MamaBear is in Georgia

The Week Ahead The primary focus this week is probably going to be on the State of the Union address.

Every Sunday I write a column called “The Week Ahead” that focuses on what we can expect in the coming week. Tonight’s column also focuses on some news the gov’t tried to conceal from us. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

BONUS Podcast - How Fox News Reacted to the SCOTUS Ruling Against Trump's Tariffs I went over everything from The Will Cain Show to Hannity on 2/20/26

This is the podcast version of the thread of videos I made. My bonus podcasts are fun because I tend to just make fun of Fox News the whole time. open.substack.com/pub/decoding...

U.S. Military Deployment in the Middle East in Anticipation of a Possible Military Operation Against Iran - 17 Feb 2026 Created by ®EGYOSINT X Abraham Lincoln CSG Gerald R. Ford CSG On Deployment Turkey Syria Iraq Egypt. Iran UAE USS Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier USS WinstonS. Churchill USS Bainbridge USS Mahan Air Defense Deployement ed Kuwait Bahrain • Qatar. Saudi Arabia Yemen Oman Arabian Sea Created by BEGYOSINT Approx 160 flights by C-17A (Since 16th Jan) Djibouti Gulf of Aden (Muwaffaq Salti AB) 18x flights by C-5M (KSA, Qatar & Djibouti) 20-22x KC-135 & KC-46 Tankers +24 F-15E (Muwaffaq Salti AB) ★ Numerous Flights by C-130H/J 1x RC-135 SIGINT (Chania, Greece) 30x F-35A fighters (Muwaffaq Salti AB) 4x MC/HC-130J (2x Muwaffaq Salti AB) (2x Diego Garcia NSF) 3x EA-11A BACN (Prince Sultan AB) F-16 deployed at the UAE & KSA WC-135R Nuke Sniffer (Midenhall, UK) 2x E-3 Sentry AWACS (Midenhall, UK) 6x EA-18GA (Muwaffaq Salti AB) + USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier (Arabian Sea) USS Frank E. Petersen (Arabian Sea) USS Spruance (Arabian Sea) USS Michael Murphy (Arabian Sea) Other assets in the ME USS Roosevelt (Mediterranean Sea) USS McFaul (Persian Gulf) USS Mitscher (Persian Gulf) USS Delbert D. Black (Red Sea) Ohio-class (unknown location) THAAD At least one additional battery (KSA or Qatar) MIM-104 Patriot Multiple battaries across the region 土 +99 C-17A & C-5M flights transferring AD Battaries By @TheIntelFrog

This is somewhere between 40-50% of deployable US air power (and it’s still growing). On a scale with the Gulf Wars.

Our ally is helping us. And I'll bet they didn't even demand that Trump offer them bribes to do it.

Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,085 - Lawyers, Guns & Money This is the grave of Mordecai Johnson. Born in 1890 in Paris, Tennessee, Johnson grew up reasonably well of for his time and place and race, which still wasn’t much. His father was a minister but you couldn’t make much of a living in a small-town Black church, so he also worked in mills. His […]

Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,085

Threads…

This, from the lawyer who successfully argued the tariff case before SCOTUS, casts huge doubt over the applicability of the statute the @POTUS is relying on to slap down a new 15 percent global tariff.
His own lawyers dismissed it in their arguments to the court.

This administration whined to the SCOTUS that they should not have to pay out SNAP even though they were legally obligated to do so. They spent so much cash appealing a court case they knew they were gonna lose just for spite and to waste taxpayer money just to make life worse for poor Americans

The case is no longer before the court, so the Supreme Court cannot respond to Trump's defiance sua sponte (on it's own accord). A case about Trump ignoring the ruling must be filed in a federal district court and then appealed. And then cert must be granted.

So SCOTUS cannot respond quickly.

Justice Department says interim US attorney is fired hours after Virginia judges appoint him to replace Trump loyalist | CNN Politics Just hours after the federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia appointed a new interim US attorney to replace Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, the administration said he is fired.

www.cnn.com/2026/02/20/p...

Text-only version: lite.cnn.com/2026/02/20/p...

We can expect Trump to have his DOJ begin investigating Supreme Court Justices who ruled against him. They may even fabricate charges against them. I can tell you that will happen because it's what aspiring tyrants always do to those who dare try to check their power.

.

JD Vance just wrote and I quote

“ This is lawlessness from the court, plain and simple”

How stupid is he?

He doesn’t understand the separation of powers?

#Tariffs

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Trump's tariffs have been nothing but a tax on Maine families and businesses at a time when costs are already high enough.

Today's Supreme Court decision confirmed what we've known all along — that this erratic approach to economic policy is unconstitutional.

Just a reminder: Howard Lutnick is the author of Trump's tariff regime. He simultaneously has made heavy bets on the market that SCOTUS would strike it down. Nothing unethical about that, is there?

NEW: SCOTUS' tariff ruling ripped out the heart of a central premise of Trump's presidency and made him look fallible at a time of mounting threats to his power.

"This was an important case to me," Trump said in an understatement.

w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social

www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

The guy who’s functionally illiterate going into his 80’s, bankrupted 6x, impeached 2x, convicted on 34 counts of fraud in NYS & spent much of his adulthood lusting after his own daughter and hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, says SCOTUS ‘embarrassed their families’. It Depends.

SCOTUS kicks Trump in the cooter over tariffs and 10 billion for the "Board Of Peace."

Prediction: Trump will assert he will restore the tariffs under other authority but he won't be too specific because the court blocked some of the options he wants. If he calls for Congress to enable him to do this, don't expect success on that front because folks up for reelection will resist.

By choosing not to publicly release three FBI interviews with an underage Trump accuser—interviews the DOJ gave Ghislaine Maxwell at trial—Trump's DOJ has allowed Maxwell to retain potential blackmail over the president. But that leverage over Trump vanishes if DOJ made them public, as law requires

This is not to say there aren't things to be revealed, or legitimate trust issues. But DO be aware that this is a weapons system being deployed directly against your mind and the population as a whole. Build defenses; reality test; differentiate between fact and conjecture.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger will deliver Democratic response to Trump's State of the Union address.

Maybe the constitution doesn’t explicitly say Congress shall allow no war to be started by a sex criminal to distract from his sex crimes, but I feel like that’s in there in spirit.

Sign Up for Executive Dysfunction A weekly newsletter highlighting the under-the-radar stories about what Trump is doing to the law—and how the law is pushing back.

We are launching a weekly newsletter! It's called Executive Dysfunction and will cover under-the-radar stories about Trump's attacks on the rule of law. Subscribe here: slate.com/dysfunction

War with Iran? Thanks, MAGA! Joe's Midweek Meltdown

Trump is preparing to go to war against Iran. And Republicans won’t say shit. And MAGA will cheer. This is what America looks like without a Congress. This is what America looks like when 1 of our 2 major political parties is an authoritarian-embracing cult.👇 open.substack.com/pub/socialco...

Wrecking the Economy to Destroy the Planet Trump's energy policy is not putting the economy first, it's about owning the libs

Trump's energy policy may be terrible for the environment, and not make any sense economically, but it really does own the libs deanbaker22.substack.com/p/wrecking-t...

Økokrim starter etterforskning mot Thorbjørn Jagland Økokrim åpner etterforskning mot Norges tidligere statsminister for mistanker om grov korrupsjon etter opplysninger som har kommet frem i Epstein-dokumentene.

Very few people in the US are aware of the fact that former Norway prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been arrested and is facing criminal charges of gross corruption arising out of his conspiracy with Jeffrey Epstein—based almost entirely on information in the DOJ release.

In Moscow, TASS details, quoting the Economists, the private investments that have been offered to Witkoff and Kushner in the context of their "negotiations."

It’s pretty astonishing how little attention the media has given to Trump’s economically disastrous policies

Especially after years of on-the-ground inflation reporting under Biden

Iran-Trump live: US military ‘ready to strike within days’ US is building up its forces in the Middle East amid reports military could strike within days

War with Iran as early as this weekend, while Congress snoozes along. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/m...