Judge Loose Cannon has done it again. The Epstein Files are getting harder for Orange Caligula’s Cabinet of the Woefully Incompetent and Corrupt to handle. Many people are already feeling the impact of the Supreme Court’s Tariff Decision. Then, there’s more fallout from the Epstein Files. In other words, it’s just another day for Trump Mania to ruin the country, and it’s only Monday.
The most current headline is on Cannon. This is from Politico. “Judge Cannon permanently blocks release of Jack Smith report. The Trump-appointed judge said releasing the classified docs report now would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice.” Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report on the decision.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon permanently barred the Justice Department from releasing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report describing President Donald Trump’s stockpiling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and allegations that he obstructed government efforts to reclaim them.
Cannon lit into Smith for a “brazen stratagem”: compiling the detailed report even after she ruled in July 2024 his appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional and dismissed the case against Trump and two co-defendants. The Justice Department had appealed Cannon’s decision but dropped the case altogether after Trump’s election.
“Special Counsel Smith and his team went ahead for months, undeterred, preparing [the classified documents report] using discovery collected in connection with this proceeding and expending government funds in the process,” Cannon wrote in a 15-page ruling issued Monday. “To say this chronology represents, at a minimum, a concerning breach of the spirit of the Dismissal Order is an understatement, if not an outright violation of it.”
The Trump-appointed judge said releasing the report now would “contravene basic notions of fairness and justice” and amount to a “manifest injustice” because the case never reached a jury. It could also risk revealing information protected by attorney-client privilege and grand jury secrecy, she said.
“While it is true that former special counsels have released final reports at the conclusion of their work,” Cannon wrote, “it appears they have done so either after electing not to bring charges at all or after adjudications of guilt by plea or trial. The Court strains to find a situation in which a former special counsel has released a report after initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.”
Aides to Smith, who is now an attorney in private practice, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Judge Cannon’s courage and judicial resolve on these important due process issues should be recognized and taught in law school classrooms across America,” Trump’s lawyer Kendra Wharton said in response to the ruling.
Cannon has drawn scrutiny for rulings that favor Trump and cut against longstanding practice and precedent. She delayed the classified documents case for months when she installed an independent overseer to review materials seized from Mar-a-Lago — until a federal appeals court overturned her decision.
“Crime is at an all-time low.” John Buss, @repeat1968
The next set of headlines concerns the upcoming State of the Union Speech. We all know that the State of our Union is weaker now than at any point since at least the Civil War. Aaron Parnas, writing at his Substack Parnas Report, has a list of “bombshells” that will definitely impact the week. I’m going to highlight a few of them. The big grifter this week is our Crazy-eyed FBI Chief, who is partying with the US Olympic Hockey Team in Italy. There is also more breaking news on the Epstein files, which is undoubtedly causing some heartburn for FARTUS.
We are kicking off an absolutely packed and consequential week. Major new developments in the Epstein case have emerged, including revelations that he maintained storage units that were never searched by the FBI. At the same time, FBI Director Patel is facing mounting calls to resign after spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on a trip to Italy where he appeared to celebrate with Olympians, even as serious crises unfolded at home. All of this comes as Trump heads into the State of the Union with his approval rating at its lowest point yet.
A quick heads up about tomorrow night. The State of the Union is coming, and here is what you can expect from me. First, I will watch the speech so you do not have to, and bring you a clear, direct breakdown afterward. Second, I will be on the ground covering the People’s State of the Union, the alternative address taking place during Trump’s speech. Third, I will be standing with Epstein survivors to ensure that justice remains front and center, even as some try to move on from the files.
Even with the pending State of the Union Address, the news on the Epstein story is wild.
A new Telegraph report reveals that Jeffrey Epstein secretly rented at least six storage units across the United States between 2003 and 2019, where he stored computers, CDs, photographs, furniture, and other equipment removed from his various properties, including materials from his private island, Little Saint James.
Financial records and internal emails show he paid private investigators tens of thousands of dollars to move and conceal these materials, sometimes ahead of anticipated search warrants. Some computer drives in storage were reportedly “cloned,” though the fate of the copies remains unknown. Emails suggest Epstein may have been tipped off about law enforcement raids in the mid-2000s and instructed associates to remove and possibly wipe digital evidence.
Importantly, search warrant records from the Justice Department’s release of millions of Epstein-related documents indicate authorities may never have searched these storage units, raising the possibility that they could still contain previously undisclosed evidence related to his sex trafficking case.
The Telegraphstory on Andrew is just as wild as you can imagine. You can read more about his horrid behavior at the link. Meanwhile, FARTUS is protecting the fossil fuel industry. He’s definitely valuing it over the country, its natural resources, its wildlife, and its people. This is from the AP. “Trump administration eases limits on coal plants for emitting mercury, other toxins.”
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday weakened limits on mercury and other toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants, the Trump administration’s latest effort to boost the fossil fuel industry by paring back clean air and water rules.
Toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants can harm the brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other problems in adults. The plants are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. The EPA announced the repeal of the tightened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule, or MATS, at a massive coal plant next to the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky.
“EPA’s actions today rights the wrongs of the last administration’s rule and will return the industry to the highly effective original MATS standards that helped pave the way for American energy dominance,” said EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi. The agency said the change should save hundreds of millions of dollars.
The final rule reverts the industry to standards first established in 2012 by the Obama administration that have reduced mercury emissions by nearly 90%. The Biden administration had sought to tighten those standards even further after the first Trump administration had moved to undermine them.
An armed man was shot down by the Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago last week. The profile of the dead man is proving interesting. This is from TMZ. “Mar-A-Lago Armed Gunman. Fixated On Epstein Files Week Before Shooting.”
The armed man shot and killed by Secret Service agents outside President Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago property Sunday had grown increasingly obsessed with the Epstein files and was also a vocal supporter of Trump … TMZ has learned.
Austin Tucker Martin sent a text message, obtained by TMZ, to a co-worker on February 15, 2026, that read, “I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein Files, but evil is real and unmistakable.” He continued, “The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have. Tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing about it. Raise awareness.”
Sources who worked with Austin at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in North Carolina tell TMZ … he became fixated on Epstein following the latest release of information tied to the files. Co-workers tell us he was deeply disturbed by what he believed was a government cover-up and often talked about powerful people “getting away with it.”
At the same time, Austin was outspoken about his Christian faith and political views. We’re told he regularly expressed support for Trump, telling colleagues as recently as late last year he believed Trump was a strong leader.
Polls point to a break with Trump since the Epstein Files were released; however, it’s tough to say if or if not this guy’s opinions are reflective of the overall MAGA cult. One more Epstein story for you today. This is from the BBC. “Lord Mandelson arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.” Chris Mason reports that “From the glamour of DC to a London police station in a matter of months. “ At least the Brits are enraged and active.
A year ago Mandelson was just a few weeks into one of the marquee jobs the British state has to offer – His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States.
He was sent there by the prime minister as the best point man to Donald Trump.
I went to the British Embassy in Washington around then and Mandelson was clearly revelling in being at the centre of things – the splendour, the glamour.
And where is he tonight? In a police station.
Mandelson is a huge figure in the contemporary history of the Labour Party, having worked for former leader Lord Kinnock, served as a cabinet minister under Sir Tony Blair, and been Gordon Brown’s first secretary of state.
And now, as you read this, he could be sitting opposite police officers in a police station interview room, answering questions under arrest as part of a criminal inquiry.
We should repeat that Mandelson has not commented publicly in recent weeks on the Epstein files but I understand his consistent position is he has not acted criminally and was not motivated by financial gain.
One more item of interest on that account from the same source.
The ex-US ambassador had been under investigation over allegations he shared market-sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein while a government minister
Three days ago, New Mexico announced an investigation into Epstein and his ranch there. “New Mexico reopens investigation into alleged illegal activity at Epstein’s former Zorro Ranch. Meanwhile, lawyers for Epstein accusers said they’ve reached a proposed settlement in a class action lawsuit against his estate.” This place sounds as horrific as the island. San Diego’s NBC affiliate reports.
New Mexico’s attorney general has reopened an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein ’s former Zorro Ranch, as allegations swirl about what role the secluded spot played in sexual abuse or sex trafficking of underage girls and young women.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s office said Thursday that the decision was made after reviewing information recently released by the U.S. Justice Department.
Although New Mexico’s initial case was closed in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors in New York, state prosecutors say now that “revelations outlined in the previously sealed FBI files warrant further examination.”
The New Mexico Department of Justice said special agents and prosecutors at the agency will be seeking immediate access to the complete, unredacted federal case file and intend to work with other law enforcement partners as well as a new truth commission established by state lawmakers to look into activities at the ranch.
“As with any potential criminal matter, we will follow the facts wherever they lead, carefully evaluate jurisdictional considerations, and take appropriate investigative action, including the collection and preservation of any relevant evidence that remains available,” the New Mexico Department of Justice said in a statement.
The most terrible thing about this is the disappearance of two very young girls. This is from the U.S. Sun. Katie Davis reports “DEN OF SIN. Inside Epstein’s ‘last refuge’ ranch with ‘buried bodies’ and celeb guests, as full scale of horror is yet to be revealed.” This is a slightly right-leaning source.
Hector Balderas, the state’s ex-attorney general whose 2019 probe into the ranch was halted, told The Sun: “There will be missed opportunities for accountability where victims will have ultimately paid the price.
“Prosecutors are barely learning to understand today how heinous and how much violence and exploitation took place throughout decades.”
Bodies of young women being buried on the grounds, sex abuse and concealing evidence are among the allegations plaguing the shady ranch.
Curiously, two renowned lawyers for victims of the twisted paedophile had no information on the farm when asked by The Sun.
Known to locals as Playboy Ranch, victims have previously told how the ranch has been overlooked throughout the scandal.
Testimonies from several women detail how Epstein was able to abuse teenage girls and young women at the ranch – without any consequence.
Despite Epstein’s properties in Palm Beach and New York being combed by investigators, Zorro Ranch has never been formally searched.
Bombshell claims uncovered in the latest drop of Epstein files from the US government have thrust the huge 7,500-acre estate firmly into the spotlight.
I think that’s enough to horrify us today!
What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Yesterday was quite a day. The Supreme Court actually decided against Trump’s insane tariffs instead of bowing down once again to the man who thinks he’s a king. Predictably, Trump threw a gigantic tantrum and then decided to more or less ignore the SCOTUS decision.
At a hastily called press conference, an agitated Trump railed against the conservative [John] Roberts and two of the courts other conservatives, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump appointees.
“They’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” Trump said, using the apparently derisive acronym for “Republicans in name only.”
And that was hardly all. Trump called the three conservatives “disloyal, unpatriotic,” and at one point he launched into a rant about how the court should have invalidated the election results in 2020, which Trump lost to Joe Biden….
Writing for a hefty 6-to-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that the nation’s founders deliberately and explicitly placed the power to impose taxes, including tariffs, with Congress, not with the president.
As the Chief Justice put it, “Having just fought a revolution motivated in large part by taxes imposed on them” by the King of England without their consent, the Framers wrote a Constitution that gives Congress the taxing power because the members of the legislature would be more accountable to the people.
Nonetheless Trump asserted at his press conference that he will go ahead with his tariffs, using alternative statutes that allow him to act without the consent of Congress.
A bit more:
There are, in fact, several statutes that allow him to impose some tariffs on his own, but they are limited. For example, one of the key statutes he cited Friday does allow him to impose certain tariffs on his own, but only for six months, and after that he must get approval from Congress. The other statutes he cited have other provisions that make it far more difficult to act unilaterally.
The other problem that Trump faces is that the billions of dollars already collected in tariffs were supposed to offset the tax cuts that the Republican-dominated Congress adopted last year at Trump’s behest. Now, however, the money isn’t there.
The federal government has been collecting about $30 billion a month in tariffs, about half of which will be eliminated by Friday’s court ruling. So it’s a big deal for U.S. businesses that have been paying the lion’s share of these tariffs. That said, tariffs are still a fairly small slice of overall government revenues; about 5%. So if half that tariff money goes away, that will mean a larger, but not crippling federal deficit.
In contrast to the stock market’s plunge when the tariffs were first put in place, the market reaction on Friday was fairly stable. That could be because investors believe the White House will try to make good on that threat to replace the outlawed tariffs with other taxes, using different statutes where the president’s claims his authority is more clear. Even those statutes, however, have more strings attached. None give Trump the power he claimed to have to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from any country for any reason….
Unresolved by the Supreme Court’s decision was the question of whether U.S. businesses that paid the tariffs for the last year can get their money back. Chief Justice Roberts did not address how refunds might work, so a lower court will have to figure that out.
Donald Trump on Friday attacked the Supreme Court majority that ruled against him in a landmark decision on tariffs with a venom and ferocity he has never directed against America’s foreign enemies. He suggested they were disloyal to the country, under the sway of other nations. The entire performance was unhinged, an old man’s tantrum about an affront to his manhood. He called the three Republican appointed justices who voted against him “fools and lapdogs.” [….]
The president seemed to miss the entire point of the Supreme Court ruling—that the power to levy tariffs lay with the Congress—as well as the nuance in the majority opinion, such as a footnote by Chief Justice John Roberts that suggested while there were may be other ways by which he could seek to put tariffs in place, those “contain various combinations of procedural prerequisites, required agency determinations and limits on the duration, amount and scope of the tariffs they authorize.”
By Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura
In other words, he could not behave like a king. He could no longer go around the world threatening other leaders whenever it suited him. He could no longer ignore the law, existing U.S. treaties, or the role Congress is assigned by the Constitution. He said he could—he said he didn’t need Congress to impose the new types of tariffs he mentioned during his press conference. But that was either denial or ignorance or a special Trumpian combination of both.
Because it will be very difficult for Trump to recreate the tariffs of the past year. Should he attempt to put some in place, and should he get the Congress and government agencies to work with him on this, the process is going to be more complex, require periodic renewals, and be far more limited in scope.
But watching Trump, it was clear that the thrust of his remarks had nothing to do with the letter of the law. With him, it seldom does. His feelings were hurt. Someone told him “no.” And he was going to lash out until he felt better.
The outburst was notable, then, because it revealed just how battered, exhausted, and at wits’ end the president is after weeks and weeks of similar experiences, of serial defeats and embarrassments, and of the prospect of many more such humiliations in the months ahead in a world that is finally learning how to say “no” to him.
With pressure building on him because of a soft economy, public anger at his immigration policies, fears of spiking healthcare costs for millions of Americans, the Epstein scandal and a looming massive defeat in the November midterms, Trump has returned regularly to the authoritarian playbook in the hopes that it would make him feel more powerful, less enfeebled by age, more like the kind of leader the slavering courtiers in his daily retinue say he is.
Go read more and enjoy the schadenfreude.
Naturally, reacted immediately with a new round of tariffs. He could have decided to work with Congress on rational trade policy, but he’d rather be a king.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing a new “temporary” 10 percent global tariff following the Supreme Court’s decision Friday striking down many of the global tariffs he raised last year.
“It is my Great Honor to have just signed, from the Oval Office, a Global 10% Tariff on all Countries, which will be effective almost immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump is invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent to address a “large and serious balance-of-payments deficit,” according to a White House fact sheet. Tariffs imposed under the authority may remain in effect for no more than 150 days unless Congress passes legislation extending them….
The announcement seeks to keep many of his tariff policies intact even after the court’s ruling.
Tama the Cat, Woodblock Print by Hiroaki Takahashi, 1926
“Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232, and existing Section 301 tariffs — they’re existing, they’re there — remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect,” Trump told reporters at a White House press conference Friday afternoon. “Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10 percent global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged. And we’re also initiating several Section 301, and other investigations, to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.”
The duties are set to take effect Feb. 24 at 12:01 a.m.
The White House fact sheet lists exemptions that are similar to the ones included with the tariffs that were invalidated Friday, carving out specific products within sectors such as energy, pharmaceuticals, autos, and aerospace, and shielding goods from North American neighbors compliant with U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump signed in his first term.
Yet, it won’t allow the president the kind of flexibility he has wielded under the emergency powers law. By statute, the tariff must be “nondiscriminatory,” meaning the U.S. can’t give breaks to certain trading partners and not others.
Today, Trump decided to increase the newly announced tariffs to 15 percent.
President Trump announced Saturday that he would raise his new, global tariff to 15 percent, a day after he took steps to replicate some of the punishing duties that had been struck down by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Trump announced the change in a post on social media, and said the tariff would take effect immediately, as he signaled anew that he would press ahead with his trade war despite the stunning legal setback.
On Friday night, Mr. Trump had set that tariff at 10 percent, using a provision in a law that allows him to impose an across-the-board tariff for 150 days unless Congress agrees to extend it.
“I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been “ripping” the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “During the next short number of months, the Trump Administration will determine and issue the new and legally permissible Tariffs, which will continue our extraordinarily successful process of Making America Great Again — GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”
This man is looney tunes and he controls our nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. military said that it struck an alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific on Friday, killing three people.
U.S. Southern Command said the strike in the eastern Pacific was against a boat that was traveling along a drug trafficking route.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the military said.
U.S. Southern Command said earlier this week that the military hit three boats on Monday, killing 11 people, in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Since September, the military has conducted strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that it alleges are involved in drug trafficking, which has been criticized by some members of Congress as legally questionable.
Before the strike Friday, there had been at least 41 boat strikes that have killed at least 134 people, according to statements from the Department of Defense tracked by NBC News.
We still have seen no evidence that these murdered people were actually transporting drugs to the U.S. and even there was such evidence, the U.S. government would have no right to kill them.
New satellite imagery and flight tracking data show a base in central Jordan has become a key hub for the U.S. military’s planning for possible strikes on Iran.
Imagery captured on Friday shows more than 60 attack aircraft parked at the base, known as Muwaffaq Salti, roughly tripling the number of jets that are normally there. And at least 68 cargo planes have landed at the base since Sunday, according to flight tracking data. More fighter jets could be parked under shelters.
The satellite images also show more modern aircraft, including F-35 stealth jets, compared to the aircraft normally seen there. Several drones and helicopters are also seen.
Soldiers also installed new air defenses to protect the base from incoming Iranian missiles.
Jordanian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the American planes and equipment are deployed there as part of a defense agreement with the United States.
The changes at the base in Jordan are part of a large U.S. military buildup across the region, which comes amid negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. On Friday, President Trump told reporters he was considering a limited military strike to pressure Iran into a deal.
One benefit for Trump of the tariff decision has been the Epstein story has temporarily faded in U.S. news, so here are some Epstein files updates:
The Department of Justice’s release of millions of Jeffrey Epstein files has not only prompted questions about his crimes – but renewed attention on authorities’ failure to stop him after an accuser reported him in 1996.
By Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura
This new cache of Epstein files has provided more insight into authorities’ familiarity with allegations against him in the years that followed, including time between his sweetheart plea deal in 2008 and federal arrest nearly six years ago.
While it’s known that accuser Virginia Giuffre’s attorneys met with federal prosecutors in 2016 about Epstein to no avail, recently disclosed files indicate that detailed information was provided to federal authorities years before that sit-down. This included allegations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor; documents indicate that he appeared on the FBI’s radar about 15 years ago.
A woman, whose name is redacted from these documents, gave an interview to FBI agents about Epstein and Maxwell in 2011, with a federal prosecutor in attendance by phone; her account echoes Giuffre’s public and legal allegations against the sex traffickers.
The US embassy in Australia told the country’s national police: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation Miami Field Office (FBI Miami) is assisting the Palm Beach Police Department in Florida with an ongoing investigation into JEFFREY EPSTEIN, a US citizen.”
The accuser, who was told in late 2008 about Epstein’s plea deal as she was found to be one of his victims, contacted federal authorities in south Florida three years later. Federal agents questioned her at the US consulate in Sydney on 17 March 2011.
This woman provided an extensive account of Epstein’s abuse and alleged participation of co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as other men as a teenage girl during the late 1990s. The woman, who described suffering at the hands of several predatory men after leaving a rehab facility, told agents that her father, a maintenance man at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, secured a job for her as a locker room attendant there.
That woman was Virginia Giuffre. There are other examples of FBI reports in the article. Why didn’t the government act?
New Mexico will reopen its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro ranch in the state after a public pressure campaign for a fuller accounting of the role the location played in the late financier’s sex-trafficking conspiracy.
The New Mexico department of justice’s announcement came less than two weeks after the Guardian reported that federal agents did not appear to have ever searched Zorro Ranch.
The Guardian’s reporting also revealed that there appeared to be no active criminal investigations into Zorro Ranch at that time.
New Mexico’s department of justice said at the time that it was working with lawmakers on launching something it styled as a truth commission. That commission was given the green light several days ago.
“Upon reviewing information recently released by the US Department of Justice, attorney general Raúl Torrez has ordered that the criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch be reopened,” the New Mexico department of justice posted online on Thursday.
“Upon reviewing information recently released by the US Department of Justice, attorney general Raúl Torrez has ordered that the criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch be reopened,” the New Mexico department of justice posted online on Thursday.
As the world follows the drip-drip of sensational revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, here’s a number to ponder: Last year the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 113,000 reports of child sex trafficking.
Yiota Souras, the center’s chief legal officer, says that while no one knows the actual number of children trafficked annually in the United States alone, “the real number is absolutely higher” than that. Most of the victims reported to her organization are 15, 16 or 17, she said, but some are as young as 11 or 12.
By Toshiwo Katsuma
“This is happening in every community, in every city and state,” she added.
I’ve been speaking in the past few days with survivors of sex trafficking and those who work with them, and they’re thrilled that the Epstein files are bringing more attention to trafficking. But they’re also frustrated that the focus has been tightly on Epstein and his circle — and not on the victims or on the way we as a society enable the abuse.
We rightly condemn powerful associates of Epstein’s for their indifference to young girls being sexually assaulted. But collectively we show the same indifference, in a way that I fear leaves us complicit.
“If you told me 20 years ago that the word ‘trafficking’ and the concept of it would be on the nightly news every single night and be the national obsession, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Rachel Lloyd, who was trafficked as a teenager and once was nearly strangled to death by her pimp, told me. “But it’s bizarre to me that we’re having a national conversation about trafficking and yet it hasn’t made any difference.”
Lloyd, who now runs GEMS, an outstanding program for trafficked young women and girls, said of the increased attention: “It’s not elevating the lives of my young women. It’s not shining a light on their vulnerabilities and the things that they go through or the gaps in the systems. It’s not doing any of that.”
It’s terrific to see the scrutiny of Epstein’s world, and I hope that there’ll be investigations of allegations made against President Trump and many others, even as we acknowledge that, for now, they are lacking in evidence. If Britain can arrest the former Prince Andrew and Norway can charge a former prime minister, how is it that the United States has barely taken action?
Lloyd says she is not surprised that Epstein’s friends appear to have gotten away with raping children: In her experience and that of the girls she has worked with, she said, predators almost always get away with their abuse.
I’ll end this post on that powerful note.
Those are recommended reads for today. What else is on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
“The Attorney General of the United States showed her true colors.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Just when you think the Circus of Incompetence and Evil has wound down, another one of the players finds a way to the stage to make a hash of reality. The Epstein files and the illegal ICE raids have pretty much taken center stage, but other atrocities are happening within the Trump Regime. I’m going to focus on the Testimony given by Pam Bondi and the entire Epstein mess that has alerted us to exactly how many people with money and power have ruined the lives and the innocence of children.
I must issue trigger warnings here because none of this is easy to see or read.
I will start with this analysis by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. “Pam Bondi Is Not Practicing Law. The attorney general’s testimony before Congress revealed what a farce this is.”
The release of the Epstein files—the slow-drip revelations of a web of privileged (mostly) men trading gifts, access, favors, and sickening child predation as casually as Pokémon cards—has been deliberately parsed out through 2026 as to both be buried itself and bury other horrific news coming out of the Trump administration. But this misses a critical point: The Epstein file dump is not simply playing out as a backdrop against which other acts of American lawlessness are occurring. The Epstein story is also the template and the proof text for all that is happening in Minnesota; at dangerous detention centers; in efforts to punish members of Congress for lawful speech; for crypto scams; and for measles outbreaks. It is an ongoing road map for an administration that lives out the reality that they are rich and powerful and famous enough to be above the law each day, and wishes for the rest of us to ultimately learn and accept that fact.
And it is equally true that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick could bring his children and their nannies to a bespoke lunch on Epstein’s island in 2012, long after he allegedly broke off contact with the sex predator, precisely because Lutnick’s children and their nannies were not the types of children or women who would be abandoned there to be raped and threatened. He is also a walking infomercial about whom the law protects and whom it leaves broken and invisible, behind. Lutnick’s testimony this past week, like Bondi’s, is thus operating as a still life in what happens when the law becomes inert. On the one hand, it is not relevant as a restraint to those who need not rely on it; on the other, it is not protective for those who do.
Liz Plank, on her Substack, describes the nausea and disorientation felt by women realizing this past week that we had all been gaslit yet again. Those of us who cannot even begin to imagine a permission structure that allowed and encouraged passing young girls around, trading insults and articles about them (“your littlest girl was a little naughty”), and bonding over the hysteria of #MeToo can barely comprehend why it was that this class of men always took the gift and the freebie and the shitty watch and the plane trip, because access to yet more of the same somehow became the coin of the realm. What Plank describes as “trust bias”—the psychological tendency to assume that others are operating within the same moral and ethical universe as yourself—means that we are all, once again, annihilated by the fact that America’s shared moral universe is a collective fiction, one that constrains one class of people and merely titillates another.
We err when we call what is being done by ICE officials to citizens and noncitizens on the streets of American cities “law,” just as we err when we call what has thus far been afforded the Epstein survivors “justice.” Indeed, the word law is too generous to contain the plea deals and the willing ignorance and the prison transfers that were granted to Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators at every turn. And the word injustice is far too small to describe the spectacle of hundreds of survivors who have still not been given a reckoning or a measure of genuine accountability, whose unredacted names appeared in public documents and who had never been contacted by the Department of Justice.
Pam Bondi may be in charge of many officials and many investigations and many legal things at the DOJ, but what she is protecting is neither justice nor law. And that means that what Plank describes as a trust bias is also an exquisitely American “law bias,” and we should dispense with the notion that we are all in some group compact to protect and preserve the same things. The law is neither protecting the vulnerable nor constraining the Epstein class. And perhaps we should stop referencing that word to mean either project, much less deploying it to describe both.
One of Maria Farmer’s works of art was released from the Epstein Files.
Continue to read this excellent piece at the link. Meanwhile, a friend of mine sent this link to a site with a Link to the Justice Department. The link provides a window into the artwork from Jeffrey Epstein survivor Maria Farmer, found in the Epstein files. CNN reported on Farmer during the first wave of releases. This is from December 19,2025. “Epstein files vindicate a survivor who reported him in the 1990s, but others are still seeking answers.” Everyone is still seeking answers, and all we get are performances like Bondi’s and distractions.
The Justice Department’s partial release of its files related to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday marked a moment of triumph for Epstein survivor Maria Farmer and her sister Annie, who have said for years that Maria had filed one of the first complaints against Epstein in the 1990s.
An FBI document released Friday included a 1996 description of a criminal complaint against Epstein related to child pornography.
While the name of the complainant is redacted in the document, Maria Farmer’s lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, confirmed on CNN that the complaint was in fact made by her client.
The “facts of complaint” part of the document says that the woman — who describes herself as a professional artist — had taken photos of her underage sisters for her own personal artwork.
“Epstein stole the photos and negatives and is believed to have sold the pictures to potential buyers,” the document reads. “Epstein at one time requested (redacted) to take pictures of young girls at swimming pools.” It continued: “Epstein is now threatening (redacted) that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down.”
Examining these photos is difficult. It is, however, one way we can give voice to these survivors. These paintings have returned to the conversation about who exactly should be brought to justice for this massive child sex trafficking travesty.
Maria’s painting shows many familiar faces. Take a look.
It appears that DHS will shut down this weekend. This is from the AP. “What to know about the Homeland Security shutdown starting this weekend.”
Another shutdown for parts of the federal government is expected this weekend as lawmakers debate new restrictions on President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security is set to expire Saturday. Democrats say they won’t help approve more funding until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis last month.
The White House has been negotiating with the Democrats, but the two sides failed to reach a deal by the end of the week, guaranteeing that funding for the department will lapse.
Unlike the record 43-day shutdown last fall, the closures will be narrowly confined, as only agencies under the DHS umbrella — like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — will be affected. Still, depending on how long the shutdown lasts, some federal workers could begin to miss paychecks.
Services like airport screening could also suffer if the shutdown drags on for weeks.
At the Transportation Security Administration, about 95% of employees are deemed essential. They will continue to scan passengers and their bags at the nation’s commercial airports. But they will work without pay until the funding lapse is resolved, raising the possibility that workers will being calling out or taking unscheduled leave. Many TSA workers already faced financial stress last year.
“Some are just now recovering from the financial impact of the 43-day shutdown” said Ha Nguyen McNeill, a senior official performing the duties of TSA administrator. “Many are still reeling from it.”
This is breaking news from theWashington Post. “Much of DHS set to shut down as Democrats demand new restraints on ICE. Democrats are pushing for new policies requiring agents to wear body cameras and get judicial warrants for raids.”
The Department of Homeland Security is expected to shut down early Saturday as congressional Democrats and the White House remain at an impasse over new restrictions on federal immigration agents.
The shutdown beginning at 12:01 a.m. Saturday would impact about 13 percent of the federal civilian workforce, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard.
But Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the main targets of Democrats’ outrage — would be able to continue immigration enforcement efforts due to an influx of funding from the Republican tax and spending law passed this past summer.
Despite the stalemate, both chambers of Congress have already left Washington and do not plan to return until Feb. 23 after a scheduled week-long recess that includes, for some senators, a trip to the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
State governments are fighting to keep the Election Clause of the U.S. Constitution real. This is from Democracy Docket‘s Matt Cohen.
The Democratic chief election officials of six states are denouncing two new voter suppression bills making their way through Congress — underscoring how the legislation would place a huge burden on voters and election administrators just as midterm election season kicks off.
“These bills would place a massive burden on American eligible voters, require unfeasible overhauls of state systems while preparations for the 2026 midterm elections are well underway, and create unfunded mandates for already under-resourced states and municipalities,” the secretaries wrote. “American voters will be the ones paying for this — by paying more in taxes, spending more time jumping through bureaucratic hoops, or losing access to the ballot box altogether.”
The House passed the SAVE America Act late Wednesday evening in a 218-213 vote, with every present Republican — along with one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas — voting in favor of the sweeping voter suppression bill. The bill — along with the MEGA Act, which was introduced earlier this week — stands to disenfranchise millions by imposing strict requirements for voters to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote, and to provide photo ID when casting ballots.
While the secretaries highlight that both bills “would make it harder for eligible voters to both register and cast their ballots,” they also call attention to the reality that GOP lawmakers have yet to address: Making such extensive changes to the voting process so close to an election would create chaos for election administrators.
Some states, like North Carolina, have already started with early voting, and any attempt to overhaul requirements for voters to register and cast ballots would be extremely costly to both states and voters, according to the secretaries.
“A series of sweeping overhauls to the nation’s voter registration and election administration laws, when some states are weeks or months away from conducting their primary elections, is not a serious effort at improving the democratic process,” the letter said. “Election administrators already face significant challenges in educating voters on registration requirements, especially considering the significant mis- and dis-information on the issue coming out of Washington, D.C.”
Democracy backsliding is real. One more surreal headline from about the HHS Secretary who admits to snorting coke from bathroom toilets. This is from The Hill’s Joseph Choi. “HHS shaking up top personnel to push Trump, MAHA priorities ahead of midterms.”
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday announced a reshuffling of top staffers in his department as the Trump administration looks to shore up health wins that can boost GOP success in the upcoming midterms.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Deputy Administrator Chris Klomp will be chief counselor at the HHS.
John Brooks, CMS deputy administrator and the chief policy and regulatory officer, will now be CMS senior counselor. Kyle Diamantas, deputy commissioner for human foods at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Grace Graham, FDA deputy commissioner for policy, legislation, and international affairs, have been named as senior counselors for the FDA.
As CNN reported, current HHS chief of staff Matt Buckham will also move to a senior counselor role. Administration officials who spoke with the outlet said the changes came as a result of conversation between the HHS and the White House.
“In just over a year, we have driven historic progress on President Trump’s health care priorities and delivered real, measurable change,” Kennedy said in a statement.
“We are restoring accountability, challenging entrenched interests, and putting the health of the American people first. I am proud to elevate battle-tested, principled leaders onto my immediate team—individuals with the courage and experience to help us move faster and go further as we work to Make America Healthy Again.”
Kennedy’s support for President Trump helped deliver a bloc of voters long critical and suspicious of the medical establishment. But many observers have noted this support is tenuous.
As Jeff Hutt, a spokesperson for the MAHA PAC, recently told The Hill “Make America Health Again” voters aren’t necessarily those who show up strongly for the GOP during midterms.
Can you believe anyone still believes this guy?
Anyway, with that , I have to get ready to go get a mammogram. Have a great weekend! It’s total Mardi Gras Crazy down here! It’s also Friday the 13th.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
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?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Before I get going with the latest news, I want to share this hilarious review of “Melania,” the “documentary” financed by Jeff Bezos as a bribe to Donald Trump. The reviewer was the only person in theater when he saw the film.
When Brett Ratner’s contentious, Amazon-backed documentary previewed at the White House last weekend, the guestlist included Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan and the president himself. Today it’s just me in the room and Melania on the screen. It makes for a more intimate and exclusive affair.
This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film’s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us – with agonising glacial slowness – through the preparations for her husband’s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.
No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.
And so it goes on. Melania moves through the action like a listless automaton, talking constantly but saying nothing, squired from Mar-a-Lago to Trump Tower to her final destination, the White House. What drama there is chiefly hinges on her concern that her white blouse is too loose at the neck and needs to be cut and then tightened, much to the consternation of the fitters. Melania misses her mother, she says, but she loves Michael Jackson and Barron and possibly her husband as well, although Trump himself is mostly a background presence here, shuffling in at intervals to brag about his election win and complain that his inauguration clashes with the televised college football playoffs. “They probably did it on purpose,” he says.
It’s dispiriting, it’s deadly and it’s spectacularly unrevealing. Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government.
“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.”
Julie Manet with cat, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
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.
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.
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.
Poor Melania. At least she got her $40 million payoff from Bezos. I think the film could have been interesting if Melania had talked about her life in Slovenia, why she chose to come to the U.S., how she got the genius visa, how she really met Donald Trump, and her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and Gislaine Maxwell. After all, she’s not a real first lady. She doesn’t live in the White House and Trump reportedly has to pay her for any appearances she makes with him.
The big headline news today is all about Jeffrey Epstein. It’s almost as if the Trump administration decided to release some shocking Epstein files in order to distract from the violence perpetrated by their secret police AKA ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Here are a few of the top revelations in the files.
Messages from billionaire Elon Musk asked Epstein when his wildest party would be and discussed visiting his notorious island. It is unclear whether Musk, who is not accused of wrongdoing, ever visited.
And inn other emails, Epstein made allegations Bill Gates had engaged in extra marital affairs. A spokesperson for Gates vehemently denied the “absurd” allegation.
In one email, Andrew said that he was travelling to London, where Epstein was staying. He told Epstein: “We could have dinner at Buckingham Palace and lots of privacy”.
The Cat at Play, by Henriëtte Ronner-Knip
Epstein responded: “Already in london [sic]. what time woudl [sic] you like me and we will also need/ have private time.”
It is not clear whether a meeting at the palace took place….
The latest release also included pictures that appeared to feature Andrew poised on all fours over a woman on the floor. It is unclear where and when the photos were taken, and the woman’s identity is masked….
The newly published files included hundreds of documents that mention Trump, many of which were collections of media reports.
One file details what appeared to be internal emails by federal investigators looking into salacious accusations involving the president and Epstein. The emails, from August 2025, give no indication that any claims had been substantiated. Investigators said several of the accusers were deemed not credible.
Another message, whose sender and recipient were both redacted, reads, “What does JE think of going to Mar-a-Lago after xmas instead of his island?” referring to Trump’s Florida club. The message is from 2012, years after Trump said the two men had stopped socialising.
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.
Here’s the one people are talking about:
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.
Apparently, this visit was also cancelled. Read more at the link.
You may recall that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed he cut all ties with Epstein after he saw the massage room in Epstein’s New York City mansion. It turns out that Lutnick lied.
Howard Lutnick, the billionaire businessman who serves as President Trump’s commerce secretary, once planned a trip to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, according to documents that the Justice Department released on Friday.
The planned visit in 2012 came years after Mr. Lutnick has said he severed ties with Mr. Epstein.
Mary Sara holding a cat, by Mary Cassatt
In December 2012, the records show, Mr. Lutnick sent an email to Mr. Epstein saying that he had a group of people — including his wife and children and another family — who were visiting the Caribbean. He asked where Mr. Epstein was located and whether they could visit for a meal.
Mr. Epstein replied through an assistant to give more information about the location of Little St. James, his private island off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. They eventually settled on plans for a lunch gathering.
Prominent people who were close to Mr. Epstein have been scrutinized in recent years for their visits to Little St. James, but Mr. Lutnick’s planned visit had not been previously disclosed. Reached by phone on Friday, Mr. Lutnick said he could not comment about the island visit because he had not seen the latest Epstein documents.
“I spent zero time with him,” Mr. Lutnick said. He then hung up.
The documents suggest the visit did occur. The gathering was set for Dec. 23, 2012. A day later, an assistant to Mr. Epstein forwarded Mr. Lutnick a message from Mr. Epstein: “Nice seeing you,” it said.
In a podcast interview last year, Mr. Lutnick claimed that around 2005, he and his wife had been so revolted by Mr. Epstein that they decided not to associate with him again.
An allegation of rape against President Donald Trump involving a 13-year-old girl is part of an explosive new tranche of documents released by his own Justice Department into the crimes of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The bombshell claim, which the White House says was “unfounded and false,” was made in an FBI file dated from August last year linked to an investigation into the Alexander brothers, three wealthy Florida siblings who are currently on trial, accused of sex trafficking.
It contained a spreadsheet of uncorroborated tips made to the FBI with references to Trump, as well as brief details of the bureau’s often limited follow up.
One allegation, for example, notes that: “(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.” [….]
In a column labelled “response” – outlining the action taken by authorities – it said: “Spoke with caller who identified (redacted) as a friend. Lead was sent to Washington Office to conduct interview.”
In another shocking allegation, an “online complainant reported she was a victim and witness to a sex trafficking ring at the Trump Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA between 1995- 1996” for which Ghislaine Maxwell was the resident “madam and broker for sex parties.”
A draft indictment against Jeffrey Epstein prepared by federal prosecutors in 2007 listed a series of sex crimes he was accused of committing against more than a dozen teenage girls over six years, saying he told one 16-year-old victim that bad things could happen to her if she reported what had transpired at his house.
The draft, which was never filed but was released Friday by the Justice Department, had been one of the most sought-after documents in the Epstein files, because it showed how much federal investigators knew about the extent of his crimes.
The Bridge, by Carl Olof Larsson
The 32-count, 56-page indictment laid out extensive charges against Mr. Epstein and two of his employees for sex trafficking and enticement of minors. But it was shelved in 2008 when federal prosecutors agreed to let Mr. Epstein cut a deal with state prosecutors for solicitation of a minor for prostitution.
Instead of facing the prospect of decades in prison, Mr. Epstein instead spent about 13 months in a local jail in Palm Beach, Fla., which he was allowed to leave during the day so he could work out of his home office.
The draft indictment detailed the many crimes that authorities decided not to prosecute in order to strike a lenient plea deal with Mr. Epstein in state court. It described a “conspiracy to procure females under the age of 18” to go to Mr. Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, so he could “engage in lewd conduct with those minor females” and satisfy his “prurient interests” in exchange for money.
The draft indictment detailed the many crimes that authorities decided not to prosecute in order to strike a lenient plea deal with Mr. Epstein in state court. It described a “conspiracy to procure females under the age of 18” to go to Mr. Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, so he could “engage in lewd conduct with those minor females” and satisfy his “prurient interests” in exchange for money.
Some of those victims were asked by Mr. Epstein and his employees “to recruit other minor females to engage in lewd conduct,” the draft indictment said.
Eleven of the victims attended the same school — presumably high school — in Palm Beach County, the draft indictment said.
The document laid out a pattern of interactions Mr. Epstein had with teenagers as far back as 2001. He would call a girl and arrange for her to come to his house, then lead her upstairs to the bedroom. He often had two girls with him at the same time. Afterward, he would pay them several hundred dollars.
One girl was first victimized in 2001 when she was 14, then again when she was 15 and 16. That victim, identified only as Jane Doe #2, was also asked to bring younger girls to Mr. Epstein, according to the draft indictment.
Most of the U.S. government shut down as the clock ticked over to Saturday, Jan. 31, but the funding lapse is expected to be brief.
The Senate passed legislation Friday evening that would fund the government, but the House is not in Washington, leading to the partial government shutdown this weekend.
Cat With Her Kitten, by Julius Adam II,
The bill was the product of a deal between President Donald Trump and Senate Democratic leaders. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told members on a Friday call that he plans to hold a vote on it Monday, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
The funding lapse is not expected to have a significant practical impact, given that most federal employees don’t work during the weekend and Trump has vowed to quickly sign the package into law. But any unforeseen delay in the House could drag out the partial shutdown deeper into next week.
Among the agencies that will be temporarily shut down: the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement and has faced heavy criticism after two high-profile killings of American citizens in Minneapolis by immigration agents.
Others include the departments of Defense, State, Treasury, Transportation, Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development….
Once passed through the House and signed into law, the Senate-passed bill will fund the government through the end of September, except for DHS. That department is funded for just two weeks, a demand by Democrats as they insist on changes to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
The bipartisan deal came together after Democrats turned against a previously negotiated DHS measure following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by DHS agents, which caused an intense public outcry.
In a partial win for Democrats, Trump and GOP leaders acquiesced to their request to punt on DHS funding for two weeks. But it remains to be seen what policy changes they will agree to for ICE and CBP, as Democrats demand reforms.
Democrats plan to use the two weeks to negotiate changes such as ending “roving patrols,” tightening requirements for warrants to make arrests, imposing a code of conduct for immigration agents and forcing them to wear identification and body cameras.
Nothing happening with the health care crisis, I guess.
The White House stands about 70 feet tall. The Lincoln Memorial, roughly 100 feet. The triumphal arch President Donald Trump wants to build would eclipse both if he gets his wish.
Trump has grown attached to the idea of a 250-foot-tall structure overlooking the Potomac River, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments, a scale that has alarmed some architectural experts who initially supported the idea of an arch but expected a far smaller one.
The planned Independence Arch is intended to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary. Built to Trump’s specifications, it would transform a small plot of land between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery into a dominant new monument, reshaping the relationship between the two memorials and obstructing pedestrians’ views.
Trump has considered smaller versions of the arch, including 165-foot-high and 123-foot-high designs he shared at a dinner last year. But he has favored the largest option, arguing that its sheer size would impress visitors to Washington, and that ‘250 for 250’ makes the most sense, the people said.
Architectural experts counter that the size of the monument — installed in the center of a traffic circle — would distort the intent of the surrounding memorials….
Asked if Trump prefers a 250-foot arch, the White House on Saturday referred to the president’s previous comments.
“The one that people know mostly is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. And we’re gonna top it by, I think, a lot,” Trump said at a White House Christmas reception in December.
The Arc de Triomphe — already one of the world’s largest triumphal arches — measures 164 feet.
He is truly insane.
I’m going to end there. I didn’t even get to ICE/immigration news, but I’ll add a few links in the comment thread. Have a great weekend, everyone!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
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.
Even with the pending State of the Union Address, the news on the Epstein story is wild.
The Telegraph 
An armed man was shot down by the Secret Service at Mar-a-Lago last week. The profile of the dead man is proving interesting. This is from TMZ. “
Polls point to a break with Trump since the Epstein Files were released; however, it’s tough to say if or if not this guy’s opinions are reflective of the overall MAGA cult. One more Epstein story for you today. This is from the BBC. “Lord Mandelson arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.” 
The most terrible thing about this is the disappearance of two very young girls. 
Another shutdown for 
This is breaking news from the
State governments are fighting to keep the Election Clause of the U.S. Constitution real. This is from 
Democracy backsliding is real. One more surreal headline from about the HHS Secretary who admits to snorting 
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments