Melissa Johnson

February 9, 2026 Last night’s thirteen-minute Super Bowl half-time show featuring Bad Bunny had more watchers than any other halftime show in history: an estimated 135 million watched live, while millions more have st...

February 9, 2026

They will be warehousing people.

And treating them as objects.

These are concentration camps.

Ghislaine Maxwell invokes Fifth Amendment in closed deposition The convicted sex trafficker was not expected to answer questions at a virtual closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee.

My analysis of this here: joycevance.substack.com/p/the-week-a...

www.ms.now/news/ghislai...

February 8, 2026 On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) stood up in front of the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, at a gathering to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

February 8, 2026

Olympic athletes carrying the flame of democracy as we head into a week of important hearings on the Hill. These are not times for people who don’t like anything that challenges their comfortable existence. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

loved every second of Bad Bunny. That message of inclusion and a celebration of cultures like Puerto Rico’s is just what America needs right now. Plus, his music just gets you in motion. 10/10

February 7, 2026 Yesterday two right-wing circuit judges signed off on the Trump administration’s new mass detention policy: the extraordinary assertion that vast numbers of noncitizens throughout the country can be a...

February 7, 2026

Massie on Howard Lutnick: "He should just resign. Three people in Great Britain resigned for less than what we've seen Howard Lutnick lie about. He clearly went to the island, if we believe what's in these files. He was in business with Jeffrey Epstein."

February 6, 2026 Late last night, President Donald J.

February 6, 2026

A Few Thoughts for Those Who Can't Sleep -- February 6 Edition YouTube video by Dr. Joanne Freeman

Some of my thoughts about the racist so-called “meme” posted by DJT.

www.youtube.com/live/hC-bAJQ...

We are not Nazis. Also: No Kings, No Dictators.

If you don’t know Alberto Castañeda Mondragón’s story, the story of his arrest by ICE, read here: open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

We are not Nazis. Also: No Kings, No Dictators.

For anyone who wondered how the Germans turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, we are living through the answer. We watched it start in real time. Do you remember last October? The details slip away fast but holding onto them helps us hold onto who we are joycevance.substack.com/p/we-are-not...

I sincerely hope that JD Vance gets this reaction every single place he goes.

February 5, 2026 The past two days have seen a growing struggle between Democrats, who are demanding accountability from the Trump administration, and Republicans trying to hide what the administration is up to.

February 5, 2026

This is truly incredible.

Shakespeare speaking to RIGHT NOW—on the “mountainish” inhumanity of punishing and casting out strangers from your country.

I don’t consider the Bill of Rights “unrealistic.”

The Supreme Court’s one-line decision in the California Prop 50 gerrymandering case went the right way, but it hides a larger truth. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

February 4, 2026 On the heels of last weekend’s special election in Texas, President Donald J.

February 4, 2026

Apparently.

February 3, 2026 Yesterday, the day before Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, U.S.

February 3, 2026

"ai sycophancy" is not always harmful In the wrong situation it can be profoundly damaging, but sycophancy is a hard problem because for information technology to work it must often take us at our word. Mike Caulfield Feb 03, 2026

New post on that Anthropic paper and a problem with defining sycophancy as AI not saying you are wrong. And more broadly a problem with conceptualizing these things as opinionated chatbots. open.substack.com/pub/mikecaul...

Walz demands DHS stop detaining Minnesota children In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Walz demanded details about how many Minnesota kids are in detention facilities.

They’re taking children from Minnesota and locking them up like criminals in detention camps in Texas.

For the love of God, send our kids home and bring an end to this nightmare.

www.startribune.com/walz-demands...

Donald Trump has been telling us that if he doesn't like the outcome of the elections he will seize ballots. He wants Republicans to take control of voting. He wants to take over elections in Democratic states.

People should be concerned and we all need to be ready.

A Few Thoughts for Those Who Can't Sleep YouTube video by Dr. Joanne Freeman

Hello folks:

I'm entirely pooped tonight -- too pooped to offer "A Few Thoughts for Those Who Can't Sleep."

But I WILL be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's yesterday's episode, on people in Florida hiding Haitians from our government...

www.youtube.com/live/vVDWYgv...

Today was one of those days where it was difficult to keep up with everything of significance that happened. Here’s a little help that should get you up to speed on at least some of it. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

Bill Clinton testified under oath about Monica Lewinsky. He will now testify under oath about Epstein. There is no excuse for Donald Trump doing that too. Either you want to learn the truth about Epstein’s crimes & who else was involved or you don’t.

Today In Court What a prosecutor in Minnesota said

A young prosecutor tells a judge what’s really going on joycevance.substack.com/p/today-in-c...

Here we go….

Folks:

This is important.

SHEAR—the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (a GREAT organization)—is tracking examples of the regime erasing history.

More at the link below.

Watching people say "even Google admits they were spying on people" and sharing an AI Overview screenshot that summarizes what people have (falsely) alleged is more 2016 than I wanted to be this morning