Mostly Hopeful

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."

Since #bbclaurak is trending, let’s remind ourselves that ONE MONTH ago, the BBC invited Mandelson on for a soft-ball interview on her show. While HIS CLIENT , Palantir’s Louis Moseley appeared as a pundit

Both, as I wrote at time, were ‘abject failures of journalism’
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Schools aren’t designed for autistic children – these are the sensory challenges they face Loud classrooms are a key cause of distress for autistic children.

Loud classrooms are a key cause of distress for autistic children.

Why are the comedy team of Witkoff and Kushner the lead negotiators on …. ANYTHING???

No Senate approval. No confirmation process.

The only expertise these two have is the ability to enrich themselves.

It doesn’t get any more disgusting than this.

Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show Though the commerce secretary has called his interactions with Epstein as "limited," the two were in business together four years after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea.

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.

www.cbsnews.com/news/howard-...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance. But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain. He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again. He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.

ICE told nurses this Minneapolis man “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.”

What actually happened is that they pulled him from a car, beat him so viciously with a steel baton that he had 8 skull fractures, 5 life-threatening brain hemorrhages, and couldn’t remember he had a daughter.

And because of groups like “M4L,” we can’t have socio-emotional learning or trauma-informed practices because they are “woo woo”. Meanwhile, cases of cPTSD are rising among educators.

My law firm intervened in every case DOJ has filed to gain access to states' sensitive voting data. So far we have won several and lost none. But this is going to be a long fight for free and fair elections.

Members of Congress will have access to unredacted Epstein files A top House Democrat asked to see the unredacted files to determine if the DOJ improperly withheld any information.

Members of Congress need to give the American people the names of those who praised a torture video and wrote about a 9 year old Brazilian child in emails to Epstein. Leak the names to the press
www.axios.com/2026/02/06/e...

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Mamdani: "I speak of Renee Good, whose final words to the man who murdered her were, 'I'm not mad at you.' I speak of Alex Pretti who died as he lived, caring for the stranger. ICE shot him bc he did something they could never fathom ... let us offer a new path: one of defiance through compassion."

YouTube video by ReelinInTheYears66 Mitchell Trio feat. John Denver- "Your Friendly Liberal Neighborhood KKK" 1966 [RITY Archive]

As they say, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

I stumbled upon John Denver in the Mitchell Trio's 1966 recording of "Your Friendly Liberal Neighborhood Ku Klux Klan."

It speaks to so many things happening today that it gives me new respect for John Denver.

Federal judge rules DOJ can ‘no longer’ be trusted in voter roll crusade The judge pointed to a letter from Bondi to Minnesota that tied federal immigration enforcement to demands for voter data as the smoking gun.

NEW: A federal judge in Oregon issued a sweeping rebuke of the Justice Department’s nationwide push to seize state voter rolls, ruling that the department can no longer be presumed to be acting in good faith and warning that its conduct threatens voters and states’ rights.

Every American needs to watch this:

Not until justice is served! The victims deserve no less.

Republicans Are Getting Behind Trump’s Absurd Plan to Nationalize Elections - Esquire

"Impunity, the sadist's conception of freedom, mainstreamed and marketed as the new American Dream..." quote from THEY KNEW (2022) Sarah Kendzior book

Opinion | Trump's Kennedy Center "renovations" explanation is a fig leaf for something darker Amid the revelations of the Epstein files and the ICE immigration crackdown, Trump's Kennedy Center renovations might seem minor. They're not.

Shutting down the Kennedy Center is even more serious than it looks

Trump is showing his desire to control American culture, echoing similar moves by autocrats around the world. And the Kennedy Center is a test case.

Right before I turned 40, my life was falling apart. Even after my diagnosis, I still have meltdown moments of overwhelm, but I am getting better at recognizing triggers. If I was diagnosed sooner, I could have had help with accommodations, and possibly prevented some soul-ache.

sarah kendzior THEY KNEW book cover

"We live in a country where the mantra of the powerful is 'Move on from the dead.' Move on and don't look too hard at who is responsible. Move on and don't ask questions, because questions challenge impunity. Move forward, because justice is divisive to the unjust." -- THEY KNEW (2022)

Authoritarian regimes ALWAYS lie

That is why it is so important and necessary to record and document everything.

The Torture Syndicate — Gaslit Nation Our democracy has been hijacked by an elite pedophile ring–one that has always been operating in plain sight. This week, Andrea and Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman dig into the horror show of the re...

Our democracy has been hijacked by an elite pedophile ring that has always been operating in plain sight. Russian mafia expert @olgalautman.bsky.social and I dig into the horror show of the #EpsteinFiles and how to demand an end to elite criminal impunity www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-tra...

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”
Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, was born on this day in 1913
#BlackHistoryMonth

Never tell a public school teacher that they have no experience. We don’t learn about poverty, hunger, homelessness, crime, and social justice from a book.

We face these issues head on every day in our classrooms.

Will he die first?

njs.libraries.rutgers.edu NJS: An Interdisciplinary Journal Summer 2025 The New Jersey Miscount: The 1860 Census and the Accidental Humanization of Enslaved Individuals By Luke Voyles DOI: 10.14713/njs.v1112.362 Abstract: The 1860 census is the only example in U.S. history when the U.S. government systematically recorded the names and ages of enslaved individuals of a state. Because government officials underestimated the number of enslaved people in New Jersey, there was no slave schedule in the state. Therefore, the names of enslaved individuals appeared within the households of their enslavers in the regular 1860 census. The official census statistics only listed 18 individuals as enslaved in 1860, but a close examination of every 1860 census page for New Jersey uncovers 64 names tied to slavery. This essay explores the context behind the census, and how the census accidentally humanized people whom it often marginalized.

Some years ago, I was chatting with a Retropolis reader, a young history student, and I mentioned there were several dozen people enslaved in New Jersey up until the day the 13th Amendment kicked in in December 1865.

Y’all. He identified every one of them.
njs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/nj...

The first time Leonard Leo was called an “influencer”

Trump wants to take over voting. Mike Johnson is willing to help Trump raised the threat to the 2026 midterm elections to an entirely new level.

We need to listen carefully and listen closely. Trump is telegraphing his playbook to steal the 2026 elections. Here’s how he will do it. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/trum...

Pathetic. Remember when the RNC bought 400K copies of Don Jr's book? Or when they bought a bunch of copies of Dan Crenshaw's book? Or when the bought a bunch of tickets to Dinesh D'Souza's movie? Or Melania? What a bunch of weirdo losers.