Cindy Adkins she/her 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇺🇦

AOC: If people like Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi violate the law, there are supposed to be consequences. These are people who call themselves law enforcement officers. The message they’re sending is that they can cover up for pedophiles and street executions. That cannot be acceptable.

Lou Correa raises a report of a bunch of Orange County cases where ICE did not show up to pick up actual criminals.

Then he asks Noem if she snatches US citizens. Literally MINUTES after Jayapal raised the four people who were detained, she says she does not.

Correa now listing more examples.

ICE must be shut-down.

Jayapal to Noem: "I want to introduce you to just four of the US citizens unlawfully detained by ICE ... they're in this room with us."

Hey ChatGPT, write me a fictional paper: these LLMs are willing to commit academic fraud Mainstream chatbots presented varying levels of resistance to deliberate requests for fabrication, study finds.

'All major large language models (LLMs) can be used to either commit academic fraud or facilitate junk science, a test of 13 models has found.'

All versions of Claude are 'the most resistant to committing fraud'.

Which LLM is your university encouraging students to use most? Asking for a friend.

Democratic voters in Texas scramble to find polling place amid precinct voting switch Early voting had been countywide and saw record Democratic turnout, but the switch to precinct-only locations left many voters showing up at the wrong spot and being turned away.

🚨BREAKING: Hundreds of Democratic voters in Dallas and Williamson Counties, Texas scrambled to find their polling places Tuesday after the local Republican parties refused to hold a joint primary — ending more than a decade of convenient countywide voting. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Timeline to US attacks on Iran Flurries of threats, then attacks, then attacks on oversight and independent evidence

Have written a quick post on the timeline leading to today's attacks...

A key thing to notice is how Trump et al tried to suppress dissent and independent evidence after last summer's strikes. Expect the same again now.

open.substack.com/pub/christin...

If I could change one piece of the discourse-that-drives-policy it’d be to underscore that higher education is not only a benefit to the individual but to all of us. It’s a collective good.

How we can make the internet good again Techdirt founder Mike Masnick has some ideas for how we can make the internet better.

The discourse tonight has me thinking about a conversation I had with @masnick.com about what kind of internet we should want. We should want better communities, not just bigger platforms.

"At its best, [the internet] can expand our capacity, our connectedness, our sense of what's possible."

Not used to a world in which Newsweek breaks anything

An ICE agent shot and killed Ruben Ray Martinez, a US citizen and San Antonio resident, in March 2025. Then ICE and the Texas Department of Public Safety covered it up. He was 23 years old. I am calling for a full investigation into this shooting, including why there was an 8-month cover up.

#164: Epstein Estate Settles for Millions But doesn’t admit guilt? Plus: Slushie Forgery Scandal, Trump Arch, 764, Kevin O’Leary, Kicking Flight Attendants, and 764. Also: Here for Antifa? Turn left and drive straight for 32 miles.

We were passed up for the George Polk award for the 3rd year in a row.

It forced us to do a deeply researched investigation into the root causes of why independent news organizations like Court Watch are routinely ignored by journalist awards committees.

www.courtwatch.news/p/164-epstei...

A must read investigation.

Jeffrey Epstein accuser sues federal government for failing to protect her and other victims Maria Farmer alleges that the FBI did "absolutely nothing" after she reported a sexual assault and other crimes Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell had allegedly committed.

Farmer also told the FBI that Epstein stole nude... who he transported across state lines and that he and others engaged in "possession, production, and distribution of sexually lascivious or exploitative images of children," which could constitute child pornography.
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Pritzker’s invoice to White House:

(via @nbcnews.com) @govpritzker.illinois.gov

"Epstein was an expert in money laundering. He also became an expert in reputation laundering for these billionaires, most of which are criminals and some of whom are provably connected to organised crime."
- journalist Whitney Webb

ICE and CoreCivic hid at least 8 pregnant women from Rep. Joaquin Castro at Dilley, including one 8 months along and another reportedly miscarrying. DHS whisked them to Laredo this morning before he arrived & blamed “the doctors’ schedule.”

Keep calling out the depraved cruelty & supporting Castro

Donald Trump illegally stole your money.

He should give it back to you.

Instead Trump is scheming up new ways to force Americans to pay even more.

Democrats should run this year on returning tariff revenue to Americans. Trump already said today he’s going to fight this in the courts. An easy mode way to be on the right side of the affordability issue.

One way to drastically improve the salmon and steelhead population is removing dams. To me, that seems nicer and more natural than mass killing beloved marine mammals, who are naturally entitled to eat fish.

Good idea. Epstein criminal conspiracy.

Trump Ramblings on Epstein Take Revealing Turn as MAGA Fury Boils Over As Trump insists he’s “totally exonerated” in the Epstein scandal amid mounting MAGA rage over it, a historian of the right explains how all this is exposing deep rifts inside MAGA—and what will happe...

On the pod historian Nicole Hemmer nails it on Epstein and elite impunity.

"Across the world, elites are going to jail or losing their positions. That’s not happening in the US. People want to understand: Why isn’t it happening here?"

Hemmer is great all throughout:
newrepublic.com/article/2068...

Don't congratulate John Roberts or the Supreme Court.

Congratulate Rick Woldenberg, the Chicago-area leader of Learning Resources, an educadtional toy company that had the courage to sue the president of the United States to save his family business.

As well as everyone else who stepped up.

This is the best approach to cats, over-all

Exclusive | The Accomplice Who Was Going to Testify Against Jeffrey Epstein—Then Went Dark Model scout Jean-Luc Brunel was negotiating to provide prosecutors with evidence against the sex offender in 2016 but ultimately backed out.

New via WSJ: French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel was secretly negotiating in 2016 with lawyers representing Epstein's victims, according to DOJ files.

Brunel's lawyer told them his client recruited girls for Epstein and had incriminating photographs.

Then Brunel went dark.

Want to walk more without trying? Move here Researchers found that walkable city design—not personal motivation—was the key factor behind people taking 1,100 more steps per day

People walk more in places that make it easier to walk.

FDA reverses course, agrees to review Moderna’s flu vaccine The FDA reversed course and told Moderna it would review its application for a new flu vaccine, the company announced Wednesday.

Public pushback matters... and reveals levers of power.

www.statnews.com/2026/02/18/f...

If parents don’t start campaigning for vaccines in the UK, more children will be lost as they were with COVID. MAGA want to remove vaccines here too. They campaigned for school return without vaccines for children or clean air for COVID. Don’t let them do it again!

Ugh! Also, an on-air analyst for what, exactly? Who wants to watch or listen to a trafficker/torturer- friendly guy talk about anything?

The Bari Weiss hire, who appears in the Trump-Epstein files 1,838 times, wrote in a 2016 email: “I go into JE withdrawal when I don’t see him.” www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...