Major Update: Bombshell Epstein Developments as Trump Support Falls Ahead of State of the Union and FBI Director Faces Calls to Resign Good morning everyone.

"A new report reveals that Epstein rented at least six storage units across the U.S. between 2003 and 2019, where he stored computers, CDs, photographs, and other equipment removed from his properties...Authorities may never have searched these storage units..." open.substack.com/pub/aaronpar...

Trump’s approval rating with independents hits a new low ahead of the State of the Union | CNN Politics When President Donald Trump gives his State of the Union address Tuesday, he will face a public that increasingly questions his priorities and expresses broad doubts about whether his proposed policie...

"Trump’s job approval rating, which has hovered below the 40% mark since last autumn, stands at 36%, with 63% disapproving. Nearly half strongly disapprove of his job performance, while 19% strongly approve. "
www.cnn.com/2026/02/23/p...

This is not the day that Chief Justice Roberts became a real jurist. This is three conservative justices who invited the president to pick consumers’ pockets for a full year before eventually telling him to knock it off — once they’d ensured that the chaotic fallout would persist for the rest of his term. We will not be applauding like trained seals because the person who left the bath running and flooded our collective house eventually wandered back and turned off the taps.

"We will not be applauding like trained seals because the person who left the bath running and flooded our collective house eventually wandered back and turned off the taps."

What the Supreme Court's tariff decision REALLY means from @lizdye.bsky.social

www.lawandchaospod.com/p/you-do-not...

Trump’s Iran War Could Be an Even Bigger Catastrophe Than Iraq Remarkably, Trump seems on the verge of outdoing George W. Bush in reckless, stupid militarism.

Trump is hurtling towards a war that could easily be a bigger disaster than the Iraq war. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Kristi Noem is squarely responsible for the chaos we have seen from ICE and DHS across the country. Her decisions risk the safety of Americans every day. Noem must be impeached.

🤔WATCH: “So this is really about naming rights for something in another country?”

Rep. Jesse Chism questions Rep Chris Todd’s push (on behalf of Israel) to force Tennessee to change “WEST BANK” references to “JUDEA & SAMARIA” in state documents… even as he admits none exist🤷🏼

The AfD is flirting with Nazi history – but moral outrage alone won’t stop the far right | Katja Hoyer Coincidence or not, the party has timed its congress for the centenary of an infamous Nazi rally. But condemnation didn’t stop Hitler, and it’s not enough now, says historian and journalist Katja Hoye...

Germany's far-right AfD has scheduled their party conference this year for exactly 100 years since a major Nazi rally in 1926 - in the same location. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Trump’s Challenge to Free Market Capitalism

"Principles" are foreign concepts to the Republican Party.

"The president’s economic policy has drifted far from principles that long defined the Republican Party."

Not gonna lie, the radio silence from the Mamdani administration over NYU and what he can do is troubling, and I say this as someone who wrote glowingly about his campaign.

‘Unmitigated Disgrace’: Fox’s Andy McCarthy Nukes Trump Over Tariff Tantrum Andy McCarthy ripped President Donald Trump a new one over the tantrum he's thrown in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to strike down his IEEPA tariffs.

MCCARTHY: ".. Trump’s attacks on the Supreme Court are an unmitigated disgrace. .. Is the plan to ignite a riot on the Supreme Court steps this time, while he can still pardon the rabble-rousers as he did the Capitol rioters?”

@mediaite.com
www.mediaite.com/media/news/u...

JB Pritzker's Invoice: Payback's a Bitch - emptywheel Among the reasons why JB Pritzker's demand that Trump make Illinois families whole for the money Trump illegally took from them is that the amount Pritzker demanded -- $1,700 per family -- is not far ...

Reup: By demanding that Trump pay Illinois households back (which won't happen), JD Pritzker makes Trump's theft politically toxic.

Trump destroyed soybean farmers, bankrupted countless small businesses, and cost average homes $1K+ a year, and it was all illegal.

emptywheel.net/jb-pritzkers...

The GOP funded its slow motion coup by further impoverishing the poor.

What you idiot commies don’t understand is that if we tax rich people they will JUST LEAVE, depriving our nation of tax cheats, political bribery, and national acts of perversion

Trump: "I suffer for the country"

"The President Must Be Removed From Office"

Zeteo is calling today for Donald Trump to be democratically removed from office, via impeachment or the 25th Amendment. The evidence, as laid out by Zeteo's @andrewperez.bsky.social in today's First Draft, suggests he is unfit.
zeteo.com/p/time-for-t...

FBI’s “Stand Down” Directive to NYPD on Jeffrey Epstein Investigations, and More The most comprehensive timeline to date of the publicly available record on New York law enforcement authorities’ action and inaction with regard to Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and other potential co-c...

Addendum: I provide links to all the documents (including the two sets of "stand down" emails) here:

A Timeline of New York Law Enforcement and Epstein Investigations

(The full video gives more of the context and where this might be headed.)

www.justsecurity.org/132230/fbi-s...

YouTube video by Ryan Goodman “Directed to Stand Down”: How NYPD Was Shut Out of the Epstein Case

2/2 Full video:

“Directed to Stand Down”: How NYPD Was Shut Out of the Epstein Case

youtu.be/aA5XdssxGWQ?...

"Directed to Stand Down"

What I discovered in the Epstein files on FBI/SDNY telling NYPD/Manhattan DA to back off Epstein investigations.

At the time, Manhattan DA had reached out to a victim who'd just come forward.

1/2 Full video in second link

"Lutnick and Epstein each signed a contract in 2012—four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes—to invest in a digital ad technology company called AdFin Solutions Inc. The deal was dated just five days after Lutnick and his family visited Epstein on his private island. "

New details from Epstein files reveal Lutnick had years-long business tie with sex offender The commerce secretary apparently still hasn't come clean on his connection with Epstein.

New: Emails and documents from Epstein files reveal Howard Lutnick and his firm had a years-long business tie with the sex offender. The two were involved in a deal for at least six years, and an email shows "HWL" discussing the investment with Epstein in 2018.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

A nearly 8% drop in AmEx shares doesn’t happen very often.

@cnbc.com

fter an hour and a half, it was over. I left the room and went back to my normal life, or what was left of it, letting the internet debate my character and performance in heated terms. There should be a better process for selecting senior government officials, but as long as this is the process we have, there will also be men and women willing to undertake it. The show must go on.

Jeremy Carl, the guy nominated to be State AAG based on his white nationalist beliefs, is whining that he had to answer questions to which he offered factually ridiculous responses.

spectator.com/article/thea...

So Trump now posts an AI video with him fighting and punching a Canadian ice hockey player and scoring the winning goal for the gold medal? We should hold every Republican culpable for not seeking the removal of this obviously deranged man.

Trump's brain flits wildly from Mamdani to shoveling snow to having a conversation with a woman in the audience who has bad eyes. He claims he "gave her a lot of money to get her eyes fixed." This event is totally off the rails.

“Why are we sending all this money to a country that has a higher standard of living than ours?”

Tucker grills Trump’s ambassador to Israel @GovMikeHuckabee about Israel’s influence over 🇺🇸, and implies invading Iraq was largely on their behalf— as War with Iran similarly looms.

Just a reminder as Trump spews complete lies about voter fraud that he put the full weight of his first administration into proving some of this bullshit and they came up completely empty.

…unveils a unique level of either willful or earnest stupidity if you, as a highly educated federal judge or lawyer, can’t figure out who the bad guy here is

the thing about this is: yea trump and American presidents have done illegal things significantly Worse than the idiotic classified documents MAL hoarding and refusal to give back what trump called “my documents”, but the boxes stealing was so flagrantly open and shut federally criminal that it…

Trump suggests he wants to send Americans 'that don't work' to other countries President Donald Trump suggested he would like to load up Americans "that don't work" in caravans and send them to other countries.At an event with so-called Angel Families on Monday, Trump claimed other countries had done exactly that to the U.S. — rounding up their unemployed and undesirable resid...

President Donald Trump suggested he would like to load up Americans "that don't work" in caravans and send them to other countries.

Trump Is Considering More Iran Strikes. No One Knows Precisely Why. As has become a pattern, the use of force isn’t part of a coherent plan.

"The Trump national security leadership seems dangerously high on its own supply. Perhaps they mistake the astonishing tactical competence of the U.S. armed forces for strategic sagacity. Or their need for “content” is insatiable."

open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...