February 8, 2026

The Sleaziest, Cheesiest President* in U.S. History. Kenneth Vogel, et al., of the New York Times: Donald “Trump’s allies are offering access to him and other perks to donors who give at least $1 million to a new group supporting flashy initiatives he is planning around the nation’s 250th birthday, according to documents and interviews. The group, Freedom 250, is threatening to overshadow years of plans meant to reach the broadest cross section of Americans for semiquincentennial celebrations. They are now taking on a Trumpian flare, replete with marble and machismo. But Freedom 250 has also emerged as another vehicle, akin to the White House ballroom project, through which people and companies with interests before the Trump administration can make tax-deductible donations to gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fund-raising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters.”

     ~~~ Marie: Of course Trump doesn't care about -- but he is also too stupid to understand -- the irony of reducing to a private party for a tiny group of ultra-wealthy elites and oligarchs what was meant to be a national celebration of the 250th anniversary of what would become an inspirational democracy. Maybe somebody should point out this part of the Declaration's text: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [that is, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The Second-Most Sleazy, Cheesy President in U.S. History. Danny Hakim of the New York Times: “Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of President Bill Clinton’s signature post-White House endeavors, new documents released by the Justice Department show. Ms. Maxwell took part in budget discussions related to the first Clinton Global Initiative conference; talked through challenges about it with both Clinton aides and Publicis Groupe, the company that produced the inaugural event; and arranged to wire $1 million to pay Publicis for its work on 'the Clinton project,' according to emails in the massive cache of documents collected as part of the government’s investigations of Mr. Epstein. The source of the money is unclear, including whether Mr. Epstein provided the funds. However, the emails show that he was aware of the payment....

“Ms. Maxwell’s involvement in the launch of the Clinton Global Initiative took place in 2004, before Mr. Epstein’s 2006 indictment and 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution with a minor, and long before Ms. Maxwell, a daughter of the media baron Robert Maxwell, was sentenced in 2022 to two decades in prison for conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls. The emails support an assertion Ms. Maxwell made last year in an interview with the Justice Department that she played a key role in helping set up the global conference.”

James Gordon of the Daily Mail: "A federal statement announcing Jeffrey Epstein's death has surfaced in newly released Justice Department files but it carries a date that appears to precede the moment he was officially found dead inside his New York prison cell. The document, issued by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and dated Friday, August 9, 2019, states that Epstein had already been found unresponsive and pronounced dead. But prison records and official accounts show Epstein was not discovered unresponsive until the morning of August 10, 2019, when a corrections officer delivering breakfast found him in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan." The article includes a facsimile of the original draft memo created by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: On YouTube, I saw two videos by fairly reliable lefties who also put up on the screen a copy of the actual SDNY announcement, dated August 10, 2019. The August 9 memo said only that Epstein was "found unresponsive in his cell and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter." The August 10 memo appended to the end of that sentence, "... of an apparent suicide." You can see for yourself here. As Aaron Parnas (yes, Lev's son!) says, if DOJ wants to clear up this date anomaly, they could simply "release the metadata behind [the document dated August 9] ... to show that it was actually created on August 10...." At any rate, the date discrepancy, along with some other bits that Parnas points out don't fit the official narrative, raise questions. I promise I'm not going crazy on you here, but our federal government is truly screwing up everything (Trump was president* in 2019), and taking care of a VIP criminal in their custody is one of the screw-ups.

U.K. Michael Shear of the New York Times: “Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff to Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, resigned under pressure on Sunday after days of political upheaval over his role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as ambassador to the United States. Mr. McSweeney, a longtime protégé of Mr. Mandelson’s, said in a statement that 'the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.' He added, 'When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment, and I take full responsibility for that advice.' Mr. Starmer’s allies in the Labour Party have been calling for Mr. McSweeney to depart for days, after emails released by the U.S. Justice Department revealed a much closer relationship than had previously been known between Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Epstein, the wealthy sex offender and disgraced financier who committed suicide in prison in 2019.”

When historians write the chronicle of this scoundrel time (not in the Washington Post, obviously) they will point to what Bezos did for Melania while gutting his own newspaper as the most glaring symptom of cultural collapse in a democracy hanging on to truth and knowledge by the barest of threads. -- Historian Simon Schama ~~~

~~~ Ed Pilkington & Jeremy Barr of the Guardian: “Jeff Bezos’s axing of more than 300 jobs at the [Washington Post] has renewed fears about the resilience of America’s democracy to withstand Trump’s attacks.... Robert McCartney, a 39-year veteran of the Post until he retired five years ago..., has been astonished by the stark contrast between Bezos’s handling of the newspaper during Donald Trump’s first term in office and his conduct now in Trump 2.0. McCartney was a senior journalist on the paper during Bezos’s initial eight years of ownership, through Trump’s first presidency. Back then, he, like many others, was grateful for Bezos’s tutelage. 'We saw him as a savior. He pumped money into the Post, didn’t meddle in the newsroom and stood up to Trump,' he said....  Bezos sank $75m into that pile of “gilded trash” [-- that is, the 'Melania movie' --] yet, unlike the Post, seems unfazed by the film’s paltry return on investment....

“While many papers have been folding, others have fallen into the hands of a new breed of super-wealthy tech and venture capitalist owners who, like Bezos, see journalism as an asset to monetize: the Los Angeles Times was acquired in 2018 by a biotech billionaire, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Like Bezos, Soon-Shiong has displayed symptoms of Trump Appeasement Syndrome.... Trump has taken his vendetta against truth-seekers to a new level. He has stripped public media channels NPR and PBS of more than $1bn in federal funding, launched full-frontal attacks on individual journalists and outlets exposing his corruption and lies and sustained a bullying campaign against corporate owners designed to browbeat them into subservience. CBS News is the consummate example.”

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Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: “...  Donald Trump became incensed when a reporter tried to compare his excuse that a 'staffer' posted a racist video with his charge that former President Joe Biden didn’t know what was being done in his name.” MB: Trump is back to declaring himself “the least racist president.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Joseph Ramos of the Bulwark: “In a tweet on Friday morning, [Sen. Tim] Scott [R-S.C.] said he was 'praying [Trump's racist post] was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.' Which raises a question: If this post was the most racist thing Scott has seen from this White House, what were the other racist things in contention for that title? It turns out there’s a fair bit from which to choose in that category. Here’s a top ten list of racist words and deeds from Trump and his administration since his return to office in January 2025.” MB: It's quite a compelling list. ~~~

~~~ Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: “... this is the most flagrant display of presidential racism since Woodrow Wilson screened D.W. Griffith’s 'The Birth of a Nation' in the White House in 1915. [The clip] uses an old white supremacist trope to denigrate the Obamas and, by extension, every American who shares their racial background. It presents people of African descent as little removed from beasts, an insult used to great effect in 'The Birth of a Nation.'... What motivates Trump? The answer is simple: racism.... Racism, among other things, is a kind of chauvinism, a belief in one’s inherent superiority, based on nothing other than a meaningless accident of birth. It’s an ideology that papers over feelings of inadequacy....” Update: the link has been changed to one that appears to be a gift link. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: For a couple of days, I have been thinking about not what motivates Trump but about what underlying factors determine his policy at a time when many people argue that he doesn't even have a policy, that he does what he does on whims. But the whims come from somewhere, and I agree with Bouie that the main "somewhere" is racism. Fundamentally, racism gives Trump an excuse to ignore the Constitution. It defines his immigration policy. It undergirds his domestic policy: no "free stuff" for dark-skinned people; no whining about slavery. It affects his foreign policy: who cares about brown people in boats or indigenous people on Greenland? Racism isn't everything, though. There's also Trump's sexism and what I would call his "wealthism."

Bouie touches on "wealthism" when he writes, "Let’s suppose you’re the spoiled son of a self-made man. Let’s suppose that, despite your flash and bravado, you’ve failed at virtually everything you’ve tried. You’re the laughingstock of polite society, a punchline for the privileged. You think you’re superior enough to be the president of the United States ... but the actual president is a man of humble origins, a minority of the kind your family didn’t even rent to when you were in the landlord business. And he is claiming power that rightfully belongs to you." 

Bouie doesn't really get at sexism, but it matters. It explains not just Trump's own mistreatment of women but his indifference to other men mistreated women. And it all comes down to, "If you're not Donald J. Trump, you're inferior." Generally speaking, the more you are like Donald J. Trump, the more acceptable you are. That is, everything boils down to another "ism": narcissism. However, it turns out that your wealth can sometimes overcome your race: Don King & Middle East sheiks are Trump's "friends." Your sex? Maybe not so much, but wealth definitely helps here, too: Trump will pretend to like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson & billionaire backer/Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. ~~~  

~~~ Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post: “There’s a war on Black wealth.... Under the leadership of Elon Musk, the U.S. DOGE Service slashed the federal workplace, cutting jobs that helped create a Black middle class in many communities, including the one where I live. The Black unemployment rate increased by over a percentage point last year, reaching 7.5 percent in December. The increase is heavily linked to the reduction of the federal workforce. Private corporations, colleges and nonprofits, fearful of ... Donald Trump’s wrath, have scuttled diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and hiring practices meant to correct past discriminatory hiring practices.” Singletary interviews Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) about his book that features the first eight Black Congressmen from South Carolina: men who served during Reconstruction. “But when Reconstruction ended in 1877, many of their accomplishments were deliberately reversed. The subsequent era of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws trapped families in a cycle of debt that made property ownership nearly impossible for a century. The similarities between then and now are striking. We are in another period of attacking the ability of minorities to gain financial traction, Clyburn says.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Of course what Singletary & Clyburn mean by "wealth" is not astronomical riches but merely a piece of the pie. Trump doesn't think of a comfortably-middle-class Black family as possessing "wealth." I'd guess he thinks of Tyler Perry as someone who passes the "wealth" test even if Perry detests Trump [NYT link].  

Molly Jong-Fast in the New York Times: “Jeffrey Epstein ... will go down in history as perhaps this century’s most horrifically accomplished social climber. He knew pretty much everybody, name-dropping, favor-trading, sex-trafficking and possibly blackmailing his way all the way up, up, up.... And what does Mr. Trump have to do with it? He’d promised to rid America of exactly the sort of self-dealing global elite that Mr. Epstein was in the middle of. 'Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,' Mr. Trump said in his 2016 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination.... Finally, someone was letting the American people know the terrible secret that no matter how hard one worked, no matter how smart one was, there was no getting ahead in America circa 2016. It wasn’t their fault. It was the fault of the elites. Around this time, we saw the rise of QAnon, a conspiracy theory that claimed that a sex-trafficking ring was being run by elites out of the nonexistent basement of a pizza shop. QAnon sounded crazy to the rest of us at the time — and it’s still crazy — but the Epstein files show it had parallels in reality.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Claire Healy & Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald: “There’s no evidence that Epstein ... kept his own 'client list' of men. But ... the FBI had compiled its own list of accusations against prominent men based largely on uncorroborated tips and interviews the DOJ had compiled since Epstein’s 2019 arrest. Among the names on the list: ... Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, private-equity investor Leon Black, L Brands founder Les Wexner, banker Jes Staley.... The presentation appears to have been compiled by task forces at the FBI and New York Police Department. The list was arranged into a detailed PowerPoint published among millions of pages of Epstein-related documents released by the Department of Justice in January.... Not all of the referenced activity is necessarily illegal, and it’s not clear that the men were connected explicitly with Epstein’s crimes.... A version of the PowerPoint was sent to FBI Director Kash Patel on Aug. 7, 2025 — a month before he told Congress the agency had no evidence to prosecute other men in connection with Epstein’s crimes.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The PowerPoint page is copied in the Herald page, but it isn't readable. I copied it to MS Paint, where I could read it without manipulating it at all. But when I transferred the Paint image to Blogspot, it was largely unreadable. So I'd say if you want to read the PowerPoint presentation, transfer it from the Herald page to a graphics editor like Paint (or a better one).

Amelia Gentleman of the Guardian: “The Epstein files reveal a patriarchy in action. This is a world where the men are rich and powerful, and the women are not. The emails showcase the private behaviour of a male ruling class, as they network, joke and trade information. Women exist at the periphery, tolerated because they organise the diaries of the busy men, they arrange food, they grace a table, they provide sex.” MB: Gentleman's observations are not even vaguely surprising, but they do jibe with my remarks further up the page about Trump's sexism. It explains, and probably was enhanced by, Trump's long affiliation with Epstein. 

David Stern & Kostiantyn Khudov of the Washington Post: Days after negotiations to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine ended inconclusively in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia and the United States were discussing bilateral economic agreements worth some $12 trillion, including deals that would affect Ukraine. Zelensky said intelligence sources showed him documents that laid out a framework for U.S.-Russian economic cooperation that he called the  'Dmitriev package' — named for Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has been a central figure in negotiations over a potential ceasefire.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: It's kind of hard to believe that Trump is capable of playing the long game, but it does seem plausible that what Putin is dangling in front of Trump's greedy maw is a carrot and not a stick. Forget the as-yet unsubstantiated "pee-pee tapes"; it's all about the money Trump hopes to make off colluding with Russia. ~~~

     ~~~ Yet Another Trumpy Deadline. Donna Ferguson of the Guardian & Agencies: “Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the US has given Ukraine and Russia yet another deadline to reach a peace settlement, and is now proposing the war should end by June. The Ukrainian president also told reporters that both sides had been invited to further talks next week.... Before Donald Trump took office, he promised to “end the war in 24 hours”. Later, his special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, suggested both sides could reach an agreement within 100 days of Trump’s inauguration. After this failed to occur, the US president set a new deadline for a deal in August last year, which also passed without any sign of peace, and in December he said a draft agreement to end the war was nearly '95% done'.”

Spy Stuff. Julian Barnes of the New York Times: “Members of Congress were briefed this week on a whistle-blower report about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing a person close to ... [Donald] Trump, according to people familiar with the material. It is not clear what country the two foreign nationals were from, but the discussion involved Iran. The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, around the time the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran.... The identity of the person close to Mr. Trump could not be immediately determined, nor could the content of what the two foreign nationals were saying about the person.... The whistle-blower accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of limiting who could see the report and of blocking wider distribution among the nation’s spy agencies.... People who have reviewed the whistle-blower report have differed about the importance of the underlying intelligence, which was collected by the National Security Agency.” ~~~

     ~~~ Cate Brown of the Guardian: “... rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, Gabbard took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj. One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office, Bakaj said.” The Guardian report has more details. 

⭐Steve Vladeck on Substack: "Late Friday, two of the nation's most right-wing circuit judges adopted an odious legal claim that district court judges from across the country (and ideological spectrum) have overwhelmingly rejected.... In a ruling handed down just two days after oral argument, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit adopted the extreme minority view — [held] that, yes, the government can indefinitely detain without bond millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety. The Fifth Circuit’s opinion was written by Judge Edith Jones and joined in full by Judge Kyle Duncan — two of the most reactionary, right-wing federal appellate judges in the country...." Via Heather Cox Richardson. ~~~

~~~ Heather Cox Richardson: “On January 20, Judd Legum of Popular Information reported that ICE stopped paying third-party providers for medical care for detainees on October 3, 2025, and that it would not start even to process claims again until at least April 30, 2026.... From 2002 to 2023, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helped to make sure detainees had medical care if an ICE facility couldn’t provide it, with ICE paying the VA for the coverage. But in 2023, Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville lied that President Joe Biden was 'robbing veterans to pay off illegals,' and on September 30, 2025, a small right-wing nonprofit sued to get documents from the Trump administration about the VA’s role in detainee care. On October 3, Legum discovered, 'the VA “abruptly and instantly terminated” its agreement with ICE,' leaving it with no way to provide prescribed medication or access off-site care.” Read on. It gets worse; eventually, Richardson cites a person who compares DHS's immigration “warehouses” to “Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945.”

Ernesto Londoño & Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times: “The top lawyer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota left the agency in recent days, exiting as a crush of litigation stemming from the immigration crackdown in the state has overwhelmed the court system. The lawyer, Jim Stolley, the outgoing chief counsel for ICE in the state, has not publicly addressed the circumstances of his departure. Starting this week, emails sent to his government account generated an automated response noting that he had 'retired from public service.'... Hundreds of immigrants [to Minnesota] are fighting deportation orders as well as the circumstances of their detention. Government lawyers have failed to respond in a timely manner to the pile of lawsuits and court orders stemming from the mass roundup of immigrants.” An MS NOW story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Either (a) not employing enough lawyers to handle the caseload was part of ICE Barbie's plan or (b) she didn't have a plan. Either way, the failure is Noem's. It is not a circumstance that could possibly be unforeseen: more detentions → more cases. And it's a failure to carry out her oath to defend the Constitution, because detaining people without cause or after a judge has ordered their release violates the people's Constitutional rights.

Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News: "An 18-month-old baby held with her parents at a South Texas immigration detention center became so ill last month that she was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening respiratory failure — then sent back to detention days later, where she was denied daily medication doctors prescribed, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday. The toddler, Amalia, remained in detention for another nine days and was released only after lawyers filed an emergency habeas corpus petition in federal court challenging her continued confinement. She was freed Friday after the filing. Amalia had been healthy before immigration officers arrested her family in El Paso in December and transferred them to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a remote, prisonlike facility where hundreds of immigrant children are held with their parents. Advocates and pediatric experts have warned that conditions at the center are unsafe for young children."

Colleen DeGuzman of the Texas Tribune: "Two active cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of COVID-19 have been identified at a massive immigration detention center in El Paso. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar disclosed the cases a day after her Friday visit to Camp East Montana, the 5,000-bed tent facility the federal government hastily built on the Fort Bliss Army base.... The cases of Tuberculosis and COVID-19, two diseases that spread through the air, have underscored concern about the conditions at Camp East Montana and other immigration detention centers. Immigration rights organizations have been warning about Camp East Montana’s 'inhumane conditions,' citing physical abuse and alarming medical neglect."

Bernard Mokam of the New York Times: “Local authorities declared an unlawful assembly after protests on Saturday escalated near a federal building just outside Minneapolis, leading to at least 50 arrests, the county sheriff’s office said. The incident occurred outside the B.H. Whipple Federal Building, a facility that has become both a staging ground for immigration agents and a hub for demonstrations against the crackdown in the Twin Cities. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office noted that while 'many individuals' peacefully assembled, 'some agitators' hurled chunks of ice at law enforcement, striking a sheriff’s deputy in the head and breaking the windshield of a squad car.... Of those arrested, 25 people were detained by state troopers for failing to comply with dispersal orders, the Minnesota State Patrol said in a statement. No weapons were used during the arrests, and one officer suffered minor injuries, the agency said.”

MEANWHILE, in Italy. Sean Ingle of the Guardian: “Team GB [Great Britain] skier Gus Kenworthy has launched a blistering attack on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers by urinating the words 'Fuck Ice' on the snow just before the start of the Winter Olympics. In a post on Instagram the 34-year-old, who will compete for Team GB in the free-ski half-pipe in Milano Cortina, also urged Americans to write to their senators to 'rein in ICE and border patrol.... Innocent people have been murdered, and enough is enough,' said Kenworthy.... Kenworthy, who was born in Chelmsford but moved to Colorado when his family emigrated while he was two years old, competed for Team US in 2014 and 2018. He then switched his allegiance to Team GB for the last Winter Games in Beijing, finishing eighth, but still lives in the US.... ICE agents are here in Milan as part of the security detail for the US vice president JD Vance.... Protesters in Milan carried banners reading 'ICE out', 'Fuck ICE'.”

Annals of “Journalism,” Ctd. Benjamin Mullin, et al., of the New York Times: “Will Lewis, the embattled chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post, has stepped down, the company announced Saturday, days after the newspaper came under widespread criticism for laying off hundreds of its journalists. Mr. Lewis said in a statement that he had made the decision 'in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.' His email, which was terse, thanked only Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Post, and did not mention journalists at the newspaper. Mr. Lewis left three days after the company, facing years of financial losses, undertook a significant round of layoffs that cut 30 percent of the staff — more than 300 journalists — decimating The Post’s local, international and sports coverage.” An AP report is here. ~~~

~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$ notes that "Will Lewis will no longer get paid for not doing any work," & he republishes a chunk of a (firewalled) Status report by Jon Passantino which offers evidence that "Bezos’ own actions have led to the destruction of the great civic institution that once brought down a sitting U.S. president, exposed covert NSA surveillance programs, and revealed Donald Trump’s assault on democracy that led to the January 6 attack — earning dozens of Pulitzer Prizes along the way. But in recent years, the paper’s very survival has been stymied by Bezos’ clear conflicts of interest, and general disinterest, as an owner." Lemieux' suggestion is not that Bezos made bad business decisions but that he made the bad decisions he made because he wanted the paper to fail. So, um, Bezos is a genius, after all?

Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post: American “Lindsey Vonn’s pursuit of a downhill medal in her fifth Olympic Games ended violently Sunday morning [in Cortina d'Ampezzo] with a gruesome crash that left her screaming in pain and being airlifted from the mountain.” 

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Louisiana. Quinn Coffman of the (Baton Route) Advocate: "Democrat Chasity Verret Martinez won Saturday's special election for State House District 60, defeating Republican Brad Daigle. Martinez, a member of the Iberville Parish Council, earned 62% of the vote against Daigle, a small-business owner and member of the Greater Baton Rouge Port Commission.... While Martinez took a nearly 2-to-1 victory, District 60 is a somewhat purple area, which voted for Donald Trump in each of his three elections, but also swung back to vote for Gov. John Bel Edwards in the Democrat's 2019 reelection."