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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Scrapper Blackwell

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Enjoy!

^{Scrapper Blackwell - Back Door Blues}

"The criminal ineptitude makes you furious."

-- Bruce Springsteen

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News and Opinion

Our Leaders Couldn’t Fix Our Problems If They Wanted To (And They Don’t Want To)

Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected.

These people are not capable of curing our civilization of its dysfunction. They don’t have the necessary skills or attributes. Even if they weren’t a bunch of evil sociopaths who are only in the positions they’re in because of their willingness to collaborate with the agendas of oligarchy, war, militarism, imperialism, ecocide, exploitation, oppression and planetary domination, they don’t even have the personal characteristics necessary to do things like end poverty, rescue our biosphere, bring about world peace or give rise to human thriving. They’d have no idea where to start.

This is the exact same logic as a wife beater who says "Look at what you made me do" after fracturing her orbital bone. https://t.co/vappTZTjfH

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 10, 2026

I say this because as I watch Americans and Australians falling all over themselves to justify the recent police brutality in our respective nations, I am struck by how many people still believe our society is run by leaders who more or less know what they are doing and will guide us to more or less where we need to be. They view their government as a wise and beneficent father who knows what’s best for all of us, and they believe anyone who disagrees with Daddy is being naughty.

That’s really all it is. They’ll make up all sorts of justifications and excuses, but ultimately their police apologia arises from an infantile worldview which believes the authorities are right for no other reason than because they are in authority. They begin with their tongue on the boot of power, and then they make up reasons for why their tongue needs to be there.

That’s the worldview that gets a lot of people through their day. Believing our society is basically just and decent, and that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the world’s problems because we’ve got highly qualified leaders working hard at fixing them.

Believing our society is just and decent allows one to relax under the assumption that they deserve all the comforts they have in life and that the system will never turn against them. If someone is killed by police, or is impoverished or imprisoned or homeless, then it’s because they did something wrong and immoral, and all you need to do to avoid the same fate is follow the rules and make ethical choices. Under a just and decent system, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, so all you need to do is be good and you’ll be fine, and if things are going badly for you it’s because you deserve it.

Believing we’ve got highly qualified leaders working on our world’s problems allows one to relax under the assumption that everything’s taken care of. There’s no need to concern ourselves with all the information which tells us we’re plunging deeper and deeper into tyrannical dystopia on a collision course with environmental catastrophe under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood, because Daddy’s got it all taken care of.

Australian police beat a 69 year old woman at an anti-genocide protest so badly that they've broken her spine in FOUR places

By @skwawkbox https://t.co/FuankqxmQJ

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) February 10, 2026

Really these are just juvenile fairy tales designed to help us psychologically compartmentalize away from uncomfortable realities; no grown adult has any business believing them. But a lot of people would do anything to avoid internal discomfort. Entire psychological universes are constructed around the unconscious agenda of not feeling unpleasant feelings.

Daddy’s not gonna save us, kiddos. Daddy’s a serial killer with dead bodies in the attic, and many important parts of his brain are missing. Our problems aren’t going to get fixed until we get rid of Daddy. Getting rid of Daddy means forcibly getting rid of the entire system under which we live and replacing it with something that serves the interests of ordinary human beings.

Bootlickers hate revolutionary politics, because it is diametrically opposed to their infantile worldview of paternalistic government deities. But things aren’t going to get better until we find a way to get the steering wheel of our world out of the hands of the people who are currently in charge. Until then, everything’s just going to keep getting worse.

Scot Ritter : Is Netanyahu Calling the Shots?

Iran tells US not to let Netanyahu thwart nuclear talks before Trump meeting

Tehran has told the US not to allow Israel to destroy the chance of reaching an agreement over Iran’s nuclear programme amid speculation that Benjamin Netanyahu intends to use a hastily arranged White House meeting with Donald Trump on Wednesday to divert negotiations. Iran’s intervention came as the Israeli prime minister flew to Washington to plead with Trump not to negotiate a deal with Tehran if it excludes limiting the country’s ballistic missile programme, dropping its support for proxy forces in the region and curtailing human rights abuses at home.

Netanyahu is deeply concerned that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, are prepared to strike a deal confined to limiting the scope of Iran’s nuclear programme, which in Israel’s view would do nothing to rein in the long-term threat Tehran poses to the region. ...

Iran expressed its anger at Israel’s intervention. Ali Larijani, the the head of the Supreme National Security Council, the body overseeing Tehran’s negotiating strategy, said: “The Americans should think wisely and not allow him, with his posturing, to create the impression before his flight that he is going to the United States to set the framework of nuclear negotiations. They must remain vigilant regarding Israel’s destructive role.” Larijani met the mediators between Washington and Tehran in Muscat to discuss the agenda for further talks.

Israel’s alarm about a potential deal that undercuts its ambitions for regime change in Tehran has grown ever since the US agreed to reopen indirect talks with Iran, which started in Oman on Friday.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Is Washington Ignoring Iran’s Peace Offers?

Trump Says He May Send Second Aircraft Carrier to Middle East To Prepare for Potential Attack on Iran

President Trump said on Tuesday that he may deploy a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East to prepare for a potential attack on Iran.

“Either we will make a deal, or we will have to do something very tough like last time,” Trump told Axios reporter Barak Ravid. “We have an armada that is heading there, and another one might be going.”

While Trump claims he wants a deal, he also told Ravid that he thinks any agreement should include limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles, which is the Israeli position and is designed to sabotage diplomacy, as Tehran’s missiles are its only form of deterrence and way of launching counterattacks if bombed by the US or Israel.

‘A step in the wrong direction’: Israel’s West Bank plans prompt global backlash

Israeli measures to tighten its control of the West Bank have prompted a global backlash, including a signal from Washington restating the Trump administration’s opposition to annexation of the occupied territory. Announcing the measures, which involve extending Israeli control in areas that are currently under Palestinian administration, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, made clear they were aimed at strengthening Israeli settlements in the West Bank and pre-empting the emergence of an independent sovereign Palestine.

The measures, passed by the Israeli security cabinet, also make it easier to find out who owns land in the West Bank and for non-Arabs to buy property in the territory. It was not initially clear when the new rules would come into effect but they require no further approval. “We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,” Katz said in a joint statement with the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

The EU called the measures “another step in the wrong direction” and said sanctions were “still on the table”, including the possible suspension of some parts of the EU-Israel trade agreement. A joint statement by a group of Arab and Islamic states, which will be central to Donald Trump’s hopes of implementing a peace plan in Gaza, said they “condemned in the strongest terms the illegal Israeli decisions and measures aimed at imposing unlawful Israeli sovereignty”.

The signatories – including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Turkey – said the new measures would “inflame violence, deepen the conflict and endanger regional stability and security”. The UK said it “strongly condemns” the Israeli measures. “Any unilateral attempt to alter the geographic or demographic makeup of Palestine is wholly unacceptable and would be inconsistent with international law,” a UK statement said. “We call on Israel to reverse these decisions immediately.” ...

The outrage at the Israeli measures came on the eve of a planned White House meeting between the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump on Wednesday. The administration made no formal comment, but a White House official issued a statement to reporters indicating its opposition. “President Trump has clearly stated that he does not support Israel annexing the West Bank,” the statement said. “A stable West Bank keeps Israel secure and is in line with this administration’s goal to achieve peace in the region.”

Israeli court blocks life-saving cancer care for boy, 5, due to his Gaza address

An Israeli court has rejected an appeal to allow a five-year-old Palestinian boy with an aggressive form of cancer to enter Israel for life-saving treatment, citing a government policy that bars residents registered in Gaza from crossing the border, even when they no longer live there.

In a ruling issued on Sunday, the Jerusalem district court dismissed a petition seeking permission to transfer the child from Ramallah to Tel HaShomer hospital near Tel Aviv for a bone marrow transplant – a procedure unavailable in either Gaza or the occupied West Bank. The boy has been in the West Bank since 2022 where he was receiving medical care unavailable in the Gaza Strip. His doctors have determined that he urgently requires antibody immunotherapy.

The decision reflects Israel’s sweeping ban on the entry of people living in Gaza after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, including cancer patients who, before the war, had routinely been granted access to life-saving treatment in Jerusalem.

“I have lost my last hope,” the child’s mother told Haaretz, describing the ruling as a death sentence for her son. She said the boy’s father died of cancer three years ago.

In his judgment, the Israeli judge Ram Winograd characterised the petition as an indirect challenge to the security establishment’s post-7 October restrictions, which have prevented Gaza residents from entering Israel for medical treatment. While acknowledging that thousands of children in Gaza are in urgent need of care, the judge argued there was no meaningful distinction between the boy’s case and those of other patients barred by the policy. “The petitioners failed to demonstrate a real and relevant difference,” Winograd wrote, noting that the child’s presence in Ramallah did not, in his view, justify an exemption from the blanket ban.

Russia Strike Coming; Zelensky Rejects Election Call. EU Again Eyes Russian Assets; Alexeyev SBU

Venezuela welcomes Trump-loving US TV channel in ‘marriage of convenience’

Last weekend a team of reporters was finally allowed to visit Caracas. Not the award-winning correspondents from outlets like CNN, Sky News and the BBC, who were among those left waiting at the border in January, but reporters from Newsmax, a conservative network owned by Donald Trump’s billionaire friend Chris Ruddy. ... On Saturday, the anchor for the Florida-based broadcaster, Rob Schmitt, was even granted an “exclusive” audience with one of Venezuela’s most powerful men, the president of the national assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, who is also the brother of the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez.

“In the last 36 days, we have had a very good understanding and relationship working with the government of the United States,” Jorge Rodríguez said in what is thought to be the first such interview since Maduro’s capture. Rodríguez called for a “win-win relationship” and touted some of the world’s biggest reserves of oil, gold and natural gas. “As President Donald Trump has mentioned recently, there’s a lot to be done,” he added, switching to English when asked how Venezuela’s people felt about the arrival of capitalist oil giants. “They are OK,” he said. Venezuela’s decision to open the doors to the conservative network, an upstart rival to Fox News, highlighted the once-unthinkable alignment of interests between the remnants of Maduro’s supposedly “anti-imperialist” regime and their ideological opposites in the White House.

“It is kind of tragicomic. But it is revealing,” the political scientist Michael Paarlberg said of the peculiar political marriage of convenience that lay behind the Newsmax trip to Caracas. From the perspective of Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez, both close Maduro allies, the network’s visit was an opportunity to signal to Trump that they are reliable partners who should be allowed to remain in power without the need for a messy transition towards democracy. “[Trump] wants to keep the oil flowing and that’s something the Rodríguez siblings can guarantee – or at least that’s what they promise. And that’s their bid to stay in power,” said Paarlberg, the former Latin America adviser to Bernie Sanders.

From Trump’s point of view, Paarlberg said the Newsmax interview was a chance to send his Maga movement a simple message: “We’re kicking ass!”

“It was a propaganda piece for consumption by Trump’s base,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, who believed the tete-a-tete was designed to convince Trump voters that the Rodríguez siblings would toe the US line.

Rubio Cuba REGIME CHANGE In Play As Island STARVES

Irish man held in ICE detention says he fears for his life and asks Ireland for help

An Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for five months despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record says he fears for his life and has appealed for help from Ireland’s government. Seamus Culleton said conditions at his detention centre in Texas were akin to “torture” and that the atmosphere was volatile. “I’m not in fear of the other inmates. I’m afraid of the staff. They’re capable of anything.”

Speaking from the El Paso facility to Ireland’s RTÉ radio, Culleton implored the taoiseach, Micheál Martin, to raise his case with Donald Trump when he visits the White House next month for St Patrick’s Day celebrations. “Just try to get me out of here and do all you can, please. It’s an absolute torture, psychological and physical torture,” Culleton said, adding he did not know how much more he could take. “It’s just a horrible, horrible, horrible place.”

Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton, 42, runs a plastering business in the Boston area. After buying supplies at a hardware store on 9 September 2025 he was followed by ICE agents and arrested.

Culleton’s wife in Massachusetts and family in Ireland went public with his story this week in hope of galvanising support for his release. Culleton told RTÉ he had been locked in the same room with 71 other detainees in squalid conditions and with insufficient food and negligible time outside for fresh air, sunshine or exercise. “You don’t know what’s going to happen on a day-to-day basis. You don’t know if there’s going to be riots, you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a nightmare down here.” Showers and toilets were “filthy” and daily meals were child-sized, he said. “So everybody is hungry.”

Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance via the Irish consulate in Austin, Texas, and that the embassy in Washington was engaging with the US Department of Homeland Security at a “senior level”. Speaking to reporters on his way to a cabinet meeting, the taoiseach said he hoped Culleton would be released and expressed concern at the conditions of his detention. Martin did not say whether he would raise the case with Trump. The case could complicate Dublin’s effort to avoid provoking the White House, which has lambasted Ireland over its record on corporate tax, trade and immigration. Some opposition parties have urged the taoiseach to shun the US president in protest at his domestic and foreign policies.

Local police aid ICE by tapping school cameras amid Trump’s immigration crackdown

Police departments across the US are quietly leveraging school district security cameras to assist Donald Trump’s mass immigration enforcement campaign, an investigation by the 74 reveals. Hundreds of thousands of audit logs spanning a month show police are searching a national database of automated license plate reader data, including from school cameras, for immigration-related investigations.

The audit logs originate from Texas school districts that contract with Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that manufactures artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers and other surveillance technology. Flock’s cameras are designed to capture license plate numbers, timestamps and other identifying details, which are uploaded to a cloud server. Flock customers, including schools, can decide whether to share their information with other police agencies in the company’s national network.

Multiple law enforcement leaders acknowledged they conducted the searches in the audit logs to help the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforce federal immigration laws. The Trump administration’s aggressive DHS crackdown, which has grown increasingly unpopular, has had a significant impact on schools. Educators, parents and students as young as five have been swept up, with immigrant families being targeted during school drop-offs and pick-ups. School parking lots are one place the cameras at the center of these searches can be found, along with other locations in the wider community, such as mounted on utility poles at intersections or along busy commercial streets.

The data raises questions about the degree to which campus surveillance technology intended for student safety is being repurposed to support immigration enforcement. “This just really underscores how far-reaching these systems can be,” said Phil Neff, research coordinator at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (UWCHR). Out-of-state law enforcement agencies conducting searches that are unrelated to campus safety but include school district security cameras “really strains any sense of the appropriate use of this technology”.

Flock devices have been installed by more than 100 public school systems nationally, government procurement records show, and audit logs from six Texas school districts show campus camera feeds are captured in a national database that police agencies across the country can access. School police officers use Flock cameras to investigate “road rage”, “speeding on campus”, “vandalism” and “criminal mischief”, records show. There is no evidence school districts themselves use the devices for immigration-related purposes – or that they’re aware other agencies do so. Research by UWCHR and reporting by the technology news outlet 404 Media previously revealed that police agencies nationwide were tapping into Flock camera feeds to help federal immigration officials track targets. In some cases, local law enforcement agencies enabled direct sharing of their networks with the US border patrol.

Amid Secretive Expansion, Leaked Docs Reveal Locations of New ICE Facilities Nationwide

Leaked documents obtained by Wired show that federal immigration enforcement operations in the US appear set to expand even more significantly in the coming years.

Overall, Wired reported on Tuesday, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—has been aggressively expanding its footprint across the country, with “more than 150 leases and office expansions” that “have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas.”

Many of these new facilities are near sensitive locations that ICE has targeted in its immigrant abduction campaigns, including schools, hospitals, and places of worship such as churches and mosques.

For example, records show ICE is planning to occupy an office building just blocks away from a preschool in Houston, Texas, and to move into offices in Irvine, California located near a childcare facility.

To speed up this rapid expansion, DHS has been leaning on the Government Services Administration to write off standard lease procurement procedures and to even conceal lease listings in the name of “national security concerns.”

Taken as a whole, Wired found that “ICE agents and officers will share

buildings with doctors, restaurants, and businesses,” and will “expand existing offices and move in with unrelated government agencies,” such as in Philadelphia, where they are set to share space with the local Division of Motor Vehicles.

“The leasing plans give a clear picture of where ICE is going next in the US: Everywhere,” the report concluded.

Prof. Glenn Diesen : Europe’s Trust in the U.S. After Epstein

NEWS: Representative Becca Balint (D-VT) reviewed unredacted Epstein files at the Department of Justice today and told Drop Site they contradict Trump’s claim that he expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, stating flatly, “That is not true. It’s a lie.”

In July 2025, Trump told… pic.twitter.com/5MOTmOFyiQ

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) February 10, 2026

Congressmen name six wealthy men ‘likely incriminated’ in Epstein files

The Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said on Tuesday that he and his Republican colleague Thomas Massie had forced the justice department to disclose the “hidden” names of six wealthy men they say are “likely incriminated” by their inclusion in the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files. In a post on X at lunchtime, Khanna, of California, named the six as Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, Nicola Caputo, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and Leslie Wexner.

Wexner is the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret. His extensive ties to Epstein – the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier – were exposed in a lengthy New York Times investigation in November. Bin Sulayem is a billionaire businessman and real estate developer from Dubai – and brother of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the head of FIA, the body that governs the world’s motorsport championships, including the prestigious Formula One series. Email exchanges between Bin Sulayem and Epstein have been previously reported.

Attached to the post was a video clip of Khanna reading the names in the House, availing himself of protection from any defamation lawsuit by the speech and debate clause of the US constitution.

“There were six wealthy, powerful men that the DoJ hid for no apparent reason,” Khanna said, claiming that he and Massie had “forced” the department to unredact their names. “Why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the justice department to get these six men’s identities to become public? If we found six men they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those … files.”

Lutnick CAUGHT LYING About Epstein Relationship in New Files

US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick says he had lunch with Epstein on his private island

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. “I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation” in 2012, Lutnick said in testimony on Tuesday before the Senate appropriations committee.

Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution-related charges in Florida in 2008, including soliciting a minor, in a controversial deal that let him avoid federal charges. “My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies,” said Lutnick. “I had another couple with – they were there as well, with their children. And we had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour.”

The US House member Thomas Massie, a Republican, called for the commerce secretary – a Wall Street billionaire, and longtime ally of Donald Trump – to resign over the weekend. During an appearance on CNN’s Inside Politics, Massie said: “Really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporterson Tuesday that Lutnick “remains a very important member” of the president’s team. She also said Trump – a former friend of Epstein – “fully supports” Lutnick.

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Debunked claims from election deniers influenced FBI raid in Georgia, affidavit reveals

The FBI’s rationale behind raiding the Fulton county election office in Georgia last month was based on debunked claims from election deniers and came after a referral from a White House lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election, a search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday reveals. The warrant offers the first insight for the basis for the FBI’s 28 January raid on the Fulton county election office. FBI officials seized nearly 700 boxes of election materials in the raid.

The FBI’s investigation “originated” from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, an attorney who sought to overturn the 2020 election and contacted justice department officials to urge them to file a motion at the US supreme court to nullify the election. Olsen began working at the White House last year to investigate election integrity problems.

The FBI’s witnesses in the investigation include a cadre of conservative activists who have been hounding state officials with claims of wrongdoing in Fulton county for years. Many of their claims have been investigated by state officials and debunked. Other witnesses include two Trump-aligned members of the Georgia state election board whom Trump publicly praised as “pit bulls” at a 2024 rally. Those two members are Janice Johnston and Janelle King, who is married to Kelvin King, a current candidate for Georgia secretary of state.

“Seizure of the election records would corroborate the analysis that evinces that election records were destroyed and or the tabulation of votes included materially false votes, either through duplicated scanning of specific ballots, interjection of pristine ballots, or other methods described above,” Hugh Raymond Evans, an FBI special agent, wrote in the affidavit. Trump lost Georgia in 2020 by nearly 12,000 votes, a result that was twice confirmed. Claims of wrongdoing have nonetheless been central to his efforts to keep alive the myth that the 2020 election was stolen. ...

“The affidavit is a total rehash of rejected and debunked claims from five years ago. While there were certainly administrative errors (as there always are in every election, including in states where Trump won), even this affidavit confirms that none of those were intentional, and that the ultimate count of the actual ballots (the paper ballots, not the images, not the tapes, which are not ballots) was correct and the right result reached,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

AIPAC Crushed In EARTHQUAKE New Jersey Race

Conceding NJ Race, Malinowski Applauds Progressive Winner Mejía for ‘Inspiring So Many Voters’

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski on Tuesday conceded the 2026 Democratic primary race to represent New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District to progressive challenger Analilia Mejía, whom he vowed to back in the general election.

In a statement posted on social media, Malinowski praised Mejía for “running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters,” while also emphasizing that “it is essential that we send a Democrat to Washington to fill this seat, not a rubber stamp” for President Donald Trump.

Malinowski then unloaded on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the US. Through its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, AIPAC spent a significant sum hammering the former Democratic congressman with negative ads that accused him of supporting Trump and US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) operations.

“The outcome of this race cannot be understood without also taking into account the massive flood of dark money that AIPAC spent on dishonest ads,” he said. “I wish I could say today that this effort, which was meant to intimidate Democrats across the country, failed in NJ-11. But it did not. I met several voters in the final days of the campaign who had seen the ads and asked me, sincerely, ‘Are you MAGA? Are you for ICE?’”

During his previous tenure serving in Congress from 2019 to 2023, Malinowski was a reliable vote in favor of sending military aid to Israel. However, AIPAC and some associated political action committees decided to target the New Jersey Democrat when he suggested putting conditions on future aid packages to Israel.

Malinowski said that no Democrat should accept support from AIPAC, which he described as a pernicious influence on US elections.

“Our Democratic Party should have nothing to do with a pro-Trump-billionaire-funded organization,” he said, “that demands absolute fealty to positions that are outside of the American pro-Israel community, then smears those who don’t fall in line.”

Malinowski vowed to oppose any candidate that AIPAC backs “openly or surreptitiously” in future contests in the district.

“The threat unlimited dark money poses to our democracy,” he emphasized, “is far more significant than the views of a single member of Congress on Middle East policy.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who also endorsed Mejía in the Democratic primary, also congratulated her on her win, emphasizing the significant number of obstacles she needed to overcome before emerging victorious.

“Starting with almost no name recognition, Analilia Mejía took on the oligarchs, the Republican establishment and Democratic establishment—and WON,” Sanders wrote on social media. “The American people want leaders who stand up to the billionaire class and fight for working families.”

The progressive advocacy organization Our Revolution praised Mejía for beating New Jersey machine politics, and pointed to her past campaign work as a sign of what she could do if she wins the April general election and is sworn in as a congresswoman.

“As a grassroots organizer, she helped win a $15 minimum wage and paid sick days,” Our Revolution wrote. “As national political director for Bernie 2020, she’s built movements to un-rig the economy.”

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Trump to repeal Obama-era finding foundational to US climate rules

In what is set to be its most audacious anti-environment move yet, the Trump administration on Thursday will roll back the mechanism allowing the government to regulate planet-heating pollution, the White House press secretary has told reporters.

“President Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the recession of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history.”

The finding determined that CO2 and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. Its overturning would be a “devastating blow to millions of Americans facing growing risks of unnatural disasters”, said Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at the environmental advocacy non-profit National Resources Defense Council.

“The Trump EPA is cynically pretending climate change isn’t a risk to Americans’ health and welfare,” said Hankins. “This is the biggest attack ever on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis. ...

In a statement, an EPA spokesperson called the endangerment finding “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said “hardworking families and small businesses have paid the price” for it. “EPA is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people,” the spokesperson said.

Trump administration removes LGBTQ+ Pride flag from Stonewall national monument

The Trump administration has removed a large pride flag from the Stonewall national monument in New York City, marking the latest move by the federal government to end diversity initiatives and sanitize the history shared in national parks. The monument commemorates the June 1969 riots that followed a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The six days of protests against the police action were a key moment in sparking the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the site has since become a national symbol of LGBTQ+ Pride.

“They cannot erase our history. Our Pride flag will be raised again,” the Manhattan borough president, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is gay, wrote in a social media post. He confirmed that the Pride flag had been removed over the 7 February weekend following a 21 January memorandum from the interior department.

The memo from the interior department, which oversees the National Park Service, provided “guidance to superintendents and site managers on policies and procedures for the display and flying of non-agency flags and pennants”, stating only US flags, agency flags and the POW/MIA flag are allowed at parks, while including a list of exemptions that included flags that “provide historical context”.

Interior department flagpoles are “not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public”, the memo read. “Rather, approved non-agency flags and pennants may be flown as an expression of the Federal Government’s official sentiments.” ...

Stacy Lentz, co-owner of the Stonewall Inn which operates independently from the national monument, called the removal of the flag an “awful attack on the park”. “We can’t trust the government with our history or with our stories,” she said.

Gray wolf appears in Los Angeles county for first time in more than 100 years

A gray wolf wandered into Los Angeles county for the first time in more than a century on Saturday morning. “This is the most southern verified record of a gray wolf in modern times,” Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the California department of fish and wildlife, said.

The three-year-old black coat female, known as BEY03F, crossed into LA county around 6am on 7 February. Born in 2023 in Plumas county in the Beyem Seyo pack, she “traversed nearly the entire range of the Sierra Nevada mountains”, probably in search of a mate, said Hunnicutt. Wildlife officials have been able to track her location because BEY03F was fitted with a GPS collar in May 2025 while passing through Tulare county. To date, California fish and wildlife has not received any reports or sightings from the Los Angeles county public.

On Tuesday, she was traveling further north, “likely deterred by the Interstate 5”, said Hunnicutt. Vehicle strikes are a leading cause of death for wolves. “It’s possible she may continue to travel hundreds of miles in search of a mate or she may come across a male tomorrow.”

The continental United States was historically home to thousands of gray wolves, but hunters and trappers extirpated the species, with the last wild wolf in California shot in 1924. In 1973, the population was protected by the Endangered Species Act and later reintroduced to Yellowstone national park in the 1990s. Those wolves eventually dispersed across the lower 48 states, with the first wolf crossing into California in 2011.

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

How Israel is engineering the failure of Gaza's ceasefire

How Israel Controls the West

How Dependent Is Canada On The US?

Vance’s X Account Deletes Post About Armenian Genocide

‘They always gave us the heaviest work’: how Maga billionaires relied on Mexican labor

US restaurants targeted for opposing ICE: ‘I refuse to cook for fascists’

Jeffrey Epstein plotted with lawyer to try to have woman deported, documents reveal

Epstein engineered intimate relationship for Tesla’s Kimbal Musk, emails show

Lawmakers in Both Parties Stunned and Disgusted After Viewing Unredacted Epstein Files

Keir Today! Gone Tomorrow?

Trump Threatens SECOND ARMADA To Iran As Bibi PANICS

'I believe you just lied under oath': Dem Rep. asks Bondi about Trump's mentions in Epstein files

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A Little Night Music

Scrapper Blackwell – Blues Before Sunrise

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell – Blue Night Blues

Scrapper Blackwell – Kokomo Blues

Scrapper Blackwell – Mr Scrapper's Blues

Scrapper Blackwell – Goin' Where The Monon Crosses The Yellow Dog

Scrapper Blackwell - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Scrapper Blackwell - Down In Black Bottom

Scrapper Blackwell - Down South Blues

Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell - How Long Has That Evening Train Been Gone

Scrapper Blackwell - Cherry

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