Politics

What The Fuck Just Happened Today?

The remaining Department of Justice files on Jeffrey Epstein include the revelation that one of the pedophile’s victims was just nine years old and that a senior official in a foreign government was allegedly involved in his sex trafficking network, lawmakers have said.

Days before Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, an investment firm controlled by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal family secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to buy almost half of a cryptocurrency startup founded by the Trump family. Under any other president, such an arrangement, which was revealed this past weekend by the Wall Street Journal, would cause a political earthquake in Washington. There would be demands for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of damage control.

Les Wexner

The new version of Senate Bill 6346 keeps in place the main thrust of the proposal: a 9.9% tax on annual earnings above $1 million, starting in 2028. That would bring in about $3.5 billion a year, affecting about 30,000 taxpayers, according to legislative staff estimates.

The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, had lunch with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on the disgraced financier’s private island, he said on Tuesday, as he faces mounting calls to resign from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence, who discussed a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney who was briefed on details of the call.

The commercial wasn’t the work of the Trump administration—or even a political candidate or a well-known advocacy organization. The pro-ICE advertisement was placed by a group called American Sovereignty, which is brand new, seems to be a nonprofit or political entity, and has almost no public presence—save for half-a-dozen tweets over the last couple weeks.

The files’ redactions came under scrutiny last week after lawyers for Epstein’s victims said the latest tranche of files included email addresses and nude photos in which the names and faces of potential victims could be identified.

A set of Catholic investors said on Monday private-prison operator GEO Group has rejected a shareholder vote designed to shed light on alleged human rights violations in its operation of ICE detention facilities as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The U.S. is in the grips of a historic measles surge, with more than 3,000 measles cases reported in 45 states across the country since the start of 2025. So far, two unvaccinated children have died from the disease. At least 920 people have been infected in South Carolina, and a similar number in Texas. In both states, nearly all infected individuals were unvaccinated.

An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record.

About 6,000 public schoolteachers in San Francisco went on strike Monday, the city’s first such walkout in nearly 50 years.

A federal judge in Georgia ordered documents related to a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid on an election facility in Fulton County to be unsealed by Tuesday.

The attorneys said that when ICE detained several men near Vail last month, agents pulled them over and handcuffed them without warrants and without asking them any questions. ICE agents later left branded playing cards with information about its Denver field office in some of those men’s abandoned cars, alarming advocates.

“This is just part of a much larger picture is, you know, in which the Trump administration is doing everything it possibly can quickly detain and deport as many migrants as possible,” said Philip Schrag, Delaney Family professor of public interest law at Georgetown University. “Even migrants who like this family have a pending asylum case. So this family is legally in the United States because they have pending asylum case and they should not be deported until case is resolved.”

In a complaint filed in the Southern District of Texas on Friday morning, the group of more than 30 people said that immigration authorities’ current practices violate their rights to due process and protection against unreasonable arrests.

Far-right influencer Jake Lang was charged Friday with felony damage to property, after posting video to social media showing him damaging an ice sculpture outside the Minnesota Capitol.

A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says both President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi asked Gabbard to be present for an FBI search of the elections headquarters in Fulton County, Georgia, last week, after Gabbard and Mr. Trump offered seemingly conflicting explanations for her presence.

US immigration agents in Oregon must stop arresting people without warrants unless there is a likelihood of escape, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

On the heels of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minnesota at the hands of federal immigration agents, 65% of Americans said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has “gone too far,” according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. And President Trump is facing the highest intensity of disapproval since just after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Unredacted images and videos showing nudity released in the Epstein files have been online for days despite US officials being warned about failures in redaction, which lawyers say has caused victims “irreparable” harm.

U.S. President Donald Trump will have more power to hire and fire up to 50,000 career federal employees in an overhaul of the government’s civil service system announced by his administration on Thursday.

Legislators passed Senate Bill 13 as a way of discouraging divestment from oil and gas companies, as financial figureheads at the time had signaled they intended to make climate change initiatives a larger factor in their investment considerations. The law requires the comptroller’s office to maintain a list of financial firms that refuse, terminate or penalize business with a fossil fuel company “without ordinary business purpose.” SB 13 is commonly referred to as an “anti-ESG” law, which stands for “environmental, social and governance.”

The Small Business Administration said in a policy note that green card holders won’t be allowed to apply for SBA loans, effective March 1.

Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is refusing to voluntarily comply with a Justice Department investigation into a video she organized urging U.S. military members to resist “illegal orders” — escalating a dispute that President Donald Trump has publicly pushed.

Amazon outbid Puget Sound Energy last month in an auction for a massive solar farm project in Oregon, leaving the utility concerned about a larger competition for resources with energy-hungry artificial intelligence companies.

The division’s role has grown in recent months as Morath encouraged school districts to report teachers who commented negatively about conservative activist Charlie Kirk following his assassination last fall. The American Federation of Teachers has sued to stop the ensuing investigations, which it labeled a “witch-hunt.”

Georgia’s Fulton County has filed a motion seeking the return of 2020 election ballots seized by the FBI, state election officials said Wednesday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday that her agency is consulting with the Justice Department on how to proceed after a federal judge halted the administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in the U.S.

In December, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson struck a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice to hand over the names, addresses and social security numbers of almost all of the 18.6 million Texans registered to vote.

Bannon has no formal power, but is an influential figure on the far right and is closely tied with the Trump administration.

The state’s voters approved the redistricting plan last year as a Democratic counterresponse to Texas’ new GOP-friendly map, which President Trump pushed for to help Republicans hold on to their narrow majority in the House.

The bill provides funding for the departments of Defense, Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education through the remainder of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

As Bhattacharya testified, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the HELP committee’s ranking member, released a report outlining the state of the NIH. The report concluded that the Trump administration is “failing American patients,” and “destroying medical research through cuts to research grants, terminations of clinical trials, and the chaos it has created.”

FEMA helps coordinate the response to major disasters like last year’s Los Angeles wildfires, but the agency more often acts like a bank, reimbursing states and cities for their disaster preparedness and recovery spending. When Noem took office, she throttled that spending by, among other things, requiring her personal sign-off on all expenses over $100,000. The pace of disbursements has since slowed to a trickle.

The bill’s opponents have called it a “bounty hunter law” because successful plaintiffs would be awarded at least $100,000 in damages. If the plaintiff is not directly related to the fetus, they would only be entitled to 10% and would have to give the remaining money to a charity of their choosing. Women taking abortion pills would not be eligible to be sued under the bill, nor would women who take them after miscarriages.

OPM’s previous shutdown guidance from September 2025 stated that furloughed employees will get paid once a lapse in appropriations ends, at the earliest date possible. The September guidance also referenced the 2019 Government Employee Fair Treatment Act (GEFTA), a law meant to ensure retroactive compensation for both excepted and furloughed federal employees during government shutdowns.

The missed deadline and up to 3m files that remain unreleased have prompted criticism and calls for further disclosure to answer how Epstein sexually abused girls with impunity for decades and landed a sweetheart plea deal about 20 years ago that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution.

The United Nations is running desperately low on money — and without a much-needed cash infusion, it may need to close the doors of its New York headquarters by August. The cash crunch is one that President Donald Trump could easily rectify by simply paying the money that the U.S. owes the U.N. But by withholding billions of dollars, Trump is putting tens of thousands of lives on the line, furthering the destructive rampage he set into motion last year.

The death of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis man killed by federal agents, has been ruled a homicide, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said.

President Donald Trump spoke directly with FBI agents involved in a recent search of a Georgia election facility, the New York Times reported Monday.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he said during an appearance on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast, which he relaunched Monday.

The Republican chair of a House Committee rejected an offer Monday from former President Bill Clinton to conduct a transcribed interview for a House investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, pushing the threat to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress closer towards a vote.

Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner emailed a screenshot of a resident’s negative Facebook comment about him to the city’s police chief one day before officers showed up at the woman’s home to question her about it — an incident that went viral and led to a wave of backlash.

An appeals court declined to compel lower courts to sign the warrants, reportedly enraging Attorney General Pam Bondi. The federal government now claims that Lemon and Fort, who was arrested in the pre-dawn hours at her home Friday, violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and “oppressed, threatened, and intimidated” congregants by occupying space in aisles and rows of chairs, engaging in “menacing and threatening behavior.”

“Where is the rest of Maria Farmer’s FBI file? Where are the records of complaints that so many other women made to FBI and how the FBI investigated those complaints? And why is the DoJ hiding the names of perpetrators while exposing survivors?” Freeman said.

President Trump said Sunday he will move to close Washington’s Kennedy Center performing arts center for two years starting in July for construction, his latest move to upturn the storied venue since returning to the White House.

A peaceful protest in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday broke into chaos as federal agents deployed tear gas on demonstrators—including families with young children.

The Trump administration is scaling back plans for this year’s field test of the 2030 census, raising concerns about the Census Bureau’s ability to produce a reliable population tally for redistributing political representation and federal funding in the next decade.

What? Headquartered in Toronto, the technology and media giant has three active contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. One, awarded in 2021, covers a “law enforcement investigative database subscription. Another, awarded in 2023, is for “risk mitigation services.” A third, awarded in 2025, is for a “maritime analysis tool” and “subject matter expert support services to the support the homeland security investigations, operation national initiative for illicit trade enforcement program.”

“We are getting constant calls from victims because their names – despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public – have all just been released for public consumption,” Edwards said. “It’s literally thousands of mistakes.”

In a complaint made by a friend, the president was accused of forcing a 13-14-year-old to perform oral sex on him.

Bruce Springsteen’s protest song “Streets of Minneapolis,” a response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, soared to the top of iTunes.

If President Donald Trump’s immigration round-up was supposed to be targeting violent offenders, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett said she doesn’t understand why 1,100 people, including children, are in a South Texas detention center.

At 35, Warsh became the youngest ever Fed governor when he joined the central bank in 2006. He served as the central bank’s main liaison to Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. Prior to joining the central bank, Warsh worked as a mergers and acquisitions banker at Morgan Stanley from 1995 to 2002 and as an economics adviser in the George W. Bush Administration.

Kari Lake, who oversees the parent agency of the Voice of America, has hit legal and political roadblocks in her drive to dismantle the government-funded broadcaster.

We’ve been taking a look over some of the newly released Epstein files.

The Trump administration has promised Italy that ICE special agents assisting with security for next month’s Olympics will work out of a single room at the U.S. Consulate, following public outcry over the agents’ arrival in the European country.

More than 90,000 people are incarcerated in private prisons across the United States, where the purpose of holding them is dominated by an incentive to maximize profit, as with any successful business. Many more people live in federal and state prisons where private contractors often source the food and medical care, or receive easy labor from its inhabitants. The more people Immigration and Customs Enforcement puts behind bars, the better for private prison corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic — which is why, according to critics, they’ve been eagerly cheering on the Trump deportation agenda.

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At 5 a.m. California time, when it is still dark outside, a member of the state’s Department of Public Health gets on a weekly call.

Meta has started blocking its users from sharing links to ICE List, a website that has compiled the names of what it claims are Department of Homeland Security employees, a project the creators say is designed to hold those employees accountable.

With 789 cases and counting, the current measles outbreak in South Carolina is now the nation’s largest since measles was officially eliminated in 2000. The highly contagious virus “is circulating in the community, increasing the risk of exposure and the risk of infection for those who are not immune due to vaccination or natural infection,” the state’s Department of Public Health says on its website.

The government of Ecuador has condemned what it described as an attempt by a US federal immigration agent to enter the Ecuadorean consulate in Minneapolis.

U.S. Judge Fred Biery ruled Monday that any removal or transfer of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, is on hold while a court case proceeds.

The files that CISA’s acting head, Madhu Gottumukkala, plugged into ChatGPT were marked “for official use only” — a government designation for information that is considered sensitive and not for public release. | Illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/POLITICO (source images via iStock) By John Sakellariadis01/27/2026 03:30 PM EST

The chief judge of Minnesota’s federal court ordered the acting chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to appear in court on Friday to personally explain why that agency has not complied with dozens of court orders in recent weeks.

Illustration by M.J. Hiblen

Former National Security Council staffer and Army veteran Alexander Vindman — who testified against Donald Trump ahead his first impeachment in 2019 — is joining the Democratic race for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat.

Trump announced Monday that his “border czar” Tom Homan would lead the charge in Minnesota and report directly to the president. He also spoke with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, noting that the phone call was “very good” in a post to Truth Social.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has a formal use-of-force policy, which states that when CBP agents use deadly force, “the officer/agent shall … be placed on Administrative Leave.”

Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday ordered all state agencies and public universities to stop sponsoring specialty H-1B visas for highly skilled workers until after the Legislature meets next year.

On Friday, tens of thousands of Minnesotans braved extreme cold to march en masse and shuttered a reported 700-plus businesses in a daylong general strike with the support of all major unions. They protested, transported, fed, and watched over each other, an outgrowth of weeks, months, and years of community care and abolitionist resistance. Their collective actions mark a breakthrough in the fight against the American authoritarianism of our time.

A federal judge is weighing whether to grant a temporary restraining order that would halt a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operating in Minnesota.

~~Protesters gathered at the Home2 Suites by Hilton near the University of Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Daily, where they believed federal immigration agents were staying after the killing of Alex Pretti. Video from the scene shows protesters making loud noises outside and graffiti on the windows with messages saying things like “ICE out,” alluding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government agency which has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s ongoing mass deportation campaign.

It’s the second fatal shooting in Minneapolis by immigration agents this month, and once again Trump administration officials immediately defended the action as self-defense while blaming the victim — in this case claiming he was a “domestic terrorist” intending to “massacre” officers.

But that’s not all she did. The same day, the U.S. attorney general sent a three-page letter to Minnesota’s Democratic governor, sketching out three demands — what Bondi characterized as “common sense solutions” — that she asked Walz to obey.

Les Wexner is a billionaire businessman, a long-time benefactor of Jeffrey Epstein, and at one point, was Epstein’s only documented client. Public reporting has documented their longstanding ties, including the fact Wexner paid for Epstein’s home in New York City. Additionally, Virginia Giuffre named Wexner in a deposition as one of the men she was trafficked to.

“Trump just took another disturbing step toward opening California’s coast to dangerous new offshore drilling,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity. She warned of risks to communities, wildlife, and California’s renowned coastline, calling it “a reckless attempt to sell out our coastline to oil companies.”

Transgender patients of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles secured a win this week after the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to end its efforts to obtain personal and medical information of more than 3,000 young patients.

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Saturday partially sided with acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock in his push to ban some private schools from the state’s new voucher program over alleged terrorism or foreign ties.

Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.

Videos show no evidence to support the claim he used any armed force to threaten agents.

As Republican Rep. Troy Nehls attempted to place blame for the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Police officials and not on President Donald Trump, former Washington, DC, police officer Michael Fanone — who was severely beaten by protestors that day — interrupted with a cough and a quick message.

Seven House Democrats voted in favor of a $64.4 billion bill to advance a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending measure that includes about $10 billion for ICE. The votes came during a markup of the DHS appropriations bill, with Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky casting the lone Republican vote against the funding, which passed 220-207 and will fund ICE and FEMA through September 30.

A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must keep federal funds flowing to child care subsidies and other social service programs in five Democratic-controlled states — at least for now.

The Trump administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to block the new congressional map adopted by California voters in November. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that the map, which the state says was intended to create five new Democratic seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in response to the creation of five new Republican seats in Texas, “is tainted by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

“If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, was the darling of Davos this week as he rallied resistance to Donald Trump’s smash and grab politics and his voracious appetite for other countries’ wealth and land.

A breakfast restaurant, a bike shop, and a brewery: these are some of the hundreds of businesses across Minnesota closing their doors Friday as part of a general strike to push Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of the state.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has abruptly halted the termination of hundreds of disaster workers because of the massive winter storm.

Part 1 - https://www.c-span.org/program/house-committee/former-special-counsel-jack-smith-testifies-on-trump-investigations-part-1/671835

The United States and China have both signed off on TikTok’s long-awaited divestment deal, clearing a major hurdle for the popular social media app’s future in the U.S., a White House official confirmed to Scripps News.

Former special counsel Jack Smith appeared unrattled nearly four hours into his testimony Thursday before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee detailing the two criminal investigations he led of President Donald Trump.

“From reporting, we know that Epstein was deeply involved with Mar-a-Lago,” he pointed out. “He was a frequent visitor to the club for years. The club sent employees, usually young women, to Epstein’s mansion for massages, manicures, and other spa services. Staff members from the club made frequent calls to Epstein’s home in Palm Beach. And on these calls, Epstein engaged in sexually suggestive behavior, such as exposing himself.”

A ballooning Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget. Hiring bonuses of $50,000. Swelling ranks of ICE officers, to 22,000, in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America.

Lindsey Halligan has left the Department of Justice after a federal judge threatened disciplinary actions against the controversial U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Jan. 20.