I’m really struggling with my emotions about the state of our country these days. I used to feel enraged about Trump’s insane policies, but now I feel mostly anxiety and intense sadness. I have to admit that I haven’t even followed the news very carefully for the past week or so. I just can’t handle it.
I know this probably sounds silly, but I’ve been thinking back to when I was in 7th or 8th grade. My junior high school had an essay contest and I won with an essay called “A Letter to a Russian Student.” Of course this reflected some brainwashing from the cold war era, but in those days I did feel glad and even proud to be an American.
There have been times since then that I felt shame about my country–when Nixon was president, for example; and when George W. Bush was using torture. Obviously the U.S. has never been perfect–far from it. But I have never felt as ashamed to be an American as I do now under Trump’s horrific, chaotic rule. Trump is really, truly evil, and I fear for our future if the Democrats don’t take over Congress in the midterm elections.
It’s difficult to pick a “worst” Trump issue, but I guess it has to be mass deportations or the Epstein scandal. Of course there are also tariffs, his attack on universities, the skyrocketing cost of health insurance, and RFK Jr’s attack on vaccines, and other preventative health policies. Oh, and we can’t forget Trump’s horrendous attacks on the environment. No wonder I’m overcome with anxiety and sadness.
Anyway, here are some stories that captured my attention this morning.
On Oct. 4, Marimar Martinez, a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school, was driving in Chicago when she observed federal immigration agents on patrol. She had begun to honk her horn to warn her neighbors about their presence when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Moments later, the agent in the vehicle, Charles Exum, fired multiple shots into Martinez’s car, hitting her again and again. (Later, Exum would brag to colleagues that he had “fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes.”)
Prosecutors for the government charged Martinez with assaulting a federal officer and accused her of trying to ram Exum with her car. The Department of Homeland Security described her actions as domestic terrorism, a charge the agency would repeat after the death of Renee Good in January at the hands of another immigration agent.
Marimar Martinez
The government’s case unraveled, however, when it became clear that its story did not fit the evidence — evidence that officials with Customs and Border Protection tried to hide. The government dropped its case against Martinez a month later, and on Friday a federal judge authorized the release of the body camera footage so that the public could see the incident for itself.
Recently, Martinez joined with other Americans brutalized by federal immigration agents to tell their stories to a forum of congressional Democrats led by Representative Robert Garcia of California and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Garcia and Blumenthal convened the event to collect testimony on — and highlight — “the violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The people who testified spoke to the terror of their confrontations with masked, armed and often trigger-happy federal agents. “I will never forget the fear, and having to quickly duck my head as the shots were fired at the passenger side of the car. Any one of those bullets could have killed me or two people I love,” said Martin Daniel Rascon, who was stopped by agents who broke the windows of the vehicle he was in and began firing when the driver, frightened, tried to escape.
If democracy rests on mutual recognition, on our capacity to see one another as full and equal persons, then the power to speak and be heard lies at the foundation of democratic life. It is when we speak — when we argue, appeal, explain and testify — that we put into practice our belief in the ability of others to understand, reason and empathize. Or as Thomas Jefferson remarked in 1824, “In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.”
Thus far, growing public opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection has been a function of the power of the image — of videos of shootings and abuse — but the testimony of Martinez, Rascon and others should remind us of the power of words and personal experience to also move the public. Crucially, there is the power inherent in giving victims of wrongdoing a chance to tell their stories, not as one perspective among many but as part of the official record.
The Internal Revenue Service improperly shared confidential tax information of thousands of individuals with immigration enforcement officials, according to three people familiar with the situation, appearing to breach a legal fire wall intended to protect taxpayer data.
The erroneous disclosure was only recently discovered, the people said. The IRS is working with officials from the Treasury Department, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security on the administration’s response.
Federal law mandates strict protections of the identities of taxpayers, including the sharing of data within the federal government. Undocumented immigrants have for years paid taxes with assurances from the federal government that doing so would not result in them being targeted by immigration enforcement.
But in a controversial decision, Treasury, which oversees the IRS, in April 2025 agreed to provide DHS with the names and addresses of individuals the Trump administration believed to be in the country illegally, pursuant to DHS requests.
Before the agreement was struck down, DHS requested the addresses of 1.2 million individuals from the IRS. The tax agency responded with data on 47,000 individuals, according to court records.
When the IRS shared the addresses with DHS, it also inadvertently disclosed private information for thousands of taxpayers erroneously, a mistake only recently discovered, said the people familiar, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
The affected individuals could be entitled to financial compensation for each time their information was improperly shared. And government officials can personally face stiff civil and criminal penalties for sharing confidential tax information.
Support for President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda is in free fall in early 2026 after federal immigration agents shot and killed two Americans last month, according to the new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey.
The administration’s aggressive tactics and deportation goals have dragged down Americans’ views of Trump on the very issue that helped sweep him into office, the survey shows.
Immigration and border security had long stood out as a strength for Trump in polls, both as he ran for a second term in 2024 and in the first year of his new administration. Now, Trump’s ratings on the issue have sunk to the same level as his overall job approval rating.
In a double-digit shift, 49% of adults strongly disapprove of how Trump has handled border security and immigration, up from 38% strong disapproval last summer and 34% in April. Self-identified independents drove the erosion, with the share of strong disapprovers in that group having risen 11 points since August.
Fully 60% of those surveyed in the week after the death of Alex Pretti in Minnesota somewhat or strongly disapproved of Trump’s actions on border security and immigration. Another 40% approved of Trump on the issue, including 27% who strongly approved and 13% who somewhat approved.
Read more at the link.
On the Epstein Files
Heather Cox Richardson at Letters from and American: February 10, 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.
Jeffrey Epstein
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.
Read more at the link.
Lutnick needs to go. It’s not just the Epstein lies. He has slavishly lied about Trump’s tariffs and other economic policies.
Howard Lutnick’s Jeffrey Epstein problem may be getting worse.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are getting more unsettled about revelations that the Commerce Secretary’s ties to Epstein were closer than he acknowledged. And Trump administration allies are now actively debating his fate — even as the White House continues to proclaim his job is safe.
Howard Lutnick
Lutnick, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump, is facing political heat after the latest batch of documents released on Epstein’s case show significant interactions between Lutnick and the convicted sex offender, who lived nextdoor to him in New York. Emails show that the two men were in contact for years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
Lutnick has not been connected to any wrongdoing by the files. Yet there’s bipartisan concern in the Senate about Lutnick, with Democrats calling for his ouster and some Republicans queasy over the spiraling storyline.
Lutnick testified Tuesday to the Senate Appropriations Committee about dining with Epstein on his island in 2012 with family and other friends — contradicting his own October comments that he and his wife chose to “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again” after the disgraced late financier showed the couple his massage room back in 2005.
One Republican senator told Semafor that Lutnick’s job would be in serious jeopardy “if it were anybody but President Trump” in charge.
The Justice Department has released the names of three people the FBI once called co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein after lawmakers complained that the names had been improperly withheld.
The Justice Department unredacted parts of an Aug. 15, 2019, FBI internal document from the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division — which included a reference to billionaire Les Wexner as a co-conspirator — and reposted it after Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., complained that the department had violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act by redacting the names. Massie and Khanna co-authored the bill, which compelled the Justice Department to release all of its records on Epstein, and they have been vocally critical of the department’s handling of the release.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded in a post of his own, saying: “The document you cite has numerous victim names. We have just unredacted Les Wexner’s name from this document, but his name already appears in the files thousands of times. DOJ is hiding nothing.”
The newly released version of the 2019 document shows eight people are listed as co-conspirators, including four whose names are not redacted: Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret; Lesley Groff, Epstein’s longtime secretary; the late modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel; and Ghislaine Maxwell, the only person who was charged in connection with Epstein. She was convicted of sex trafficking charges and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Four other names on the document are still redacted. It is unclear who those people are; prosecutors have said Epstein used women he preyed on as recruiters. A separate document dated August 2019 indicated that some of the others were victims, as well, and had been cooperating with investigators.
Ro Khanna, the US congressman, publicly revealed the names of six men whose identities were redacted from the Jeffrey Epstein files, including Leslie Wexner, a billionaire retail magnate, whom the FBI appeared to have labeled as a co-conspirator.
Ro Khanna
The Democratic representative of California disclosed the names during a floor speech on Tuesday, following a visit to the Department of Justice, where he and Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, spent two hours reviewing unredacted documents.
The six men named by Khanna are Wexner, the Victoria’s Secret founder; Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, CEO of DP World and an Emirati billionaire businessperson; and four others identified as Nicola Caputo, Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze and Leonic Leonov.
Khanna did not provide evidence of wrongdoing against any of them nor have they been charged with a crime in connection with Epstein.
“If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3m files,” Khanna said during his floor speech.
New analysis of U.S. Census data shows that states across the U.S. where key midterm elections will take place this year paid over $134 billion in tariffs in the period since President Donald Trump began implementing widespread trade duties in March 2025 through last November. In all, the U.S. Census data compiled by Trade Partnership Worldwide showed a total of $199 billion in tariffs paid by states during that time period.
Rep. Greg Meeks at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5. Photo Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
But Trump’s tariffs and affordability are expected to be factors in the upcoming midterm election cycle. Recent CNBC survey data from the American consumer and pricing data show that the affordability issues are real and many voters have soured on the economy. A January poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that 54% of voters oppose Trump’s tariffs. Some members of the GOP are starting to break with their leaders over the tariffs issue, joining Democrats on Tuesday in a vote to defeat a rule that would have prohibited the House from challenging tariffs issued by Trump. The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a measure to overturn Trump’s tariffs on Canada introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.
“Americans struggling with affordability rightly blame tariffs for higher prices on many everyday purchases,” said Dan Anthony, executive director of the We Pay the Tariffs small business coalition and president of Trade Partnership Worldwide. “The president could eliminate tens of billions in taxes in the states that will determine the 2026 elections. He just doesn’t want to,” Anthony said.
House Democrats are already planning to force votes overturning at least two of President Trump’s tariffs, with more likely to follow, senior lawmakers tell Axios.
Why it matters: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has repeatedly blocked these votes over the past year, but his attempt to do so on Tuesday was thwarted by a trio of Republican defectors in a late-night vote.
Johnson’s procedural maneuver to stop Democrats from forcing votes to end Trump’s tariffs under the National Emergencies Act failed 214 to 217, with Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) breaking away.
What they’re saying: “We are going to do Canada today and follow with Mexico,” House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) told Axios in a text message Wednesday morning.
More are likely to follow, a senior House Democrat speaking on the condition of anonymity told Axios, but it is undecided which countries they will target.
There are “lots of thoughts” on that, the lawmaker said.
Still, a House Democratic leadership aide cautioned that Republicans may still try to maneuver to block the tariff votes from coming to the floor.
The Trump administration tried and failed Tuesday to indict Democratic lawmakers over a video urging members of the military and intelligence communities not to comply with unlawful orders, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Six Democrats participated in the video, and some had said they would not cooperate with the Justice Department’s probe into their involvement.
Lawmakers said U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office in Washington had sought interviews with them over the video.
The indictment, pursued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, led by Trump appointee Jeanine Pirro, is the latest example of the Justice Department’s targeting the president’s perceived political opponents. The government attorneys assigned to the case are political appointees, not career Justice Department prosecutors, according to a source familiar with the investigation….
The FBI had sought interviews with the six members of Congress who appeared in the video, which was posted to social media in November: Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.
The lawmakers, all of whom served in the military or in intelligence roles, said in the video that the Trump administration was pitting members of the military and the intelligence communities “against American citizens.”
They then pointed out that public servants can refuse illegal orders. “Now, more than ever, the American people need you,” the lawmakers say in the video. “Don’t give up the ship.”
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, members of the military are obliged to obey only lawful orders and must refuse those that are manifestly illegal.
The Food and Drug Administration has declined to review Moderna’s application for the first mRNA-based flu vaccine, a decision that shocked the company and that comes as the agency plans to tighten federal vaccine approvals.
The nation’s top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad, told Moderna that it lacked an “adequate and well-controlled” study, the company said in a news release Tuesday. In a large clinical trial, the vaccine was compared with Fluarix, an approved standard-dose flu vaccine. Prasad’s letter did not detail concerns with the safety or efficacy of the vaccine, which Moderna was aiming to target for adults ages 50 and older.
Vinay Prasad
Moderna President Stephen Hoge said that the company had previously engaged with the FDA on the trial design and that the agency had indicated it would be acceptable.
“We’re trying right now to reach out to the FDA and understand what would be necessary for them to start reviewing the submission,” Hoge said in an interview….
Last fall, Prasad laid out a stricter approach for federal vaccine approvals, alarming a dozen former FDA leaders who said the change risks undermining the nation’s ability to fight diseases. In a November internal email, Prasad urged the agency to rethink its framework for annual flu shots, examine whether Americans should receive multiple vaccines at the same time and require larger studies to net approval for certain shots.
Moderna has requested a formal meeting with the agency. It said the vaccine has been accepted for review in the European Union, Canada and Australia.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday plans to repeal the legal framework that underpins its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“President Trump will be joined by Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing on Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
A coal-fired power station in Pawnee, Ill., in 2025.Chicago Tribune TNS file
Known as the endangerment finding, the EPA’s 2009 decision says that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are heating the Earth and that warming threatens public health and welfare. It therefore functions, under the Clean Air Act, as the lynchpin for rules that set emissions standards for cars and trucks and require fossil fuel companies to report their emissions, among others.
The move is expected to upend most U.S. policies aimed at reducing climate pollution — if the repeal can withstand court challenges from environmental groups, which had already been preparing to sue.
The text of the rule repealing the finding has not yet been released, so many details are still unknown. However, the EPA released a draft version in August, which also proposed removing all greenhouse gas emissions standards for motor vehicles. Leavitt said the EPA’s planned deregulation would reduce the costs of cars, SUVs and trucks — an indication that the final draft may also include the vehicle emissions rollback.
“Attention International Olympic Committee, thank you for your attention to this matter.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
This weekend had a Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, and a peak ongoing #FARTUS shitshow. The headline that caught my attention was the FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. The Election Clause of the U.S. Constitution is short and leaves much to be determined by Congress and the courts. However, it is quite clear that both State Representatives and Congress are responsible for elections. The DOJ is completely out of its realm when it comes to what happened in Fulton County. Stacked courts and statewide politics are key here.
This headline is from Politico. Josh Gerstein has the analysis. “Fulton County argues FBI seizure of 2020 ballots shows ‘callous disregard’ for constitutional rights. A Trump-appointed judge set a Tuesday deadline to disclose justification for the raid.”
Local officials in Georgia demanding that the FBI return hundreds of thousands of ballots from the 2020 presidential election contend that the seizure took place with “callous disregard” for the constitutional rights of voters and county officials, according to court filings unsealed Saturday.
In addition to unsealing the Democratic-run county’s legal arguments, Boulee issued an order Saturday giving the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Tuesday to file publicly the arguments federal prosecutors put forward to persuade Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas to issue the search warrant authorizing the seizure of all of the physical ballots from the 2020 election, along with ballot images, tabulator tapes and voter rolls.
Boulee said unsealing the affidavit was appropriate due to “the importance of the public’s access to judicial proceedings,” but he said he will allow Justice Department lawyers to redact the names of “non-governmental witnesses” from the version that is made public.
Without providing evidence, President Donald Trump has long complained that fraud led to his loss in Georgia in 2020. In a phone call shortly after the election, he famously but unsuccessfully implored state officials to “find” about 11,800 ballots so that he could be declared the winner.
More recently, Republicans have complained that Fulton County computer files are missing images corresponding to thousands of physical ballots, but county officials have countered that recounts and court challenges verified the vote tallies there and that the law at the time did not require keeping the computer scans.
“Claims that the 2020 election results were fraudulent or otherwise invalid have been exhaustively reviewed and, without exception, refuted,” Fulton County Attorney Y. Soo Jo wrote in the county’s motion demanding return of the seized ballots. “Eleven different post-election lawsuits, challenging various aspects of Georgia’s election process, failed to demonstrate fraud.”
Trump’s obsession with losing is at odds with one of our most precious rights. The Right to vote with a secret ballot is on the line here. The Super Bowl is one of those panem et circenses events in our country. It displays some of the worst and best of our cultural quirks. You won’t catch me watching it, but I do eventually come around to going to YouTube to watch the Musical performances. My vote for the best half-time performance is Prince forever. You can follow this link to Parade to see how many American Super Stars have taken the field. “Prince’s ‘Legendary’ Super Bowl Halftime Show Goes Viral Ahead of Bad Bunny Performance. Prince put on an epic Super Bowl halftime show that fans are still talking about.”
I’m going to use The Wall Street Journalas my source for the Super Bowl halftime show report. “Bad Bunny Uses Joy to Put Out Political Firestorm at Super Bowl Halftime. ‘We’re still here,’ Puerto Rican superstar says in Spanish while spiking a football.”
Bad Bunny delivered a pointed message in Spanish to millions of Americans watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night: “We’re still here.”
In a history-making halftime show performed almost entirely in Spanish, the Puerto Rican star paid tribute to his heritage and the many countries—from Brazil to Mexico—whose people have come to shape the modern-day U.S.
Just a week ago, Bad Bunny denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement while accepting a Grammy award, stoking further political furor from conservatives ahead of the Super Bowl. But on the halftime stage, he offered up a buoyant celebration of Latino culture.
The elaborate stage design included a maze of sugar cane and a single-story house similar to the one he used during his 31-date residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico, last summer. As Bad Bunny strutted through the greenery, he passed by old men playing dominoes, women chatting in a nail salon and boxers sparring—a montage of scenes from life in Puerto Rico.
He opened with some of his kinetic reggaeton hits—“Tití Me Preguntó,” an insistent single about a hyperactive love life, and “Yo Perreo Sola,” a club missile—and later moved through muscular Latin trap (“Monaco”) and sparkling salsa (the opening of “Nuevayol”).
A stream of celebrities showed up to offer their support: Jessica Alba, Pedro Pascal, Cardi B, Karol G and Young Miko threw a house-party behind a phalanx of dancers. Lady Gaga sang a salsa version of her hit “Die With a Smile,” originally a duet with Bruno Mars, while Ricky Martin delivered a full-throated rendition of Bad Bunny’s song “Lo Que le Pasó a Hawaii”—which critiques the potential consequences of U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico through the lens of Hawaii.
Bad Bunny finished his set by spiking a football which read “Together, We Are America.” Then he led a raucous singalong to his nostalgic hit “DTMF” as a crowd hoisted the flags of nations across Latin America behind him.
“He went from bagging groceries 10 years ago to playing the biggest stage this planet has to offer, and did it unwaveringly on his own terms in his native tongue,” said Carlos Cancela, a Bad Bunny fan and former executive at a major label. “He is quite literally the embodiment of the American Dream.”
But Bad Bunny, whose full name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, also sparked the latest culture-war controversy as conservatives railed against his selection. Right-wing influencers and commentators zeroed in on the star’s past criticism of President Trump’s immigration agenda, his Spanish-language song lyrics and his gender-fluid fashion choices. Last week, Bad Bunny said, “ICE out,” on stage at the Grammys, where he became the first artist to win album of the year for an all-Spanish release, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.”
Of course, Trump wasn’t the center of attention here so he had to make a particularly set of nasty comments about Ocasio and the show. This is from The Guardian. “Trump claims ‘no one could understand’ Bad Bunny halftime show: ‘A slap in the face to our country’. Rant comes as Turning Point USA’s ‘All-American’ Super Bowl halftime show garnered just four million viewers.” Trump is a one trick pony. He puts on a display of overt racism to deflect anything that gets in the way of his perceived greatness and tries to draw attention away from the current Epstein file dump.
Toward the end of his set, Bad Bunny was handed a ball with the words, “Together, we are America” written on it, and a message on the big screen read: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
That Truth Social screed is up there on the worst of the worst list. He just keeps outdoing himself these days. This link The Independent. “Trump claims ‘no one could understand’ Bad Bunny halftime show: ‘A slap in the face to our country’. Rant comes as Turning Point USA’s ‘All-American’ Super Bowl halftime show garnered just four million viewers.” Rhian Lubin has the story.
Toward the end of his set, Bad Bunny was handed a ball with the words, “Together, we are America” written on it, and a message on the big screen read: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
But the message of unity clearly did not go down well with the president.
“Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World,” Trump raged.
“This “Show” is just a “slap in the face” to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every single day — including the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History!” the president fumed. “There is nothing inspirational about this mess of a Halftime Show and watch, it will get great reviews from the Fake News Media, because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.”
It was not immediately clear whether Trump watched the Turning Point USA halftime show, but from the president’s Truth Social post, it became apparent he did not miss the Puerto Rican megastar.
Trump is hosting his own Super Bowl watch party thousands of miles away at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to the president’s public schedule.
What’s left of the Washington Post had this headline today. “Trump plans to keep Democratic governors out of traditionally bipartisan meeting. The White House did not explain why Democrats were not invited to the meeting. In addition, at least two Democrats were uninvited to a White House dinner, according to their offices.” Mariana Alfaro has the story.
President Donald Trump plans to keepDemocrats out of a traditionally bipartisan White House gathering of governorstypically held as part of the National Governors Association’s annual Washington summit, the organization said.
According to the governors’ offices, the president also revoked invitations sent to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D), the NGA’s vice chair; and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) to attend a second White House event scheduled to occur around the summit: a dinner for governors.
“This week, I learned that I was uninvited to this year’s National Governors Association dinner — a decades-long annual tradition meant to bring governors from both parties together to build bonds and celebrate a shared service to our citizens with the President of the United States,” Moore said in a statement Sunday. “… It’s hard not to see this decision as another example of blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership.”
Moore told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he was confused by the White House’s decision, saying that, just a few weeks ago, he led a bipartisan group of governors who met with the president as Trump signed a memorandum on bringing down energy costs.
Moore also said on CNN that it was “not lost” on him that he is the only Black governor of a state.
“I find that to be particularly painful, considering the fact that the president is trying to exclude me from an organization that not only my peers have asked me to help to lead, but then also a place where I know I belong in,” he said. “I’m never in a room because of someone’s benevolence nor kindness. I’m not in a room because of a social experiment. I’m in the room because I belong there and the room was incomplete until I got there.”
Eric Maruyama, a spokesperson for Polis, said the decision to exclude the Colorado governor was “disappointing.”
“Gov. Polis has always been willing to work with anyone across the political spectrum who wants to help work on the hardest problems facing Colorado and America, regardless of party or who occupies the White House,” Maruyama said in a statement.
Those of us living the reality of high prices and questionable incomes realize the Trump Economy is in a ditch that feels like we’re careening towards a cliff. However, Trump does not see it that way. This is from NBC News. You don’t need to be an economist like to realize how tough it is to make ends meet if you’re not a billionaire. “Trump accepts ownership of the current economy: ‘I’m very proud of it’. In an exclusive interview with NBC News, the president said the country is already experiencing the “Trump economy.” This is reported by Jonathan Allen.
President Donald Trump says it’s his economy now.
In an interview with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas that aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday, the 47th president said the country is already experiencing the Trump economy.
“At what point are we in the Trump economy?” Llamas asked.
“I’d say we’re there now,” he replied. “I’m very proud of it.”
His remarks come at a time when most Americans tell pollsters they are not satisfied with the state of the economy and as Trump executes a barnstorming strategy to bring his economic message to political battlegrounds before the November midterms.
An NPR/Marist/PBS News survey released last week showed that 36% of adults say they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 59% disapprove. In off-year elections last November, Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and New York hammered away at “affordability” on their way to victory.
In the interview, which was taped Wednesday in the Oval Office, Trump said the economy is doing so well that Democrats are abandoning that message — and also blamed his predecessor, President Joe Biden, for stubbornly high prices on some staples.
“In the last four days, it’s only four days, the Democrats have not uttered the word ‘affordability,’” he said. “They’re the ones that caused the problem. I took over a mess in every way.”
Using figures that are not backed up by the administration’s own data, Trump claimed that the gross domestic product has grown by 5.6% on his watch. According to the Labor Department, the economy grew at a strong annualized rate of 4.4% in the third quarter of 2025. It has not grown at more than 5% in any quarter since 2021, when the U.S. was recovering from the Covid pandemic.
Excuse me while I make my humble grocery list and pull my hair out. Oops. I forgot the Winter Olympics. Well, there’s this from the L.A. Times. “U.S. Olympic athletes in Italy are speaking out about the political situation at home.”
Olympic skiers Mikaela Shiffrin and Hunter Hess are among the athletes who’ve talked about the political situation in the U.S. while at the Milan-Cortina Games.
President Trump called freestyle skier Hess a “loser” on social media after Hess said he had mixed emotions about representing the U.S. at the Olympics.
Multiple U.S. athletes emphasize they represent American values of inclusivity and compassion, not the current political situation in the country.
Feeling any better?
“The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio
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Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s disgusting Truth Social post of a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. Trump left it up for at least 12 hours before someone at the White House finally deleted it. Of course Trump, who is a hateful and repulsive racist, won’t apologize.
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Donald Trump declined to apologize for sharing a social media video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, saying he did not realize the image of the former president and first lady was tacked on to the end of the clip.
The president said Friday thathe had watched and passed along the video — which focused on claims of voter fraud until the final seconds of the clip — to unidentified “people” to post to his Truth Social account, but that he “didn’t see the whole thing,” including the brief portion that showed the heads of the Obamas edited onto the bodies of apes.
In response to a question from The Washington Post about whether he would heed the calls of some Republicans to apologize for posting the video, which was widely condemned as racist and offensive, Trump said he would not.
“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on his way to Palm Beach, Florida, for the weekend. “I look at a lot of — thousands of things. And I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”
Trump referred to the controversial video, which was online for about 12 hours before being deleted, as “a very strong post in terms of voter fraud.” [….]
…[T]he pushback was swift, including from Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), the chamber’s only Black Republican, who also serves as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Scott called the post “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” Several other GOP senators and House members joined Scott in condemning the video, with some calling on Trump to apologize….
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday, Trump dismissed the notion that the post and his handling of it could hurt him with the minority voters he had made gains with during the 2024 election. He touted criminal justice reform legislation passed during his first term, as well as his efforts to ensure funding to historically Black colleges and universities.
We’ll see. I think Trump expects to be able to rig the 2026 election anyway.
Donald Trump supercharged his political career by claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t American. Yesterday, 16 minutes before midnight, the president’s account on Truth Social posted a video that suggests Obama isn’t even human. It briefly shows the head of the first Black president and that of his wife superimposed onto the bodies of apes. They dance along to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
The video, which Trump’s account shared twice, seems to be a screen recording. Its first minute shows a clip promoting the lie that voting-machine tampering handed Joe Biden the presidency in 2020. Then, someone seems to swipe up, and the clip depicting the Obamas as apes flashes into focus. [The post was removed after about 12 hours.]….
In the interim, hundreds if not thousands of people responded to the clip with enthusiasm. Immediately after the video was first posted on Truth Social, the memecoin $APEBAMA was minted. Within 12 hours, more than $4 million worth of $APEBAMA had been traded back and forth. In an X group with the same name that now has hundreds of members, the pinned tweet implies that the meme stock will succeed because of how outrageous the video is: “this is pretty much on par with him calling Obama a nigga.” Some members posted their own depictions of Obama as a monkey or ape. The ape video’s apparent creator, the X user @xerias_x, reposted the full video to their X account early this morning. Besides the Obamas, the video shows a menagerie of Democratic politicians as animals, bowing down to Trump, who appears as a lion. It now has more than 1 million views. (@xerias_x also seems to be the originator of an AI-generated video Trump reposted in October that shows the president raining down what appears to be excrement on protesters from the sky.)
The “joke” that Trump’s account spread is plainly sinister. The idea that Black people sit somewhere between white people and apes has long been used to justify cruelty. In 1377, a historian wrote that Africans “have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals,” meaning they “are, as a whole, submissive to slavery.” Cartoons circulated during the Civil War were printed with images similar to the one Trump posted: One labels a monkey holding a book upside down as a NEGRO-MAN; another depicts a Black man on all fours, accompanied by the words WHAR’S JEFF DAVIS. In 1906, a man born in what was then the Belgian Congo, Ota Benga, was displayed at the Bronx Zoo in a cage with an orangutan. In 1975, white teenagers harassed Black students desegregating a Boston public school with the chant “Two, four, six, eight, assassinate the nigger apes.”
The ape caricature still colors how Black people are received in America. But this morning, the administration played the video off for laughs. “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in response to a comment request before the Truth Social posts were removed. (The Lion King features a monkey named Rafiki, but no apes appear in the film.)
There is absolutely no question that Trump is a vicious racist.
In other news, there are so many fascinating revelations coming out of the latest release from the FBI’s Epstein files. I haven’t had the patience to actually try searching through them myself, but I’ve been following what reporters are finding. Some of the latest examples:
Jeffrey Epstein had a years-long relationship with an FSB-trained Russian official who sought his help connecting with a well-known hacker in 2016.
The late sex trafficker’s corresponJeffrdence with Sergei Belyakov is among the strangest revelations in the millions of case files released by the Justice Department last month.
Belyakov, a former deputy economic minister, helped Epstein secure visas to visit Russia, provided him with a dossier on a Russian woman Epstein had complained was trying to blackmail “a group of powerful businessmen,” and reported to Epstein about his work for the Russian government.
Epstein’s frequent bids to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov feature heavily in the newly released files—his assistant reminds him in one September 2011 email that he’d told his bodyguard he “had an appointment with Putin” coming up—but he appears to have had Belyakov at his beck and call.
In one January 2016 email under the subject, “My new position,” Belyakov told Epstein he’d started working at the Russian Direct Investment Fund–now led by Kirill Dmitriev, one of Vladimir Putin’s most trusted envoys, and a key player in ongoing peace talks with the Trump administration to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Much of their correspondence focused on investment opportunities and potential investors, though it’s unclear to what extent Belyakov involved Epstein in his work beyond the emails documented in the latest files.
The pair met several times in person over the years. In numerous email exchanges from 2014 through 2018, they reference personal meetings they had together, along with sporadic phone calls.
Epstein described Belyakov as a “very good friend” in a 2015 email to billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel as he tried to arrange for the pair to meet. Belyakov also apparently put Epstein in touch with other Russian officials, with emails showing he helped Epstein apply for a Russian visa in 2014 to meet with then-Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak and Alexei Simanovsky, the deputy head of Russia’s Central Bank at the time.
The millions of Jeffrey Epstein files dumped last Friday by the US Department of Justice will provide journalists, conspiracy theorists and interested members of the public with months of reading. And what they will read is enraging.
What makes these files so infuriating, however, is not just Epstein’s horrific predatory behavior, which is well-known, but the more mundane examples of elite conduct that the documents continue to expose. They vividly illustrate a world whose existence many everyday people, whether fevered with visions of the Illuminati or just jaundiced by banal anti-establishment cynicism, already suspected exists: an informal global club of powerful, ultra-rich people who all seemingly know each other, help one another out, and protect each other from the consequences of their depravity.
The new files will probably not provide satisfying answers to questions about, say, whether any of Epstein’s famous friends participated in his sex trafficking, or if his death in custody in 2019 was truly a suicide, as authorities have said. But conspiracy theorists may still feel vindicated – and to some extent they should, Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, said.
Although the documents may not expose an actual criminal conspiracy, he said, they confirm the belief behind most conspiracy theories: that elites “get special treatment, that they’re shielded from the rules that are supposed to apply to everyone equally, and that there is a kind of corruption in the broadest sense of the word”.
The new material is the largest, and possibly last, tranche of the so-called Epstein files, though the government is keeping as many as 3m more pages under wraps. Yet even the initial revelations of these files deepen the astonishing constellation of ties between Epstein and members of the global elite – including tech billionaires; a former US president; British, Norwegian and Saudi royalty or royal courtiers; current and former US cabinet secretaries and governors; and prominent business executives and academics….
[T]he files, especially Epstein’s typo-filled email and text-message correspondences, are fascinating – and ultimately grim – in what they show of how elites act in private, among themselves. At the least, many of Epstein’s powerful acquaintances remained friendly with him years after the notoriously lenient sweetheart bargain, in 2008, in which he pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, and as survivors continued to accuse Epstein of further crimes.
Again, there is lots more enraging material at the link.
LONDON (AP) — A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States.
The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic and social elites — dominating headlines, ending careers and spurring political and criminal investigations.
Former U.K. Ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson was fired and could go to prison. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a leadership crisis over the Mandelson appointment. Senior figures have fallen in Norway, Sweden and Slovakia. And, even before the latest batch of files, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles III, lost his honors, princely title and taxpayer-funded mansion.
Apart from the former Prince Andrew, none of them faces claims of sexual wrongdoing. They have been toppled for maintaining friendly relationships with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender.
“Epstein collected powerful people the way others collect frequent flyer points,” said Mark Stephens, a specialist in international and human rights law at Howard Kennedy in London. “But the receipts are now in public, and some might wish they’d traveled less.”
The documents were published after a public frenzy over Epstein became a crisis for President Donald Trump’s administration and led to a rare bipartisan effort to force the government to open its investigative files. But in the U.S., the long-sought publication has not brought the same public reckoning with Epstein’s associates — at least so far.
Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said that in Britain, “if you’re in those files, it’s immediately a big story.”
“It suggests to me we have a more functional media, we have a more functional accountability structure, that there is still a degree of shame in politics, in terms of people will say: ‘This is just not acceptable, this is just not done,’” he said.
In other words, our media sucks and many of our politicians are shameless. I can’t argue with that.
A couple of Trump cabinet members captured in the files:
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said he had “limited interactions” with Jeffrey Epstein, but documents show they were in business together as recently as 2014.
Epstein and Lutnick’s signatures appear on neighboring pages in the contract, with Epstein signing for his Southern Trust Company, Inc. and Lutnick for a limited liability company called CVAFH I. The documents list nine shareholders in total.
Lutnick, the former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald who at one point lived next door to Epstein, told the New York Post in October that he and his wife Allison had cut ties with Epstein in 2005, deciding after taking a tour of Epstein’s New York townhouse, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”
However, it appears Epstein and Lutnick continued to maintain contact and emails show they arranged calls and planned to have drinks in 2011.
The following year, the couple and their four children planned a visit to Epstein’s island, Little St. James, emails show. Lutnick was invited for lunch on Dec. 24, 2012, and later, Epstein’s assistant wrote on behalf of Epstein, “it was nice seeing you.”
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went hunting for dinosaur bones in the Dakotas with child sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, according to the latest tranche of documents released by the Justice Department.
As the fallout over the Epstein files continues, an email exchange between the two sex predators centers on the now-Trump Cabinet secretary, one of the many prominent people whose friendship the pair cultivated over the years.
The exchange took place in 2012, seven years before Epstein died in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial.
In one email, Epstein writes to Maxwell about a trip involving “dinosaur and fossill hunitng (sic) with jack horner on the ranch, found 90 million year old clams and fossils.”
“Right up your alley,” he adds.
The following day, Maxwell replies: “Love that – didn’t we go fossil hunting with him and Bobby Kennedy in N Dakota?”
“Yes,” Epstein replies.
Maxwell, a former British socialite now serving 20 years for her crimes, also disclosed the fossil hunt during an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last year, apparently catching him off guard when she said of Epstein: “Bobby Kennedy knew him.”
Pluck an email at random from the millions in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. It is a Saturday evening in February 2013, and Jeffrey Epstein is messaging Bill Gates’s assistant about guests for a dinner he wants to organise.’
“People for Bill,” the email begins. Epstein starts listing possible candidates: the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the film director Woody Allen, the prime minister of Qatar, a couple of Harvard academics, the billionaire CEO of Hyatt hotels, a White House communications director, a former US secretary of defence.
He names 10 powerful men, before suggesting “Anne Hathaway (really)”. Epstein has to make it clear, with the bracketed word, that he is not joking when he proposes that a woman might join them at the table. The lists ends tentatively: “victoria secret models?” Epstein wonders: “Who on the list do you think he would enjoy the most?”
The Epstein files reveal a patriarchy in action. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful, and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class, as they network, joke and trade information. Women exist at the periphery, tolerated because they organise the diaries of the busy men, they arrange food, they grace a table, they provide sex.
A typical email from Epstein to a woman might say: “Take a selfie of your pussy and send.”
Spend three days rummaging through the chaotic, sprawling, sordid pit of information contained in the Epstein files, and you learn valuable lessons about how this modern global patriarchy operates: through flattery, the exchange of favours and occasional curt reminders of who owes what to whom.
For women, these files offer an unprecedented chance to eavesdrop on conversations from which they are usually excluded. They provide salutary insights into what a set of distinguished global figures think and say about women when they assume the women aren’t listening.
President Donald Trump last month told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that he would be willing to unfreeze $16 billion in funding for a major infrastructure project in New York if Schumer would agree to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles Airport after him, two sources familiar with the conversation told ABC News.
The Hudson Tunnel Project — which would connect New York City and New Jersey — had already started. The project includes building nine miles of new passenger rail track and rehabilitating the North River Tunnel, according to the commission responsible for it.
Officials in New York and New Jersey said if the money isn’t freed-up by Friday, the project would stop, leaving approximately 1,000 construction jobs in jeopardy.
Sources told ABC that Schumer rejected Trump’s offer.
Trump correctly said: “Believers all over the planet rallied to Mariam’s cause, prayed for her protection, and successfully pressured for her release.”
But then the president appeared to ad-lib – and claimed that he was the one who got Ibrahim freed.
“I did that. I did that. I did that with one phone call, actually,” he said. “And she had such support, it was so easy. And when I explained it to the powers that be: ‘Yes, sir, we will do it right away.’ I just wish I knew earlier. But it’s a big world with a lot of people.”
Ibrahim was released in 2014, during the Obama administration. Trump did not become president until January 2017. He was not even a presidential candidate until June 2015. There has never been the slightest indication that a private citizen in the US, a businessman and celebrity at the time, was the person who convinced Sudanese authorities to let her out of prison.
A former Obama administration official who served on the National Security Council in 2014 told CNN on Friday: “I neither had at the time nor have now any knowledge of Trump’s involvement whatsoever. It’d be very surprising if he were.”
Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor who is a prominent conservative legal scholar, said in a Friday email: “As Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2014, I advocated for Mariam Ibrahim. I do not recall Donald Trump being involved in the case or assisting our Commission’s efforts. Of course, he was not President at the time.
Thousands of active-duty military personnel may have been “pressured” into seeing the Melania documentary at cinemas around the country, a watchdog has warned.
The $75 million Amazon film opened last week to $7 million at the box office—despite universally terrible reviews.
According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, those numbers have been artificially inflated by pressure from MAGA-aligned officers leaning on their troops to buy tickets.
“People are scared,” Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the MRFF, said. Weinstein said he has received letters from members of the U.S. military at eight facilities worldwide, complaining that their superiors encouraged or pressured them to see the film.
He told Business Insider. “They were pressured to see the movie. Your military superior, that’s not your shift manager at Taco Bell or Starbucks. They have complete and total control over you.”
The MRFF, a non-profit founded in 2005 to promote the separation of church and state within the military, has roughly 100,000 members.
“Nobody that I know wanted to go except for those that did not want to get jacked up by our unit commander for not attending,” one of those members told Weinstein in a letter seen by journalist Jonathan Larsen.
That’s it for me today. What stories have you been following?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
But in a controversial decision, Treasury, which oversees the IRS, in April 2025 agreed to provide DHS with the names and addresses of individuals the Trump administration believed to be in the country illegally, pursuant to DHS requests.
Trump’s obsession with losing is at odds with one of our most precious rights. The Right to vote with a secret ballot is on the line here. The Super Bowl is one of those panem et circenses events in our country. It displays some of the worst and best of our cultural quirks. You won’t catch me watching it, but I do eventually come around to going to YouTube to watch the Musical performances. My vote for the best half-time performance is Prince forever. You can follow this link to 
Of course, Trump wasn’t the center of attention here so he had to make a particularly set of nasty comments about Ocasio and the show. This is from 
That Truth Social screed is up there on the worst of the worst list. He just keeps outdoing himself these days. This link 
What’s left of the 
Those of us living the reality of high prices and questionable incomes realize the Trump Economy is in a ditch that feels like we’re careening towards a cliff. However, Trump does not see it that way. This is from 
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