting for medical treatment abroad.
The hope is that the reopening of Rafah will be a move toward gradually improving conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.
The first groups of Palestinians started passing through the crossing on Monday morning in both directions, according to Israeli officials, who said they would have final numbers of how many crossed by the end of the day.
At a Palestinian Red Crescent Society hospital in Khan Younis, a minibus departed for the Rafah crossing shortly after 1 p.m. with five patients, each accompanied by two caregivers.
Mohammed Mahdi, 25, was escorting his father Akram Mahdi, 61, a mechanical engineer. The elder Mr. Mahdi was wounded in April 2024 in an Israeli airstrike near their home, in a refugee camp in central Gaza, according to his son. Shrapnel tore into his face, blinding him in his right eye and damaging his left one. Doctors in Gaza could do little more than stabilize him, his son said.
“Finally, we can get advanced treatment abroad,” Mohammed Mahdi said before boarding the minibus.
It was unclear by midday how many Palestinians had actually crossed the border in either direction. No returnees appeared to have arrived in Gaza as of early afternoon.
Israel and Egypt disagreed for months over the terms of the reopening, which is part of President Trump’s plan for ending the Gaza war. A shaky cease-fire took effect in October, but Israel kept the crossing closed as leverage until the last of the hostages seized in the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, were returned to Israel, alive or dead.
New York Times, Investigation: The Secret Egyptian Air Base Behind Sudan’s Drone War, Declan Walsh, Malachy Browne, Eric Schmitt and Nick Cumming-Bruce, Updated Feb. 2, 2026. The covert base offers new evidence of how the Sudanese conflict is morphing into a theater for high-tech warfare, driven by foreign interests.
The airstrip sits next to giant crop circles at the edge of the Sahara. Military drones take off over enormous fields of wheat, leaving their covert base for one of the world’s biggest drone wars.
The base is in Egypt, hidden amid a vast, agricultural project in the country’s Western desert. But the targets are in Sudan.
The clandestine drone operation offers new evidence of how the civil war in Sudan — racked by famine, atrocities and tens of thousands of deaths — is morphing into a sprawling theater for high-tech drone warfare driven by the interests of rival foreign powers.
Satellite images, flight records and videos reviewed by The New York Times, as well as interviews with American, European and Arab officials, suggest that for at least six months, advanced military drones based at the Egyptian airstrip have been carrying out strikes in Sudan. Their target is the ruthless paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., which has been battling the Sudanese military for more than 1,000 days.
More On U.S. Politics, Governance
Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: DraftKings and FanDuel spending millions on 2026 midterms, new filings reveal, Judd Legum, right, Feb. 2, 2026. The two largest online sports gambling companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, have already spent millions of dollars on the 2026 midterm elections, according to FEC disclosures filed on Friday. This is a sea change for the industry, which has traditionally focused its political spending on state politics.
The push into federal elections comes as DraftKings and FanDuel face increased scrutiny on the impact of online sports gambling, including several high-profile athlete scandals and research showing a significant spike in problem gambling.
The emergence of DraftKings and FanDuel as major political contributors for the 2026 midterms has not been previously reported. Although the spending is bipartisan, both companies’ giving is tilted toward Republicans.
The deluge of cash reflects the national ambitions of the two companies and their desire to curb federal legislation and regulation that could blunt their expansion. The companies oppose bills that could restrict advertising and fund efforts to combat gambling addiction. Both companies have also recently expanded beyond sports betting into prediction markets, which are regulated at the federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
On December 16, 2025, DraftKings donated $500,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), a Super PAC dedicated to maintaining Republican control of the Senate. The company, which donates under the name DK Crown Holdings Inc., has not yet donated to the SLF’s Democratic equivalent, the Senate Majority PAC (SMP). DraftKings also donated $2 million to a new PAC, Win For America, which was created on November 2, 2025. The company was Win For America’s only donor. Then, on November 21, Win for America donated $500,000 to the American Conservative Fund, a dark money group that works in concert with the SLF to boost Senate Republicans. Simultaneously, $450,000 was funneled from Win for America to American Future PAC, a new group that was formed days after Win for America. Win for America is the sole source of funding for American Future PAC. Based on the political consultants involved and the messaging of American Future PAC’s nascent website, it appears likely to support Democratic candidates.
Prior to this spending, the only federal political donation DraftKings has made since its founding in 2012 was a $500,000 donation to the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC). DraftKings did not donate to the Democratic National Convention (DNC). In 2025, DraftKings also donated $502,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee.
On December 24, 2025, FanDuel donated $500,000 to the SLF and another $500,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the Super PAC dedicated to electing Republican candidates in the House. The same day, FanDuel donated $500,000 each to their Democratic equivalents, the SMP and the House Majority PAC.
In September, FanDuel donated $25,000 each to Team Morrisey and Black Bear Inc, two federal committees affiliated with West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey (R). (West Virginia has a permissive regulatory environment for online gambling and is often used by FanDuel and DraftKings to test new features.)
On June 18, 2025, FanDuel created FanDuel PAC. It has not yet made any contributions, but the PAC has already amassed a war chest of about $130,000 by collecting checks from employees, suggesting FanDuel’s involvement in the 2026 midterms is far from over.
Prior to last year, FanDuel’s only federal political spending was $500,000 to the 2024 RNC. Like DraftKings, it did not donate to the DNC. FanDuel also donated $482,000 to Trump’s 2025 inauguration.The online gambling industry’s federal agenda
New research is shedding light on the financial and public health toll of pervasive online gambling in the United States. About 57 million Americans had an account with an online sportsbook as of February 2025 — including nearly half of men 18-49.
A July 2025 poll by U.S. News and World Report found that “one-quarter of sports bettors say they’ve been unable to pay a bill because of wagers they made.” About 30% of bettors report having debt they attribute to gambling, and 12% have taken out a high-interest payday loan to fund their wagers. Nine percent report seeking treatment for gambling addiction.
Problem gambling is significantly higher for in-game bets — live wagers placed during the game — than for traditional bets placed before the game begins. But in-game wagers are being promoted relentlessly in advertising by FanDuel and DraftKings.
The proliferation of online sports betting is also impacting the integrity of competition. In the last year, there have been major scandals involving the NBA and college basketball.
In response, some members of Congress have proposed legislation to further regulate the industry and fund treatment for problem gambling.
The SAFE Bet Act would regulate online sports gambling at the federal level. It would ban online sports gambling advertising during live sports events. It would also prohibit online sports books from inducing people to start gambling by offering “bonus bets” or similar incentives. The bill would stop credit card deposits and prohibit online sportsbooks from using AI to track individual players’ betting habits.
The industry also opposes a more modest legislative effort, the GRIT Act, which would “set aside 50% of the federal sports excise tax revenue for gambling addiction treatment and research.” The excise tax is currently 0.25% and generated about $150 million in revenue in 2024. As Vanity Fair notes, currently, the “federal government spends about $1.6 billion annually to research drug abuse, $600 million annually to research the effects of alcohol, and $0 to study gambling.”
The industry opposes the GRIT Act, likely because it establishes the principle that online sportsbooks are responsible for the harms they cause. The online sportsbooks are backing the Discriminatory Gaming Tax Repeal Act, co-sponsored by Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-NV) and Congressman Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), which would eliminate the excise tax altogether.Beyond sports gambling
DraftKings and FanDuel’s federal donations may also be related to their recent expansion into prediction markets. The move allows the companies to take on established prediction markets like Kalshi, which effectively offers wagers on games in states where traditional online sports betting is illegal, including California and Texas. It will also allow FanDuel and DraftKings customers to place bets on topics beyond sports, including politics, economics, and pop culture.
Prediction markets are regulated by the federal government through the CFTC. The Trump administration has allowed prediction markets to operate in a legal gray area, approving markets on a case-by-case basis. The CFTC recently withdrew rules proposed in 2024, which would have banned sports and politics markets.
But CFTC Chair Michael Selig said new rules for prediction markets are coming. The CFTC’s regulatory direction could significantly impact DraftKings and FanDuel’s future earnings. This provides an additional rationale for the companies to influence federal policy. Ultimately, Congress oversees the CFTC, and the Senate must confirm any new members.
DraftKings and FanDuel’s embrace of prediction markets led them to leave the American Gaming Association (AGA), a powerful industry lobbying group, in November. Since leaving the AGA, both companies have rapidly expanded their influence operations.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic was first published by The Atlantic Monthly Magazine in 1862.
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: February 1, 2026 [Song Sums Up Cause of Freedom], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 2, 2026. On February 1, 1862, in the early days of the Civil War, the Atlantic Monthly published Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” summing up the cause of freedom for which the United States troops would soon be fighting. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” it began.
“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.”
Howe had written the poem on a visit to Washington, D.C., with her husband. Approaching the city, she had reflected sadly that there was little she could do for the United States. She couldn’t send her menfolk to war: her husband was too old to fight, her sons too young. And with a toddler, she didn’t even have enough time to volunteer to pack stores for the field hospitals. “I thought of the women of my acquaintance whose sons or husbands were fighting our great battle; the women themselves serving in the hospitals, or busying themselves with the work of the Sanitary Commission,” she recalled, and she worried there was nothing she could give to the cause.
One day she, her husband, and friends, toured the troop encampments surrounding the city. To amuse themselves on the way back to the hotel, they sang a song popular with the troops as they marched. It ended: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave; his soul is marching on.” A friend challenged Howe to write more uplifting words for the soldiers’ song.
That night, Howe slept soundly. She woke before dawn and, lying in bed, began thinking about the tune she had heard the day before. She recalled: “[A]s I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.... With a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen…. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
Howe’s hymn captured the tension of Washington, D.C., during the war, and the soldiers’ camps strung in circles around the city to keep invaders from the U.S. capital.
“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.”
Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic went on to define the Civil War as a holy war for human freedom:
“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”
Battle of Gettysburg 1863 Battle Map.
The Battle Hymn became the anthem of the Union during the Civil War, and exactly three years after it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, on February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution of Congress passing the Thirteenth Amendment and sending it off to the states for ratification. The amendment provided that “[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It gave Congress power to enforce that amendment. This was the first amendment that gave power to the federal government rather than taking it away.
When the measure had passed the House the day before, the lawmakers and spectators had gone wild. “The members on the floor huzzaed in chorus with deafening and equally emphatic cheers of the throng in the galleries,” the New York Times reported. “The ladies in the dense assemblage waved their handkerchiefs, and again and again the applause was repeated, intermingled with clapping of hands and exclamations of ‘Hurrah for freedom,’ ‘Glory enough for one day,’ &c. The audience were wildly excited, and the friends of the measure were jubilant.” Indiana congressman George Julian later recalled, “It seemed to me I had been born into a new life, and that the world was overflowing with beauty and joy, while I was inexpressibly thankful for the privilege of recording my name on so glorious a page of the nation’s history.”
But the hopes of that moment had crumbled within a decade. Almost a century later, students from Bennett College, a women’s college in Greensboro, North Carolina, set out to bring them back to life. They organized to protest the F.W. Woolworth Company’s willingness to sell products to Black people but refusal to serve them food. On February 1, 1960, their male colleagues from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down on stools at Woolworth’s department store lunch counter in Greensboro. David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell A. Blair Jr., and Joseph McNeil were first-year students who wanted to find a way to combat the segregation under which Black Americans had lived since the 1880s.
So the men forced the issue by sitting down and ordering coffee and doughnuts. They sat quietly as the white waitress refused to serve them and the store manager ignored them. They came back the next day with a larger group. This time, television cameras covered the story. By February 3 there were 60 men and women sitting. By February 5 there were 50 white male counterprotesters.
By March the sit-in movement had spread across the South, to bus routes, museums, art galleries, and swimming pools. In July, after profits had dropped dramatically, the store manager of the Greensboro Woolworth’s asked four Black employees to put on street clothes and order food at the counter. They did, and they were served. Desegregation in public spaces had begun.
In 1976, President Gerald Ford, right, officially recognized February 1 as the first day of Black History Month, asking the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
On February 1, 2023, the family of Tyre Nichols laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee. He was so severely beaten by police officers on January 7, allegedly for a traffic violation, that he died three days later.
On February 1, 2026, as the fiftieth observance of Black History Month begins, government officials under the administration of Donald J. Trump have just removed an exhibit on enslavement from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The exhibit acknowledged nine people enslaved at the President’s House Site when President George Washington lived there. Curators intended the exhibit to examine “the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation,” but it conflicted with Trump’s March 2025 order that national historic sites should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.” In his order, Trump called out Independence National Historical Park for promoting “corrosive ideology,” teaching visitors that “America is purportedly racist.”
The administration is openly working to replace American multiculturalism with white nationalism, launching raids by federal agents to terrorize Brown and Black Americans as well as white Americans who reject MAGA ideology.
On Saturday, in Minneapolis, where federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are attacking immigrants and those marching to end the violence of the federal agents, people entered a Target store to protest the retail chain’s cooperation with federal agents. In unison, they sang: “We the people stand together, we the people stand together….”
The words were set to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
U.S. Interest Rates, Federal Reserve, Markets, Jobs, Economy
New York Times, Your ‘Safe’ Stock Funds May Be Riskier Than You Think, Jeff Sommer, Updated Feb. 2, 2026. The U.S. stock market has become so concentrated that even broad index funds are no longer well diversified, our columnist says.
Even if you have been doing everything right and diversifying your investments as the textbooks suggest, you may be taking greater risk than you realize.
What’s happened is that a handful of companies, like Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple, have been driving stock returns. They, and a handful of other tech giants, including Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla, have become so valuable that their shares dwarf the rest of the market. That’s well known, and even applauded, because these gargantuan stocks, many of them spurred by investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, account for an outsize portion of the wealth that many people have gained in the market over the last three years.
But there’s a downside that isn’t as well understood. The market has become so highly concentrated that even the most comprehensive U.S. stock index funds are no longer well diversified. In fact, by a strict legal definition, they now are not diversified at all. If you believed that by buying an index fund that mirrored the entire stock market you were being protected by true diversification, it’s time to re-evaluate this crucial assumption.Why Spreading Risk Matters
The adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is a reasonable starting point for thinking about long-term investing. It basically means owning a sufficient variety of securities to give yourself protection if some of your holdings run into trouble.
Holding broad index funds is a standard way to accomplish this. Owning a bit of everything in a publicly traded market is usually said to give you plenty of diversification. The vast literature on finance has suggested this for more than 50 years. While I believe it’s still largely true, it isn’t entirely correct. The situation has changed for the first time since the advent of widely available index funds in the 1970s.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Kevin Warsh and Weathervane Economics, Paul Krugman, right, Feb. 2, 2026. A man with his finger in the political wind.
On Friday I had some, well, less than positive things to say about the nomination of Kevin Warsh to head the Federal Reserve. As I noted, many news reports have characterized Warsh as a monetary hawk, but I argued that he’s more of a political weathervane: He’s for tight money when Democrats are in power, but all for running the printing presses hot when a Republican is in the White House.
Writing in the New York Times, Catherine Rampell says more or less the same thing I did, but more politely.
And I have a picture! Neil Dutta of Renaissance Macro, another skeptic, asked Claude to rate Warsh’s speeches and public comments over the years for monetary hawkishness or dovishness. He sent me the chart at the top of this post. Warsh was very hawkish in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. But he turned abruptly dovish … after Donald Trump won in 2024.
If you look carefully at that chart, you’ll see that there’s a gap in the timeline for several years after Warsh was passed over for Fed chair during Trump’s first term. Dutta tells me that this is because he didn’t say enough in public about monetary policy for Claude to rate his position.
Why was Warsh so opposed to easy money after the 2008 financial crisis? Initially he argued against low interest rates and quantitative easing because, he warned, they would lead to excessive inflation. He was, however, completely wrong, and it would have been a disaster if the Fed had followed his advice. As Rampell says,
Of course, plenty of people get predictions wrong. But not usually this wrong, without acknowledgment or explanation of how they’d avoid a similarly catastrophic error next time, particularly when expecting a promotion.
OK, she’s not that much more polite than I was.
It’s also worth noting that Warsh, right, has been extremely caustic, condemnatory and insulting about the Federal Reserve’s track record. But during the 
biggest, most consequential monetary debate of modern times, Warsh got it totally wrong — while the professional staff at the Fed got it mostly right.
Also, Warsh continued to argue vociferously against easy money even after the inflation he predicted circa 2010 failed to materialize. Rather than changing his views, he came up with new arguments to justify an unchanging policy position, seemingly inventing new economic principles on the fly. I’ll discuss debates about monetary policy at length next weekend, but let me just say here that Warsh’s biggest effort to justify tight money in the face of low inflation and still-weak employment, made in 2015, was an intellectual mess. Larry Summers (I know, I know) called it “the single most confused analysis of monetary policy that I have read this year.”
Given this history, why have so many established economists rushed to say nice things about Warsh? Well, I’m an economist too, and we’re supposed to think about incentives. Imagine yourself as a policy-oriented economist who tries to have contact with and influence over policymakers. Do you want to risk making a bitter enemy out of the next chair of the Federal Reserve? I’m personally wondering how I’ll be greeted at some of the conferences I’m supposed to attend over the next few months.
Still, readers deserve to be told the truth. Warsh might surprise us all by showing unexpected integrity, but don’t count on it. He may be better than the alternatives, but that’s a very low bar, which mainly tells us how sorry a state economic policymaking — actually, policymaking of any kind — has reached in the age of Trump.
Feb. 1
The Parnas Perspective, Major Update: Trump Claims Epstein Files "Absolve" Him, DOJ Caught Violating the law, Major Trump Family Corruption Scheme Exposed, Aaron Parnas, Feb. 1, 2026. I’ve spent the last 48 hours reviewing thousands of Epstein-related documents, and there are new developments this morning that the public needs to know about. At the same time, a major corruption scheme involving the Trump family and a royal family from the United Arab Emirates has come to light. There is a lot to unpack.
Here’s the news:
Donald Trump claimed that the Epstein files completely “absolved” him, despite there being substantial allegations made in the files against the President of the United States.
I have spent the past several hours sending the Department of Justice multiple documents that it failed to properly redact. The first document is shown below, or rather, only the first page is shown in order to protect victim privacy. That page depicts a manila envelope. Inside the envelope are headshot images of more than a dozen Epstein victims. The accompanying information notes that the survivors are under the age of 18, as it lists their dates of birth. Not a single face is redacted.
The second document I found is a list of survivors, 32 in total. Only one name is redacted. The remaining 31 are not. These appear to be clear violations of the Epstein files law. I am actively working with the Department of Justice and the House Oversight Committee to have these materials taken down and properly redacted.
Elon Musk dismissed the Epstein files as “a distraction” after old emails surfaced showing him expressing interest in visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s private island and asking about the “wildest party,” despite later attempts to distance himself.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, left, claimed that there was insufficient evidence in the files to charge any third parties.
The only problem with that comment is that, in the files, there is a draft indictment from the mid-2000s in which federal prosecutors prepared to charge Epstein and three co-conspirators. Assuming one of those co-conspirators is Ghislaine Maxwell, the other two have never been charged, despite prosecutors believing there to be enough evidence to move forward:
Reminder: Jeffrey Epstein plead guilty to procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18 in 2008. Despite that, so many people had contacts with Epstein after 2008.
New emails show Jeffrey Epstein made a donation on behalf of Howard Lutnick, right, the Trump Commerce Secretary, years after Lutnick claimed to have cut off ties with Epstein:
Sent: To: Subject: Rattner, David Tuesday, November 14, 2017 1:33 AM jeffrey E. RE: Hi Jeffrey many thanks for your incredible donation in honor of Howard Lutnick. Would you like to take an ad and offer your own words of congratulations in our commemorative journal? Are you able to join us at the event itself on December 11th and would you like to take a table (inclusive of your generosity)? Thank you!'
A text exchange between Steve Bannon and and someone who appears to be Jeffrey Epstein discusses Donald Trump’s then-assistant Madeleine Westerhout, with Bannon calling her a “grundoon,” Epstein referring to her as “Kneepads” who was “doing God’s work,” and adding that Trump was “much more calm,” but that “the sight of him in the residence in his undies is hard to fathom,” promising, “I’ll give you details when I see you.”
Newly released files claim Jeffrey Epstein sent a total of $75,000 in payments linked to Lord Mandelson, left, between 2003 and 2004, including a 
transfer to his partner and later payments to accounts in Mandelson’s name, which Mandelson disputes and says he does not recall receiving.
A senior Slovak official resigned after new Epstein-related emails emerged, with Prime Minister Robert Fico accepting the resignation of his national security adviser Miroslav Lajčák, following disclosures that Jeffrey Epstein invited Lajčák to dinners and meetings in 2018, including one email proposing a gathering with Steve Bannon and Kathy Ruemmler; Lajčák denied wrongdoing and said the contacts were part of his diplomatic role, but political pressure forced his exit.
In a 2016 exchange revealed in the Epstein files, Larry Summers asked Jeffrey Epstein who he thought would win the election, to which Epstein replied, “Difficult to bet against the card cheat if you are gambling on the outcome.”
Sent: To: Subject: Jeffrey E.
Other news:
The Wall Street Journal has uncovered a secret deal signed days before Donald Trump’s inauguration gave Abu Dhabi royals led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan a 49% stake in the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial for $500 million, with Eric Trump signing the deal and millions flowing to Trump-linked entities and to associates of Steve Witkoff, right, months before the UAE secured access to tightly controlled U.S. AI chips.
Todd Blanche was asked about this today, he refused to answer.
MPR News has confirmed Liam Ramos and his father have safely landed in Minnesota. They have been released.
NBC News has confirmed that AI-altered photos and videos of the fatal Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti spread widely online, misleading millions, blurring fact and fiction, and even prompting Dick Durbin to cite an inauthentic image, underscoring how AI “enhancements” are fueling misinformation and false skepticism about real evidence involving federal officers, including ICE.
A partial government shutdown is expected to last until at least Tuesday after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, left, said Democrats will not help pass a GOP-backed funding bill, leaving Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling for votes on a Senate deal brokered by Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump that temporarily funds DHS while negotiations continue over immigration enforcement and ICE oversight.
Ro Khanna said he is a “firm no” on voting to reopen the federal government unless ICE funding is separated, arguing Democrats cannot support continued ICE financing amid scrutiny over fatal shootings of U.S. citizens and broader concerns about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
New York Times, News Analysis: How Alex Pretti’s Death Became a National Tipping Point, Kurt Streeter, Feb. 1, 2026. Several factors converged to force a remarkable shift in the federal government’s aggressive efforts in Minnesota.
Renee Good was killed on Jan. 7. Alex Pretti, above, on Jan. 24. Federal agents killed both of them, and the administration labeled both of them terrorists — labels that quickly fell apart when the public learned more about each case and saw videos of the shootings.
Yet it was Mr. Pretti’s death that broke the dam, galvanizing public sentiment against the federal government’s tactics and forcing a remarkable retreat by the Trump administration.
Gun-rights groups turned on the White House. Republican senators called for investigations. One poll found that support for abolishing ICE had nearly doubled among independent voters.
Both deaths provoked outrage. But Mr. Pretti’s reached further — into conservative circles that had defended the crackdown, and among independents, who had been willing to look away. Why did his death cross political lines that Ms. Good’s, for all the anger it generated, didn’t?
It is never possible to say with certainty why one tragedy widens the circle of outrage and another does not. History offers precedents.
George Floyd was not the first Black man to die at the hands of police in 2020. The searing video of his death, however, and the moment it arrived — during heightened unease around police misconduct — turned his killing into a movement. Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus; a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin had been arrested after performing the same act months earlier. But it was Parks, for reasons both strategic and circumstantial, whose case became a catalyst. Tipping points are often visible only in hindsight.
Kevin Drakulich, a criminologist at Northeastern University who studies race, crime and public opinion, put it simply: “Renee Good’s death was tragic. Alex Pretti’s is a trend.”
The federal crackdown had already produced casualties elsewhere, including a Mexican immigrant who was shot and killed by ICE agents in Chicago in September. The death did not draw sustained national attention. Minneapolis was different — two killings of American citizens, at close to the same time, in a city that had become shorthand for protest and police violence.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the then-Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, crouched on all fours over an unidentified woman lying on the floor, in images released as part of the Jeffrey Epstein files
New York Times, Starmer Urges Former Prince Andrew to Testify to Congress Over Epstein Ties, Stephen Castle, Feb. 1, 2026. Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles in October by his brother King Charles III because of growing questions around his links to Mr. Epstein.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain has urged Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to testify before a congressional committee over his dealings with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, following the release of photographs appearing to show the former British prince kneeling over a woman lying on the ground.
Mr. Starmer’s comments, made on Saturday to reporters traveling with him, increase the pressure on Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, who was asked in November by Democrats in Congress to give evidence to an investigation.
At the time, Mr. Starmer, shown at right in a 2017 photo, supported the principle of those with information coming forward, but said that the request was something Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor should consider personally. That position appeared to toughen somewhat this weekend when the prime minister was asked directly about the case during a four-day visit to Asia.
“Anybody who has got information should be prepared to share that information in whatever form they are asked to do that,” Mr. Starmer told reporters, Reuters reported. “You can’t be victim-centered if you’re not prepared to do that.”
Formerly known as Prince Andrew and the Duke of York, Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles in October by his brother King Charles III because of the growing questions around his links to Mr. Epstein, a financier, who died in prison in 2019.
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor is also scheduled to move out of his home at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, a 30-room Georgian mansion that sits on 98 acres of land west of London where he has lived since 2003, to a more modest residence on the royal estate in Sandringham, which is privately owned by the monarch.
The latest embarrassing photographs, which dominated several newspaper front pages in Britain on Sunday, emerged with the release on Friday by the Justice Department of more than three million pieces of evidence, including thousands of images. It was the largest batch of files related to the Epstein case to be made public to date.
Two images appear to show Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor kneeling over an unidentified, fully-clothed woman in an unspecified location while touching her stomach and waist. In a third, he looks at the camera while on all fours next to the woman. In all pictures, her face has been redacted.
The latest batch of documents also included a 2010 email exchange between Mr. Epstein and Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, right, adding new details to what has been publicly known about the long friendship between the men.
Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the latest images. Buckingham Palace also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Around 2001, Mr. Epstein trafficked Virginia Roberts Giuffre, then 17, to have sex with the now former prince, according to legal filings. Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor has denied that he raped her and has denied any wrongdoing in relation to his friendship with Mr. Epstein.
Beyond the images of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, there was one of Peter Mandelson, shown above in a file photo, the former British ambassador to the United States, in his underwear, talking to a woman wearing a bathrobe. Mr. Mandelson was fired in September over his links to Mr. Epstein.
Reverberations of the files released on Friday were also felt more widely. In Slovakia, the prime minister, Robert Fico, announced this weekend that he had accepted the resignation of his national security adviser, Miroslav Lajcak, after the release of messages from 2018 between Mr. Lajcak and Mr. Epstein in which they discussed women and a forthcoming meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, which President Trump has sought to rename to include his name first despite a law stating its official name as honoring only the late President Kennedy.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Kennedy Center to Close for 2-Year Construction Project, President Says, Adam Nagourney, Feb. 1, 2026. What We’re Covering Today.
President Trump announced Sunday that he would shut down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which has been battered by cancellations and boycotts, for two years starting this summer. He said that would allow his administration to transform what he called “a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center,” into “the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind.”
Mr. Trump’s announcement came after a major backlash by performers, contributors and audience members and amounted to a significant setback to one of the key initiatives of his second term. From his first weeks in office, Mr. Trump set out to remake the center, opened as a tribute to John F. Kennedy after his assassination in 1963, in his image.
He attached his name to the center, has installed loyalists to run it, including Richard Grenell, and called for changing the programming there to make it more in line of what he said was widespread American tastes and sensibilities: more “Les Miz” and less “Hamilton,” as he put it on one visit to the center.
The reaction has been harsh and unrelenting. Last week, Philip Glass, the acclaimed American composer, said he was withdrawing Symphony No. 15, which had been commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra in tribute to Abraham Lincoln, that was to be performed there in June. A week earlier, the acclaimed soprano Renée Fleming canceled a performance there.
The Washington National Opera announced last month that it was cutting its ties to the center and the other classical music anchor there, the National Symphony Orchestra, has been playing to empty seats.
But Mr. Trump, in his social media post, made no mention of the cancellations or the patrons who are now staying home: attendance at the National Symphony Orchestra is down 50 percent over last year. Instead, he presented it as his latest effort to rebuild part of Washington — following the demolition of the East Wing of the White House — in this case a performing arts center.
The Kennedy Center underwent a major renovation and expansion in 2019 under Deborah Rutter, the Kennedy Center president who left shortly after Mr. Trump took office. But Mr. Trump had earlier seemed unhappy with that expansion, which cost $250 million, saying “they built these rooms that nobody is going to use.”
The president said that funding had been found for the project — but did not say how much it would cost or where the money was coming from. Last year, Mr. Trump secured $257 million from Congress to help with capital repairs on the building.
He offered no details of what kind of reconstruction he had in mind, other than to say it would entail “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.”
The center will shut down on July 4, he said Sunday, coinciding with the nation’s celebration of its 250th birthday. He said that a dramatic step was necessary to safeguard one of Washington’s most treasured cultural institutions.
“In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer,” he wrote on Truth Social. The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!”
There was no immediate word where the National Symphony Orchestra, which has vowed to keep playing at the center in the midst of the exodus, would perform over those two years. In a typical year, the orchestra plays as many as 150 performances at the Kennedy Center.
The Washington National Opera has already begun to find other halls.
Mr. Trump made his announcement on what has always been a busy night for American culture and music: the Grammy Awards are taking place in Los Angeles. And it came two days after he used the center as a venue for the black-tie premiere of a documentary about his wife, “Melania.”
More On U.S. Immigration, Rights, Violations
Liam Ramos, the Minnesota five-year-old seized by ICE agents to hold him hostage while seeking his father, is shown at left with U.S District Judge Fred Biery, who ordered his release from the ICE camp in Texas. President Trump, who ordered a crackdown seeking deportation of up to 20 million immigrants, is shown at right in a file photo
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: HOORAY! A judge orders the release of little Liam Ramos, calling his incarceration “unconstitutional” and TEARS into the Trump administration in an absolutely scathing order! Staff Report, Jan. 31- Feb. 1, 2026.
Poor five-year-old Liam Ramos was kidnapped by ICE goons in Minnesota on his way home from school, and then exploited so they could snatch his father too. The image of his tiny, terrified face in a blue hat and wearing his little backpack has struck a chord with the nation, horrified by the cruelty and the heartlessness of Stephen Miller’s deportation regime.
He was sent to an ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas, which has notoriously poor living conditions for its prisoners. Liam was reportedly falling sick from the disgusting food and deeply depressed by being yanked away from his mom and schoolmates and thrown into a terrifying prison by masked goons.
Thankfully, Judge Fred Biery, appointed by Bill Clinton, has ordered his release, and did so with fireworks.
“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” wrote the furious judge in his order.
“Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:
1. "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."
2. "He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
3. "For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."
4. "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.""’We the people’ are hearing echos of that history.”
But he didn’t stop there. “Civics lesson to the government!” thundered the judge:
“Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse.”“The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer. Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son.”
Judge Biery makes it clear he understands the stakes of what’s happening, ending his order by writing, “with a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, it is so ORDERED.”
WOW. Judge Biery is NOT messing around. It’s about time someone told off the Trump administration for their constant violations of our Constitution and took action to rectify at least one of the many, many, many illegal and unjust detentions they have perpetrated on a terrified and innocent immigrant community.
New York Times, Federal Courts Undercut Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign, Miriam Jordan and Devlin Barrett, Feb. 1, 2026. A policy intended to keep immigrants detained indefinitely has led to a deluge of lawsuits, overwhelming some federal courts and resulting in many releases.
The Trump administration has gone to great lengths to arrest and detain as many people as possible during its immigration crackdown. But in recent weeks, a deluge of court cases has led federal judges to release hundreds of immigrant detainees back into the country, and threatens to overwhelm the court system.
In case after case, federal judges have found that the Trump administration has been ignoring longstanding legal interpretations that mandate the release of many people who are taken into immigration custody if they post a bond.
The surge in such cases has dominated the court dockets in some districts, overwhelming government lawyers who have to defend the detentions. And the wave of people who have been set free has upended the Trump administration’s effort to keep detained immigrants locked up indefinitely, even if they do not pose a public safety threat.
Lawyers representing detainees have been filing rafts of what are known as habeas corpus petitions — court filings that compel the government to justify holding someone in custody. In the vast majority of cases, judges are siding with the detainees and ordering their immediate release, or ordering immigration judges to hold bond hearings, according to 10 lawyers interviewed by The New York Times, who said their practices had filed dozens of habeas petitions over the last couple of months.
Jessie Calmes, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta, said that she had filed at least 40 petitions since November. Every one had been granted, she said.
“A lot of these people have been here more than 10 years and have U.S.-citizen kids,” she said. “They’re people who were picked up on the way to work, at their job site or for a traffic violation.”
The surge in habeas petitions has strained federal courts in some states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, with hundreds of new cases a month in some court districts, according to a person with knowledge of the process. That influx has led the Justice Department to pull some criminal prosecutors off regular duties to help with habeas cases, the person said.
The wave of habeas petitions traces to a key change the Trump administration made in how immigration detention decisions are made.
For decades, immigration judges — who are separate from the federal courts and overseen by the Justice Department rather than the judiciary — granted bond to immigrants in detention who were not public safety threats or flight risks, allowing them to live and work in the community while pursuing their cases.
But last year the Trump administration moved to make virtually everyone who is in the country unlawfully subject to mandatory detention. When the policy change was affirmed by the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, it took discretion away from immigration judges.
Federal judges in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia, Nevada and other states, have recently taken issue with the mandatory detention policy and have been ordering immediate releases or bond hearings in immigration court.
Thinking About ..... Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio? Timothy Snyder, historian, right, and author of "Tyrrany," Feb. 1, 2026. Nazi Lies in Vance's America.
In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians.
Its origins are in racist fantasy. During the last presidential campaign, JD Vance, then the vice-presidential nominee, put the Haitians of Springfield at the center of national attention. Temporary Protected Status had been granted to non-citizen Haitians in the US after an earthquake in Haiti killed more than 200,000 people; it was extended after the Haitian president was assassinated. This allowed ten thousand or more Haitians to gather in Springfield, a small city between Dayton and Columbus, and to work. Vance heard about Haitians in Springfield, from a city manager who wanted federal assistance for housing. He turned a reasonable request into a racial crusade.
In a speech of 10 July 2024, Vance, left, claimed that “Springfield, Ohio has been overwhelmed” by Haitian immigrants. Although there was certainly friction over schools and housing, there was no basis for such a judgment. In fact, Springfield was doing better economically than in any moment in Vance’s lifetime. In the months to follow, he would return to the theme, publishing a number of inflammatory claims about Haitians in Springfield, not a single one of which was true. As we will see, Vance’s goal was not so much to get individual lies on the record; it was rather to create a self-sustaining story, in which a real place and its real people could become the raw material for an alternative Nazi reality -- I use the word advisedly. Vance had help in expanding his theme, and crucial helpers were Nazis.
In American terms, Haitians are Black; and the American group Blood Tribe are white-supremacist blood-obsessed Nazis.
A group of American Neo-Nazis white nationalists named Blood Tribe is photographed at a demonstration in Florida (Photo by Wolfman5678 via Wikimedia Creative Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=168542837). The group's flag, using a swastika modeled after that used by Germany's Adolf Hitler, is shown below at center.
After Vance’s speech, Blood Tribe took its cue. Blood Tribe had marched in other cities in the previous two years, wearing masks, distinctive uniforms, and carrying banners with swastikas. These marches were unmistakably Nazi. Vance’s speech drew the attention of Blood Tribe to Springfield. On 10 August 2024, members of Blood Tribe carried out their usual performance in the city’s downtown, two of them carrying banners with swastikas and another two brandishing automatic rifles. Mayor Rob Rue called the march “an attempt to disrupt our community by an outside hate group.” Blood Tribe responded on social media: “We hear that you have a real problem with Haitian ‘refugees.’”
And from whom did they “hear” this? JD Vance.
Later that month, a local Springfield (self-described) social media influencer named Anthony Harris attended a meeting of the Springfield City
Commission. He claimed that Haitians were “flipping cars in the middle of the street,” which was not the case. He then introduced a colorful new element to Vance’s image of a Springfield “overwhelmed” with refugees. He claimed that Haitians went to Springfield parks, seized ducks by the necks, cut off their heads, and then devoured the headless fowl. This was untrue.
Five Blood Tribe members also attended that same 27 August City Commission meeting. One of the Nazis, Drake Berentz, stood up to say that “I come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you are doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian that you bring in.” Haitians had been living in Springfield for years. The only novelty was that Vance had drawn attention to them. After the City Commission meeting, Blood Tribe took to the internet to spread the lie that “Haitians eat the ducks out of city parks.”
This business of purported animal abuse would become very important. A month later a version of the story would be spread to tens of millions of people by a former (and future) president of the United States, who would use a tale of barbarism as a justification for a “large deportation.”
The question of who is human and who is not can be defined by animals. In a predominantly rural society, the claim that people are beasts is a suggestion that they can be slaughtered. This is a frequent theme in histories of mass killing, such as the Holodomor (the Stalinist political famine) in Ukraine, or for that matter the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an urban or suburban setting, in which animals are companions, the idea that others mistreat animals can be the signal that they are not like us, barbarians, not fully human. Among the many other accelerating repressions, Jews in Nazi Germany were not allowed to keep pets at home. In the US, the slur of eating pets has traditionally been applied to Asians. The idea that Black people eat the wrong things in the wrong way is a staple of American racism.
In early September 2024, a Springfield woman posted on Facebook about a lost cat. She had heard from someone who had heard from someone else who had heard from yet someone else that a cat had been abducted and eaten by Haitians. The story had no basis. But once online, it could be used, and it was. The fascist-friendly Twitter account @EndWokeness posted that “ducks and pets are disappearing,” with a screenshot of the cat post and a photo of a man holding a Canada goose. The photo was taken in another city, and the man in the image complained that his image was being used in a campaign of lies. The baseless notion that Haitians were mistreating or killing animals, spread to make them seem like barbarians, was quickly shared by prominent far-right figures such as Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk.
When Vance then posted about Haitians on 9 September 2024, two months after his first speech, a circle was closed. He had drawn attention to Springfield, including the attention of Nazis. This led to the portrayal Haitians as criminals and barbarians. Vance now repeated the specific claims, to which he himself had given the general impulse, as evidence that his initial slander had been true. “Reports now show,” he wrote, “that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who should not be in this country.”
There were no such reports; there was only the campaign of aggression that Vance himself had initiated. Cat-eating now became a favorite topic among national elected Republican officials. Often this took a joking tone, with cat memes. This levity is a tactic of the on-line far right: even as we demean other people and deny their humanity, it is all somehow just a joke. But of course the consequences are real: an advocate of the Haitian community was harassed after Vance’s post.
This was just the beginning. The alternative reality that Vance and Nazis co-created was bleeding into the real world. The next day was the presidential debate between Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee, and Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
On the stage in Philadelphia on 10 September 2024, before a national televised audience of sixty-seven million people, Trump led with racial abuse of Haitians in Springfield: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what is happening in our country and it’s a shame.” One of the moderators pointed out that there was no evidence for any such claim. Trump then said that he had seen “people on television” complaining that their dogs had been eaten. There were no such television reports.
After the debate, Vance revealed what he was doing: saying one thing that was not true (the pets) in the service of spreading even bigger lies (some general catastrophe). He essentially granted to an interviewer that the story about cats and dogs was not true, but “whatever the case may be,” it was legitimate to spread that false claim because it drew attention to the general “carnage” in Springfield, of which of course there was none. Vance’s stance might be summarized thus: “Where there is the smoke that I made up, then there must also be the fire that I also made up.” In other settings, Vance was more specific than “carnage,” claiming increased rates of disease and crime. All of these claims were also baseless and false.
A spurious alternative reality, built from Nazi marches, internet memes, and Vance’s and Trump’s lies was consciously created and spread. The day after the presidential debate, the leader of the Nazi group Blood Tribe understandably declared victory, expressing his pride that Blood Tribe had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.”
Ohio politicians began to respond. Governor Mike DeWine, left, spoke up to contain the lies that Vance and others had spread. DeWine acknowledged the very real challenges created by rapid immigration to schools and housing, and described state-level measures designed to address them. He described the Haitian immigrants as a “positive influence.” He elaborated: “People who want to work, people who value their kids, who value education, you know, these are positive influences on our community in Springfield, and any comment about that otherwise, I think, is hurtful and is not helpful to the city of Springfield and the people of Springfield.” Mike DeWine, who was born in Springfield, knew what he was talking about. But he was reaching thousands of people. Social media had reached millions, Trump tens of millions. The damage had been done.
Vance’s Nazi-propelled propaganda had won. And a propaganda victory of this sort, involving degrading claims about crime, barbarism, and disease, can lead directly to threats and violence. Two days after the presidential debate, Blood Tribe doxed Springfield residents, while several public buildings in Springfield had to be closed due to bomb threats, at least one of which involved hate speech about Haitians. The day after that, on 13 September 2024, three Springfield schools had to be closed after bomb threats. Amidst the chaos that he himself had sown, Vance blamed the immigrants and Kamala Harris.
Having created the problem, Trump and Vance had a “solution,” That same day, Trump claimed that immigrants had “destroyed” Springfield, and promised that, were he to become president, he would order an ethnic purge of the city: “I can say this, we will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio — large deportations. We’re going to get these people out.” Trump’s words were as magnetic as Vance’s: on 28 September, the Nazis of Blood Tribe returned to Springfield, this time waving a swastika flag in front of the mayor’s house.
The Trump-Vance lie that the city had been “destroyed,” the notion of “carnage,” the dehumanization of immigrants— all of this creates the impression that their promised ethnic cleansing action would be a response to something, rather than a simple choice to exercise state violence against an invented racial enemy. These reversals are very important. It is important to consider this carefully.
First, Vance reported that the Nazi propaganda campaign that he had himself inspired amounted to factual evidence. Mental chaos has been created where there was none before. And then that mental chaos becomes the justification for physical chaos: Trump’s “large deportations,” ICE raids that will, in fact, wreck an improving local economy. And once that physical chaos has been created, it will be blamed on the immigrants who are no longer there. Most of this has already played out. A key threshold, which it appears that we are about to cross, is the application of the state violence. At that point, so to speak, the lie is supposed to become “true.”
Hitler gave very specific propaganda guidance in Mein Kampf: a Nazi leader should tell a lie so big that his people cannot accept that they could be deceived on such a scale. And that is one logic, for those predisposed to believe a cat-eating-scale liar like Vance and to accept that the violence was justified. Others, those who do not trust Vance, might still find it hard to believe that their own government, however untrustworthy, is really about to carry out an ethnic cleansing operation just because Nazis march and the vice-president messages.
But if we lose time in incredulity, we risk becoming complicit. Once a big lie has led to violence, violence in which we are implicated because it is our government, it becomes harder to deny the initial lies — we do not want to think that we are complicit in an act of state terror that was based on absolutely nothing except Vance’s lies and Nazi marches. And so some kind of resistance now, even if it is not completely effective, is not only politically but ethically very important.Subscribed
One answer to a big lie, to a Nazi alternative reality, are the small truths. When I visited Ohio in October 2024, after the presidential debate, and then again in October 2025, I was told that the narrative imposed by Vance and Trump on Springfield was irritating and wrong. To be sure, Springfield had problems, like most cities in my home state. But when I stopped there last October, my impressions were in line with what the Ohio governor has been saying. The city is clearly on the upswing.
When I was growing up in the area, Springfield was much rougher than it is now. When I was finishing middle school, in 1983, Newsweek devoted an entire issue to Springfield, a gentle case study of the decline of the American dream. When I was in high school, the city (still) had two high schools, and so two football teams, which meant that I visited several times (to watch). It was a tricky town. Things got worse in the 1990s, as the main local employer, International Harvester cut back production, and industry in nearby Dayton also retreated. Between 1999 and 2014, median income in Springfield fell by more than in any other metropolitan area in the country. By 2012, Springfield self-rated as the unhappiest city in the land, and in 2016 it was presented in national media as the nadir the rust belt trajectory. But the city presented itself as a good place to do business, and in 2017 a big Japanese auto parts maker moved in. And suddenly there were more jobs than people seeking them. Soon the Haitians, who could legally work, starting coming.
By the 2020s, the city has visibly improved. The downtown, which had gone almost dark, is much more bright and functional: the Museum of Art and the Heritage Center Museum are still inviting, and there are good restaurants in the center — in part thanks to Haitians. Looking out into the sunshine of a perfect fall day from the pavilion of a Mexican place, it seemed grotesque to imagine that restaurants and other sites of employment could be raided by federal agents, that the city could be laid to waste on the lying logic that it had already been laid to waste. There was nothing here, nothing among the small truths of Springfield, that could justify such an action.
But even as I was visiting Springfield last fall, Vance’s mendacity was doing its political work. The fiery racial lies were becoming cold bureaucratic power. A few weeks later, in late November, the federal government took the actions necessary to establish the institutional preconditions for an ethnic cleansing of Springfield. In late November of last year, the Department of Homeland Security issued an unpersuasive finding of improved conditions in Haiti. This was the step needed to deprive Haitians of the official Temporary Protected Status that allows them to live and work legally in the United States. Read attentively, the text reveals that conditions in Haiti remain disastrous. At most, there is some weak gesturing towards the future possibility of some improvement — which, in normal times, would be obviously insufficient to deprive Haitians of their status. There is no sense of such improvement in State Department documents, such as the current travel advisory strongly discouraging Americans from visiting Haiti.
The concluding claim of the finding is that the presence of Haitians “is contrary to the US national interest.” This assertion, which is presented as dispositive of all other issues, goes unexplained and undefended. What national interest, exactly? How? The only answer is a vague reference to Trump’s beliefs. In the context of the previous events, the meaning is clear enough. The president and the vice-president have repeated that Haitians eat domestic animals, cause diseases, commit violent crimes, and wreck cities. These very specific dicta about Haitians originated with JD Vance and American Nazis. Given the lack of any other explanation, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the motive of the policy is the racial hatred expressed by the president and the vice-president.
This expression of state of mind is one reason why, should a major ICE operation go forward in Springfield, it would be the ethnic cleansing of an American city. To be sure, the appearance of racial difference drives ICE raids all over the country. But in this case we have a particularly clear trail from public racism to practical policy. This is what lawyers and historians concerned with genocide try to ascertain: was there the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”? It is not easy to settle questions of intent, or of genocide generally; but the expression of racial fantasy about “carnage,” “destruction,” and barbarism by the vice-president and the president weighs on one side of the scale.Subscribed
Today begins Black History Month. This Saturday there will be an open house at Gammon House, Springfield’s museum of the Underground Railroad. What will happen between now and then? Absent a court decision or a change of attitude by the White House, the Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status will expire on Tuesday (3 February) at 11:59pm. Springfield local authorities believe that an ICE surge will begin on Wednesday (4 February) and last for thirty days. The governor has said the same.
And some local people are responding. Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, asked the “silent majority” who supports the local Haitian population to speak up. A conservative couple took up the challenge by gathering more than a thousand signatures for the extension of Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status. On Thursday 29 January, in a Springfield church, people gathered for an information session about their rights. Mayor Rue initiated on Tuesday 27 January a resolution in the City Commission, asking that ICE agents respect local rules and norms. The specific concern was that ICE agents would be masked and could not be identified. In the course of the last month, of course, two Americans have been shot dead by agents carrying out raids. One of the victims was Alex Pretti, a nurse. On 27 January, the Ohio Nurses Association, in an open letter to Ohio’s Congressional delegation, called for all funding for federal immigration enforcement to be halted.
Up until now, the major ICE raids have taken place in states and cities with reliable Democratic majorities. In Springfield, Ohio, the politics would be different. Republicans dominate a wildly gerrymandered Ohio state legislature. Ohio’s two Republican United States senators are unlikely to contradict the president on his signature issue. Mayor Rue and Governor DeWine unsurprisingly say that the law is the law; even these local and state-level Republicans, for whom the issue is close at hand, cannot be expected to use a language of opposition. That said, their expressions of concern are unmistakable; and, in DeWine’s case, thoughtful and detailed. Dewine is far more informed about both Springfield and Haiti than Vance, Trump, Kristi Noem, or anyone else involved in the process.
DeWine disputed the two justifications given by the Department of Homeland Security for the federal action: that Haiti is safe and that Haitians in Springfield somehow compromise “national security.” He said that the decision to remove their Temporary Protected Status as “wrong.” His description of Haiti is, sadly, quite accurate: “it’s extremely violent, the economy’s in shambles, the government does not function, the police are virtually worthless.” He contradicts the Department of Homeland Security finding: “it doesn’t qualify as the situation changing for the better in Haiti.” DeWine is an informed observer. He and his wife Fran DeWine helped to fund a school in Haiti, named in honor of their deceased daughter, Becky. This charitable effort became unsustainable in 2024.
The direction of federal deportation policy really rests on claims about Springfield. Here DeWine’s statement was equally clear: “But probably more important for the United States and the people of Ohio, is that the Temporary Protected Status, if it goes away next week, it’s going to mean that you have thousands of Haitians who are working, contributing members of the community, contributing to the economy, who one day will be able to work, and who the next day will not be able to work. Springfield and Clark County are coming back, they’ve been doing a very very good job. It’s an upward movement. Part of that upward movement comes about because, frankly, of Haitians who are working and contributing to the economy and buying things and opening restaurants and doing all the things that working people (do). These people are working, and they’re hard workers, so I think from a public policy point of view, it is a mistake, it is not in the best interest of Ohio, for these individuals who are workers and working to lose that status.”
Still, the thin, cold guillotine of bureaucratic language descends, from Washington DC to Columbus and Springfield: “A federal list of individual removal orders has been identified in Springfield as an initial focus for enforcement activity.” Public employees in Springfield have just read these chilling words. DeWine’s description helps us to imagine the realization, in an actual city, of this bureaucratic language. There are at least ten thousand men, women, and children who will be subject to arrest and deportation. These are those men and women at work, “who one day will be able to work, and the next day will not be able to work” -- the end of Temporary Protected Status means that people who try to work will be seized in their workplaces, and if not seized in their home.
Those are adults; we also have to imagine the children. Roughly twenty percent of the children in Springfield Public Schools do not have documentation that would establish their citizenship. All of these boys and girls, about fifteen hundred children, are vulnerable. As in other cities, they can be taken from schools and away from their parents, or return home to find their parents gone. Springfield churches are preparing right now for that very situation. The city employees who received that memo about the “removal orders” and the “initial focus of enforcement activity” were the teachers. The Ohio Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the state, “strongly opposes” any presence of ICE agents in schools, which “undermines trust, disrupts learning, and creates trauma for children and families.”
Sad though it is to contemplate, trauma is a goal of ethnic cleansing. The stages that we have seen in Ohio are all too familiar: the fiction of the subhuman enemy; the false details that are used to introduce the stereotypes; the organized use of the propaganda of racial hatred in media; the capture of government by people involved in all this; and then finally the application of violence to thousands of human bodies. At every stage we will be offered the reasons that we should find this normal: on the one side, the fiery talk about subhumans; on the other, the frozen bureaucratic passive-voice institutional boilerplate suggesting that all is normal and inevitable and that no one need take personal responsibility for what is simply happening and must happen.
The violence, once it comes, changes normality: first of all, for the people who are rounded up and held in the concentration camps we call “detention centers,” preparatory to being sent either somewhere they do not want to go, or dying in custody. And this leaves trauma among the survivors in the most obvious, incontestable sense. But everyone who observes also partakes in the trauma. The kids who remain in Springfield schools after their friends disappear will need to tell themselves something. Their parents will need to think of what to tell them. Everyone around has to ask how it came to this. The trauma becomes a political resource. The perpetrators of an ethnic cleansing use the emotion to reshape how we see our neighbors — and ourselves. Most people, I expect, will be appalled by what they see in Springfield. The ethnic cleanser, though, rules with the help of those who are not, those who comply, agree, take part. And in this way ethnic cleansing itself is a step away from democracy and towards minority rule by a police state served by those willing to wear the mask.
Those who dispense the trauma are aware of what they are doing. In this whole Springfield story, it is the statements of Blood Tribe and the the vice-president that reveal the most self-awareness. They are guiding a process that they recognize, understand, and approve: the generation of an alternative reality with a clear definition of the detestable other, and then the mobilization of state power to eliminate that imagined enemy. If this process is completed, as there is every sign that it will be, they will have succeeded: and they too will be altered. Blood Tribe, and groups like them, will have seen how they can move the national conversation and the federal government.
After a Springfield pogrom, JD Vance will have his first namesake policy. Although he has been outspoken during the first year of the Trump administration, and has gotten himself in the way of various endeavors, there is, as of yet, no clear instance of a policy of which he is the author and the executor. The ethnic cleansing of Springfield would be the first. “JD Genocide,” or perhaps “Genocide Vance” -- if all this happens, the sobriquets will write themselves.
And what history will the rest of us write for ourselves? When we are confronted with street terror, concentration camps, and mass deportations, as now in the United States, the thought of historical precedents arises — and is usually suppressed. “It can’t happen here,” we think, so this must not be “it.” When we take the focus down from the national to the local, to the story of Springfield, this is a bit harder to maintain. The “it” is right there in front of our faces.
We confront no historical analogy, but actual twenty-first century Nazis who took action in the public sphere, shaped the public conversation, and are getting the policy outcome that they desired. As the mayor noted after Blood Tribe marched in Springfield, the aim was to “disrupt the community” — and now that disruption can take on a catastrophic scale. Blood Tribe, Vance and Trump appeal not to someone else’s racism in some other time and place, but to American racism, right here and now.
Indeed, having followed the genealogy of events in Springfield, we might find ourselves more open to broader interpretations of what is happening around us, at a national level. After all, the social media feeds of the Department of Homeland Security are ever less distinguishable from those of Blood Tribe, and of course incomparably more influential. The motives given for the deportation operations as a whole, the notion of “criminal aliens” and the like, are essentially those of Springfield writ large. Springfield, far from being the exception, might help us to see the general rule. When I see masked ICE agents I can’t help remembering the masks of Blood Tribe -- and asking myself if there might be some overlap in personnel...
For me, as a historian of atrocity who was raised in Ohio, it is uncanny to consider this evidence. Usually I am reading the sources years or decades after the fact, not along with the events themselves. Usually I visit sites of memory, not cities at risk, which is what Springfield is right now. I wish that what I know about other times and places was not quite so applicable. But insofar as is historical patterns are of any use, it is in naming what might well happen before it does happen -- which, perhaps, makes the horror less likely.
An ICE surge in Ohio is not inevitable. Trump could stop his promised “large deportation.” Perhaps Vance or Kristi Noem could stop it. It can be halted, by a court ruling tomorrow, Monday the second of February.
And if the horror is not stopped, it can at least be resisted, recorded, given its place in history by those with the courage to be present and to speak about what they see. And the seeing, just the seeing, is of huge importance, for all of us. When we see, we can feel and we can act. We can empathize, communicate, shelter, protest, help.
New York Times, Canadian Company Cancels Sale of Virginia Warehouse to ICE, Amanda Holpuch, Feb. 1, 2026. Jim Pattison Developments said the sale of an industrial building, which was planned to become an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility, would not go forward.
A Canadian company said on Friday that it would no longer sell a warehouse in Virginia to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which had planned to use the site as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility.
The site is one of several planned warehouse purchases by ICE, which has faced resistance in recent weeks as the federal government’s immigration enforcement tactics have set off a backlash and protests.
Videos of federal immigration authorities fatally shooting Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota brought new scrutiny to the government’s operations after a year of enforcing anti-immigration policies.
The warehouse in Virginia belongs to Jim Pattison Developments, which is based in Vancouver. After its planned sale was made public in January, the company became one of a number of international companies facing questions about their work with ICE.
On Jan. 21, the Homeland Security Department wrote to officials in Hanover County, Va., to say that the agency planned to buy a 43.49-acre property in Ashland to support ICE operations.
The letter, published by VPM, a Virginia public media company, said the property might be renovated to make holding and processing spaces, offices and cafeterias.
The Hanover County Board of Supervisors said in a statement that it opposed the acquisition, but had limited power to stop a federal building from opening, VPM reported.ImageJim Pattinson, wearing a burgundy coat and a red and blue tie, stands in front of a microphone.Jim Pattison, chief executive of the Jim Pattison Group, oversees a number of business divisions, including real estate. Credit...Phillip Chin/Getty Images
At the same time, Jim Pattison Developments, a company in the Jim Pattison Group, fell into the spotlight in Canada. Emily Lowan, who leads the Green Party in British Columbia, called for a boycott of the company.
Point Blank Creative Inc., a digital media company in Canada, said in a public letter that it would suspend media buys with Jim Pattison Group entities because of the warehouse sale. Point Blank said it had previously spent $550,000 of its clients’ budgets for media placements with Jim Pattison Group businesses.
Jim Pattison Developments said in a statement last week that it had accepted an offer to sell the warehouse to a U.S. government contractor before its potential new owner and use were made known.Trump Administration: Live UpdatesUpdated Feb. 1, 2026, 2:43 p.m. ET4 hours ago
A U.A.E. firm quietly took a stake in the Trump family’s crypto company. Liam, the 5-year-old detained while wearing a bunny hat, is out of federal custody. A judge who has been critical of the Trump administration has been cleared of an ethics complaint.
“We understand that the conversation around immigration policy and enforcement is particularly heated, and has become much more so over the past few weeks,” the statement said.
On Friday, the company released a one-line statement that the sale would not proceed.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
The Virginia warehouse appeared to be a part of the Trump administration’s effort to expand the network of ICE facilities, where people who are not citizens can be detained.
Historically, the agency has prioritized who it detains, such as people with criminal records, but under the Trump administration, the net has expanded to anyone who may be in the country illegally.ImageA black-and-white aerial view of a warehouse in Virginia.An aerial view of a Virginia warehouse. The Department of Homeland Security’s effort to create new ICE facilities is facing resistance in communities across the country.Credit...Department of Homeland Security
At least 32 people have died in ICE custody since Mr. Trump took office for his second term last year, more than in the entire term of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In December, The Washington Post reported that ICE was planning to buy industrial buildings designed for businesses in 23 towns and to convert them into detention facilities, spurring some resistance in places where the warehouse plans became public.
Federal Seizure of Georgia Ballots, Voting Rights
Greg Palast Investigates for The Hartmann Report and RawStory, The real story of the FBI raid on Fulton County, Atlanta, Greg Palast, Jan. 29, 2026. You are watching the theft of 2026 before your eyes.
For God’s sake, let’s get to the REAL agenda behind Wednesday’s-FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE 2020 ELECTION. The warrant says the FBI wants the envelopes from the 2020 election to hunt for crimes. But that’s just the legal excuse for the storm trooping.
This is NOT, as the media seems to think, about Trump’s attempt to prove he won the 2020 race, as if he’s some political Captain Ahab was trying to chase the Moby Dick of 2020 revenge.
This is all about 2026 and 2028. Look at a map. Fulton County is the heart of “Blacklanta.” And Atlanta is the electoral heart of Georgia. And Georgia is the swingiest of swing states. If Republicans don’t cut down the Black vote in Atlanta, they lose the crucial seat now held by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. And in 2028, the GOP, if they don’t suppress the vote in Fulton, they lose the White House. Fulton was the fulcrum of Trump’s loss in 2020 and could spell doomsday for Republicans in 2028.
So, how exactly do you stop Fulton County Black folk (and the LGBTQ community and the hipsters who left rural Georgia because they hate their parents) from voting? The answer is in one word: DROP-BOX.
Surveillance footage of a drop box in Atlanta, used in the film 2000 Mules as evidence of a “mule” whom filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza claimed was paid to stuff this and 26 other ballot boxes. According to D’Souza, this was “the smoking gun! O.J. Simpson…leaving the scene of a crime!” But it doesn’t show anything more than a Black man voting.
Follow me on this.
First, let me explain to my White readers a fact about African-Americans: In the majority, they vote early, having suffered the cruel absurdity of six-hour lines on Election Day. (And remember, it’s a FELONY crime in Georgia to give an elderly voter standing in line, thirsty a bottle of water). From long, sad experience, Black voters have learned to use early voting opportunities, especially mail-in ballots that can be placed in a drop-box.
For example, in the election run-off following the 2020 vote, which put two Georgia Democrats into the US Senate, over a million mail-in ballots (1,084,021) were cast, mainly in drop-boxes, mostly in Fulton/Atlanta.
Republicans took note. So, in a bill signed by GOP Governor Brian Kemp, the infamous SB202, the state declared all-out war on early voting, especially early votes placed in secure drop-boxes.
First, the state slashed the number of drop-boxes allowed in Atlanta and Savannah the two big cities with the urban Black population, by 77%.
Early voting days, when you can use the drop box, were cut from 60 to just seven (!). And drop boxes — meant to serve voters who can only vote when they get off work at night — were sealed up at night in state office buildings.
The result, not reported by a single US outlet (except, God bless him, Thom Hartmann) was that the number of mail-in ballots cast dropped by 83% — 83%! — from over a million to 0.2 million (191,286) by the run-off of 2022.
Why? It goes back to what Donald Trump calls, correctly, one of the most influential documentaries of all time: 2000 Mules. The film, premiered by Trump at Mar-a-Lago, accused 2000 Black men of taking $10 from George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg and Stacey Abrams to stuff drop-boxes with tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots, especially in Fulton County. It was the perfect Sturm for the right, a stimulating concoction of racism and anti-Semitism.
There wasn’t a bit of evidence, of course, but it looked convincing to MAGA-nauts. Every single drop-box in Georgia has a video camera over it to prevent fraud, and the videos are public. So, the Trump front called True the Vote, showed videos of Black men “stuffing” the drop boxes with extra ballots.
Except it wasn’t true. The “star” criminal was a Black man accused of “running from the scene of crime like OJ Simpson.” In fact, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is Republican controlled, ran all over the state to arrest each Black alleged ballot stuffer (a felony crime) — but found that every one, EVERY ONE, was a legal voter. The man accused of thievery was Mark Andrews, who is a Verizon executive who legally dropped his family’s ballots in the drop box. But, as LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter says, “He was seen guilty of a crime because he was Black.” That, literally, was the only “evidence” of the crime. Note: I want you to see Mark Andrews, supposed Black “criminal” supposedly caught in the act of VWB, Voting While Black. Next Thursday, February 5, at 6:30pm Central time (4:30pm Pacific), chapters of Indivisible will host a special online showing of my film, Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, which rips Trump’s True the Vote a new one. If you’re in the Chicago area, you can attend the live showing with Q&A to follow. Early voting, mail-in voting and casting an early vote in a drop were the keys to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, key to a huge surge in minority and student votes nationwide.
And massive suppression of early, mail-in and drop-box votes were key to Trump’s triumphant return. (Did anyone note that, seen from the Oval, the demolition of the East Wing only leaves the Right Wing?)v
Following the 2020 election, over 20 Red States passed laws eliminating or restricting drop-boxes. And in every single case, legislators cited the bullshit “evidence” of 2000 Mules. Fact check: The state of Georgia recounted and reviewed every single Fulton County drop-box and mail in ballot and didn’t find one single forged ballot. Every vote had an identified, verified vote. Not ONE ballot.
White Democrats don’t seem to understand how important early drop-off votes mean to Black and student communities. But the Republicans understand it completely. In fact, GOP Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that, had he not gone to court and stopped Houston from mailing out absentee ballots to all voter, “Donald Trump would have lost Texas.” Texas! (Note: Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America.
By seeking every envelope from drop-box and absentee voters, Attorney General Pam Blondi is saving her job by saving the GOP from the voters’ wrath. The game is to force a state (i.e. Republican) takeover of Fulton County voting (possible under SB 202). And you can’t separate the invasion of Atlanta voting offices from the Purge’n General Blondi’s demand that Minnesota hand over its voter rolls.
The underlying purpose of Blondi’s seizure of Minnesota’s voter files is the restoration of two other racially poisonous vote suppression tricks. One is the return of the “Interstate Crosscheck” purge program and its sister, the purge of “aliens” from the rolls. Interstate Crosscheck cost nearly one million voters their registrations in 2016, key to Trump’s first election. Crosscheck was ruled illegal through a grassroots campaign led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Bernie Sanders and litigation brought by PUSH, the NAACP and the ACLU based, I’m proud to say, on the evidence presented to the courts by the Palast Investigative Fund. But now, Crosscheck is BAAAACK! Want to know about Crosscheck. Read my investigation for Rolling Stone.
And there’s the canard of allegedly MILLIONS of alien voters swimming the Rio Grande just to vote for Democrats. When Florida used the ICE lists to purge 187,000 (!) voters from the rolls, mostly Hispanics, it turns out only ONE was an illegal alien: A Republican from Austria.
But that’s a story for another day — and for our film, "Vigilantes Inc." Grab some popcorn and save America. Greg Palast’s film "Vigilantes Inc.," was produced by Martin Sheen and Maria Florio (Oscar, Best Documentary) and narrated by Rosario Dawson.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: Top intel Democrats demand that Tulsi Gabbard testify before Congress after she was suspiciously spotted during the sham FBI raid on an election center in Georgia, Staff Report, Jan. 31- Feb. 1, 2026. We need answers and we need them NOW.
"We write regarding your participation in the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center on January 28, 2026, reportedly related to the 2020 presidential election, which President Trump continues to falsely claim he won," Senator Mark Warner (above left) and Representative Jim Himes (above right) wrote to Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, shown in center photos above. Warner is the top intelligence committee Democrat in the Senate and Hines holds that distinction in the House.
Georgia has long been the centerpiece of Trump's debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him by Joe Biden. The FBI — which is still under the corrupt control of Kash "Cover up the Epstein Files" Patel — seized the center's 2020 ballots, tabulator tapes, ballot images, and voter rolls. There is no benign explanation for such an operation and it certainly seems like the plan is to manufacture evidence for Trump's false claims to justify undermining the 2026 midterms.
"All I know is that as long as those boxes had been in the control of the county in this facility, they were safe and secure," stated Robb Pitts, chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. "I can no longer, as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta but the citizens of the world that those ballots are still secure."
In their letter to Gabbard, Warner and Hines were blunt. They pointed out that she has "puzzlingly sought to dismantle elements" of the U.S. intelligence apparatus designed to "identify, assess, and counter foreign threats to U.S. elections." In other words, Gabbard's tenure seems designed specifically to make American democracy more susceptible to foreign interference.
"This has included dismantling the Foreign Malign Influence Center, the product of bipartisan legislation in 2019; declassifying a range of classified materials associated with the 2016 Presidential Election – in an apparent attempt to rewrite the well-established public record generated by the Special Counsel Investigation and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation; and paralyzing intelligence production on foreign plans and intentions towards future U.S. elections. In parallel, the Attorney General and Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have dissolved the Foreign Influence Task Force, which was established under President Trump’s first term," wrote Warner and Hines.
“It is also deeply concerning that you participated in this domestic law enforcement action. The Intelligence Community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating for Americans privacy and civil liberties,” they continued.
They then requested that Gabbard appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "immediately" to explain why she was part of the FBI raid in Georgia, what role that intelligence employees played in the operation, and what "legal authorities" she had to be there.
They also demanded an "update on any intelligence in your possession concerning foreign interference in U.S. elections, including the 2020 election and subsequent election cycles, and information on any analysis or activity IC personnel are conducting, or have conducted in the past year, related to the 2020 election."
“Given the politically fraught nature of elections for federal office, any federal efforts associated with combatting foreign election threats necessitate public transparency, prompt updating of Congressional intelligence committees, and clear commitment to non-partisan conduct," they added.
"Your recent actions raise foundational questions about the current mission of your office, and it is critical that you brief the Committees immediately as part of your obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed.
"We expect your cooperation and look forward to your appearance before our committees," they concluded.
Lawfare, Analysis: We Have Questions About the FBI’s Fulton County Search, Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Troy Edwards, Michael Feinberg, Molly Roberts, Benjamin Wittes, Jan. 30, 2026. The administration continues to litigate the 2020 election more than five years later.
More On U.S. Crime, Justice, Rights, Courts
The Legal Breakdown, She Was There” Epstein Filing Reignites Legal Questions About Melania Trump, Andrew Weissmann, right, Feb. 1, 2026. A newly 
surfaced legal filing connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case has reignited public discussion and legal scrutiny surrounding past associations mentioned within court documents — including references that have drawn attention to Melania Trump. While no wrongdoing has been established, the language used in the filing has prompted renewed legal and media analysis.
This video provides a careful, evidence-based breakdown of what the filing actually says, what it does not say, and why certain claims are resurfacing now. We examine how legal filings are written, why specific phrasing matters, and how unverified statements can circulate widely online when removed from their procedural context.
Rather than speculation or sensationalism, this analysis focuses on documented language, legal standards, and the difference between allegations, testimony references, and proven facts. We also discuss how high-profile names can appear in filings without implying liability, and why responsible reporting requires restraint and precision.
Viewers will gain insight into how courts treat third-party mentions, why filings can reopen public debate years later, and how to critically evaluate claims spreading across social media platforms. This discussion is framed within established legal principles and emphasizes the importance of verification before drawing conclusions.
Three brothers, Alon, Oran, and Tal, shown left to right, are standing trial in Miami on federal charges of a massive rape, assault and trafficking ring victimizing underage teens and other your women, including some allegedly drugged and raped by the brothers, two of them twins.
New York Times, Woman Says Tal Alexander Assaulted Her When She Was 13 Years Old, Debra Kamin and Benjamin Weiser, Feb. 1, 2026. The woman told police she was at a party when she was drugged and assaulted by five boys, including Mr. Alexander, who is currently on trial for sex trafficking.
Tal Alexander in a white polo shirt.A recently filed court document points to a pattern of alleged assaults by Tal Alexander and his twin brothers Oren and Alon Alexander that predate the charges they are currently on trial for.Credit...Natalie Keyssar for The New York TimesDebra KaminBenjamin Weiser
More than 20 years ago, a 13-year-old girl was invited to a house party. She had just celebrated her bat mitzvah a few months earlier.
She sneaked out of her house with a few friends from her Miami middle school. They drank some of her parents’ wine and then piled into a taxi to go to a house in Bal Harbour, a wealthy village in north Miami Beach.
It was there, she told The New York Times in an interview this week, that she was assaulted by five boys, including a high school student named Tal Alexander. The Miami-Dade police confirmed that the woman, now 36, spoke to them about the allegations in 2024.
Tal Alexander is now 39 and on trial in Manhattan federal court on charges that he and his twin brothers Oren and Alon Alexander, both 38, led a sweeping sex-trafficking conspiracy dating back to 2008. But the alleged assault of the 13-year-old girl, as well as a recently filed court document, point to a pattern of accusations that predate anything the men have been charged with — with victims so young that they were still in junior high school.
Deanna Paul, a lawyer for Tal Alexander, called the new allegation “categorically false.” In an emailed statement, she added, “Tal is focused on the fighting the charges currently being tried in federal court, not mid-trial publication of new claims.”
Prosecutors have said that the Alexander brothers began engaging in acts of sexual violence, including gang rape, while they were still in high school in Miami. “Each of the victims that the government has interviewed from this period reported hearing that individuals involved — including Tal Alexander — talked about the assaults at school, boasting about ‘running train’ on their victims and saying that they wanted to ‘do it again,’” the prosecutors wrote after the brothers were arrested in December 2024.
The men have all pleaded not guilty.
The federal charges against the brothers involve six adult victims and two underage girls, one who was described as 17 at the time and the other only as being under 18.
But the possibility that accusers might testify who were even younger when they said they were assaulted has been the subject of a heated debate between prosecutors and the Alexanders’ lawyers that has unfolded largely out of public view.
Earlier this month, according to a heavily redacted government court filing, prosecutors asked Judge Valerie E. Caproni to admit testimony from two women about acts that appear to have occurred in 2002, when the brothers and the victims were all young teenagers.Lawyers for the brothers objected strenuously, describing the proposed testimony as “horrific,” and arguing it would be “far more prejudicial and inflammatory” than the other allegations the jury would hear at the trial. Judge Caproni barred the testimony.
The girl from Miami who was 13 when she said Tal Alexander assaulted her is not part of the trial, but she has been closely following it in the news.
The woman asked that her name be withheld in order to protect her privacy. The assault, she said, which began after five boys dragged her to a bedroom and removed her clothes, “affected my entire life.”
In November 2024, she said she got in contact with the Miami Dade police, who told her they were investigating the brothers, and she reported her memories of the assault to them.
She was in eighth grade.
It was late 2002 or early 2003; she said she remembered the school year, but not the exact date. She can’t remember a lot of things, which is why she said she said she didn’t come forward for 20 years. Tal Alexander was 16 at the time.
For two decades, she held on to the burning memory: She entered the Bal Harbour house, she said, and was given a shot of vodka. She had drunk alcohol before and said in the interview with The Times that she was “pretty sure she was drugged” by the drink because her body went weak and her memory turned hazy in a way she had never experienced.
After that, she said, she has only flashes: being dragged down the hall, feeling her clothes being pulled off and lying, weak and helpless, while the boys fondled her body. She knew that she was penetrated by something but was unsure if it was a penis. She remembers seeing a blinking red light and thinking to herself: “Am I being filmed?”
The boy who lived in the house where the alleged assault occurred, she said, was a friend of the Alexanders. His home was near the mansion where Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander grew up.
In June 2024, more than 20 years later, after Tal and Oren Alexander had become two of the most successful real estate brokers in Manhattan and Miami, a headline appeared in The Real Deal, a real estate trade publication: Two women had filed lawsuits accusing Oren and Alon Alexander of rape. Allegations from nearly two dozen more women soon followed; many of them accused Tal Alexander, as well.
Media coverage of the assaults came swift and fast. Dozens of other women came forward with allegations, including in The Times. The woman from Miami said she read the accounts of the accusers and was stunned that many sounded similar to what she had held on to for so many years.
high-profile twins Oren and Alon Alexander of sexual assault was found dead in Australia late last year, according to new reports. Kate Whiteman sued the men in March 2024, alleging they sexually assaulted her in the state of New York in 2012. Months later theywere arrested alongside their older brother and charged with sex trafficking offences. An investigation into the death of Whiteman, 45, by the New South Wales coroner's office has now concluded, finding her death was not suspicious. The coroner's office said they could not provide any further information about Whiteman's death, out of consideration for bereaved family members. WJTX-TV, News4 Jax, Navy commander arrested on child sex crime charges in St. Johns County, Staff Report, Jan. 30, 2026. Jonathan Saburn, above, a 44-year-old active-duty U.S. Navy commander, was arrested this week on multiple child sex crime charges. Saburn also serves as the deputy director of Naval Academy Sailing.
The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office led the arrest, with assistance from the Navy Criminal Investigative Service and the U.S. Marshals Service. Saburn was taken into custody while on duty at Naval Station Mayport.
The investigation began in July 2025 after a victim came forward to report incidents of abuse that happened years earlier. Authorities say the months-long inquiry uncovered evidence that Saburn engaged in inappropriate behavior and touching on several occasions when the victim was young.
These incidents reportedly took place in both St. Johns and Duval counties. Saburn now faces charges including lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, and child abuse.
All Rise News, Rising This Week: People v. Trump, Adam Klasfeld, right, Feb. 1, 2026. The fight over Donald Trump's 34 felony convictions returns to court on Wednesday.
Donald Trump’s lawyers and the federal government that he controls will try again this week to topple his 34 felony convictions from his New York criminal case by seeking to move the case to federal court.
In its latest effort, Trump’s Justice Department will be continuing its practice of trying to erase his criminal record — and the history that led to it — while prosecuting his enemies under the same charges leveled against him and his supporters.
Trump began his term by pardoning every Jan. 6 rioter, including the more than 600 people charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. More than 170 were charged with using deadly or dangerous weapons. Rioters assaulted police with pepper spray, bear spray, Tasers, PVC poles, flagpoles, metal barricades, brass knuckles and more. Some brought firearms.
In a funhouse mirror inversion, Trump’s Justice Department aggressively deployed the same charge against protesters and politicians involved in mundane interactions with federal immigration officers.
The Jan. 6-related images of assaults on law enforcement were searing. Officer Daniel Hodges screamed in agony as a pro-Trump mob pinned him inside a doorway. Officer Michael Fanone had a heart attack after a rioter shocked him with a stun gun to his neck. At least 140 police suffered injuries like concussions, broken bones and chemical burns. Five officers died.
By contrast, one of the biggest symbols of protests against Trump’s federal agents has been a sandwich.
Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) is still facing criminal prosecution after being seen brushing up against federal agents during a melee that ensued during the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D). The mayor’s trespassing case collapsed, but McIver’s case remains pending.
Grand juries and trial juries have thrown out similar allegations of assaulting law enforcement from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
In arresting Don Lemon, prosecutors turned one of Jack Smith’s charges against Trump on its head: conspiracy against rights, which falls under an umbrella statute known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. Trump earned that charge by conspiring to deprive citizens of their votes across the country, predominantly in racially diverse metropolitan areas like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.
Trump’s former Big Lie lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, now in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, gleefully amplified a social media post declaring a prominent Black and gay journalist as one of “today’s klansmen” for documenting a protest inside a church.
Running parallel to their efforts to turn the allegations against Trump and his supporters against their enemies, the Justice Department’s lawyers have tried to clear their boss of wrongdoing. The government executed a search warrant last week to seize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., where three recounts including a hand count declared Joe Biden the winner of the election.
Fulton County was a hotbed of Trump’s conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, where Rudy Giuliani terrorized election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, Trump threatened Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and MAGA state lawmakers joined the ranks of phony Trump electors.
That is to say, the latest development in The People of the State of New York v. Trump is about more than Trump’s criminal convictions. It’s about a Justice Department under his control set on his personal protection and retribution.
That context lurks behind the more narrow issue before U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein: Does the Supreme Court’s immunity decision require the transfer of Trump’s state criminal case to federal court?
Morning News
Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 31, 2026 [Today's Lincoln-Miller 'Debate' on Worker Voting Rights], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Feb. 1, 2026.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media this morning:
“Plenty of countries in history have experimented with importing a foreign labor class. The West is the first and only civilization to import a foreign labor class that is granted full political rights, including welfare & the right to vote. All visas are a bridge to citizenship. In America, for generations now, the policy has been that anyone who would economically benefit from moving to the US can do so, exercise the franchise in the US and their children, the moment they are born, will be full American citizens with all the rights and benefits therein.”
After his call for a “labor class” excluded from citizenship and a voice in government, Miller went on to reject the idea that Haitians living and working legally in Ohio should be described as part of Ohio communities. Calling out Democratic former senator Sherrod Brown, who is running for the Senate again this year, for including them, Miller posted: “Democrats just flatly reject any concept of nationhood that has ever existed in human history.”
History is doing that rhyming thing again.
In 1858, Senator James Henry Hammond (D-SC), a wealthy enslaver, rose to explain to his northern colleagues why their objection to human enslavement was so badly misguided. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” he said. Such workers needed few brains and little skill; they just had to be strong, docile, and loyal to their betters, who would organize their labor and then collect the profits from it, concentrating that wealth into their own hands to move society forward efficiently.
Hammond called such workers “the mud-sill of society and political government.” Much like the beams driven into the ground to support a stately home above, the mudsill supported “that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.” The South had pushed Black Americans into that mudsill role. “We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves,” he said. The North also had a mudsill class, he added: “the man who lives by daily labor…in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and ‘operatives,’ as you call them, are essentially slaves.”
But Hammond warned that the North was making a terrible mistake. “Our slaves do not vote,” he said. “We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositories of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided…by the quiet process of the ballot-box.”
Hammond was very clear about what he believed the world should look like. Black Americans should always be subordinate to white men, of course, but white women, too, were subordinate. They were made “to breed,” as “toy[s] for recreation,” or to bring men “wealth and position,” he had explained to his son in 1852. Hammond’s promising early political career had been nearly derailed when he admitted that for two years he had sexually assaulted his four young nieces, the daughters of the powerful Wade Hampton II (although he insisted he was being wronged because he should get credit for showing any restraint at all when faced with four such “lovely creatures”).
If women and Black people were at the bottom of society, southern white men were an “aristocracy” by virtue of their descent from “the ancient cavaliers of Virginia…a race of men without fear and without reproach,” “alike incapable of servility and selfishness.” By definition, whatever such leaders did was what was good for society, and any man who had not achieved that status was excluded because of his own failings or criminal inclinations.
The southern system, Hammond told the Senate, was “the best in the world…such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth,” and spreading it would benefit everyone.
The next year, rising politician Abraham Lincoln told an audience at the Wisconsin state fair in Milwaukee that he rejected Hammond’s mudsill theory. Lincoln explained that Hammond’s “mud-sill theory” divided the world into permanent castes, arguing that men with money drove the economy and workers were stuck permanently at the bottom.
Abraham Lincoln, shown in an 1860 portrait by Matthew Brady during a campaign appearance at Cooper Union in New York City
For his part, Lincoln embraced a different theory: It was workers, not wealthy men, who drove the economy. While men of wealth had little incentive to experiment and throw themselves into their work, men on the make were innovative and hardworking. Such men could—and should—rise. This “free labor” theory articulated the true meaning of American democracy for northerners and for the non-slave-holding southerners, who, as Lincoln reminded his listeners, made up a majority in the South. “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him,” he explained.
In the election of 1860, southern Democrats tried to get voters to back their worldview by promising they were reflecting God’s will and by using virulent racism, warning that Black Americans must be kept in their place or they would destroy American society.
But, in a nation of immigrants and men who had worked their way up from day laborers to become prominent men, Lincoln stood firm on the Declaration of Independence. He warned that if people started to make exceptions to the idea that all men are created equal, they would not stop. They would “transform this Government into a government of some other form.” “If that declaration is not the truth,” Lincoln said, “let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!” To cries of “No! No!” he responded: “[L]et us stand firmly by it then.”
Miller’s white nationalism is not the concept on which this nation was built. The United States of America was built on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the sweat and blood of almost 250 years of Americans, often those from marginalized communities, working to make those principles a reality.
The hierarchical system Miller embraces echoes the system championed by those like Hammond, who imagined themselves the nation’s true leaders who had the right to rule. They were not bound by the law, and they rejected the idea that those unwilling to recognize their superiority should have either economic or political power.
The horrors of the Epstein files show a group of powerful and wealthy men and women who sexually assaulted children and showed no concern either for their crimes or that they might have to answer to the law. The public still does not know the extent of the horrors or the human-trafficking business in which Epstein and others were engaged. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters yesterday that the Department of Justice was not releasing any item from the Epstein files that showed “death, physical abuse, or injury.”
“You [know] the biggest problem with being friends with you?” Dr. Peter Attia wrote in an email to Epstein in response to an email with the subject line “Got a fresh shipment.” Attia answered his own question: “The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”
Trump echoed Hammond in a different way tonight on Air Force One as he traveled to Florida. Asked by a reporter how he would handle being on both sides of his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, he suggested that taking the money of the American people into his own hands would enable him to use it for the public good. “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” he said. “We could make it a substantial amount, nobody would care because it’s gonna go to numerous, very good charities.”
Another story tonight indicated the degree to which the president sees himself as part of a wealthy caste that is above the law. Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhous, Eliot Brown, and Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster report showing that four days before Trump’s 2025 inauguration, men working for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal with the Trump family to buy 49% of their brand-new cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial. The investors would pay half immediately, sending $187 million to entities held by the Trump family and at least $31 million to entities held by Steve Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial whom Trump had named U.S. envoy to the Middle East weeks earlier.
The deal was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates and oversees more than $1.3 trillion that includes the country’s largest wealth fund. Tahnoon has wanted access to U.S. AI technology, but the Biden administration blocked access out of concern it could end up in Chinese hands. The Trump administration, in striking contrast, has committed to allowing the United Arab Emirates to buy about half a million of the most advanced AI chips a year.
Federal agents acting for the Trump administration are trying to enforce the authority of those like Miller, tear-gassing, arresting, and killing American citizens. Thousands marched peacefully in Portland, Oregon, today but, as Alex Baumhardt of the Oregon Capital Chronicle recorded, “federal officers outside the ICE facility in Portland…indiscriminately threw loads of gas and flash bangs” at marchers, including children. Portland, Oregon, city councillor Mitch Green reported: “I just got tear gassed along with thousands of union members, many of whom had their families with them. Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions.”
Tim Dickinson of The Contrarian wrote: “Today I saw ICE gas little white kids in the streets of Portland with chemical weapons. Imagine what they’re doing to brown and black kids in the detention camps.”
And yet, in another echo of the 1850s, MAGA Republicans are reversing victim and offender, blaming the people under assault for the violence. Trump officials insist that community watch groups and protesters are engaging in “domestic terrorism.” Greg Jaffe and Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the New York Times flagged that Representative Eli Crane (R-AZ) told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson on Monday that those people protecting their neighbors from the violence of federal agents want “revolution.” “They want to fundamentally remake and tear down the institutions and the culture of this country.”
In an order requiring the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias, from detention, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery noted that in their crusade against undocumented immigrants, U.S. officials are ignoring the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. “[F]or some among us,” the judge wrote, “the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.”
Judge Biery signed the order after saying he was putting “ a judicial finger in the constitutional dike.” Under his signature, he posted the now-famous image of the little boy detained in his blue bunny hat and Spiderman backpack, along with the notations for two biblical passages: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,’” and “Jesus wept.”
Tonight, voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a special election. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and machinist, defeated right-wing Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a seat that Republicans have held since the early 1990s. Robert Downen of Texas Monthly noted that in the final days of the campaign, the Wambsganss campaign spent $310,000 while Rehmet spent nothing, and Daniel Nichanian of BoltsMag posted that overall, Wambsganss spent nearly $2.2 million more than Rehmet in the campaign. Both Texas governor Greg Abbott and Trump himself publicly supported Wambsganss.
And yet, as G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted, voters flipped a district that Trump won in 2024 by 17 points to Rehmet, electing him by a 14.4-point margin. After removing the minor-party candidates in the vote, the swing from the Republican in 2024 was 32 points toward the Democrats. In Texas.
More On U.S. Government, Politics
New York Times, Democratic Upset in Deep Red Texas District Rattles Republicans, J. David Goodman, Feb. 1, 2026. A Democrat won a state legislative special election in a district that President Trump carried by 17 percentage points, unnerving Republicans in Texas and beyond.
In an upset that rattled Republicans in Texas and beyond, a Democrat decisively won a state legislative special election on Saturday in a district around Fort Worth that President Trump carried by more than 17 percentage points just over a year ago.
The Democrat, Taylor Rehmet, a local union leader and first-time candidate, defeated the Republican, Leigh Wambsganss, by double digits — 57 to 43 — in the historically conservative district.
The contest to fill a State Senate seat had been closely followed by national leaders from both parties as a barometer of potential Republican struggles in this year’s midterm elections.
It attracted outsized attention after Mr. Rehmet, 33, performed far better than expected in the first round of voting in November and ended up in the runoff. Since then, he received a surge of support from Democratic groups, including the Democratic National Committee.
Republican leaders, concerned that a defeat could bring an influx of Democratic investment into Texas races in 2026, tried to rally support for Ms. Wambsganss. She received an endorsement from President Trump and the backing of prominent conservative leaders in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The chairman of the Republican National Committee met with Ms. Wambsganss last week.
The unusually timed election attracted low turnout in a district of Tarrant County that includes portions of Fort Worth and its northern suburbs. Mr. Patrick, in the run up to the race, pleaded with Republicans to vote in the special election, which fell on a Saturday. Mr. Trump also urged voters to vote in a social media post on Friday.
On Jan. 31, 2026, union leader Taylor Rehmet, above left, defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in the race for Texas state Senate seat 9 with 57.2% of the vote in a seat that voted for Donald Trump by 17+ points in 2024.
Occupy Democrats, Advocacy: POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE! Democrats flip deep-red Texas seat by THIRTY POINTS after being outspent 20 to 1 AND overcoming Trump’s personal endorsement! Staff report, Feb. 1, 2026. Buckle up, folks. Something is HAPPENING. For the first time since 1991, the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, will be represented by a Democrat.
How big is this win? Well, Rehmet won a town called "White Settlement" by 9pts.
The shocking upset marks a humiliating defeat for Donald Trump, who personally intervened in the race and called on Republicans to vote for Wambsganss, and for the GOP at large. Wambsganss spent over $2 million more than Rehmet, who spent under $200,000, on this race, and STILL got boatraced.
“When a grassroots union organizer like Taylor Rehmet overperforms by almost 20 points and forces a runoff, it couldn’t be any clearer that voters are tired of Republican bullshit,” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said in a statement after the November race.
This is very, very, very good news for November.
“To put this upset in Tarrant County into perspective: if Democrats overperformed statewide in November the way Taylor Rehmet did tonight, the GOP’s gerrymander would actually backfire -- and Democrats would net 3 House seats in Texas,” writes election analyst @ElxMapping on Twitter.
New York Times, 9 Mayors Discuss Safety and Trust in Their Cities Under Trump, Clyde McGrady, Photographs by Caroline Gutman, Jan. 30, 2026. The nation’s mayors gathered in Washington this week, and Minneapolis has dominated the conversation.
Hundreds of mayors from around the country converged this week on Washington and another city dominated the conversation — Minneapolis.
The annual winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors often revolves around everyday responsibilities such as economic development, law enforcement and budgeting. This year, the added dimensions included tariffs, the withholding of federal funds to cities, and especially immigration enforcement as the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies continue Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.
Democrats predominate in large and medium-size cities, and many mayors voiced worry over the potential fraying of trust between their communities and law enforcement agencies. Some no longer saw the federal government as a reliable partner.
This is how mayors in both parties view their jobs at the moment, with some minor editing to condense their thoughts.
Mississippi Today, Gov. Reeves says ice storm in Mississippi not as bad as ICE protests in Minnesota, Bobby Harrison, Feb. 1, 2026. On Saturday morning, Jan. 24, as a massive ice storm was carving a path of destruction through parts of north Mississippi and more than 48 hours before Gov. Tate Reeves activated the Mississippi National Guard to provide assistance, he went on Fox News.
The governor says he went on Fox News to provide national viewers an update on the storm’s impact on Mississippi. It seemed logical for Reeves to go on Fox to remind the national audience about Mississippi and the plight caused in the state by the ice storm. After all, it is not unheard of for Mississippi to be overlooked in national reports on the impact of weather events.Gov. Tate Reeves speaks during the Mississippi Economic Council’s annual Hobnob at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
So, it could be argued the governor was doing his duty by reminding a national audience that Mississippi was the state that stood to be the most impacted by the winter storm.
But the second-term Republican governor did not stop there. Reeves felt compelled not only to talk about the woes Mississippians face from freezing rain, but also to pontificate on events in Minneapolis, where the largest congregation of ICE agents in the country are clashing with protesters resulting in chaos, violence and at least two tragic deaths.
Reeves blamed the Democratic Minnesota governor and Minneapolis mayor for not taking control of the situation. It is perhaps worth noting, though, that as Reeves spoke Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had activated the National Guard to deal with his situation. Reeves had not at that time done the same for the ice storm in Mississippi.
On social media, Reeves wrote, “Went on Fox this morning to discuss the historic winter storms in our state, but breaking news on the chaos and disorder caused by lawless hordes in Minneapolis pulled the focus. The mobs of anarchists and radicals who are terrorizing American cities need to go home, whether that’s just back to their mother’s basements or back to Mogadishu.h
“Stay safe and warm Mississippi…
“And let’s be grateful it’s just sleet and snow – and not Antifa – closing our streets.”
Granted, it is really like apples to oranges to compare the freezing rain that pummeled Mississippi with the protests occurring in Minneapolis. But it was Reeves who chose to make that comparison, saying “let’s be grateful, it’s just sleet and snow – and not Antifa – closing our streets.”
Even as the governor wrote his social media post, people in the Delta and in areas of north Mississippi including Lafayette and Tippah counties were on the verge of being left in the dark and huddling in the cold. Soon people would die as a result of their efforts to stay warm in the extreme cold with no electricity.
In some areas of Mississippi, communities struggled to provide water pressure to people’s homes.
Granted, ice storms cause unique and difficult problems that many areas of the country don’t understand. This is not meant as a judgment on the state’s response, but just on Reeves’ rhetoric.
Were those people in Mississippi in the path of the ice storm really better off at that time than Minnesotans? Has the quality of life for the average Minnesotans – many of whom choose to protest based on social media and news accounts – really been harmed by the protests? They can still go the store, cook a dinner, watch television, take a warm shower and not freeze in their homes.
Sure, according to reports, Minneapolis streets are being blocked for short periods of time by protesters. But in Mississippi, days after the ice storm, social media accounts report people being stranded on interstate highways for hours – literally all night.
State officials finally closed portions of those interstate highways in Mississippi – not Minnesota. The closure was not because of “mobs of anarchists and radicals” but because of ice – not ICE.
U.S. Media, Entertainment, Political Messaging
New York Times, ‘Melania’ Arrives With Strong Box Office Showing for a Documentary, Brooks Barnes, Jan. 31, 2026. Amazon backed up the Brink’s trucks to promote the vanity film, resulting in opening-weekend ticket sales of roughly $8 million, or 60 percent more than expected.
Amazon’s gold-plated rollout for Melania Trump’s documentary is likely to result in opening-weekend ticket sales of roughly $8.1 million in the United States and Canada, box office analysts projected on Saturday. That would give “Melania” the best start for a documentary (excluding concert films) in 14 years.
It would be a face-saving result for the first lady — just a few days ago, ticket sales were pacing at about $5 million — but not for Amazon, which spent an exorbitant $75 million to buy distribution rights to “Melania” and market its release. Theater owners keep roughly 50 percent of ticket sales, meaning that Amazon would end the weekend with about $4 million to show for its investment. (Overseas ticket sales are expected to be negligible. Specific estimates were not yet available on Saturday. Analysts project weekend ticket sales by collecting Friday sales data from various theater circuits, measuring presales for Saturday and Sunday and extrapolating from there.)
EntTelligence, a research firm, estimated that theaters in rural areas would contribute roughly 46 percent of the opening-weekend total for “Melania,” far higher than is typical for a film opening. Republican counties would also over perform, contributing about 53 percent of ticket sales, according to EntTelligence. Top states included Florida, Texas and Arizona.
The audience was overwhelmingly female (72 percent) and over the age of 55, according to Amazon.
At the Cinemark Valley View in Cleveland on Friday, the audience for a “Melania” screening included a couple of buses worth of people from a nearby senior center. “It was a nice fluff piece,” Gordon Wilson, 80, said as he exited. Another Cleveland attendee, Anita Dloniak, 68, chuckled when she heard that some of the other ticket buyers called the film propaganda. “What did they think it was going to be?” she said.
Bob Schmidt, 60, went to see “Melania” at the Alamo Drafthouse on Staten Island on Friday. He rarely goes to the movies anymore, he said, but he bought a ticket to send a message to what he called the liberal movie industry. “I wanted to see this movie kick Hollywood’s ass,” Mr. Schmidt said. (During the screening, attendees erupted in applause during the scene when President Trump is sworn in. Someone shouted, “Trump 2028!”)
Amazon, of course, can also monetize “Melania” on its Prime streaming service, where the film is expected to become available in three to four weeks. But the company’s spending on the documentary was so extreme — it paid $40 million for the rights alone, about $26 million more than the next closest bidder — that a question will linger: Was this all just an attempt for Amazon to ingratiate itself with President Trump?
Amazon’s lavish spending on “Melania” coincided with 16,000 layoffs at the company (on top of the 14,000 corporate employees it expunged in October), adding to a bumpy moment for the company’s brand.
The company declined to comment on Saturday. Previously, Amazon had said it bought Mrs. Trump’s documentary “for one reason and one reason only — because we think customers are going to love it.”
People who went to see “Melania” gave it an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls. “Elegant, informative and beautifully done” was Lynn Suter’s review, as she left a sold-out Friday showing of the film near Jupiter, Fla. Ms. Suter, a member of Conservative Gals of Palm Beach County, a Facebook group with more than 400 members, added that she intended to “tell everyone to go see it.”
But critics savaged Mrs. Trump’s affectionate self-portrait. (She produced the film and had editorial control.) “It’s so orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial,” wrote Owen Gleiberman, chief movie critic for Variety, the Hollywood trade publication.
Meidas Touch Network, My Most Important Sunday Message Yet, .Ben Meiselas, right, Feb. 1, 2026. I normally post this earlier, but I didn’t sleep that much last night. I’ve been going through the 3 million Epstein files over and over again, making connections that I’ve been sharing on our YouTube page. I alsospent a lot of time last night and into the early hours of this morning reflecting on the state of independent journalism.
On this Sunday, we should reflect on how independent journalism is under attack and what we need to do to protect it. As the largest independent media platform in the world, I know it is a moral imperative to use this platform and my voice to defend other independent reporters, to bring us together, and to rally us all in a common cause. I have been in communication with leaders in independent reporting to find ways to support each other’s work even more.
I also know that as the largest independent news platform in the world, the MeidasTouch Network is the top target for Trump and his DOJ. We knew we had to prepare for the day when Trump would try to arrest us and shut us down. For me, this network was, and is, always about this community and not me. If something happens to me personally, this network can live on since MeidasTouch stands for something bigger and more universal. We have intentionally built out a decentralized organizational structure to withstand attacks on our leadership, and we built out an international structure to withstand internet and communication blackouts in this country.
It is not a coincidence that Trump’s crackdown on independent journalism has accelerated with the partial release of the Epstein files. Trump knows that corporate news has been captured and won’t report how devastating those documents are. He wants to shut us down because he knows that more people get their news from us than anywhere else.
So where do we go from here? It is important we remain fearless in our reporting. It is important we don’t flinch or blink in the face of the threats. It is important that if something happens to me or our other leadership, the network’s operations are not impacted at all. It is critical that we keep our joy and not let Trump take away our empathy, our love for what we do, and our desire to bring people together rather than divide them. It is imperative we grow our operations here in the United States and, equally importantly, across the world. That is my pledge to you.
In return, as I reflect this weekend on everything, I have a simple request from you. Please share the MeidasTouch Network with people in your life today. Show them this Substack. Show them all the YouTube videos I’ve posted today on the MeidasTouch YouTube channel since 4 AM PT and let them see the truth.
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A Craigslist advertisement paying people $50 has reportedly been posted as the film struggles to sell any tickets at all ahead of it's opening weekend this week.
Irish Star, Struggling Melania movie inspires Craigslist listing paying $50 to sit through film, Jack Hobbs, Jan. 29 2026. A Craigslist advertisement paying people $50 has reportedly been posted as the film struggles to sell any tickets at all ahead of it's opening weekend this week.
While many people might have lined up to watch historical films such as Darren Aronofsky's Oscar-nominated Jackie or Showtime's Viola Davis-led The First Lady, it seems the team promoting Melania Trump's new documentary might have a bit more trouble filling seats.
It was reported that the Amazon-backed film has allegedly posted an advertisement on Craigslist offering $50 to anyone who responds, as well as free tickets to watch the film in Boston, Massachusetts. The one stipulation, however, is that they must remain in the movie theater for the entire showing.
According to the posting, the desperate plea to fill seats came on Wednesday and could be fulfilled by attending a showing "at any Boston area theater during opening weekend." Of course, the post found its way to social media, where many users tried to claim the ad was not real.
Melania Trump's film crew 'want names removed from credits' of $40m documentary
"Why would anyone bother doing this? The Melania movie exists as a way for Bezos to legally bribe Trump," one person wrote. "He pays $40 million directly to Trump, no oversight, for some vague "rights." That's done. Trump has the money. The movie doesn't need to pretend to make a profit."
"omg ... they are hiring seat fillers? Why and whose paying?" a second person added. One person noticed a loophole in the advertisement.
According to the posting, the desperate plea to fill seats came on Wednesday and could be fulfilled by attending a showing "at any Boston area theatre during opening weekend."
"Doesn't say anything about having to actually pay attention, or that you can't be incredibly distracting and make tons of noise etc," they commented. "That being said, only $50? nah, gonna need to do better than that to get people to be willing to fill seats for her ego."
"If I’m going to sit through that garbage, I want $1M," a third person said bluntly. The plea for seat fillers comes after one user posted a screenshot of a showing with not a single seat sold.
The one stipulation, however, is that they must remain in the movie theater for the entire showing. Who's who?
Earlier, it was reported that many of the film's crew requested that their names be kept off the project. One crew member, who spoke to Rolling Stone magazine on condition of anonymity, expressed regret about their credit appearing in the film.
Social media engaged in an online debate whether the advertisement was real or not
"I'm much more alarmed now than I was a year ago," they said. Even those whose names still appear on the production hope the film disappears. "Unfortunately, if it does flop, I would really feel great about it," a production insider told Rolling Stone.
According to those who spoke to the magazine, the main grievance wasn't directed at the First Lady herself, who was described as "boring" but "nice." It was, however, director Brett Ratner, who was accused of multiple sex scandals after several women came forward.
Ratner has "categorically" denied all the allegations and has never faced charges. One member of the production team claimed there was more discussion about Brett's conduct than there was about Melania throughout the shoot.
The full guest list for Melania Trump's documentary premiere has been unveiled just a day before the film debuts at the Kennedy Center. The $40 million production is scheduled to hit screens at what's now being called the Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday, with a roster of VIPs confirmed to attend.
According to The Daily Beast, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams and television personality Dr. Phil are among those expected to attend the screening. President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. , has also confirmed his attendance.
In addition, several White House personnel, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the controversial Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, are all expected to be in attendance.
Jan. 31
In this undated photograph from the personal collection of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump is seen talking to a woman and standing next to Epstein. The photo, from Epstein’s estate, was released earlier by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
The Parnas Perspective, Major Mid-Day Epstein Update: New Bombshell Documents Discuss Trump and Others as DOJ's Failures Exposed, Aaron Parnas, right, Jan. 31, 2026. An important mid-day update: I’ve now worked through tens of thousands of documents, and while the pace is deliberate, that’s because this work demands precision. What’s emerging matters, and it needs to be done right.
Just to show you how bad the DOJ is violating the law, this is a screenshot from the FBI 302 interview with Epstein survivor Danielle Hannah Bensky. Her name is not redacted. That is a clear violation of the law. I spoke with her and she gave me permission to share this with you.
This document [above] appears to be a screenshot of an affidavit signed, under the penalty of perjury, by "Tiffany Doe" noting that she "personally witnessed Defendant Trump telling the Plaintiff that she shouldn't ever say anything if she didn't want to disappear like the 12-year-old female . . ." Full document here.
A newly released 2007 draft memo shows federal prosecutors had detailed evidence and sought a 60-count indictment against Jeffrey Epstein as a high flight risk and danger to minors, but the case was never pursued after a controversial plea deal instead limited him to minor state charges. Full memo in support of the prosecution can be found here.
An FBI tip asserts that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein sexually exploited a young girl. It is unclear if this was ever investigated:
Newly released Justice Department files show that in a 2013 email, Richard Branson joked to Jeffrey Epstein about “bringing his harem” and offered public-relations advice years after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting a minor, a correspondence Branson now downplays as limited contact and says would not have occurred had he known the full extent of Epstein’s crimes.
This (shown above) appears to be an image of Brett Ratner, Jeffrey Epstein, and two girls. Ratner has been in the headlines recently as he produced Melania Trump’s new movie:
A very disturbing and bizarre video of Epstein appearing to chase young girls around a kitchen surfaced in these files:
Three weeks after Trump was elected in 2016, Jeffrey Epstein emails Larry Summers "do you have any suggestions for Treasury?" [shown below, including several suggested names being floated for the Trump cabinet post that Summers had previously occupied].
Justice Department emails show federal prosecutors were actively investigating sexual assault allegations against former Apollo Capital chairman Leon Black and had at least one cooperating witness, indicating the inquiry went further than previously known.
Newly released Justice Department emails show that Jeffrey Epstein arranged two business meetings in 2011 with Todd Boehly, now owner of Chelsea and part-owner of the Dodgers and Lakers, nearly three years after Epstein’s first jail term, with no indication the interactions involved anything beyond business and no allegation of misconduct by Boehly.
Members of Congress are making clear that this files drop is incomplete as there are more Epstein files that have yet to be released:
Newly released Justice Department emails reveal that Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Josh Harris had years of business-related email and phone contact with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, including plans for meetings at Epstein’s Manhattan home, 
with no evidence of sexual misconduct by Harris but new details about the scope and persistence of their professional interactions.
Epstein survivors have been left “devastated” after the Justice Department released files publicly identifying some victims — sometimes visibly despite redactions or via photos — prompting fierce criticism from women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, left, who called the handling by the Department of Justice an “absolute mess” and a new low.
This is from an FBI email with the subect "Re: Epstein - Cellmate Interview." Here are the summaries provided by the FBI agent.
A never-filed draft federal indictment alleged that from 2001–2005, Jeffrey Epstein and three unnamed co-conspirators trafficked at least 19 girls—some as young as 14—for paid sexual abuse, included a threat to silence a victim, but prosecutors instead struck a 2007 non-prosecution deal; a 2020 DOJ review criticized poor judgment without finding misconduct.
Newly released emails show Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers privately gossiping about Donald Trump during his first term—questioning his intelligence, mental fitness, and alleged Russia ties—underscoring that Summers continued corresponding with Epstein for years after his conviction, a relationship he later said he was “deeply ashamed” of.
Newly released Justice Department emails show Elon Musk, right, expressed interest in visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s Caribbean island multiple times between 2012–2013—despite later public claims he refused invitations—though the records do not show he ever went or allege wrongdoing by Musk.
More emails concerning Elon Musk and Woody Allen:
Newly released Justice Department emails show Jeffrey Epstein privately drafted notes alleging that Bill Gates engaged in extramarital sex and other misconduct—claims Gates’s representatives flatly deny as false and defamatory, saying the messages reflect Epstein’s resentment after failed financial dealings rather than any wrongdoing by Gates.
Newly released Department of Justice Epstein files include photographs appearing to show Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, shown at right in a 2014 photo, in a compromising pose with an unidentified woman and emails suggesting Jeffrey Epstein invited him to dine with a 26-year-old Russian woman in 2010.
Emails from August 2010 show Jeffrey Epstein arranging to introduce a 26-year-old Russian woman to an account signed “HRH Duke of York KG,” widely understood to be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, shortly after Epstein completed his sentence.
Newly released Justice Department files include a 2009 email in which Sarah Ferguson thanked Jeffrey Epstein for “being the brother I have always wished for,” renewing scrutiny of their relationship and prompting renewed requests for comment after charities previously cut ties over her past remarks about Epstein.
Important Update from Aaron Parnas: Members of Congress Set to Hold Pam Bondi in Contempt Over Epstein File Failures as Top Trump Supporter Renounces His Support
Good evening, everyone. This is my final update for tonight—but it’s an important one.
This evening, I spoke with Epstein survivor Jess Michaels and Congressman Robert Garcia. These are longer interviews, and I strongly urge you to watch them in full. Congressman Garcia is unequivocal: he is prepared to hold Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress. Jess Michaels powerfully explains the pain and anger survivors are feeling as the Department of Justice continues to violate federal law in its handling and release of the Epstein files.
There are still a significant number of documents I’m working through, and I’ll continue reviewing them tonight and tomorrow. We’ll begin tomorrow morning with our weekly good news update, with further Epstein coverage coming in the evening.
To everyone who has subscribed, shared this work, or sent kind and supportive messages over the past 24 hours—thank you. Our reporting is reaching an enormous audience, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we’re doing. If you’re able, please subscribe and help us keep building this together.
Here’s the news:
House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, called for an urgent review of the unredacted Epstein files, questioning why millions of pages remain withheld and warning that redactions must not be used to shield officials from embarrassment or political harm.
Newly released investigative files show that, less than two weeks before Jeffrey Epstein’s death, his lawyers met with Manhattan federal prosecutors to broadly discuss a possible case resolution and potential cooperation, though no concrete proposal was made.
More emails showing Epstein communicating with Elon Musk:
This is an email showing Epstein was worried about journalist Julie K. Brown:
Newly released Epstein files show that Peter Attia, above, a recently hired CBS News contributor, exchanged dozens of crude and friendly emails with Jeffrey Epstein over several years—continuing well after Epstein’s earlier conviction—raising scrutiny of Attia and other figures connected to Bari Weiss amid the document dump.
Here’s Epstein after being told he has “permission to kill” an unidentified man: “whoops”:
"jeffrey E."
Epstein after being told Mary Kennedy was found dead in her backyard: “whoops”
May be an image of ticket stub, magazine and text that says 'From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation
Another email talking about killing someone:
May be an image of text that says 'To: From: Sent: jeffrey
Journalist Nellie Bowles said her name appearing in newly released Epstein-related emails reflects a disclosed, on-the-record meeting she later reported on for the New York Times, not secret or improper contact.
This is Jeffrey Epstein labeling young girls “little” when describing them. Absolutely horrifying:
'To: From: Sent: Subject: Jeffrey
In a 2012 email revealed in newly released files, Jeffrey Epstein said he entertained the possibility that convicted child abuser Jerry Sandusky was innocent, criticizing what he viewed as a rush to judgment by the media and public.
PoliticusUSA, Commentary: Jamie Raskin Demands Trump Administration Turn Over The Unredacted Epstein Files, Jason Easley, Jan 31, 2026. House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) found that the Trump administration has only released half the Epstein files documents and redacted hundreds of thousands of pages.
The mainstream media has run with the Trump administration's myth that they have turned over all of the Epstein files documents.
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), above, said that the Trump administration has only turned over half of the documents, and the documents that have been released, hundreds of thousands of pages have been redacted.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on February 11, and Raskin and committee Democrats want to review the unredacted files before she appears.
Raskin wrote to the DOJ:
Our review is particularly urgent because DOJ itself claims to have identified over six million potentially responsive pages, but after releasing only about half of them—including over 200,000 pages that DOJ redacted or withheld—says strangely that it has fully complied with the Act. We seek to ensure that your redactions comply with the Act’s requirement that materials be withheld only in narrow circumstances, such as protecting victims’ personally identifiable information, and not on the basis of ‘embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.
Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a tranche of documents related to disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and claims to have fully satisfied its obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). At the press conference, Deputy Attorney General Blanche also said: “If any Member of Congress wishes to review any portions of the response of production in any unredacted form, they’re welcome to make arrangements with the Department to do so, and we’re happy to do that.”
Moreover, in light of Attorney General Bondi’s appearance in a hearing before the Committee on February 11, it is vital that Committee Members and staff have an opportunity to review the unredacted files in order to evaluate the lawfulness and appropriateness of your redactions and to examine the Attorney General about them.
It is shocking that so many people are willing to take what the Trump DOJ has released at face value.
The full documents need to be reviewed. It isn’t smart to look for compliance with the law from an administration that is being led by a 34-time convicted felon. Democrats need to conduct oversight because it is a tiny fraction of what the Epstein survivors deserve.
New York Times, They Said They Weren’t Close to Epstein. New Documents Show Otherwise, Nicholas Confessore, Jan. 31, 2026. Materials released by the Justice Department revealed that leading business and political figures had enduring relationships with the disgraced financier.
They said they didn’t really know Jeffrey Epstein that well. They were disgusted by him right off the bat. They were just drawn to his intellect or love of science or business acumen. They didn’t know about his abuse of women and girls. They deeply regretted associating with him.
In the years since Mr. Epstein’s 2019 arrest and death by suicide in a Manhattan jail, some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people have hastened to distance themselves from the disgraced man with whom they once did business, dined in lavish settings or flew on private jets.
But a slow drip of document releases and other revelations over the last several months — culminating in Friday’s release of nearly three million pages of Epstein-related records — has underscored the depth, intensity and persistence of his connections to the global elite, contradicting or undermining years of careful denials.
So far, at least, the new documents have not fundamentally altered the public understanding of Mr. Epstein or his crimes. Instead, they are replete with chummy exchanges, warm invitations and financial entanglements. Together, the documents show how Mr. Epstein’s connections with people in Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington and fashion thrived even after he became a convicted sex offender in 2008.
In some cases, the documents shed greater light on Epstein associates whose connections to him were already known. Others revealed relationships that had remained hidden for years.ImageElon Musk appeared eager to visit Mr. Epstein’s private island.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Elon Musk, among the world’s richest men, once not only denied visiting Mr. Epstein’s island, but framed his decision as an act of principle. In a social media post last September, Mr. Musk wrote that Mr. Epstein “tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED.” But the documents released on Friday suggested that Mr. Musk was at one point eager to visit. “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Mr. Musk emailed Mr. Epstein in November 2012.
Mr. Musk wrote Saturday in a social media post: “I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his ‘Lolita Express,’ but was well aware that some email correspondence with him could be misinterpreted and used by detractors to smear my name.”
On a podcast last year, Howard Lutnick, left, the secretary of commerce, described being so revolted by a mid-2000s visit to Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion that he decided to “never be in a room with that disgusting person ever again."
Mr. Lutnick’s disgust appeared to prove temporary. In 2012, he emailed with Mr. Epstein to arrange a visit with his wife and children to Mr. Epstein’s private island just before Christmas. An assistant to Mr. Epstein later forwarded Mr. Lutnick a message from Mr. Epstein: “Nice seeing you,” it said. (On Friday, Mr. Lutnick said that “I spent zero time with him.”)
Kathy Ruemmler, a White House counsel under President Barack Obama who is now general counsel of Goldman Sachs, has said she provided Mr. Epstein with professional services and legal advice. But in newly released emails with Mr. Epstein and others, she discussed meeting up with him and what she described as “the girls”; analyzed troubling dreams; and arranged to accept the delivery of expensive gifts from him. A Goldman spokesman said that it was “well known that Epstein often offered unsolicited favors and gifts to his many business contacts.” He also said that “the girls” was a reference to a mutual client and her daughters.
A 2013 email exchange with the British billionaire Richard Branson hinted that he, too, had a familiar relationship with Mr. Epstein. “It was really nice seeing you yesterday,” Mr. Branson wrote, adding: “Any time you’re in the area would love to see you. As long as you bring your harem!” A Branson representative said the two had a business meeting and stressed that the women were adults and had not attended the meeting.
The New York real estate mogul Andrew Farkas, a powerful political donor with ties to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and President Trump, co-owned a marina with Mr. Epstein in St. Thomas for years. In a letter to investors last year, he said that his relationship with the sex offender was purely a business one. But documents released recently suggested a more personal connection.ImageAndrew Farkas, wearing a dark suit and an open-collar shirt, stands at a lectern.Emails showed that Andrew Farkas called himself one of Mr. Epstein’s best friends.Credit...Cindy Ord/Getty Images
The two men traded crude emails about women in one 2010 exchange, after Mr. Epstein’s first arrest and conviction. Mr. Farkas told Mr. Epstein in a 2018 note that he loved him and considered him one of his best friends before signing off, “xoxo.” Mr. Farkas stayed on Mr. Epstein’s island. And photographs released by Congress late last year showed Mr. Epstein with his hand on Mr. Farkas’ shoulder as they walked together in a tropical setting. In December, a spokeswoman for Mr. Farkas told The Times that his “dealings with Mr. Epstein were entirely related to their business relationship” and that “he regrets their association.”
Early last year, the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel wrote an essay for the Financial Times arguing that Mr. Trump’s re-election meant that closely guarded government secrets — including about Mr. Epstein’s death — would finally come to light. In the months since, the scrutiny around Mr. Epstein instead revealed that an investment firm co-founded by Mr. Thiel accepted $40 million from Mr. Epstein and that Mr. Epstein and Mr. Thiel corresponded for at least five years before Mr. Epstein’s death.
“Visit me Caribbean,” Mr. Epstein urged the tech billionaire in 2018. Jeremiah Hall, a spokesman for Mr. Thiel, declined to comment on the relationship but said that Mr. Thiel “never went to Epstein’s island.”
U.S. Media, Political Messaging, Disinformation
The Bulwark Goes To Hollywood, Melania’ Review, The first lady's reality show,.Sonny Bunch, Jan. 31, 2026. As a general rule, my theory of criticism is that the only thing that really matters is the work on the screen. Jan. 31, 2026.
Producer is corrupt? Director has been hit by sexual harassment claims? Star is embroiled in tabloid drama because they have ties to a sexually deviant blackmailer who flew people to his private island? Not really germane to the action on the screen.
But Melania is hard to separate from the off-screen nonsense as it only exists because of the off-screen nonsense. Just to briefly recap the ways in which this movie is . . . odd:
Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million for the rights to make Melania, a deal the Wall Street Journal reported came about after a dinner between Jeff Bezos (who has, shall we say, multiple interests of great value that could be hurt or helped by Donald Trump’s White House) and the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago. Melania’s cut of that pie? Seventy percent.
Bezos and company have spent another $35 million advertising the film, which, as I noted in Morning Shots yesterday, means that it needs to recoup about $150 million at the box office to break even. And while there is a case to be made for conservative documentarians being an undervalued cinematic niche—a lot of dupes out there find great value in Dinesh D’Souza’s work—it is not a “$150 million worldwide haul” niche.
The director of the film, Brett Ratner—who was introduced to Trump by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—was forced out of Hollywood in disgrace after the Los Angeles Times in 2017 reported allegations that he forced actress Natasha Henstridge to perform oral sex on him and masturbated in front of Olivia Munn without her permission. (Ratner would later claim to have had sex with Munn, humiliating her further, before admitting that was a lie. He denies the more salacious allegations and has not faced criminal charges.)
A photo of Ratner (above) was included in the Epstein files, though his relationship to the pedophilic blackmailer is unclear. Just as it is unclear what Melania and Donald Trump’s relationship to the pedophilic blackmailer is, given the DOJ’s refusal to release all of the Epstein files.
Ratner has attempted to parlay his relationship with Trump into a return to Hollywood writ large, using Trump’s leverage over Paramount’s father-son duo, Larry and David Ellison, to get a new Rush Hour film made.
All of which is to say that there is no reason for Melania to exist outside of rank corruption. The Trumps are using the power of the presidency to grift Jeff Bezos; Bezos hopes that this bribe will keep his companies safe from government interference; Ratner is worming his way into Trump’s good graces as a way to get past his own history of alleged sexual misconduct; and the Ellisons are putting up with Ratner’s return and potentially distributing a new Rush Hour in the hope that Trump will use his considerable influence to push the FTC toward allowing Paramount Skydance to swallow up Warner Bros. Discovery.
It’s all quite disgusting.
But is the documentary any good?
You see how we here at The Bulwark suffer for you, the reader? You see what we put ourselves through? If you haven’t signed up to become a paying Bulwark+ member just yet, maybe do so now to demonstrate that such immiseration is worth it, would you? I don’t think Jeff Bezos is going to be buying any pricey banner ads for Melania in this here newsletter after he reads what follows.
Well, no, it’s not any good—and that’s partly because “documentary” here is a category error. This isn’t a documentary, as the opening moments make plain, Melania entering the frame and hitting her marks while a camera swoops overhead and watches her enter her SUV, which we then track as it arrives at an airport, private jet waiting as “Gimme Shelter” and then “Billy Jean” play in rapid succession. The term “documentary” is all wrong for something this stage-managed, this carefully put together.
No, this is reality TV with a hint of HBO’s long-defunct series Entourage, a strange combination of lifestyle porn and hagiography with the barest hints of public policy flitting around at the edges like fruit flies circling a moldy melon. Keeping Up With the Kardashians by way of Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, and the White House, say, albeit one that looks better than any reality TV show I’ve seen.¹
Set in the period between the re-election of Donald Trump and his second inauguration, Ratner’s camera follows the once and future first lady as she does all the things a first lady does: obsess over her hat brim’s straightness, ensure that the tablecloths and plates for the billionaires at the donor’s ball match the marble of the National Building Museum, and chit-chat with other first ladies about limiting screen time for teenagers. I don’t want to downplay all of her work here—there is a genuinely moving sequence with a survivor of October 7th whose husband was still being held hostage by Hamas when filming took place—but this is not a film that is particularly interested in Melania’s absurdly named Be Best campaign.
No, the film’s real interest is in the clothes and the glitz and the style; Ratner lovingly shoots Melania from the heels up, so routinely tracking her high-heeled feet up to her torso that one can’t help but feel as if he’s auditioning to be Quentin Tarantino’s second unit director. We learn all about the seams of her inaugural gown (it’s going to be in the Smithsonian one day, don’t you know) and how smart she is about clothes. It’s true: she’s a former model (it’s how she got her Einstein visa, don’t you know) and quite pretty and knows how to flatter herself.
Look: This movie’s not for me. If you’re reading this at The Bulwark, it’s probably not for you, either. The target audience seemed to enjoy it fine; the 12:40 p.m. showing at the AMC NorthPark in Dallas was 80 percent full and laughed in all the right places. It preaches to the faithful with great reverence and they were thrilled to bask in the golden glow of Trump Tower. But it’s fascinating to see so pure and naked an instrument of graft and propaganda deployed to great effect on an audience happy to lap it up.
The Daily via PoliticusUSA, Commentary: Beware the Firehose of Falsehood, Sarah Jones, right, Jan. 31, 2026. The firehose of falsehood is a 
Russian disinformation strategy that often involves overwhelming the information environment with massive amounts of conflicting, bizarre, or fabricated content.
Steve Bannon described Trump’s media strategy as “flood the zone.”
The latest Epstein files dump is truly disturbing. It appears to smear Trump as well as his allies and foes with the suggestion of wrongdoing, but also at the same time fails to produce actual evidence.
Coming more than a month after Trump’s DOJ missed the deadline set by Congress, they dumped more than 3 million pages and 180,000 images on Friday. They have not yet explained all of the redactions, either.
PBS’s Ali Rogin said of the newly released materials, “I think most notably what people are looking for is mentions of President Trump. And there are thousands of them in these documents. Many of them, we should note, are news clippings.
“But there are some lists and summaries of unsubstantiated claims made against him from individuals alleging wrongdoing, including graphic depictions of alleged sexual abuse, including of underage girls. Some of those complaints date back to the ‘90s, others from more recently around when he was campaigning for president.
“What we don’t know, though, is whether any of these claims have been substantially investigated. But the Department of Justice says that they were required by law to release everything, including those documents that were fake or falsely submitted.”
Trump’s former attorney and now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed they had not protected Donald Trump.
His comments sounded like he knew people would not be satisfied with the document dump, “We complied with the statute, we complied with the act, and there is no -- we did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody. There’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s -- it’s not -- there’s nothing I can do about that.”
The administration did what has become its usual thing of dumping on a Friday and then taking the documents offline for a short time, only to come back later with presumably more redactions, thus creating chaos and sparking suspicion.
Some of the accusations included are outlandish, which I suspect is intentional.
We’re cautioning readers because confirmation bias is one hell of a drug. Yes, Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist. Yes, he has lusted after teenagers in public, including his own daughter. Accusations made in the 90s would hold more weight off the bat because they wouldn’t be dismissed as potentially political, however many women will come forward during a political campaign because they feel a duty to warn the public.
But importantly, accusations that have not been tested are not facts.
This is not meant as a defense for the big names mentioned in this dump, including Trump, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Melania Trump’s “love” email to Ghislaine Maxwell, but rather a reminder of the pattern we have seen before from this administration.
The Trump administration briefly took down the portion of the Epstein files it published on January 30, 2026. By taking it offline, they created an even a bigger story about what could be red herrings. Was this deliberate or are they this incompetent?
Either way, it’s a very real Russian technique, referred to by nonpartisan policy researchers at RAND as the “firehose of falsehood”.Disinformation
The firehose of falsehood is a Russian disinformation strategy that often involves overwhelming the information environment with massive amounts of conflicting, bizarre, or fabricated content to erode public trust.
Occupy Democrats, Democratic Advocacy: Brave reporter REFUSES to let Trump bully her, and sends him into a tantrum challenging him on his plot to steal *billions* in taxpayer dollars! Staff Report, Jan. 31, 2026.
ABC News’ Karen Travers, shown above left, was one of the few reporters daring enough to ask the president a *real* question during his White House presser today, asking why he was suing the IRS for $10 billion dollars over imaginary claims they leaked his tax records — which we all know is just an excuse so he can siphon the public’s money into his pockets.
The issue is apparently a touchy subject for Trump, who immediately lost his temper and threw a tantrum.“Why are you suing?” asked Travers.
“Who are you with?” snaps Trump.“I'm with ABC News,” she responds. “You're a loud person. Very loud. Let somebody else have a chance,” he says, trying to dismiss her and move on. But she won’t budge.
“Can you answer the question? Why are you suing IRS?”
"ABC fake news! You're — I didn't call on you. [to another reporter] Go ahead, please. Go ahead. Go ahead. Do you think the upcoming talks... [Trump interrupts him] ABC, by the way, is truly one of the worst!"
Kudos to Travers for risking her ability to be in the Oval Office by asking Trump to explain his transparent effort to bully an arm of the government into giving him a huge payout based on nothing but conspiracy theories and bullsh*t.
President Insecurity Projection's response makes it very clear that there is nothing legitimate about this lawsuit, and the media needs to be hounding him left and right for trying to extort TEN BILLION DOLLARS from the U.S. taxpayer.
Weekly News Summary
The Hartmann Report, Weekly Update: Trump's New Grift: A $10 Billion Demand for “Reputational Harm” After his Income Tax Avoidance Was Exposed, Thom Hartmann, right, Jan. 31, 2026. The Best of the Rest of the News...
— New Trump act may lead to the takeover of elections. Trump has officially begun his corruption of the 2026 election, raiding the warehouse in Georgia where the 2020 election ballots were being stored by the state. He and his lickspittles know they’re facing an overwhelming defeat this November unless they can figure out multiple ways to rig the elections. Orbán and Putin have both used their equivalents of gerrymandering, destroying the free press, and voter purges to stay in power, and Trump has been following their examples (and even hung Putin’s picture in the White House this week). When conspiracy nut, former cult member, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, right, showed up in Atlanta to participate in the seizure of these materials, election integrity folks from across the country went on high alert. Something really dark is afoot; keep an eye on this…
— Trump building ‘white supremacist army’ inside government that will outlast him. “I’ve said some pretty harsh things in my time,” Ta-Nehisi Coates said on a podcast this week, “but I don’t know that I’ve seen before the President of the United States attempt to build what I can only call a white supremacist army that’ll outlast him. That is new. And I don’t know what else to call it! Given the propaganda and the recruiting.” I documented the white supremacist memes that Republicans and ICE are using for recruitment and general racist incitement, and it’s now so broad and pervasive it’s impossible to ignore. Good on Coates for calling this out.
— Trump’s New Grift: A $10 Billion Demand for “Reputational Harm” After his Income Tax Avoidance Was Exposed. Seriously. A man 
is now serving a 5-year prison sentence for leaking Trump’s tax returns to the press in 2018, and he wasn’t even a federal employee; he worked for a contractor. But Trump still thinks his embarrassment when we learned he’s been a tax cheat most of his life is, Trump says, so severe that the American government must give him and his two oldest boys a massive pile of cash. This family never saw a grift it couldn’t embrace…
— Is this how a free press dies in America, with Don Lemon in handcuffs? What’s left of American democracy just hit another crisis with the arrest of independent journalist Don Lemon, left, by federal agents yesterday in Los Angeles. This was for reporting on a protest at a Minnesota church, and it isn’t just a legal spat: this is intimidation aimed at the free press itself. As fascism expert Jason Stanley noted on Ali Velshi‘s show this morning, this is the moment of fascism when the fascists begin arresting members of the press. Federal officials are pursuing charges even after a magistrate judge refused to approve a complaint against Lemon, and his lawyer says Lemon was there doing what journalists have done forever — reporting the truth — and that’s exactly what the First Amendment protects. The message being sent is clear: “If you speak truth to power — particularly if you are Black or brown — you could end up in handcuffs.” This cannot stand. Call your elected officials (the number for Congress‘s switchboard is 202-224-3121) to support independent journalism and let them know that we need them to defend the Constitution, the First Amendment, and our tattered republic.
— Is Minneapolis now a “papers please” city for non-whites? CBS News reports that people of color, including people whose families have been born here for generations, are now carrying their passports or birth certificates with them in Minnesota because ICE continues to defy the Fourth Amendment and federal and state law by randomly stopping people and demanding they show their proof of citizenship. If it’s not readily available, they often end up in ICE detention (which some reports suggest generates a bonus for the agent who nabs them, “undocumented immigrant” or not), something that’s already happened to multiple US citizens. Trump’s reign of terror is just getting underway; Minneapolis is widely regarded as a test case, with other Blue cities in Blue states up next. My congresswoman, Maxine Dexter, just warned Portlanders that we should all get whistles and be prepared for an invasion here, as most observers think Portland will be next (although, apparently they’ve decided to go after Black Somalis in Ohio first). It’s a sentiment echoed by an administration official who spoke with NBC News, saying: “The reality is, you can’t stop what you’re doing. This is the whole point of ICE existing in these cities, and Minnesota is not going to be the last state that ICE goes to. Oregon was next. We were not done. We need to keep going.” Trump is trying to create a situation where people in Red states feel “safe” and people in Blue states go to bed every night feeling like they are under siege. So far, it appears to be generating more backlash than fear, even after he’s murdered two people and inflicted violence and chemical weapons on thousands of others. Will America eventually back down and bow before him? Stay tuned…
— Mark Carney stood up for democracy, and Trump is pissed. Canadian Prime Minister Carney went to Davos and gave a great speech arguing that as Trump moves America closer and closer to Putin-style fascism it’s high time for the remaining democratic nations of the world to band together. That would include economic cooperation, military and defense collaborations, along with new alliances. It’ll be a massive undertaking and will probably produce a short-term hit to the Canadian economy, but Canada is now — perhaps correctly — viewing Trump and the US the way Poland was viewing Hitler and Germany in 1938. The damage our bone-spurs rapist fraudster felon president is inflicting on America and the world is mind-boggling.
— DOJ busted for removing Epstein files accusing Trump of child rape. Minutes after releasing an FBI document detailing reports to our government of Trump raping young girls, they pulled it off their server. Nonetheless, the FBI report is widely circulating on the web now, including text like this: “[Redacted] reported an unidentified female friend who was forced to perform oral sex on President Trump approximately 35 years ago in NJ. The friend told Alexis that she was approximately 13-14 years old when this occurred, and the friend allegedly bit President Trump while performing oral sex. The friend was allegedly hit in the face after she laughed about biting President Trump. The friend said she was also abused by Epstein.” That’s just one of a series of allegations against our president who’s already been found — twice — by a jury of his peers to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. Only the best, right?
The Parnas Perspective, News Updates and Commentary, More Significant Epstein Documents Show Powerful People Lying as Mass Protests Break Out Across America, Aaron Parnas, Jan. 31, 2026. Today’s update is coming later than usual because I spent much of the past 24 hours carefully reviewing a large volume of Epstein files and wanted to be sure you received a thorough and accurate briefing.
There is a lot to cover. More powerful figures are being named, key claims are being contradicted by the documents, and this is unfolding alongside massive protests breaking out across America this weekend against Trump and ICE.
I am still working through many of the records and will be sharing additional updates throughout the day and into the weekend. Let’s keep this work moving forward and keep it strong.
Other news:
A brief partial U.S. government shutdown began after the Senate passed a funding deal brokered between Donald Trump and Senate Democrats, but the House—led by Mike Johnson, right—won’t vote until Monday; most agencies are temporarily closed, while DHS funding was punted for two weeks amid Democratic demands for immigration enforcement reforms.
More than 300 nationwide “ICE Out of Everywhere” protests are planned across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., organized by grassroots group 50501 in response to recent deaths involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with demonstrators demanding accountability, defunding of DHS, and an end to what they describe as the militarization of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.
Federal immigration officials are reportedly planning an enforcement operation in Ohio that could target Haitian immigrants in Springfield as early as next week, as Temporary Protected Status for Haiti expires—heightening fear in a community previously singled out by Donald Trump and JD Vance, while local advocates prepare legal and support services for possible detentions.
Critics are savaging the Amazon-backed documentary “Melania”, calling it propaganda and poorly made amid immigration raids, questioning Amazon’s $75 million investment—of which Melania Trump reportedly received over $28 million—and raising concerns about political favor-currying and director Brett Ratner’s controversial return, despite a weak box office outlook.
French lawmakers are demanding answers after a U.S. subsidiary of Capgemini signed a multimillion-dollar contract to provide “skip tracing” services for Immigration and Customs Enforcement—helping locate and deport migrants—sparking outrage over potential human rights violations and prompting scrutiny from French ministers including Catherine Vautrin and calls to suspend the deal.
Chicago-based Metropolitan Capital Bank & Trust became the first U.S. bank failure of 2026 after being shut down by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which sold most assets to First Independence Bank in a resolution expected to cost the FDIC’s insurance fund about $19.7 million, aligning with Chair Travis Hill’s push for rapid wind-downs.
The U.S. warned Iran against conducting live-fire naval drills near American forces in the Strait of Hormuz, as Donald Trump weighs possible military action amid escalating tensions over Iran’s protest crackdown and nuclear concerns, while regional and international actors push for de-escalation and renewed diplomacy.
A Customs and Border Protection employee, Alfredo Mancillas Jr., was charged with drunken driving in Minnesota after state troopers allegedly found him unconscious and “covered in vomit” in a parked car, an arrest now under review by the Department of Homeland Security amid heightened scrutiny of federal immigration enforcement during the Trump administration’s crackdown.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed at least 30 Palestinians—including children and police officers—despite a “ceasefire,” with attacks hitting a police station, apartments, and displacement camps just before a planned border crossing reopening, underscoring ongoing violence.
The Guardian has confirmed that U.S. authorities are reportedly probing claims from a new lawsuit that Meta can read supposedly end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp messages—allegations Meta calls “categorically false,” arguing they stem from litigation tactics linked to NSO Group, while security experts say secretly accessing encrypted chats would be effectively impossible and likely already exposed.
More On U.S. Elections, Politics
New York Times, Editorial: Trump Could Interfere With the Midterm Elections. You Can Help Defend Them, Editorial Board. Jan. 31, 2026. Election Integrity in the United States can be a fraught subject. Merely raising the prospect that a future election might be compromised makes many democracy experts uncomfortable. It can undermine faith in our reliable, well-run election system and amplify the false claims about fraud that often come from President Trump.
Even people who respect the sanctity of elections sometimes malign them. Many Democrats, for example, have wrongly suggested that voter-identification laws undermine the system by causing large declines in turnout.
In truth, American elections have never been more reliable or accessible. For every election, thousands of principled election officials painstakingly update voter rolls, mail information to households, train poll workers, oversee voting and transport ballots with a documented chain of custody. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and voter turnout in the past two presidential elections reached higher levels than in any other over the previous century.
Yet it would be naïve to assume that the status quo is guaranteed to continue. The sanctity of the 2026 elections is indeed under threat. And the reason is Mr. Trump.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
He has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to interfere with elections to benefit himself and his party. He has broken the law to do so and broken longstanding bipartisan traditions. Since he entered politics a decade ago, he has suggested that election outcomes are fair only if his side wins. In 2020, after he lost the presidential election, he attempted to direct a sprawling conspiracy to overturn the result. As it was failing (thanks to the honesty of election administrators from both parties), he encouraged protesters to march to Congress when it was meeting to certify his defeat — and later celebrated their violent attack.
Since he returned to the presidency last year, he has if anything shown a willingness to go further. He has pushed for extreme gerrymandering of congressional districts, outside the normal 10-year cycle, to help Republicans hold the House even if most voters want them out. His Justice Department is building an unprecedented database of voter information that experts fear the administration may use to cast unfair doubt on voters’ eligibility. He signed a legally dubious executive order that could force states to reject some mail-in ballots. He recently told The Times that he regretted not sending the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 presidential election.
The threat took on a new urgency this week, when F.B.I. agents searched an election center in Atlanta related to Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations of fraud in 2020. Chillingly, his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, accompanied agents on the search. As an article in The Times explained, the search “could be used to justify a forced takeover of the elections operation” in Georgia’s most populous county, which skews heavily Democratic. It is a reminder of Mr. Trump’s willingness to use the tools of state power — prosecutors, national security officials, National Guard members and F.B.I. and immigration agents — in the service of his political interests.
To look at this pattern and conclude that the 2026 midterm elections are safe is to leave American democracy exposed. In a divided country where many elections are close and congressional control could come down to a handful of races, a local disruption affecting turnout or vote counting could have national consequences. If you are somebody who has previously dismissed talk of election interference as overwrought, we understand where you are coming from. Yet we urge you not to assume that the past will repeat itself.
We are relieved to see that an array of civic-minded Americans — including Democrats, independents and Republicans — are responding to the threat and already taking steps to protect the integrity of the 2026 elections. They need help in this nonpartisan endeavor. They have far fewer resources at their disposal than the president does. Much as the editorial board makes annual recommendations of high-impact charities to support, we want to suggest several ways that you can help safeguard democracy ahead of the midterms. We ask you to consider them.
Global News
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, previously served as German Defense Minister, is shown in a 2018 photo talking to Bundeswehr soldiers in Mazar-i-Sharif base in northern Afghanistan, March 25, 2018. She made multiple visits to German troops in Afghanistan (Image: Michael Kappeler/dpa/Picture Alliance).
New York Times, Europe’s Leaders Try to Reduce Dependence on Trump, Jeanna Smialek, Lara Jakes, Steven Erlanger and Jim Tankersley, Jan. 31, 2026. Since President Trump made threats about Greenland, the continent’s leaders have debated the rapid deterioration of U.S. ties in policy papers and at dinner.
After President Trump shocked the world last week by threatening Europe with economic pain, humiliating its politicians and excoriating their values, leaders from across the continent wrestled with the fallout the next day at an emergency dinner meeting in Brussels.
The dishes were neat and traditional — chicken supreme, a classic French comfort food, with vanilla roast parsnips — but the question on the table was messy and recent. What should Europe do to cope with the rapid deterioration of its relationship with the United States, most recently manifested in Mr. Trump’s obsessive pursuit of Greenland?
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, an ideological ally of Mr. Trump on many issues, arrived at the meeting urging ongoing dialogue with the president. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany pushed for immediate steps to reduce business regulations across Europe, to lift growth and reduce dependence on the American economy. President Emmanuel Macron of France said that to win respect from Mr. Trump, Europe must show a willingness to strike back against his threats.
Deliberations ran into the early hours of the morning. What emerged was a sort of playbook for how to deal with a Trump administration that is expected to remain volatile, according to three officials briefed on the meeting and leaders’ public statements. The leaders’ plan is to remain calm during Mr. Trump’s future provocations, threaten to hit back with tariffs and, the officials said, work behind the scenes to make Europe less militarily and economically dependent on its increasingly unreliable ally. The officials requested anonymity to speak about the politically sensitive discussions.
The playbook — a relatively bold but still largely abstract approach — was an example of how Europe’s leaders were now verbally pushing harder than ever against Mr. Trump and yet are still struggling to bolster their statements with action.
New York Times, Israel Launches Deadly Strikes in Gaza as Rafah Border Is Set to Reopen, Natan Odenheimer and Fatima AbdulKarim, Jan. 31, 2026. A local health official said at least 26 people had been killed in the attacks, which the Israeli military said had targeted Hamas commanders.
The Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday. At least 26 people were killed in the attacks, according to the Gaza health ministry. The strikes came as Israel was expected to reopen the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt.CreditCredit...Saher Alghorra for The
ByThe Israeli military launched a series of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, an attack that local health officials said was the deadliest in weeks and that comes as the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was set to move into its next phase.
Zaher al-Waheidi, an official at the Gaza health ministry, said at least 26 people had been killed in the strikes, which hit several locations, including Gaza City and a refugee camp near the city of Khan Younis, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense rescue service.
Several children were among those killed, according to Mr. al-Waheidi and Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, who said his hospital had received some of the injured and dead on Saturday.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the airstrikes had targeted commanders and fighters from Hamas and another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as weapons facilities. It said the strikes were a response to activity the day before, when it said militants had emerged from a tunnel in Rafah, in an Israeli-controlled area. The military described that as “a violation of the cease-fire agreement.”
Hamas described the Israeli attacks themselves as a violation of the cease-fire.
Samer Abo Samra, 27, a resident of Gaza City, said in a phone interview that his apartment building had been hit during the strikes and that, in the aftermath, he had seen the bodies of three children. The Israeli military said it did not immediately have a comment on the incident.
The strikes came before the expected reopening in the coming days of the crucial land crossing at Rafah between Gaza and Egypt, a long-delayed part of the cease-fire agreed in October.
More On Epstein Files Revelations
Guardian, Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show, Nick Robins-Early, Jan. 31, 2026 (print ed.). Newly released files from DoJ show the pair making plans in 2012 and 2013 for the Tesla CEO to visit Epstein’s island.
Elon Musk had more extensive – and more friendly – communications with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein than previously publicly known, according to documents released on Friday by the Department of Justice. Emails in the files appear to show the two cordially messaging each other on two separate occasions to make plans for Musk to visit Epstein’s island.
The documents include Musk and Epstein emailing in both 2012 and 2013 to determine when Musk should make the trip to Little St James. Neither exchanges appear to have resulted in Musk visiting the island, due to logistical issues.
“Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit?” Musk states on 13 December 2013.
“any day 1st - 8th . play it by ear if you want. always space for you,” Epstein replies.
Musk then sends several emails relaying his schedule, and the two settle on 2 January as a date for the visit. The email exchange ends with Epstein telling Musk that he would need to remain in New York and sending his regrets that they could not meet.
“Bad news- Unfortunately , my schedule will keep me in New York . I was really looking forward to finally spending some time together with just fun as the agenda. so i am very disappointed. Hopefully we can schedule another time in the near future,” Epstein wrote.man in gray sweatshirt smilingUS justice department releases more than 3 million new pages of Epstein filesRead more
In November 2012, Epstein sent Musk an email asking “how many people will you be for the heli to island”.
“Probably just Talulah and me. What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk replied, in an apparent reference to his former wife Talulah Riley.
Musk followed up with an email on 25 December in response to another Epstein message that encouraged him to visit and offered use of his helicopter.
“Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for,” Musk wrote.
“Understood , I will see you on st Barth, the ratio on my island might make Talilah uncomfortable,” Epstein responded.
“Ratio is not a problem for Talulah,” Musk said.
On 2 January 2013, Musk sent Epstein an email suggesting that the visit wouldn’t take place saying: “Logistics won’t work this time around.”
Musk has been harshly critical of those linked to Epstein, but the newly released emails appear to contradict his own longstanding denial of any ties of his own. The Tesla CEO told Vanity Fair in 2019 that Epstein was “obviously a creep” and claimed that Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined.” The emails between the two moguls come years after Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida. Authorities later arrested Epstein in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges.
A separate email in the documents shows Epstein’s longtime assistant Lesley Groff appearing to make plans for Epstein to have lunch at SpaceX in 2013, stating: “Elon Musk appreciates the invitation to the Ranch but has commitments… Lunch on Monday Feb.25th at 1pm at Space X is confirmed”. It is unclear whether the lunch took place or whether Musk was in attendance. Yet another series of exchanges from March 2013 features Epstein and Musk emailing back and forth after Epstein sends him congratulations a day after a SpaceX rocket launch.
A representative for Musk and his artificial intelligence company, xAI, did not immediately return a request for comment.
The newly released emails between Musk and Epstein, who was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 and for years has been the subject of speculation over his connections to some of the world’s most powerful people, are part of a tranche of 3 million documents that the justice department made public on Friday.
Musk has faced pressure to address any potential connection to Epstein in the past, including after an earlier justice department release of documents related to the investigation mentioned his name. House Democrats last year released a copy of Epstein’s daily schedule, which showed a calendar entry from 2014 that states “Reminder: Elon Musk to island Dec. 6 (is this still happening?)”. No other information was included, and Musk denied making plans for the visit in a post on X.
“This is false,” he wrote in response to a post that mentioned the allegations.
Musk has also denied knowing Epstein’s longtime co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, claiming that a much-circulated photo of the two of them together at an event was because she “photobombed” him at a Vanity Fair party. Musk stated that he once visited Epstein’s Manhattan apartment “for about 30 minutes” with his ex-wife Talulah Riley as part of research for a book she was writing, but did not specify an exact date.
While he has denied a personal connection to Epstein, Musk has invoked the sex offender’s name to attack others. He claimed during his public falling-out with Donald Trump last year that the president’s name was in the Epstein files. He later appeared to delete his posts on X accusing Trump of ties to Epstein. Musk also insulted fellow tech mogul Bill Gates in May over the Microsoft founder’s relationship with Epstein, lashing out after Gates criticized him for cuts to humanitarian aid.
“Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children given that he frequented Jeffrey Epstein?” Musk said.
New York Times, Release of Three Million Epstein Pages Falls Short, Survivors Say, Devlin Barrett, Michael Gold and Mike Baker, Jan. 31, 2026 (print ed.). Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, told reporters on Friday that “there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents.”
The Justice Department on Friday finished its belated release of investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker, though officials conceded that the disclosure of more than three million pages was unlikely to put to rest the suspicions that surround the case.
That was quickly reinforced by Democratic lawmakers and some of Mr. Epstein’s victims, who had forced the Trump administration to disclose the documents related to the case. They asserted that the massive tranche still fell short of a full accounting, and that the documents revealed personal information about people Mr. Epstein abused.
Hundreds of prosecutors have spent the last two months reviewing more than six million pages potentially related to the case. As of Friday, around 3.5 million pages had been published in response to a law passed by Congress last November. The latest files also included 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.
The files appeared to contain at least 4,500 documents that mention Mr. Trump, according to an initial review by The New York Times. One was a summary F.B.I. officials assembled last summer of more than a dozen tips from members of the public involving Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the disgraced financier.
“We did not protect President Trump,” Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, told reporters on Friday. “We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”
Mr. Blanche said that many of the pages that were reviewed were duplicates, and that roughly 200,000 pages were redacted or withheld after Justice Department lawyers determined that they were protected by various legal privileges, including attorney-client material. One small tranche of papers, from a law firm involved with an Epstein-related case, still has to be dealt with, Mr. Blanche said.
“I think there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents,” he added. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Hours after the release of the documents, a group of 18 survivors of Mr. Epstein’s abuse said in a joint statement that the disclosure did not do enough to hold his enablers accountable.
“Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. That is outrageous,” they said, without specifying what material had been revealed. “This is not over. We will not stop until the truth is fully revealed and every perpetrator is finally held accountable.”Editors’ Picks27 Books Coming in FebruaryThe Sauces and Seasonings Chefs Can’t Live WithoutSome Takeaways — and Some Good Movies — From This Year’s Sundance
Justice Department officials said that the department redacted images of every woman in the files except for Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s longtime companion and associate who has been convicted of sex trafficking. Any information about other victims that was inadvertently exposed would be swiftly removed, they said.
U.S. Immigration, Civil Rights, Courts, Crime
New York Times, ICE Expands Power of Agents to Arrest People Without Warrants, Hamed Aleaziz and Charlie Savage, Jan. 30, 2026. An internal memo changed the standard from whether people are unlikely to show up for hearings to whether they could leave the scene.
Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.
The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person.
The shift comes as the administration has deployed thousands of masked immigration agents into cities nationwide. A week before the memo, it came to light that Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of the agency, had issued guidance in May saying agents could enter homes with only an administrative warrant, not a judicial one. And the day before the memo, Mr. Trump said he would “de-escalate a little bit” in Minneapolis, after agents fatally shot two people in the crackdown there.
The memo, addressed to all ICE personnel and signed on Wednesday by Mr. Lyons, centers on a federal law that empowers agents to make warrantless arrests of people they believe are undocumented immigrants, if they are “likely to escape” before an arrest warrant can be obtained.
ICE has long interpreted that standard to mean situations in which agents believe someone is a “flight risk,” and unlikely to comply with future immigration obligations like appearing for hearings, according to the memo. But Mr. Lyons criticized that construction as “unreasoned” and “incorrect,” changing the agency’s interpretation of it to instead mean situations in which agents believe someone is unlikely to remain at the scene.
“An alien is ‘likely to escape’ if an immigration officer determines he or she is unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained,” Mr. Lyons wrote.
The Times shared a description of the memo’s contents with several former senior ICE officials from the Biden administration. Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior adviser at ICE, called the new definition “an extremely broad interpretation of the term ‘escape.’”
“It would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless,” she added.
Mr. Lyons’s memo explicitly portrays the revised interpretation of “likely to escape” as a change from how ICE had “previously applied the phrase.” But Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said that “this is not new.”
“This is simply a reminder to officers,” she wrote in a statement, to keep “detailed records on their arrests.”
The Trump administration has pushed ICE to significantly increase arrests per day as part of its mass deportation campaign. The agency has carried out more indiscriminate sweeps — like rounding up people in Home Depot parking lots looking for work — rather than targeted operations in which agents set out, warrant in hand, to arrest specific people.
Such roundup operations could still involve administrative warrants if supervisors on the scene quickly fill out the paperwork, known as a Form I-200. The change lowers the standard for arrests even without a supervisor’s approval.
Mr. Lyons’s memo lists factors agents can consider when deciding whether the standard has been met, including whether someone obeys commands or tries to evade them; has access to a car or other means to leave; has identification or work authorization documents agents suspect are fraudulent; or provides “unverifiable or suspected false information.”
The memo tells agents who make warrantless arrests to fill out a form afterward that documents the factors they considered in determining that someone was “likely to escape.” That includes situations in which agents set out to arrest a particular person and then take others in the vicinity into custody. Mr. Lyons called that group “collateral aliens.”
“If an immigration officer encounters and arrests multiple collateral aliens, his or her analysis as to the likelihood of escape must be specific to each alien arrested,” the memo said. “That one collateral alien is likely to escape does not necessarily mean another collateral alien is also likely to escape.”
But this kind of assessment requirement only goes so far: The memo stresses that “particular factors may be common to multiple aliens arrested at the same time.”
During the first Trump administration, a class-action lawsuit claimed that agents had been illegally profiling in traffic stops as a pretext for warrantless arrests. In 2022, the Biden administration agreed to a settlement that included a three-year nationwide policy. Plaintiffs last year accused the second Trump administration of violating the agreement, prompting litigation.
The policy standard in the 2022 settlement included factors that resembled Mr. Lyons’s list. But it also included “ties to the community (such as a family, home or employment) or lack thereof, or other specific circumstances that weigh in favor or against a reasonable belief that the subject is likely to abscond.”
But Mr. Lyons’s memo noted that when agents encounter people they suspect are in the country illegally, the agents are not likely to be able to know much about them. “This on-the-spot determination as to the likelihood of escape is often made with limited information about the subject’s identity, background or place of residence and no corroboration of any self-serving statements made by the subject,” he wrote.
Scott Shuchart, a former head of policy at ICE during the Biden administration, said the memo would open the door to more frequent warrantless arrests.
“This memo bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval,” he said. The memo, he warned, said that “even that supervisor’s note can almost always be sidestepped so long as the officer can say anything remotely plausible about the person being arrested possibly leaving the area.”
New York Times Magazine, 'A Terrifying Line Is Being Crossed’: Mayor Jacob Frey on the Turmoil in Minneapolis, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Jan. 31, 2026. Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, shown in a recent file photo, knows that what is playing out on the streets of his city will have profound implications for the whole country.
Since December, thousands of federal agents have arrived in Minneapolis, as part of an immigration enforcement effort that theDepartment of Homeland Security has named “Operation Metro Surge.” Since then, Frey has had to shepherd a cityrived by protests, infuriated by the killings of two American citizens at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, and shaken by an aggressive federal action that has left some residents afraid to leave their homes.
I spoke to Frey on Thursday afternoon, not long after Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan — who has been dispatched to Minneapolis to replace and clean up after the operation’s original commander Gregory Bovino — promised to de-escalate the situation there. He said in a news conference that there would be a drawdown of agents, only to have President Trump later deny that there was any plan to pull back.
Protests against ICE have now spread nationwide, and congressional Democrats are pushing for reform of an immigration enforcement agency that they say is out of control. The federal government is promising to crack down on the protesters, and the Justice Department is already investigating both Frey and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota for what it says is a conspiracy to impede federal immigration agents.
While there are many differing opinions on what is happening in Minneapolis, it’s clear that this confrontation between the federal government, a state and its people is at an inflection point. Frey and I talked about how the conflict was playing out on the ground, where it might be headed and the long-term impact on his city and the country.
New York Times, Bovino Is Said to Have Mocked Prosecutor’s Jewish Faith on Call With Lawyers, Ernesto Londoño and Hamed Aleaziz, Jan. 31, 2026. Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol field leader, made disparaging remarks in reference to the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, an Orthodox Jew, people with knowledge of the phone call said.
A day before six career federal prosecutors resigned in protest over the Justice Department’s handling of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, lawyers in the office had a conversation with Gregory Bovino, right, the Border Patrol field leader, that left them deeply 
unsettled.
According to several people with knowledge of the telephone conversation, which took place on Jan. 12, Mr. Bovino made derisive remarks about the faith of the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, Daniel N. Rosen. Mr. Rosen is an Orthodox Jew and observes Shabbat, a period of rest between Friday and Saturday nights that often includes refraining from using electronic devices.
Mr. Bovino, who has been the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, used the term “chosen people” in a mocking way, according to the people with knowledge of the call. He also asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Rosen understood that Orthodox Jewish criminals don’t take weekends off, the people said.
Mr. Bovino had requested the meeting with Mr. Rosen to press the Minnesota office to work more aggressively to seek criminal charges against people Mr. Bovino believed were unlawfully impeding the work of his immigration agents.
Mr. Rosen delegated the call to a deputy. During the call, with a handful of prosecutors listening in, Mr. Bovino complained that Mr. Rosen had been unreachable for portions of the weekend because of Shabbat. Mr. Bovino’s remarks followed his complaints about having difficulty reaching Mr. Rosen.
Mr. Bovino’s comments raised judgment concerns, but also a potential legal dilemma for government lawyers. Based on a 1972 Supreme Court decision in a case known as Giglio, prosecutors have an obligation to disclose certain information to the defense that could call into question the integrity and character of a law enforcement officer who is involved in an arrest and called as a witness in a trial.
What you should know. The Times makes a careful decision any time it uses an anonymous source. The information the source supplies must be newsworthy and give readers genuine insight.Learn more about our process.
Mr. Bovino did not respond to requests for comment.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Border Patrol, did not respond directly to questions about Mr. Bovino’s comments. “Instead of focusing on gossip, why don’t you focus on something actually important like the victims of illegal alien crime or the criminals taken out of Minneapolis communities?” she said.
A representative for the Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Rosen declined to comment for this article.
Mr. Rosen, a commercial litigator, has kept a relatively low profile since he became the U.S. attorney in Minnesota last October.Editors’ Picks28 Ways to Entertain Your Kids in New York City This WinterAnswer 4 Questions. Find Your Dream Mexico Vacation.‘Hey, How’s It Going? I’m Filing for Divorce Now.’
In an interview that month with an online news outlet, Jewish Insider, Mr. Rosen said that one of his “primary motivations” for seeking his current role was the power it gave him to combat what he called the “rapid escalation of violent antisemitism” in the United States.
“Jewish history tells us that Jews fare poorly in societies that turn polarized, and where that polarization evolves into factional hatreds in the non-Jewish societies within which we live,” he told the outlet.
Mr. Bovino, a Border Patrol commander based in Southern California, became among the most visible figures in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in cities starting last summer.
New York Times, Federal Judge Denies Request to Temporarily Block ICE Surge in Minnesota, Mitch Smith, Jan. 31, 2026. Local officials had sought a preliminary injunction to stop the federal deployment of some 3,000 immigration agents to Minnesota, arguing that the move amounted to a violation of state sovereignty.
A federal judge in Minnesota denied a request by the state government and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul on Saturday to temporarily block a surge of federal immigration agents that has led to three shootings, thousands of arrests and weeks of protests.
The judge, Kate M. Menendez, who was nominated to the bench by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., had resisted requests by state lawyers for an immediate ruling on halting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign, known as Operation Metro Surge, which began late last year.
The state and the cities argued in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 12 that the decision to send some 3,000 immigration agents to Democratic-led Minnesota over the objections of local officials amounted to a violation of state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. They also described the deployment as an illegal attempt to coerce them into cooperating with civil immigration enforcement. The Trump administration dismissed that legal theory and defended their actions as a lawful campaign to crack down on illegal immigration.
Judge Menendez wrote that the state and local governments had failed to show that the deployment crossed a constitutional line and therefore had not met the burden for a preliminary injunction.
“Plaintiffs have provided no metric by which to determine when lawful law enforcement becomes unlawful commandeering, simply arguing that the excesses of Operation Metro Surge are so extreme that the surge exceeds whatever line must exist,” she wrote, referencing a courtroom exchange with a lawyer for the state. “A proclamation that Operation Metro Surge has simply gone ‘so far on the other side of the line’ is a thin reed on which to base a preliminary injunction.”
The lawsuit was filed days after a federal agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, a U.S. citizen. After the first hearing on the case, agents shot two more people in the city. On Jan. 14, an agent shot and injured a Venezuelan man who officials said was in the country illegally and had resisted arrest. And last Saturday, agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and intensive-care nurse.
Lindsey Middlecamp, a lawyer for the state, reiterated the call for swift action in a court hearing on Monday, asking the judge to stop what she called an “invasion” of federal agents.
Ms. Middlecamp called on the judge to “issue a temporary restraining order today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today.” Hours after the hearing ended, Judge Menendez requested an additional written brief from the federal government and gave them until Wednesday evening to file it.
Judge Menendez said in court that “I think it goes without saying that we are in shockingly unusual times.” But she pressed lawyers for the state to explain when, in its view, the federal government deploying federal agents to enforce federal law could become a constitutional affront. The state did not seek an end to all immigration enforcement in Minnesota, only a return to the levels seen before the surge.
More On Don Lemon's Arrest
Don Lemon with Grandmother Mary Bouligney circa 1969
The Don Lemon Show, Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round, Don Lemon, right, Jan. 31, 2026. How My Grandmother, a Sunday Song, and Journalism Taught Me to Stand for Truth.
There is a passage in scripture that says, “The truth shall set you free.”
But it does not say it will protect you from cages.
It does not say it will spare you the consequences of seeing too clearly.
It does not say it will make the powerful comfortable.
I learned this not from theology, but from experience — when the government decided that my work as a journalist was not protected speech, but punishable.
Not theory.
A cell.
A silence imposed by authority.
And in that silence, I came to know insistence as a companion.
It revealed itself quietly, slowly, in the marrow, in the rhythm of my breath, in the stubbornness of waking each day determined to see, to write, to witness.
It did not ask permission.
It did not negotiate.
It demanded courage.
America loves the idea of a free press.
It recites it like a hymn, photographs it like a saint, teaches it like doctrine, celebrates it like a holiday.
But the press is only free so long as it does not disturb comfort, so long as it does not expose what power would rather conceal.
The free press does not exist to reassure the nation.
It exists to reveal it to itself.
It exists to name what is hidden, to tell what is denied, to measure promises against deeds, to hold authority accountable — even when authority would prefer silence.
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There is an old Negro spiritual that says, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.”
I did not learn those words from a history book.
I learned them in church on Sunday mornings, in the quiet authority of my grandmother’s voice as she hummed through the house, long before I understood what insistence meant.
I took them seriously — long before I knew how costly seriousness could be.
James Baldwin understood that clarity carries consequences.
Dr. King knew that truth invites punishment.
Malcolm X saw that systems built on hierarchy will always attempt to silence those who name them.
And as voices in the Black prophetic tradition have long warned, truth that threatens power will be met with the full force of authority.
And I have felt that force in my own life.
A society that punishes journalists is a society that punishes reality.
When a reporter is jailed, silenced, or threatened for speaking truth, the boundary between fact and fiction begins to dissolve.
Permitted stories become safe stories.
Forbidden stories become invisible histories.
And democracy, stripped of witnesses, becomes performance.
The First Amendment does not protect comfort.
It protects exposure.
It protects accountability.
It protects the sacred act of observation.
Power is not afraid of disorder.
It is afraid of revelation.
A free press is revelation made public.
It is the stubborn insistence that reality cannot be owned by authority.
It illuminates patterns, exposes contradictions, names injustice, and reminds a nation of its unfinished promises.
The press must carry the same spirit as the old song — not loud, not theatrical, but unyielding.
Because without witnesses, injustice becomes ordinary.
Without witnesses, lies become law.
Without witnesses, freedom becomes an abstraction.
The press is not a luxury.
It is the pulse of democracy.
If journalists are silenced, citizens are blinded.
If truth is criminalized, freedom becomes ceremonial.
If the First Amendment is optional, democracy itself is optional.
And still, somewhere in the distance, the old song continues — not as nostalgia, but as prophecy.
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.
Emptywheel, Analysis: “Demonic,” “Godless,” “Un-American:” Harmeet Dhillon’s Own Misconduct Will Be an Issue in Don Lemon Case, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), Jan. 31, 2026. Less than a day after her office obtained an indictment against eight people, most Black, for invading a Christian Nationalist Church whose pastor reportedly has a leadership position in ICE, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon RTed a tweet from far right extremist Mike Davis calling Don Lemon a klansman.
That was the culmination of almost two weeks of an intense, wildly inappropriate media campaign led by Harmeet.
And that’s a problem, because Harmeet’s media blitz targeting the church protest generally and Don Lemon personally happened during the same period when her own office, after two judicial rulings that there was not probable cause to charge most defendants and without any local career prosecutor included, indicted the defendants.
This table is a very very rough account showing how Harmeet’s media blitz interspersed legal actions she or Bondi took (do not rely on this without replicating the work with a download of Harmeet’s tweets, as her habit of RTing herself over and over makes this hard to track, especially from another timezone).
Among the things Harmeet, right, did in her blitz was:
Attacked both Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko and Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz Falsely claimed that the entire Eighth Circuit panel had found probable cause for the indictment Disseminated false claims about what happened at the protest Disseminated the White House generated AI slop that darkened Nekima Levy Armstrong’s skin and falsely depicting her crying Called the protestors “demonic,” “godless,” and “anti-American” Platformed comments calling the defendants inflammatory terms (including terrorist) Told Megyn Kelly she would pursue Don Lemon “to the end of the earth” Platformed tweets talking about betting on the outcome of the investigation Made it clear that she was taking these steps to prove her (and Bondi’s) mettle to the “black-pilled” further right Tweeted Republican politicians calling for charges
This was a prosecution fed by and catering to Catturd and Benny Johnson.
And that is likely to put Harmeet’s own misconduct at the center of the prosecution.Very rough timeline
Over the course of the day she tweeted:
Fourteen times on her AAG account, RTing NewsMax host Todd Starmes, the Center for Baptist Leadership, Karoline Leavitt, Will Chamberlain Twenty times on her Harmeet account, RTing accounts including CatTurd, Libs of TikTok, Mike Lee, House GOP
U.S. Economy, Markets, Jobs, Inflation
New York Times, Kevin Warsh Has a Tough Job Ahead. It’s Not the First Time, Sydney Ember and Colby Smith, Jan. 31, 2026. Mr. Warsh, below right, is known as a consensus builder, skills he will need if he is to head the Federal Reserve when President Trump is demanding rock-bottom rates.
Kevin M. Warsh, then a junior at Stanford University, seemed aware of the brewing ill will.
He had just won a contentious election for chair of the student senate after a vote that some members felt was too hasty. Facing anxiety about the process and his ability to lead impartially, he quickly tried to provide some assurances.
“I will not be manipulated by political parties,” he told The Stanford Daily, the school’s student newspaper, in May 1991. “I do not have an agenda.”
Thirty-five years later, the onus is on Mr. Warsh once again to prove that he can run an institution under pressure — this time with implications far beyond the halls of student governance.
On Friday, President Trump announced that he planned to nominate Mr. Warsh, 55, to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, capping a lengthy bake-off to replace Jerome H. Powell, whose term as Fed chair concludes in May.
Those who know Mr. Warsh, a former Fed governor, believe he is up to the task, bolstered by his talent for amassing support that has long been one of his signature strengths.
“He’s able to bring individuals together,” said John Cogan, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who has known Mr. Warsh since his days as an undergraduate. “He knows where he stands on issues, but he also knows the importance of consensus and compromise to get a job done.”
Mr. Warsh still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, and Mr. Trump has not exactly greased the path. For months, the president has attacked Mr. Powell and the central bank for its reluctance to more aggressively lower interest rates. On Friday, Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, reiterated his refusal to confirm any nominee for the Fed until the Justice Department — which opened a rare criminal investigation into Mr. Powell this month — resolved the inquiry.
In naming Mr. Warsh, Mr. Trump praised him for being “central casting” and vowed that he would “go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best” — descriptions that did not allay concerns that he would be able to guide the country’s monetary policy free of influence from the White House.
Mr. Warsh’s recent policy pivots have also raised questions from some lawmakers and economists about what he really believes is the best policy path forward and what he will do if the president presses him to pursue something out of step with the economic data. During his time as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011, Mr. Warsh warned against cutting rates — including during the Great Recession — only to embrace rate cuts once Mr. Trump returned to office.
More On 'Melania' Film Flop, Hype
Meidas Touch Podcast, Melania gets DITCHED as Epstein Emails EXPOSE HER, Jan 31, 2026. Host Ben Meiselas reports on Melania Trump having the worst week of her life as her movie premiere was ruined because no one showed up and because of she got exposed by an email in the Epstein email dump on Friday.
Melania Trump CRIES on Live After $75 Million Movie Disaster!, Emma Lopez, Jan 31, 2026. Emma Lopez breaks down the jaw-dropping flop of Melania Trump's new documentary — the $75 million project that promised glamour but delivered empty theaters and brutal silence. From canceled screenings to savage reviews, find out why this "cinematic" disaster is already legendary.
Jan. 30
The Warning with Steve Schmidt, The Reckoning Is Coming, Steve Schmidt, above, Jan. 30, 2026. Last night, Melania Trump held the premiere of a movie no one wants to watch. Steve Schmidt condemns Trump’s sycophants for celebrating a blatant act of corruption while they continue assaulting constitutional rights.
Variety, ‘Melania’ Review: Brett Ratner’s First Lady Documentary Is a Cheeseball Infomercial of Staggering Inertia, Jan 30, 2026. There's no drama to a film that should have been called "Day of the Living Tradwife."
“Melania” is a documentary that never comes to life. It’s a “portrait” of the First Lady of the United States, but it’s so orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial.
Is it cheesy? At moments, but mostly it’s inert. It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show. There’s no drama to it. It should have been called “Day of the Living Tradwife.”
The movie was shot, by director Brett Ratner and a trio of prestige cinematographers, over the course of the 20 days leading up to (and including) the 2025 Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump. And to the extent that it allows Melania Trump a whisper of personality or agency, it’s as a designer. She helps to tweak the design of her own outfits. She has chosen the color of the inaugural invitation envelopes (a lovely shade of scarlet). She offers design tips about the plates and flowers and glassware. And, during the first Trump presidency, she helped to redesign sections of the White House.
All of this plays out, in “Melania,” as if she’s planning her wedding. The movie opens to the strains of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” which makes it sound like the film is going to strike an attitude of defense against those who have been mean to Melania. But no, “Melania” is so studiously celebratory, like a piece of state-sanctioned propaganda out of 1960s Communist China, that it never even wades into those controversial waters.
The movie plunks us down at Mar-a-Lago, where Melania struts out the door and into the back of an SUV, which will take her to the red-white-and-blue private plane painted with the word TRUMP that’s waiting for her at the airport. Wherever she lands, she’s in a mobile bubble, jetting from the palace of Palm Beach to Trump Tower in New York, where she meets for a fashion fitting in what looks like a dining room of the Titanic designed by Liberace, then to St. Patrick’s Cathedral right down the block (where she attends an anniversary mass for her mother) and on to the renovated 19th-century charm of Blair House in Washington, D.C., then back to Trump Tower and back to the Capital.
Melania came out of Slovenia as a teenage fashion model, but she was always less Brooke Shields than Nico, and now, at 55, in her Terminator sunglasses and thick mascara eyelashes and omnipresent four-inch pumps (she wears them in every scene, even when she’s just relaxing on the couch), she still has that frozen-for-the-camera hauteur, as well as the thick accent that blankets everything she says, giving it all the same emotional neutrality. “Can we do the lapel a little bit beeger?” she asks her designer, Hervé Pierre, and he, like everyone else in the room, reacts with a grin of jovial agreement, as if Marie Antoinette had just asked for a piece of cake. The movie is stitched together by Melania narrating her life in voice-over, most of it along the lines of “This is my last flight as a private citizen, before stepping back into my public life” or “The people I like have to share my vee-sion.”
Variety, 'Melania': Why Would Amazon Spend $75 Million on a Movie This Boring? Regine Mahaux, Jan. 30, 2026. About midway through the documentary “Melania,” a piece of imagemaking whose interest comes only occasionally and accidentally, the film seems to acknowledge the oddity of its own making.
First Lady-to-be Melania Trump, in the days before her husband’s 2025 inauguration, has inked a deal to appear in the very film the audience is watching; her aides are fielding inquiries from a journalist about the potential ethical issues this deal raises. One of the two soon-to-be East Wing workers laughs; the inquiry is destined to go unanswered.Related StoriesWagner MouraWagner Moura on Brazilian Soccer, His Next Directorial Feature and Why the Oscar Rule That Shut Out ‘The Secret Agent’ Director Needs to ChangeSINNERS, Michael B. Jordan (left), 2025. © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection'Sinners' Breaks All-Time Oscar Nomination Record With 16 Nods
Perhaps it just goes without saying. Whatever benefit the Trump administration is to gain from the message of “Melania,” such as it is, playing out on cineplex scenes nationwide seems minuscule compared to the material gain: Amazon paid a reported $40 million fee to Melania’s production company, and has invested some $35 million more in promoting the film. Before the logo for Muse Films, Melania’s company, the film opens with the banner for Amazon MGM Studios, whose “Art for Art’s Sake” slogan has rarely seemed more ironic.
That’s because the film itself exists as a striking rebuttal to the idea that it exists for reasons beyond the transactional. (Now that Amazon has made a payment to the First Family, perhaps whatever regulatory concerns they are to have in future might be eased.) “Melania” is a fascinating document: An attempt to look behind the image of a person who resolutely refuses introspection, a vérité confessional undertaken by someone constitutionally averse to the act of confession. It plays like a film by Pablo Larraín, that great documenter of female celebrity behind “Jackie” and “Spencer,” minus the moment when our great diva has an emotional catharsis, or expresses an emotion. And it is many things — but it’s not $75 million worth of movie.
The film’s box-office prospects seem abysmal; it’s tracking very low, and, anecdotally, it became apparent that all of the 20 or so people in my screening room were, to a one, journalists reporting on the movie. Why would civilians care? After all, for much of its 108-minute running time, “Melania” is primarily a film about a woman walking into and out of rooms. This is true from the very first: The movie opens with a lengthy sequence, scored to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” in which Melania enters a car to leave Mar-a-Lago, puts on sunglasses, exits that car, boards a plane, removes her sunglasses and sits down, her head hitting the headrest just as the “Rape! Murder!” chorus of the song kicks in. (The scoring of this movie, including two plays of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” is gaudily expensive throughout, a funny reminder that pop music is one of our current president’s great interests.)
Melania, here, is spending her last weeks as a private citizen while planning the inauguration, and we are shown that prep at a level of detail that shifts from painstaking to painful. (Not once but twice are we shown lengthy fitting sequences, as she instructing a tailor on the manner in which her inaugural looks need to be altered.) She speaks in voiceover throughout the planning process, deliveringparagraphs with incantatory rhythms that can have the effect of concealing that they contain no substance at all. “My education in architecture gives me a serious design approach,” she tells us. Later: “For me, it’s important that timeless elegance shines through in every element.”
One senses little feeling behind the words, not least because they seem at times to directly contravene what’s actually happening in the world, from relatively trivial to high-stakes. She proudly informs viewers that, in her husband’s first term, she “restored the Rose Garden”; it’s since been paved over. Later, reflecting on the outpouring of support she felt on Inauguration Day, she tells us that “In the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.” A director not beholden to the Trump administration — unlike Brett Ratner, whom Melania tapped to make this film, and who had previously been cast out of the industry following multiple allegations of sexual assault — might find the interesting friction between these words and the ongoing refusal to acknowledge the humanity of immigrants and those who advocate for them. Instead, the words just lie there.
Jan. 30
The Parnas Perspective, News and Commentary: Major Epstein Files Update: Bombshell Documents Released, Aaron Parnas, right, Jan 30, 2026.
Good afternoon, everyone. Over the past several hours, I’ve been methodically reviewing thousands of newly released Epstein-related documents—and I’ll be continuing this work late into the night. I’m issuing this interim update because several significant records have already surfaced that directly reference Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other powerful figures, and they warrant immediate attention.
I also caught Howard Lutnick, the current Commerce Secretary, in a major lie.
I’ll be sharing additional findings tonight and throughout the weekend as I continue to analyze and verify what’s in these files. If you’re able, please consider subscribing to support this work and help keep me caffeinated and focused—this level of scrutiny takes time, resources, and stamina. I can’t do this alone, and your support makes this reporting possible.
Here’s my update:
The Justice Department released a massive new tranche of long-awaited Jeffrey Epstein records—more than 3.5 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images—over a month after an initial release of 3,500 files, missing a statutory December deadline under the Epstein Files Transparency Act; officials said the materials include large volumes of commercial pornography and some images apparently taken by Epstein or people around him, with portions marked or redacted as child sex abuse material, and the release comes amid intense political pressure.
At the same time, the redactions have been a complete mess. I have confirmed through my review already that multiple survivors have their names unredacted in the new batch of files. In addition, Jane Doe survivors who I have spoken to and know their names privately have had their names outed by the Justice Department publicly during this release.
One of the files released today outlines a list of complaints and accusations made by individuals against President Donald Trump. This file was posted this morning, deleted by the Department of Justice for several hours, and is now back online. This file contains a list of tips the FBI received. What’s unclear is if the FBI followed up on any of these tips. The allegations are horrific:
In a March 2016 exchange, Jeffrey Epstein sought legal advice from Kathy Ruemmler about an allegation by a girl who claimed she had sex with Donald Trump while underage; the context notes that Epstein and Ruemmler reportedly used the nickname “MacGyver” for Trump—suggesting he could escape legal trouble—and the timing is could be interpreted to potentially referring to the Katie Johnson lawsuit filed in April 2016, though the allegations have not yet been adjudicated.
Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—formerly CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and a longtime neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein on Manhattan’s Upper East Side—said that a 2005 visit to Epstein’s townhouse, where Epstein showed him and his wife a “massage room,” so disgusted them that they vowed never to be alone with him again, yet a newly released 2015 email shows Lutnick inviting Epstein (via Epstein’s longtime assistant) to a Democratic fundraiser Lutnick hosted for Hillary Clinton; it is unclear whether Epstein attended, and the U.S. Department of Commerce did not immediately comment.
New York Times, Live Updates: Millions of Pages of Epstein Documents Released, Devlin Barrett, Michael Gold and Alan Feuer, Jan. 30, 2026. The release of files from the federal inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein is the largest to date, and includes thousands of videos and photographs. Times reporters are sifting through the material. Here’s the latest.
The Justice Department on Friday released three million more pages of documents from its Jeffrey Epstein files, and thousands of videos and images, as the Trump administration sought to bring an end to the accusations and speculation swirling around the case.
The documents posted online are the largest batch of Epstein files released by the department to date, and arrived weeks after a Dec. 19 deadline imposed by Congress. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the release also included 2,000 videos and some 180,000 images.
At a news conference, Mr. Blanche signaled the documents would be the last major release of government files about Mr. Epstein, but he acknowledged that even that many documents were unlikely to satisfy the public demand for information about Mr. Epstein.
New York Times reporters are sifting through the material and providing updates and analysis of the records.
The law that required the Justice Department to make virtually all its Epstein investigative files public also required it to explain why it redacted any information. Mr. Blanche, right, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, said that federal officials would submit its report to Congress “in due course.”
The files include a significant number of uncorroborated tips to law enforcement, the kind of material that was also included in earlier releases.
Mr. Blanche rattled off a number of reasons that the Justice Department withheld documents, saying that the department was permitted to do so under the law passed by Congress last year. The reasons included files with personal identifying information or medical information of Mr. Epstein’s victims, material depicting child sexual abuse and material that depicted death or violence. Though the law allowed the government to withhold Epstein documents that contained classified information, he said there were no such documents and so none were withheld for that reason.
The White House “had nothing to do with this review,” Mr. Blanche said. “They had no oversight and they did not tell this department how to do our review and what to look for and what to redact or not redact,” he said.
Here’s what we’re covering:
One document released Friday diagrams Epstein’s inner circle, above. Federal authorities created a diagram of Jeffrey Epstein’s inner circle, at least several of whom authorities considered to be potential co-conspirators, according to a document released on Friday.
The document featured photos and names of a number of well-known people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, including his convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell; his lawyer Darren Indyke; his accountant Richard Kahn; his financial adviser Harry Beller; his longtime assistant Lesley Groff; and Jean-Luc Brunel, who died by suicide in a French jail after being charged with rape.
The names and faces of several other people, described as Mr. Epstein’s employees or girlfriends, were redacted in the document.
Of all the people depicted or referred to in the chart, only Ms. Maxwell (shown above with the future president) was ever charged with helping Mr. Epstein engage in the sex trafficking of teenage girls. But the photo montage shows that at least around the time of Mr. Epstein’s arrest and death in 2019, federal authorities were looking into a wider array of potential co-conspirators.
Three people whose photos were not redacted, Mr. Indyke, Mr. Kahn and Mr. Beller, were some of Mr. Epstein’s closest employees. Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn currently serve as the co-executors of Mr. Epstein’s estate. They and Mr. Beller, whose name is misspelled in the document, were involved in the inner workings of Mr. Epstein’s finances. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has been investigating the government’s handling of the investigations into Mr. Epstein, has announced plans to depose Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn.
Lawyers for Mr. Indyke, Mr. Kahn and Ms. Groff were not immediately available for comment on Friday. A lawyer for Mr. Beller had no immediate comment.
The document also listed several of Mr. Epstein’s other employees and associates, including his pilots and Leslie Wexner, the billionaire retail magnate, who for years was Mr. Epstein’s most important financial benefactor. There is no indication in the document that federal authorities considered those men to be among Mr. Epstein’s co-conspirators.Understanding Our Reporting
A group of Times reporters and editors with deep experience covering the Jeffrey Epstein case are examining millions of documents released by the Justice Department on Friday. But they will proceed with typical care to ensure accuracy and fairness.
The files released Friday appear to contain at least 3,200 documents that mention President Trump. The Times is going through the documents and that number could increase.
Some of the documents mentioning Trump appear to be from tips called into investigators relating to the Epstein case. Others are mentions of Trump in news articles that are mixed into the files. Epstein and his friends frequently exchanged articles, and federal investigators also reviewed media reports as part of their inquiries.
There are also emails that simply reference Trump. Epstein, for example, regularly discussed Trump, including musing about his chances in the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.The New York TimesJan. 30, 2026, 1:01 p.m. ET1 hour ago
A group of Times reporters and editors with deep experience covering the Jeffrey Epstein case are examining millions of documents released by the Justice Department on Friday. But they will proceed with typical care to ensure accuracy and fairness.
Several of these staff members have covered the case since 2019. Others report on the Justice Department, Congress, the White House and the federal court system.
New York Times, Trump Administration Live Updates: Kevin Warsh Is Named Fed Chair, Staff Reports, What We’re Covering Today.
President Trump announced on Friday that he had selected Kevin M. Warsh, a lawyer and former Federal Reserve official, as the next chairman of the central bank. Mr. Warsh, if confirmed by the Senate, would succeed Jerome H. Powell, who has faced a barrage attacks from the Trump administration over the bank’s reluctance to more aggressively cut interest rates. Read more ›President Trump has selected Kevin M. Warsh to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, giving the former central bank governor a pivotal role in steering an institution that has faced a barrage of attacks from the administration over its reluctance to more aggressively lower interest rates.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Warsh, saying “he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best. On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting’ and will never let you down.”
Friday’s announcement capped a drawn-out search process to replace Jerome H. Powell, whose term as chair of the central bank ends in May. Mr. Warsh, who served as a Fed governor between 2006 and 2011, edged out other contenders including Kevin A. Hassett, one of the president’s top economic advisers, and Christopher J. Waller, a current governor. Rick Rieder, a top executive at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, was also a finalist.
Mr. Warsh, a conservative economist who was a front-runner to be Fed chair during Mr. Trump’s first term, will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
The selection comes at a critical moment for the Fed, whose officials are facing relentless pressure from the Trump administration to provide relief to borrowers while grappling with a weakening labor market and persistent inflation. That dynamic has put the Fed’s primary goals of stable prices and low unemployment in tension with one another, stoking internal divisions about what to do about rates.
Mr. Trump’s top criteria for Fed chair was someone who supported significantly lower borrowing costs, which has been the biggest source of tension between Mr. Trump and Mr. Powell, who is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department stemming from his handling of renovations at the central bank’s headquarters in Washington.
Mr. Powell, who up until the investigation had brushed aside the president’s attacks, hit back directly, accusing the administration of leveraging legal threats as retaliation against the institution for not lowering rates as quickly as Mr. Trump would like. Senate Republicans jumped to Mr. Powell’s support, with some even going so far as to say they would block the confirmation of any Fed nominee until the issue was resolved.
As Fed chair, Mr. Warsh, 55, will have influence over the central bank’s policy decisions, but far from total control. Interest rates are set by a 12-person committee, which includes all seven members of the Fed’s board of governors as well as a rotating set of four presidents from the regional reserve banks. The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has a permanent vote.
Officials on Wednesday opted to hold rates steady at a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent at their first gathering of the year. This week’s pause followed three quarter-point cuts in the latter half of 2025. Despite those moves, rates are well above the roughly 1 percent level that Mr. Trump has called for in the past.
That disconnect has spawned other attempts by the Trump administration to pressure the Fed, aside from just targeting Mr. Powell. The president is in the process of trying to fire one governor, Lisa D. Cook, over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud before joining the Fed. The Supreme Court this month heard arguments for that case and appeared skeptical of the president’s argument that he had grounds to fire her. The justices also expressed unease about the incursion on the Fed’s independence and the prospects of an adverse economic impact.Mr. Warsh, who previously worked as an aide to President George W. Bush, has publicly backed the need for rate cuts, arguing that tariffs will not lead to persistently higher inflation.
Since leaving the Fed nearly 15 years ago, Mr. Warsh, who currently works with billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller and is also a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, has emerged as a staunch critic of the central bank. Earlier this year, he called for “regime change in the conduct of policy,” telling CNBC at the time that “the credibility deficit lies with the incumbents that are at the Fed, in my view.” He has repeatedly hit out at the Fed for missing the inflation surge in the aftermath of the pandemic and is likely to support downsizing staff.
Paul Krugman via Substack, Political Economy Commentary: A Bad Heir Day at the Fed, Paul Krugman, right, Jan. 30, 2026. No, Kevin Warsh isn’t qualified.
So Kevin Warsh will be the next Fed chair. The silver lining to his appointment is that he shouldn’t be able to do much damage, although with one big caveat (see below). The Fed is a republic, not a dictatorship; key decisions are made by a committee in which the chairperson has only one vote. Fed chairs can only drive policy through persuasion — and Warsh lacks the intellectual and moral credibility to be effective on that score.
But God help us if we enter a crisis that requires decisive Fed leadership, the kind Fed chair Ben Bernanke showed during the financial crisis, or Jay Powell, right, is now showing against Trump’s attacks.
Absent a crisis, my prediction is that the majority of Warsh’s colleagues will largely ignore him, albeit without expressing their contempt openly. Even a coalition among the Trump appointees to the Board of Governors – Warsh, Bowman and Miran – won’t be enough to overturn the responsible monetary policy stewardship of the other governors. Details below.
Trump National Security Advisor Tulsi Gabbard and the anti-democratic prime minister of India, Narendra Modi.
Wayne Madsen Report via Substack, Investigative Commentary: America's democracy is being Modi-ized, Wayne Madsen, left, investitgative report, author of 28 books and former Navy intelligence officer, Jan. 30, 2026. Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard are close to the right-wing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- and that is a five-alarm fire for America's free and fair elections.
The appearance on January 28 of FBI agents at the Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City, outside of Atlanta, is a direct threat by the Trump regime to America’s system of state-run free and fair elections. Pursuant to a federal court —approved search warrant, the FBI loaded into trucks records related to the 2020 election. The records included ballots, ballot envelopes, stubs, and digital files from the 2020 election.
More worrisome is the fact that Fulton County officials said they did not know why the materials were taken or where they were being transported. And even more ominously, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was photographed standing near FBI evidence trucks during the raid. The DNI possesses no authority to participate in domestic criminal investigations. Her presence at the election office triggered concerns from Democrats and Republicans. FBI director Kash Patel and Gabbard’s involvement in investigating the 2020 election in Georgia should result in more than “concern.”
Both Patel and Gabbard are closely linked to the anti-democratic right-wing Hindu nationalist government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Perhaps that is why the anti-Modi Hindustan Times of India, which has called out Modi’s undermining of what was once the world’s most populous democracy, reported the following about the Georgia incident: “Multiple lawmakers, including Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. Jon Ossoff, publicly questioned why she [Gabbard] was “bizarrely and personally lurking” at the scene. The Hindustan Times has reported in-depth on how the Indian opposition to Modi has seen their candidates and office holders arrested and physically harmed, and elections they have won being annulled.
Justice Department insiders reported that Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County office was not requested by them. The White House stated that Gabbard was present during the documents seizure on the orders of Donald Trump.
The involvement of Patel’s FBI agents and Gabbard’s presence is a warning sign of what may be coming in the way of Trum’s interference in the mid-term elections this year and beyond.
During Trump’s first presidential term, Trump introduced Patel, right, to Modi as “my intel guy.” Patel had no background in intelligence at the time. Patel’s family hails from Modi’s home state of Gujarat, a region plagued by religious violence, often instigated by Hindu nationalist leaders against Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. In 2002, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi was accused of condoning Hindu violence against Muslims that resulted in the deaths of 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus.
Patel has vehemently criticized American press coverage of Modi and the Ram Temple issue, arguing that U.S. outlets misrepresent Indian history and unfairly target Modi. The Ram Temple in Ayodhya is a major Hindu temple consecrated on January 22, 2024. It was built on the site of the 16th-century Babri Masjid mosque, which was destroyed by Hindu rioters in 1992. Patel has also claimed that Washington “elites” prefer to “liken Trump and Modi as similar figures,” which Patel believes the media uses as cudgel to undermine Modi. At times, it’s difficult to ascertain whether Patel works for Trump or Modi. FBI director Kash Patel assures India full support in the fight against terrorism amid recent Pahalgam attack Kash Patel
Gabbard met Modi in Washington within hours after her confirmation as DNI. In fact, Gabbard was first U.S. official to meet Modi during his 2025 visit, which was a rather peculiar breach of diplomatic protocol. Gabbard had met Modi previously and has been publicly supportive of India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party political identity, a rejection of the more secular policies of the center-left Indian National Congress adopted since independence by INC leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi, V.P. Singh, and Manmohan Singh.
Newsweek has reported on Gabbard’s ties to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the Hindu militant paramilitary organization of which Modi is a lifelong member. RSS leader M.S. Golwalkar, who led the organization during World War II, took inspiration from Adolf Hitler's ideology of racial purity. Golwalkar and other RSS leaders also supported the fascist policies of Benito Mussolini. The RSS was banned by the Indian government three times following independence. The bans occurred in 1948, following the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi; 1975, following the suspension of the Constitution; and 1992, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Gujarat. Modi’s 2008 book, Jyotipunj, contains life sketches of 16 RSS leaders who shaped his worldview. The longest and most reverential chapter is devoted to M.S. Golwalkar, With his new book “Golwalkar: The Myth ...
Gabbard is not of Indian origin, but she is the first Hindu elected to the U.S. Congress. Gabbard followed her mother in embracing the Science of Identity Foundation cult, a Hawaii-based offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement led by Chris Butler, aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa.
Patel’s and Gabbard’s close links to Modi should be setting off alarms all over the United States. Multiple independent democracy‑watching organizations argue that Modi has significantly weakened India’s democratic institutions. The actions of Patel and Gabbard appear to be following the Modi template, which in India has occurred “through the fully legal harassment of the opposition,” rather than through a coup or mass arrests. Modi’s actions have included the frequent use of investigative agencies like the Department of Revenue Enforcement Division (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against opposition leaders; pressure on state and territorial governments; and criminal cases that critics argue are politically motivated.
Under Modi, intimidation of the media is a key mechanism of democratic erosion. Modi’s regime has raided independent newsrooms, pressured journalists, and concentrated media ownership among pro‑government media corporations.
Modi’s government has pursued a strong‑executive model that centralizes authority in the Prime Minister’s Office, reducing the autonomy of institutions that historically acted as checks. This has adversely affected bureaucratic independence, federalism, and parliamentary oversight.
Modi has attempted to stamp out political opposition by targeting opposition office holders. In 2024, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of the opposition Common People’s Party, was arrested by the ED in a liquor‑licensing case. His deputy and party Member of Parliament were already jailed. The opposition parties claimed the actions were part of a pre‑election crackdown.
The opposition was correct. Other opposition leaders were also arrested during pre-election campaigning in 2024. Hemant Soren, the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, was arrested by the ED hours after resigning. His party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, denied the corruption allegations. Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel of Chhattisgarh and leader of the state’s branch of the INC was picked up by ED officials right before the 2024 state elections. The ED also arrested Chaitanya Baghel, son of former Chief Minister Baghel. Multiple Baghel aides were also raided. Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav of Bihar and leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal was also raided by federal authorities before the election.
Additionally, former Congress Member of the Legislative Assembly of Haryana, Dharam Singh Chhoker, was arrested. Most of Modi’s actions against the opposition occurred just before elections. Modi has attempted to paint the opposition as corrupt even though he leads the most corrupt Indian government since independence.
Civil society leaders have also been targeted by Modi. In 2024, Harsh Mander and his think tank, the Center for Equity Studies (CES) in New Delhi, were raided by the CBI, India’s version of the FBI, allegedly over charges that they had accepted illegal foreign contributions.
Delhi, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh all saw their Chief Ministers arrested by Modi. This paralyzed governance and weakened the opposition’s ability to campaign. Modi’s government also froze the INC’s bank accounts, which hampered its ability to campaign. The ED, acting on the orders of Modi, has questioned INC leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi for several hours. Rahul Gandhi was suspended from parliament for three days in 2023 for defaming Modi in a 2019 campaign speech. Gandhi merely asked the following question, “Why do all thieves have Modi as their surname?"
Federal law enforcement agencies have conducted raids on INC offices and associated trusts and have repeatedly summoned multiple senior INC figures for questioning. This is the same sort of political intimidation and law enforcement misuse that the Trump regime is now employing against Democratic leaders, journalists, and other opposition figures
Patel’s and Gabbard’s actions against Fulton County’s election process means that we will see Modi-style action taken by the Trump regime prior to the mid-term elections and beyond leading up to the 2028 presidential election. The seizure of the data devices of a Washington Post reporter, the arrest of former CNN anchor Don Lemon, indictments of Democratic politicians, the opening of criminal investigations of leading Democratic political leaders in Minnesota and possibly other states, and other malign actions place the United States in the same position as India prior to its 2024 elections.
The Parnas Perspective, News Updates and Commentary, Trump DOJ Arrests Don Lemon, Trump Calls Pretti an Insurrectionist, a Major First Amendment Attack, Aaron Parnas, right, Jan. 30, 2026. Federal authorities arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon late Thursday in what amounts to an unmistakable act of overreach—one that directly threatens the First Amendment and signals a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against dissent and press freedom.
As I said in the video, it has never been scarier to be a journalist in America, and I mean it. It’s also never been more important to fight back and continue reporting. I will never stop no matter what. Subscribe if you can to support my work:Subscribed
Lemon was taken into custody over his presence at a protest that disrupted a church service earlier this month in St. Paul, Minnesota, despite overwhelming evidence that he was there solely as a journalist documenting events, not participating in them. A statement from Lemon’s attorney is below:
The precise charges against Lemon, left, were still unclear at the time of his arrest. What is clear is the extraordinary path the Trump Justice Department took to get there. Just days earlier, a magistrate judge refused to sign a criminal complaint against Lemon, finding the evidence insufficient.
Rather than respecting that judicial determination, the administration appears to have deliberately maneuvered around it—either by seeking a grand jury indictment or shopping the case to another magistrate judge. This is not normal law enforcement. It is the weaponization of prosecutorial power to punish a reporter whose coverage the government did not like.
The events in question occurred on Jan. 18 at Cities Church, where protesters opposing the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown interrupted a service led by a pastor who also serves as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. Protesters chanted “ICE out,” and federal prosecutors quickly moved to bring charges against eight individuals under a statute meant to protect worshippers’ rights. Lemon was swept into that dragnet despite the fact that he was not chanting, organizing, or disrupting the service—he was reporting.
A magistrate judge recognized that distinction, approving charges against only three individuals and rejecting the case against Lemon and others. A federal appeals court later declined to override that ruling. Lemon’s arrest, therefore, is not the result of new facts or new evidence.
In a functioning democracy, journalism is protected precisely because it often involves proximity to conflict, protest, and power. Lemon has been explicit about what he did inside the church: he observed the unfolding protest and spoke with those involved, including the pastor, congregants, and demonstrators. Criminalizing that conduct is not about preserving order—it is about intimidation. It sends a clear message to reporters everywhere: cover the wrong story, ask the wrong questions, and you could be next.
This crackdown unfolds against a backdrop of escalating violence and repression in Minneapolis. Federal agents have killed two protesters in recent weeks, including Alex Pretti, an intensive-care nurse shot by Customs and Border Protection officers. Rather than expressing restraint or concern, President Trump publicly smeared Pretti as an “agitator” and “perhaps an insurrectionist.”
Even as tensions spiral, the White House has attempted to project moderation. President Trump has suggested he may seek to “de-escalate” the situation, replacing the Border Patrol official overseeing the crackdown with border czar Tom Homan. Homan has floated the possibility of negotiating with local officials and reducing the federal footprint in the city. Yet these gestures ring hollow when paired with the arrest of a journalist whose conduct had already been deemed lawful by the courts.
Inside the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis, the strain is becoming impossible to hide. Multiple prosecutors have resigned following internal confrontations over the administration’s refusal to investigate the shootings carried out by federal agents. Attorney General Pam Bondi has since called in reinforcements from other Midwest offices, underscoring both the scope of the unrest and the administration’s determination to press forward regardless of internal dissent.
Don Lemon’s case now stands as a warning—and a test. It raises the question of whether the federal government can simply override judicial skepticism, criminalize journalism, and use the machinery of the state to silence those who document its abuses. This is not about a single protest or a single reporter. It is about whether constitutional protections still function when power feels threatened.
In authoritarian systems, the press is not outlawed overnight. It is intimidated, prosecuted, and worn down case by case. The arrest of Don Lemon is not an anomaly. It is a signal.
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Andrew Kreig
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The Justice Integrity Project (JIP) researches official misconduct
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