Washington's ambassador to Paris, Charles Kushner, has been denied direct access to French government members after he failed to attend a Foreign Ministry summons.
Four years ago today, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin launched a “special military operation” involving dozens of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities before dawn. In 1994, in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, Russia, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, agreed not to use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons left in Ukraine after the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991. At the time, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Russia violated that agreement when it invaded in 2014 after Ukrainians threw out Russia-backed oligarch Viktor Yanukovych.
Putin had been eyeing Ukraine’s industrialized region since at least summer 2016, when Russian operatives told then-candidate Donald J. Trump that they would help Trump win the White House if he would look the other way when Russia installed Yanukovych to govern a new “autonomous” republic there. Two days before he invaded in 2022, Putin recognized “new republics” in Ukraine and then, in his announcement of his invasion, claimed he had to protect the people there from “persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime.” He called for “demilitarization” of Ukraine, demanding that soldiers lay down their weapons and saying that any bloodshed would be on their hands.
Putin called for the murder of Ukrainian leaders in the executive branch and parliament and intended to seize or kill those involved in the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which sought to turn the country away from Russia and toward a democratic government within Europe, and which itself prompted a Russian invasion. Putin planned for his troops to seize Ukraine’s electric, heating, and financial systems so the people would have to do as he wished. The operation was intended to be lightning fast.
But rather than collapsing, Ukrainians held firm. The day after Russia invaded, Zelensky and his cabinet recorded a video in Kyiv. “We are all here,” he said. “Our soldiers are here. The citizens are here, and we are here. We will defend our independence…. Glory to Ukraine!” When the United States offered the next day to transport Zelensky outside the country, where he could lead a government in exile, he responded:
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
During his first term, Trump had weakened the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that stood against Russian aggression, but once President Joe Biden took office, he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked quietly to strengthen NATO and ties with other allies and partners. They rallied the G7 (the world’s seven wealthiest liberal democracies), the European Union, and others to supply Ukraine with weapons and humanitarian assistance. Under Biden, the U.S. led the international response, providing about $50 billion in military aid and about $53 billion in humanitarian aid, as well as coordinating aid from allies and partners.
The U.S. and allies and partners also united behind extraordinary economic sanctions, including, on February 26, 2022, the exclusion of Russian banks from SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. SWIFT is a Belgian-based network that enables banks to transfer payments across international borders, and its ban on Russian banks isolated Russia’s economy.
Over the next three years, Ukraine’s stand against Russia boosted the morale of those defending their own countries against invaders and, in turn, captured the imagination of people around the world hoping to stem the rise of authoritarianism. Ukraine’s society transformed to bring the power of civilians as well as soldiers behind the war effort. The Ukraine army grew to be the largest in Europe, with a million people, even as Russian attacks killed civilians as well as soldiers and destroyed hospitals, infrastructure, and the energy sector. Ukraine became the global leader in drone technology, while Russia’s economy faltered and its front lines dug in.
Last year, foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum wrote: “The only way Putin wins now is by persuading Ukraine’s allies to be sick of the war…by persuading Trump to cut off Ukraine…and by convincing Europeans that they can’t win either.”
Indeed, while Americans supported Ukraine, Trump never wavered from his support for Russia. Although a bipartisan majority in Congress would have passed more funding for Ukraine, after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Trump loyalist House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refused to bring Ukraine funding to the floor for a vote.
Then, in December 2023, MAGA Republican lawmakers said they would not pass a new measure to fund Ukraine’s assistance without measures strengthening the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Senators wrote the measure they demanded, only to have Trump urge his congressional supporters to kill it in order to keep the issue of immigration alive for the 2024 election.
By the time Congress finally passed a measure appropriating $60 billion in aid for Ukraine in April 2024, the lack of funding for six months had helped shift the war in Russia’s favor.
Once Trump was back in the White House, the U.S. position changed dramatically. As a team from the Wall Street Journal later explained, even before Trump took the oath of office, Putin was reaching out to Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer with no experience in diplomacy, to negotiate over Ukraine. In February, Witkoff went to Moscow to meet with Putin without a translator and without being briefed by the CIA.
On February 12, 2025, the day after Witkoff returned, Trump talked to Putin for nearly an hour and a half and came out from the “highly productive” call parroting Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine. Two days later, Vice President J.D. Vance used the Munich Security Conference to attack Europe and its democratic values while declining to acknowledge the threat of Russian aggression, indicating that the U.S. would no longer stand with Ukraine. Days later, a readout of a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that Russia was in dire need of relief from economic sanctions.
Then, on February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance ambushed Ukraine president Zelensky in an Oval Office meeting that seemed designed to give the White House an excuse for siding with Russia. The American leaders spouted Russian propaganda, trying to bully Zelensky into accepting a ceasefire on Russia’s terms and signing over rights to Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals, while accusing him of being “ungrateful” for U.S. support. Zelensky didn’t take the bait, and Trump ended up furiously defending Putin before walking out. Shortly after, Zelensky and his team were asked to leave the White House.
In August, Trump met Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, on U.S. soil, greeting him in Alaska on a literal red carpet and clapping as Putin walked to greet him, before taking him alone into the presidential limousine to drive to the meeting site. Trump has placed a photograph from that meeting on display in the White House.
Putin’s attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine have increased dramatically since Trump took office, even as Witkoff has been negotiating officially for an end to the war and quietly over deals on oil, gas, and perhaps minerals. In April the U.S. appeared to back a plan that essentially gave Russia all it wanted, including the Ukrainian land it had invaded. Since then, the administration’s ongoing “negotiations” with Russia resulted in demands of major concessions from Ukraine but none from Russia. Those talks are ongoing, now with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner involved, although as recently as last week, Russia had not wavered from its demands for Ukraine’s territory.
Today, landmark buildings across the world that were lit up in blue and yellow to show support for Ukraine included the Council of the European Union and European Commission buildings in Brussels, Belgium; Canada’s Parliament and the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa; the Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia; The Colosseum in Rome, Italy; the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France; the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany; the Tower of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark; Sebitseom in Seoul, South Korea; and the Empire State Building in New York City, New York. European leaders vowed to “stand firm” with Ukraine, and the United Nations General Assembly voiced support for Ukraine, passing a resolution saying it was committed to “”the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.” The U.S. abstained.
The sudden switch of the U.S. away from its traditional allies in favor of Russia has dramatically reordered the globe. With the U.S. stepping back, Russia has provoked European countries by sabotaging their infrastructure and sending drones over their airspace. Applebaum recently told Il Foglio that Trump’s stance has shocked Europeans into a determination to shed its former reliance on the U.S. and to be self-sufficient in terms of defense, to develop its own technology companies, to build a stronger industrial sector, and to integrate financial markets more fully. As U.S. funding for Ukraine has all but disappeared, Europe is stepping up, although as Nick Paton Walsh of CNN noted today, not as fast as it needs to in order to stop Russia’s aggression.
At the end of its fourth year of war, Russia is weakened enough that the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses today that “Putin’s mismanagement of the war and Ukraine’s resistance now confront Putin with challenging, uncomfortable, and unpopular decisions about the war’s force generation requirements and the Russian economy.” The need for more money and more men to fight will be unpopular in the midst of an unpopular war in which Russia has recently been losing territory, and the ISW assesses that Kremlin officials are already trying to mitigate domestic backlash.
In her interview with Applebaum in Il Foglio, Paola Peduzzi noted that “[t]he Ukrainians have suffered the most from America’s distortion, because we measure the transatlantic divorce in money and they in black bags: since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Ukrainian civilian deaths have increased by 31 percent compared to 2024, and by 70 percent compared to 2023.”
Applebaum told Peduzzi that Russia is not winning the war, but said the war “won’t end until the Russians agree to stop fighting, and they haven’t yet, nor have they ever said they want to. So the war can’t end: the Ukrainians are defending their land and can’t stop, even if they wanted to.”
“Ukrainians have changed the way they wage war; they no longer ask when it will end, but only how,” Peduzzi wrote. She concluded: “Ukrainians are saving us all, and unlike us, they don’t even ask us to say thank you.”
At last night’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump went on offense, seeming to try to set the terms for the upcoming midterm elections. Although the State of the Union in the past was an opportunity for the president to tell the American people where the country stood with regard to foreign affairs, finances, the economy, the public lands, and so on, it has, over the years, become more about messaging and future plans rather than a summing up of the past year.
With his approval ratings under 40%, administration officials mired in corruption scandals, and every one of his policies underwater, Trump delivered a campaign rally. To answer Americans’ concerns about his economic policies, the slowing of economic growth, and rising inflation, he insisted that he had “inherited a nation in crisis” but had “achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before.” He proceeded to claim that the economy is booming, using statistics that were either made up or staggeringly misleading, like his boast that “in one year we have lifted 2.4 million Americans—a record—off of food stamps.” In fact, Republicans cut food assistance from those people, so they are indeed off the rolls, but “lifted” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
In between his celebrations of what he assured the audience was a “golden age,” Trump turned the event into what appeared to be an awards show. “Our country is winning again,” he claimed. “In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore. We’re not used to winning in our country until you came along, we’re just always losing. But now we’re winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you’re going to win again. You’re going to win big. You’re going to win bigger than ever. And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men’s gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in!”
Trump said he would be awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the goalie of that team, which had just won the gold medal at the Olympics.
He also presented two recipients with Purple Hearts, a military decoration awarded to service members killed or wounded in action; and one with the Legion of Merit award for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of an outstanding service or achievement. Trump awarded two recipients the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest decoration for valor in action. After awarding one, Trump mused: “I’ve always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I was informed I’m not allowed to give it to myself, and I wouldn’t know why I’d be taking it. But if they ever opened up that law I will be there with you someday.”
Trump did not serve in the military.
But the party atmosphere was selective. Trump did not acknowledge the Epstein survivors in the audience, invited by Democratic representatives. Representative Al Green (D-TX) was escorted out after holding up a sign that referred to the president’s posting of an image of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, reading: “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES.” And Trump’s descriptions of murders committed by undocumented immigrants—with apparent relish and with the victims’ family members in the audience—seemed to glorify cruelty and violence.
It seemed clear that Trump intends to try to persuade Americans who have soured on his economy and hate his immigration policies that they are wrong, and that both are, in fact, triumphs. He also appeared to try to answer concerns about the skyrocketing deficit on his watch by blaming immigrants for it, claiming that they are committing fraud that is “plundering” the country. He announced a “war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President J.D. Vance,” saying, “And we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.”
Trump’s tax cuts primarily benefited the wealthy and corporations, and pinning their effects on immigrants illustrates how Trump’s strongest calls were to his base. Not only did he portray immigrants as violent criminals, in a moment scripted for television, he then turned on Democrats in the chamber, setting them up to force them to back off their insistence on reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol by demanding that they stand to show their support for the statement: “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
It was a deliberate division of the country into “us” and “them,” a classic authoritarian move, that he followed up by calling the Democrats “crazy” and claiming that “Democrats are destroying our country.” Facing a midterm election in which voters appear strongly to favor Democrats, Trump went out of his way to try to define them, rather than his own administration, as dangerous extremists.
Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times noted that deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, an adherent of the Great Replacement theory who is the key figure driving the administration’s crusade against migrants, made it “clear that the night’s performance had been built around this moment.” Miller posted: “0 democrats stood for the foundational principle of all government that leaders must serve citizens before invaders. Never has there been a more stunning moment in Congress.”
And he was right, in a way, because it was indeed stunning that Republican members of Congress cheered and applauded at the attacks on their colleagues. In his 1951 The True Believer: Notes on the Nature of Mass Movements, philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that once people are wedded to a strongman, they will cling to him ever more tightly as his behavior becomes more and more erratic. This loyalty is in part to demonstrate their own devotion to the cause, and in part to justify their own attacks on those the strongman has given them permission to hurt.
The behavior of the Republican representatives was really the only memorable part of the evening. Trump’s almost two-hour State of the Union—the longest State of the Union address in history—felt pretty much like a Trump rally, full of outrageous exaggerations, lies, game show promises, and attacks, and those are old hat by now.
In contrast, the response to the State of the Union—which is usually deadly—was a breath of fresh air. Delivered by Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger, the response was short and clean, and in a refreshing change from Trump’s constant focus on himself, it centered the American people.
Spanberger noted that she was speaking from the Virginia House of Burgesses, where “before there was a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, or a Bill of Rights—there were people in this very room” who “dreamed of what a new nation…could be.” She continued: “The United States was founded on the idea that ordinary people could reject the unacceptable excesses of poor leadership, band together to demand better of their government, and create a nation that would be an example for the world.”
“Tonight,” she said, “we did not hear the truth from our President.” She asked, is the president “working to make life more affordable for you and your family,” is he “working to keep Americans safe—both at home and abroad,” and is he “working for YOU?”
She noted that the rising costs of housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare are pressing everyone. Trump’s trade policies, especially tariffs, have hurt small businesses, farmers, and everyday Americans, while the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is forcing rural health clinics to close, stripping healthcare from millions of Americans, and cutting food programs for children.
Turning to the excesses of federal agents from ICE and Border Patrol, Spanberger highlighted her own career as a law enforcement officer working money-laundering and narcotics cases alongside local and state police to note that law enforcement requires “an abiding sense of duty and commitment to community.” “And yet,” she said, “our President has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans—and they have done it without a warrant.
“They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies, they have sent children—a little boy in a blue bunny hat—to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens on our streets. And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability. Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children, or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings.”
“Our President told us tonight that we are safer because these agents arrest mothers and detain children,” she said. “Think about that. Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed—not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.”
At the same time, she said, the president “continues to cede economic power and technological strength to China, bow down to a Russian dictator, and make plans for war with Iran.” “[T]hrough [the Department of Government Efficiency], mass firings, and the appointment of deeply unserious people to our nation’s most serious positions, our President has endangered the long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good.”
“In his speech tonight,” she said, “the President did what he always does: he lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted. He also offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges—so many of which he is actively making worse.” Who is benefitting from “his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, and the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress?” she asked.
“He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends,” she said. “The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There’s the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation’s capital. This is not what our founders envisioned. So, I’ll ask again: Is the President working for you?”
“We all know the answer is no.”
“But here is the special thing about America,” she said. “[W]e know better than any nation what is possible when ordinary citizens—like those who once dreamed right here in this room—reject the unacceptable and demand more of their government.” She noted the power of the Americans taking action across the country to protest the government and to vote. “With their votes,” she said, “they are writing a new story.”
In November, Spanberger said, she won her election by 15 points, earning votes “from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and everyone in-between; because they knew as citizens, they could demand more. That they could vote for what they believe matters, and they didn’t need to be constrained by a party or political affiliation.” In that election, Democrats flipped legislative seats in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, and Texas. Now “[o]rdinary Americans are stepping up to run…to demand more and do more for their neighbors and communities.”
“Those who are stepping up now to run will win in November because Americans know you can demand more, and that we are working to lower costs, we are working to keep our communities and country safe, and we are working for you,” she said.
“In his Farewell Address,” she concluded, “George Washington warned us about the possibility of ‘cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men’ rising to power. But he also encouraged us—all Americans—to unite in ‘a common cause’ to move this nation forward. That is our charge once more. And that is what we are seeing across the country.
“It is deeply American and patriotic to do so, and it is how we ensure that the State of our Union remains strong, not just this year but for the next 250 years as well.”
It appears the State of the Union was the marker for the White House to launch directly into campaign mode. Much of that mode centers on trying to defang Trump’s weaknesses with attacks on Democrats. And since the 2024 campaign brought us the insistence from the Trump campaign, including Trump and then–vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, that “they’re eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats,” it’s reasonable to assume the next several months are going to be a morass of lies and disinformation.
Trump announced in his State of the Union that he was declaring a “war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President J.D. Vance” and said that “members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer…in actuality, the number is much higher than that. And California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse.” He added: “And we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.”
This, in part, seemed designed to reverse victim and offender by suggesting that rather than Trump’s being the perpetrator of extraordinary frauds and corruption in cryptocurrency, for example—he was, after all, found guilty on 34 charges of business fraud in 2024—immigrants are to blame for fraud.
As Kirsten Swanson and Ryan Raiche of KSTP in Minneapolis explain, members of Minnesota’s Somali community, 95% of whom are U.S. citizens, pay about $67 million in taxes annually and have an estimated $8 billion impact on the community. While some have indeed been charged and convicted of fraud over the past five years, the accusation of $19 billion in fraud is just a number thrown out without evidence by “then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson,” who estimated in December 2025 that “‘half or more’ of $18 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from 14 high-risk programs could be fraudulent.”
Yesterday Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who oversees Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income households, announced the administration is withholding $259 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota, claiming the state has not done enough to protect taxpayers from fraud. It is illegal for the executive branch to withhold funds appropriated by Congress, and a federal judge has blocked a similar freeze on $10 billion in childcare funding for Illinois, California, Colorado, Minnesota, and New York while the case is in court. Nonetheless, Minnesota representative Tom Emmer, who is part of the Republican leadership in the House, approved the attack on his constituents, posting: “The war on fraud has begun. And Somali fraudsters in my home state are about to find out.”
Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, posted: “This has nothing to do with fraud…. This is a campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota. These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.”
While Walz is almost certainly correct that this is a campaign of retribution, the administration is also salting into the media an explanation for the sudden depletion of the trust funds that are used to pay Medicare and Social Security.
In March 2025, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the trust fund that pays for Medicare A would be solvent until 2052. On Monday, it updated its projections, saying the funds will run out in 2040. The CBO also expects the Social Security trust fund to run dry a year earlier than previously expected, by the end of 2031. As Nick Lichtenberg of Fortune wrote, policy changes by the Republicans under Trump, especially the tax cuts in the budget reconciliation bill the Republicans call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” have “drastically shortened the financial life spans of both Medicare and Social Security, accelerating their paths toward insolvency.”
Between Trump’s statement that if the administration finds enough fraud it can balance the budget overnight, and the subsequent insistence that cuts to Medicaid are necessary because of that fraud, it sure looks like the administration is trying to distract attention from the CBO’s report that Trump’s tax cuts have cut the solvency of Social Security and Medicare by more than a decade. Instead, they are hoping to convince voters that immigrants are at fault.
Similarly, in an oldie but a goodie, Republicans today hauled former secretary of state Hillary Clinton before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify by video about her knowledge of the investigations into sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. In a scathing opening statement, Clinton noted that while committee chair James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed eight law enforcement officials who were directly involved in that investigation, only one appeared before the committee. The rest simply submitted brief statements saying they had no information. Clinton also noted that the committee has held no public hearings and refused media coverage of hearings—including today’s—and has made little effort to hear from the people whose names are prominent in the files. When the committee heard from billionaire businessman Les Wexner last week, she observed, “not a single Republican Member showed up.”
And yet Clinton was before them, despite her sworn declaration on January 13 that “I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices. I have nothing else to add to that.”
She did, though, note that she has advocated tirelessly for women and girls, including advocacy for the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which her husband, President Bill Clinton, signed into law. The Trump administration has fired more than 70% of the career civil servants at the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Office.
Secretary Clinton called out the committee for compelling her “to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump’s actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers.” Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) confirmed Clinton’s accusation when she shared a photo from the closed deposition with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, who posted it on social media with the caption: “This is the first time Hillary has had to answer real questions about Epstein. Clinton does not look happy.”
Yesterday, a spokesperson for Harvard said former Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard University Lawrence Summers has resigned from Harvard effective at the end of the semester because of his ties to Epstein. Today, the president and chief executive officer of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende, stepped down after the organization reviewed his connections with Epstein. Brende was a former Norwegian minister of foreign affairs.
On Tuesday morning, Stephen Fowler of NPR built on earlier reporting by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger to report that the Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to have illegally withheld material from the Epstein files. That material is related to allegations that Trump sexually assaulted two girls when they were about thirteen years old. The DOJ also removed from the files they did publish documents that mention Trump among allegations against convicted sexual abuser Epstein.
When Fowler asked the White House about the missing documents, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told him that Trump “has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
Fowler notes that on February 14, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that they had not withheld or redacted any records “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the DOJ to release all the files no later than December 19, 2025, prohibits that type of redactions, permitting them only to protect Epstein’s victims and survivors.
After NPR reported the story, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Robert Garcia of California, released a statement, saying: “Yesterday, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice. Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes.”
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder wrote yesterday that Trump is “failing at fascism” because “he needs a bloody, popular, victorious war” as an opportunity to “to kill one’s own people and thereby generate a reservoir of meaning that could be used to justify indefinite rule and further oppression, to make the world seem like an endless [struggle] and submission to hierarchy as the only kind of life.”
On this morning’s cable news shows, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice pointed out, Republicans were “[s]uddenly talking again about the need to ‘take’ Greenland,” “[h]yping [the] importance of ‘strangling’ the Cuban government,” and “[e]ncouraging Trump to ‘topple’ [the] Iranian regime.”
But there, too, ginning up a war would give foreign affairs coverage to another scandal: On Monday, Steve Holland and Alexandra Alper of Reuters reported that China’s AI startup DeepSeek has been trained on Nvidia’s most advanced chip. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that an official from the United Arab Emirates invested $500,000,000 to buy 49% of the stock of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company shortly before Trump took office, putting $187 million directly into the pockets of the Trump family. Under Biden, U.S. officials had refused to sell Nvidia chips to the UAE out of concerns they would end up in the hands of China for use in munitions.
Hannah Knowles and Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported today that Republicans were hoping to trap the Democrats at the State of the Union by demanding they stand to demonstrate their agreement that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Democrats, who are demanding reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol, did not take the bait and stayed in their seats. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has tried to pump up the story, and the Trump War Room wrote: “Remember this when you head to the polls in 2026, 2028, and beyond.”
But the timing of the Republicans’ story coincided with the horrific story that on February 19, Border Patrol agents had dropped Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a nearly blind legal refugee from genocide in Myanmar who spoke no English and could not read, write, or use electronic devices, miles from his home in Buffalo, New York. They did not notify either his lawyer or his family that he had been dropped off, and when his family filed a missing persons case, the police believed Shah Alam was with Border Patrol and closed the file. He was found dead on the street on February 24.
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of Border Patrol, said: “Border Patrol agents offered him a courtesy ride, which he chose to accept to a coffee shop, determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address, rather than be released directly from the Border Patrol station. He showed no signs of distress, mobility issues or disabilities requiring special assistance.”
In his State of the Union address, Trump also turned back to his attacks on the rights of transgender Americans, and right on cue, a new law went into effect today in Kansas that invalidates the driver’s licenses of transgender residents by requiring that identification must match the holder’s “sex at birth.” The bill, SB 244, also requires transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their sex at birth, making any governmental entity that violates that law liable for penalties of $125,000 per violation, and allows citizens to sue any transgender people they encounter in bathrooms for $1,000 in damages.
Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning explains that the legislature passed the law without its vetting by a committee. When the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, vetoed the measure, the legislature overrode her veto to make the bill a law. The legislators left no grace period before licenses became invalid, and a letter sent to those affected reminded them that “you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential.” Reed notes that in Kansas, driving without a license is punishable by a $1,000 fine and six months in jail, although first offenders typically are cited and fined. Reed notes that the Trump administration is leading a campaign to strip transgender Americans of accurate identification documents.
Today, Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post reported that right-wing activists are circulating a draft of an executive order that declares a national emergency to give Trump control over voting. The activists say that they are working with the White House. The order reiterates a debunked claim that China interfered in the 2020 presidential election and says the president can ban mail-in ballots and voting machines.
Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket called the plan “blatantly illegal” and unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution gives sole control of elections to the states, not the president.
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark R. Warner of Virginia, refuted the idea that there is a national emergency. “We’ve been raising the alarm for weeks about President Trump’s attacks on our elections and now we’re seeing reports that outline how they may be planning to do it. This is a plot to interfere with the will of voters and undermine both the rule of law and public confidence in our elections.”
And so, election season is underway.
I was thinking of something like a coalition which abandoned, at least temporarily, small party identities and formed a united majority party.
Coalition agreements force parties to make compromises that can water down their core profile. This can make it harder for voters to perceive the differences between the parties
How many Democrats are too many?
In the race for California governor, so many Democratic candidates have crowded into the contest that party insiders have become fearful of a historic calamity in the making. It’s become mathematically possible that Democrats divide their vote so much that two Republicans advance from the June primary to the general election.
“It’s the parlor game in Sacramento right now — could this happen?” Democratic consultant Paul Mitchell said.
The uncertainty in the outcome stems from the state’s unpredictable “ top two ” primary system. All candidates appear on a single ballot but only the two top finishers advance to the November general election, regardless of party. It’s the first time since voters approved that system more than a decade ago that there’s been a governor’s race with no clear frontrunner, helping feed a “Why not me?” mentality among the large number of Democrats flooding into the contest.
“There’s a very real chance there could be only Republicans on November’s ballot,” the campaign of former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, warned in a recent fundraising pitch.
A political shock in the making?
Though it remains a distant longshot, it’s hard to understate the political shock that would come with two Republicans perched atop California’s midterm ballot. The state is known as a Democratic fortress, and a GOP candidate hasn’t won a statewide election in two decades. It would also have implications for races down the ballot, including congressional battlegrounds that could determine control of the U.S. House.
Why so many candidates? The governor’s chair in California has always had magnetic allure — it’s one of the most powerful political platforms in the nation. The state — by itself — is ranked as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It’s the nation’s top agricultural producer and is home to Silicon Valley and Hollywood. The state budget tallies nearly $350 billion in annual spending, an amount roughly equal to the market value of Netflix.
Candidates lured by a wide-open election
With Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom barred by law from seeking a third term, it’s the most wide-open contest for governor in a generation.
Dozens of people have filed paperwork to run, from a college student to a billionaire. Among them are at least nine Democrats with the name recognition and fundraising machinery to seriously compete.
That list includes current and former members of Congress — Porter, Rep. Eric Swalwell and Xavier Becerra, who later served as the Biden administration’s top health official; former state controller Betty Yee and schools superintendent Tony Thurmond; billionaire Tom Steyer; San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; and Ian Calderon, a former majority leader in the state Assembly.
With the Democrats occupying much of the same ideological turf, candidates are highlighting other markers to break away from the pack. Swalwell, for example, has campaigned partly on his role as a House manager of Trump’s 2021 impeachment trial. Mahan, the newest candidate in the race, has been a frequent critic of Newsom on crime and homelessness. Steyer is among Mahan’s top critics, saying he’s too aligned with tech interests.
Some Democrats hope to see the field narrow on its own.
It would be best for “the lower-tiered people to drop out,” said Democratic strategist Drexel Heard II, former executive director of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. “You are looking at people who are never going to break through.”
Uncertainty comes with ‘top two’ primary
Mitchell said he used available polling data to run a series of simulations to assess the likelihood of a twin GOP breakthrough and found it was possible, though with long odds. The leading GOP candidates are Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, both supporters of President Donald Trump.
California is one of the most solidly Democratic states in the country. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide, Democrats have held every statewide office since 2010 and Republicans have been reduced to powerless spectators in the Legislature.
In a primary, the Democrats are expected to divide roughly 60% of the vote, Republicans, 40%. The math gets challenging for Democrats if the party has a long list of credible candidates in the race, cutting up their share of the vote.
“It’s a small probability but one that would be a massive, massive deal,” Mitchell said. The quandary for Democrats: “There isn’t somebody who is going to come in and tell these lower-tier candidates they can’t run.”
Republicans, for their part, are also concerned about the tricky math. Hilton has been calling on Bianco to drop out in hopes that Republicans would consolidate to push one candidate into the November election.
“We cannot risk splitting the Republican vote and letting the Democrats in,” Hilton said in a recent debate.
Democrats in search of a national leader
The race is displaying some similarity with the rapidly developing 2028 Democratic contest for president, where a large field is assembling to contend for an open seat. Democrats are still regrouping from the thrashing the national party suffered in 2024 and candidates in both races are testing messages they hope will galvanize voters in the midterms and beyond.
With Republicans in charge of Congress and the White House and many Americans pessimistic about the future, the abundance of candidates is a sign of both energy and frustration within the party, said Democratic consultant Antjuan Seawright.
The common denominator between the races: “We have to learn how to focus on the game of expansion and strengthening our coalition,” Seawright said.
On Monday, February 23, Daniel Ruetenik, Pat Milton, and Cara Tabachnick of CBS News reported a newly uncovered document in the Epstein files shows that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was running an investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and fourteen other people for drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering.
This investigation—which is different from the sex trafficking case under way when he died—began on December 17, 2010, under the Obama administration and was still operating in 2015. A heavily redacted document in the Epstein files from the director of the DEA’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) said “DEA reporting indicates the above individuals are involved in illegitimate wire transfers which are tied to illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.” The investigation was named “Chain Reaction.”
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, described OCDETF as “a premier task force set up to identify, disrupt and dismantle major organized crime and drug trafficking operations.” It “worked with partners across federal agencies to conduct sophisticated investigations into transnational organized crime and money laundering. OCDETF frequently targeted dangerous drug cartels , the Russian mafia and violent gangs moving fentanyl and weapons.” The Trump administration dismantled OCDETF.
The document is 69 pages long and is heavily redacted. It comes from a request by the DEA to an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Fusion Center in Virginia for information from other agencies related to Epstein and the other targets. A law enforcement source told the reporters that a request to the Fusion Center is not routine, which suggests the investigation was a “significant” one.
Wyden has been investigating the finances behind Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking organization. His investigation has turned up the information that JPMorgan Chase neglected to report more than $4 billion in suspicious financial transactions linked to Epstein. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has refused to produce the records to the Senate Finance Committee, and in September, Wyden introduced the Produce Epstein Treasury Records Act (PETRA) to get access to them. In November, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but it did not cover Treasury financial records.
“The basic question here is whether a bunch of rich pedophiles and Epstein accomplices are going to face any consequences for their crimes,” Wyden said, “and Scott Bessent is doing his best to make sure they won’t. My head just about exploded when I heard Bessent say it wasn’t his department’s job to investigate these Epstein bank records…. From the beginning, my view has been that following the money is the key to identifying Epstein’s clients as well as the henchmen and banks that enabled his sex trafficking network. It’s past time for Bessent to quit running interference for pedophiles and give us the Epstein files he’s sitting on.”
When the CBS News reporters broke the story about the DEA investigation, Wyden said: “It appears Epstein was involved in criminal activity that went way beyond pedophilia and sex trafficking, which makes it even more outrageous that [Attorney General] Pam Bondi is sitting on several million unreleased files.”
On Wednesday, February 23, Wyden wrote to Terrance C. Cole, administrator of the DEA, noting that “[t]he fact that Epstein was under investigation by the DOJ’s OCDETF task force suggests that there was ample evidence indicating that Epstein was engaged in heavy drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy. This is incredibly disturbing and raises serious questions as to how this investigation by the DEA was handled.”
He noted that Epstein and the fourteen co-conspirators were never charged for drug trafficking or financial crimes, and wrote: “I am concerned that the DEA and DOJ during the first Trump Administration moved to terminate this investigation in order to protect pedophiles.” He also noted that the heavy redactions in the document appear to go far beyond anything authorized by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and since the document was not classified, “there is no reason to withhold an unredacted version of this document from the U.S. Congress.
Wyden asked Cole to produce a number of documents by March 13, 2026, two weeks away. Wyden asked for an unredacted copy of the memo in the files, information about what triggered the investigation, what types of drugs Epstein and his fourteen associates were buying or selling, when operation “Chain Reaction” concluded and what was its result, why no one was charged, and why the names of the fourteen co-conspirators were redacted.
Asked by a reporter about Epstein today, Trump said: “I don’t know anything about the Epstein files. I’ve been fully exonerated.”
Trump’s name is, in fact, all through the Epstein files, and the DOJ’s clumsy attempt to hide files that discuss him has only called attention to them. The recent news that the DOJ withheld files about allegations that Trump raped a 13-year-old girl has raised suggestions of an illegal coverup, whether the allegations are true or not. Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he will open an investigation.
Now the DOJ says it will review whether the files about Trump were improperly withheld, although the fact that the administration has hung a giant image of Trump’s face on the outside of its building undermines confidence that the DOJ is, in fact, following the law impartially.
Led by chair James Comer (R-KY), the Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee required former first lady Hillary Clinton to testify before it yesterday, despite her testimony under oath that she had never met Epstein and knew Maxwell only as an acquaintance and despite the fact that she is not mentioned in the Epstein files.
As Kaivan Shroff noted in the Daily Beast, the Republicans are working to “revive as much Hillary hate as they can,” but they are likely going to regret dragging Clinton back into the spotlight. She is embracing her role as a public figure who can stand up to Trump, appearing both in the U.S. and internationally to engage on a range of issues. As Shroff notes, Clinton has been “one of the Democratic Party’s most battle-tested figures, and she is speaking up once again—not for a campaign, not for validation, but with the clarity that comes from having nothing left to lose.”
By going after Clinton, Republicans have also opened the way for the Democrats to demand that the Trumps testify. On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” panelists noted that while Clinton didn’t know Epstein, there are many photos of First Lady Melania Trump with him, along with her husband and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Host Joe Scarborough said “Comer got the wrong first lady.” And, he added, “today he’s got the wrong president.”
Today former president Bill Clinton testified for more than six hours under oath before the committee at the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in Chappaqua, New York. He is the first president to be compelled to testify before Congress under threat of criminal contempt charges. In his opening statement, Clinton appeared to be referencing Trump when he said: “I’m here today for two reasons. The first is that I love my country. And America was built upon the idea that no person is above the law, even Presidents—especially Presidents.” In contrast to Trump and Bondi, both of whom have refused to acknowledge Epstein’s victims—now survivors—Clinton highlighted them: “The second reason I’m here is that the girls and women whose lives Jeffrey Epstein destroyed deserve not only justice, but healing. They’ve been waiting too long for both.”
In calling out the committee for forcing his wife to testify, Clinton alluded to the Republicans’ attempt to spin the testimony for political points. Clinton noted that even though he was the only one sworn in that morning, “everyone has a responsibility to be honest with those they represent. Whether you raised your right hand or not, each and every one of us owes nothing less than truth and accuracy to the American people.”
Clinton told the committee he “had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing…. I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong. As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing—I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals.”
Clinton also told the committee he would often tell it he didn’t recall. “This was all a long time ago. And I am bound by my oath not to speculate, or to guess.”
Like Trump, Clinton is named in the Epstein files; unlike Trump, he is not accused of crimes in any public files. But Clinton had a relationship with both Epstein and Maxwell, and as part of his work with the Clinton Global Initiative after he left office, he traveled on Epstein’s plane about two dozen times, to Europe, Africa, Asia, Russia, Miami, and New York. Clinton reiterated today that he never traveled to Epstein’s island in the Caribbean, where much of the sexual abuse of children took place. Although Trump has repeatedly accused Clinton of visiting the island, Trump’s own White House chief of staff Susie Wiles says Trump is wrong about that, and has confirmed that Clinton was never there.
Kayla Epstein of the BBC recalled that in his memoir, Clinton wrote: “The bottom line is, even though it allowed me to visit the work of my foundation, traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward. I wish I had never met him.”
Tonight, former president Clinton posted a video message reiterating the main points of his opening statement and concluding: “When the video of my testimony today is released, I hope it will motivate everyone to go in front of Congress to say what they know. I hope it will motivate the Justice Department to finally release all the files and to ensure that this never happens again. The survivors deserve that.”
During a break in Clinton’s deposition, Comer told reporters that “the president went on to say that [Trump] has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved. And he meant with Epstein.” Comer has used closed-door hearings to salt the media with unfounded stories for years now, and as he undoubtedly intended, the media has run with this characterization as an accurate description of what Clinton said.
But Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, later told reporters that Comer’s comment didn’t accurately reflect Clinton’s answer. “I think the best response to that would be to view the complete record of what actually he said,” Garcia suggested. “We’re not going to disclose what was said because that’s not in the rules. The Republicans keep breaking the rules…. Let’s release the full transcript, so you can all get a full record of what was actually said.”
