Broad Mandate

Tax cuts for giant corporations and the super rich.

Paid for by cuts to the social safety net for everyone else.

The state of Trump's union. [@itep.org]

The Paranoid Style of Jeffrey Epstein Has Come for Us All The pedophile plutocrat had some peculiar predilections—especially for academics and thinkers who showed a potential to further his grand experiments in inhumanity.

Wrote a piece about many looking at the Epstein case all wrong: He's not the thing that connects a network of rich and powerful men; he's the lens that shows us how they were already connected.

newrepublic.com/article/2068...

The judge sounded skeptical of Louisiana's argument that ending telehealth prescriptions for abortion pills would end demand for them. Logical, and a key element to establish standing: if court can't remedy your injury, you can't sue

read @lailluminator.com:
lailluminator.com/2026/02/24/a...

my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels

Justice Department Sues University of California Over Antisemitism

Well, the DOJ has done it: they have filed a lawsuit against the University of California over antisemitism.

The complaint contains some falsehoods. But as someone who teaches and writes about Title VII, I'm equally struck by what the complaint doesn't say.

A few thoughts— 🧵

Remember, this guy then killed an MIT professor while they were stumbling to catch up

text says "There’s no way to know which COVID-19 infection will cause long-term illness. Each new COVID-19 infection increases your risk of organ damage, Long COVID, and disability, even if you have no other health conditions that you know of, and even if your previous COVID-19 infections were mild or had no symptoms. Protect your lifelong health by protecting yourself from COVID-19, no matter your age or health history. Wear masks. get vaccinated. keep indoor air clean.” Graphics on the side illustrate people getting sick repeatedly until eventually they end up with long-term illness.

Every time you get COVID-19, your risk increases for Long COVID, organ damage, disability, & more, & there’s no way to know which infection will be the one to cause it! Protect your lifelong health by protecting yourself from COVID-19. Learn more about Long COVID: www.cdc.gov/long-covid/a...

Kash Patel’s use of jet delayed FBI team’s mass shooting response, whistleblower tells top senator Sen. Richard Durbin says FBI director’s “misplaced priorities” led to the delayed response to the Brown University shooting in December.

oh dear

Kash Patel was using the FBI's private jet to visit his mom...

"The evidence response team instead had to drive through the night amid a snowstorm..."

www.ms.now/news/senator...

EPIWATCH O @EPIWA...•5h X Three active cases of tuberculosis have been diagnosed at a high school in San Francisco, United States, and over 200 staff and students have tested positive for latent tuberculosis.

How it’s going.

🤷🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ #SaferAir

In an Intense Election Year, New Post Office Rules Could Trip Up Voter Registration - Bolts A change in how mail is postmarked could lead some voters to miss key deadlines, including voter registration. Advocates worry the people most affected will be those already facing voting barriers.

NEW: The USPS changed its rules on how it postmarks ballots.

This may affect elections at every stage at which there's a mail deadline.

An underplayed one: VOTER REGISTRATION.

Many voters who send in their registration forms by mail could be postmarked late, missing out without realizing it.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...

A British grandmother with a valid visa detained by ICE for 6 weeks.

"So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. 'Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,' Karen says."

It remains astounding how unfaithfully the media covers Trump’s ramblings day to day. We’re a decade into this — and his rambling gets worse — and yet the coverage continues to portray his public appearances as if they’re coherent.

In a note embedded on top of an FAQ question, “What is the average length of stay for the aliens?” Tim Kaiser, the deputy chief of staff for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, asked David Venturella, a former GEO Group executive whom The Washington Post described as an adviser overseeing an ICE division that manages detention center contracts, to “Please confirm” that the average stay for the new mega detention centers would be 60 days. Venturella replied in a note that remained visible on the published document, “Ideally, I'd like to see a 30-day average for the Mega Center but 60 is fine.”

NEW: DHS left embedded comments in a PDF outlining its plans to warehouse immigrants, identifying the architects and laying bare the gross extent of its regulatory capture. Great scoop by @regret.bsky.social:

www.wired.com/story/metada...

so what happens to all the collected tariff money?

Not great that on the day the president said he was going to raid the US treasury, he also hung a banner of himself from the department of Justice

YouTube video by Katie Phang Trump’s FATAL DECISION Sends WORLD Towards DISASTER

Trump’s EPA just rescinded one of its most important rulings that protected public health & the climate because Trump is beholden to coal & fossil fuels.

@michaelemann.bsky.social joins for a sobering conversation about our climate crisis that has perilously escalated.

youtu.be/9vx1zTG6VbI?...

Homeland Security’s “SAVE” Program Exacerbates Risks to Voters Bad data and a politicized overhaul could spread election fraud lies and disenfranchise voters.

10/ The SAVE system's “main addition was confidential Social Security Administration data, which allowed states to search using full or partial Social Security numbers and incorporated information on millions of Americans who were not previously in Homeland Security databases.”

Stephen Colbert Says CBS Blocked Him From Interviewing Senate Hopeful Over FCC Equal Time Fears Colbert and 'The Late Show' posted the interview with James Talarico on the show's YouTube page to bypass the FCC's oversight.

"You know who is not one of my guests tonight: Texas State Representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast."

www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/s...

Recent CBS News news:
1. Anderson Cooper leaves 60 Minutes after two decades
2. Stephen Colbert reveals network won’t let him air interview with Dem
3. Producer says politics dictating what airs
4. Owner’s bid for CNN parent back on the table.
5. Not firing Epstein pal.

What Is Kari Lake Trying to Achieve? The Arizona politician has wasted millions of dollars while blocking U.S. efforts to bring reliable news to repressive countries.

During her 11 months as the de facto leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, Kari Lake has wasted millions of dollars and done profound damage to America’s foreign broadcasters, and to America’s ability to communicate with the world

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

@andreapitzer.bsky.social "concentration camp regimes in their early stages often make use of large open infrastructure to convert into detention spaces. Dachau was converted from a shuttered factory into a concentration camp in 1933"
degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/building-t...

On Nov. 16, a mental health counselor recorded in Kamilla’s medical records that her mother reported the girl had lost her appetite after being “served food that contained worms.” A week later, the couple said, children were told to gather in the gym for what they believed would be a Thanksgiving celebration. Excitement spread as families saw tables set with turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, they said. The children waited expectantly. But when a parent asked when the celebration would begin, Oksana said, staff told them the holiday meal was for employees, not detainees. The children, she said, watched despondently as the feast was packed away.

On Thanksgiving, the immigrant children held at the Dilley detention center gathered in the gym for what they thought was a holiday feast.

The kids salivated over a spread of turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, a family told me.

But the food wasn’t for detainees — it was for the staff.

Social Security Workers Are Being Told to Hand Over Appointment Details to ICE The recent request goes against decades of precedent, and puts noncitizens at further risk of immigration enforcement actions.

SCOOP: ICE is asking Social Security for peoples' in-person appointment dates and times, and SSA staff are being told to give it to them. From me + @leahfeiger.bsky.social + @zoeschiffer.bsky.social @wired.com

wired.com/story/social...

Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation Staff members have been instructed to scrub this topic and ‘biodefense’ from the agency’s website.

Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation
Staff members have been instructed to scrub this topic and ‘biodefense’ from the agency’s website.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into detention centers ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion converting warehouses into detention centers, according to planning documents, more than the annual budgets of 22 states.

Breaking news: ICE expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the U.S. and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of people, according to agency documents.

RFK Jr. can't change state vaccine regulations. But, he can dismantle the vaccine supply chain.

FDA's failure to review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine demonstrates how HHS can weaponize the vaccine approval process to discourage the production of new, innovative, and potentially life-saving vaccines.

Anthropic AI safety researcher quits with 'world in peril' warning It comes in the same week an OpenAI researcher resigned amid concerns about its decision to start testing ChatGPT ads.

Anthropic head of AI safety quits, warning of "world in peril" & announces plan to study creative writing, as my college charges ahead in deal with Anthropic, which trained its tech on at least 25 books taken without permission from our Creative Writing faculty. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Trump Administration to Cut $600 Million in Health Funding From Four States

The Trump administration plans to rescind $600 million in public health funds from four states led by Democrats because it finds the grants “inconsistent with agency priorities,” according to documents reviewed by the NYT

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/h...