Friday, February 27, 2026

Pesto Tuna Pasta in the Kitchen


Ingredients
10 ounces rigatoni pasta or other short tube pasta like penne
2 cans (6-oz each) white albacore tuna, in water or oil drained
7-8 ounces prepared pesto sauce
¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic pressed
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
shaved parmesan cheese optional for topping
Fresh lemon juice optional for topping
salt & fresh ground black pepper optional to taste

Instructions
Boil pasta in a large stockpot or pasta pot in plenty of salted water. This should take about 7-8 minutes.
While the pasta is cooking, to a medium skillet over medium heat, add the olive oil. Add pressed fresh garlic cloves and the red pepper flakes.
Stir & heat for 5 minutes over medium-low heat. Be careful to not let the garlic or peppers burn. 
Once ready, add the drained tuna to the skillet. Stir carefully to coat the tuna in the flavored olive oil. You do not want the tuna to break apart too much - some big chunks are ideal.
When the pasta is al dente, turn off the heat. Now scoop out 2-3 tablespoons of pasta water and set aside. Drain the pasta and add it back to the pot.
Add the pesto sauce and stir to coat the pasta. Add some of the starchy pasta water (a little at a time) to thin the pesto and help it cling to the rigatoni.
Transfer the tuna mixture to the pot with the pesto pasta. Gently fold or stir everything together. Again, try and keep the tuna in chunks.
To serve, spoon the Pesto Tuna Pasta into individual pasta bowls or plates. Top with shaved parmesan. Drizzle with olive oil &/or squeeze on some fresh lemon juice for a bit of zing.
Add salt and/or fresh black pepper to taste. Enjoy immediately while warm.






Another Trump acolyte has taken it upon himself to lecture the pope on the Catholic faith.

Border Czar Tom Homan tried to school Pope Leo XIV on Catholic teachings about immigration in an interview with the Letters from Leo Substack on Wednesday, offering, “I’d be happy to sit down to explain to him.”
Homan, 64, prefaced his unsolicited theological lesson to the Vicar of Christ, 70, by touting his credentials as a “life-long Catholic.”

He went on to excoriate Leo for criticizing the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, asserting the Chicago-born pontiff had failed to grasp Catholic doctrine.
[. . .]
Homan, who allegedly accepted a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen seeking future government contracts in 2024, then told the Holy Father to mind his own business.


I don't really think the Pope needs a lecture from a man who took a $50,000 bribe.  Homan knows nothing about ethics or about the Church.  


This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Thursday:

Thursday, February 26, 2026.  Pam Bondi earlier this month was screeching and braying before a Congressional committee and now appears to have lied to that Committee and to have intentionally withheld significant documents, a witness was interviewed by the FBI four times -- first she spoke only of Epstein, then she spoke of Donald Chump and Epstein for the next three interviews but somehow those three interviews didn't get released, Pam's trying to figure out a good lie right now to excuse her actions.  




A federal judge has rejected the Justice Department’s request to search the seized devices of a Washington Post reporter as part of an FBI investigation into leaked classified documents.

In a 22-page opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter of the Eastern District of Virginia criticized the government’s handling of the case, reversing course in part after previously authorizing the seizure of the reporter’s devices.

Porter previously approved a warrant that led federal agents to seize two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive, and a Garmin watch belonging to reporter Hannah Natanson in a pre-dawn raid at her Virginia home.
In his ruling, Porter concluded that the government could not be trusted to conduct a review of the devices on its own. He denied the Justice Department’s request to allow a government filter team to search the devices for materials relevant to its probe into Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, a government contractor who had top-level security clearances and was charged last month with illegally retaining classified documents.

[. . .]

The judge’s ruling marks an embarrassing setback for Attorney General Pam Bondi and her department as it carries out its investigation into the contractor, whom President Donald Trump has identified as a “leaker” who divulged classified information regarding Venezuela and shared it with the Washington Post reporter.

Embarrassing for Pam?  She's got so much to be embarrassed over.  Erkki Forster (THE DAILY BEAST) reminds:


An NPR investigation, published on Tuesday morning of the president’s State of the Union address, alleges that the DOJ withheld dozens of documents from its Epstein release that may pertain to a woman who accused Trump and Epstein of sexually abusing her when she was a minor, including three FBI interviews with the accuser. Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre told the Daily Beast that NPR wrongly stated the DOJ declined to respond to questions about what it described as missing files.

At the conference, Amanda Roberts, the sister-in-law of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent victims, declared that despite the president’s wishes, “today we are saying we will not move on, and the world is not moving on.”
Trump spent much of last year working to dissuade Republicans from voting for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated a full disclosure of the files. He has also refused to meet with Epstein survivors.

After Congress passed the bill and Trump—knowing the numbers were not on his side—was forced to sign it into law, the Justice Department missed the deadline for disclosing the files. Amid their staggered release, the DOJ has been criticized for redacting Epstein’s associates while failing to redact survivors’ names in the files.


THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE addressed the cover up last night. 



MS NOW's MORNING JOE is addressing it already today. 





The vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department from its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump, according to a review by The New York Times.

The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor.

The existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released. According to that index, the F.B.I. conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one. But only one of the summaries, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department. The other three are missing.

The public files also do not include the underlying interview notes, which the index also indicates are part of the file. The Justice Department released similar interview notes in connection to F.B.I. interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.




You’ve probably seen some hints of it. But I wanted to focus your attention on a genuine piece of news out of the Epstein Files, even weeks after their original release. In 2019, a woman came forward and spoke to the FBI claiming that Donald Trump had assaulted her in the early 1980s. In her allegations, Jeffrey Epstein essentially provided her to Trump. Other files in the Epstein trove say that the FBI conducted four interviews with the woman. But only one of them was released in the larger trove — one that detailed her accusations against Epstein. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he went to view the unredacted version of the files that members of Congress can access and the missing interviews aren’t there either.




How can we claim to care about protecting girls, about holding powerful men accountable, but then change the rulebook when it touches someone we support politically?

Trump says he has been exonerated. There has been no criminal conviction tying him to Epstein’s crimes. Both of those things are factual. But the larger issue is consistency. If we demand transparency from one powerful man, we should demand it from all of them.

Right now, the Trump Epstein files debate feels less like a search for truth and more like a loyalty test.

If we want justice, it cannot stop at party lines.

That is the part I cannot ignore.


Democrats are ready to ask questions of anyone.  Tara Suter (THE HILL) notes:

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that former Attorney General Merrick Garland, who served under former President Biden, should testify to Congress about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Why the [Department of Justice (DOJ)] under Merrick Garland, or others, weren’t forthcoming in what was actually in these files, I think is an important question that has to be answered,” Garcia, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room.”
“I’ve talked to [House Oversight Committee] Chairman [James] Comer [(R-Ky.)], I think it’s important that we hear from Merrick Garland, and others, and former directors of the FBI and former attorneys general. That is an important part of this investigation.”

“What are you doing, in terms of that, for accountability?” Brown asked Garcia.

“We’ve asked — we want to see them actually testify, I want to get answers from these officials. So, we’ve made those requests to Chairman Comer, I believe there will be additional subpoenas and requests made in the near future,” Garcia responded.





J








Virginia Roberts Giuffre is responsible for so much of what has happened.  She refused to be silenced.  She fought as long as she could.  She took her life last year but she changed the culture and the conversation.  Laura Trujillo (USA TODAY) speaks with her younger brother Sky Roberts:


Now her brother is trying to carry on her legacy. He is calling on Congress to pass her law and is urging the U.S. to release the rest of the Epstein files. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department has stopped its review after releasing about 3 million of 6 million pages. Trump has said America should move on.

“I am here to say proudly that what Virginia did for this world will not be in vain,” Roberts said during a press conference on Feb. 24, alongside other Epstein accusers and Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Suhas Subramanyam.

“She may have left this earth,” he said, pausing to catch his breath. “But her soul is still here. It lives in every survivor who decides to speak. It lives in in every victim who is still finding their voice and it lives in every person who refuses to accept the country where exploitation is met with immunity.”
Roberts has spent the past nine months speaking on behalf of his sister, sometimes with his wife Amanda. They often both still call her “Sissie,” Roberts’ childhood nickname for her.
“Virginia did not just survive, she fought. She pushed back a culture of silence,” he said, his pride showing through his voice. He wears a silver and blue butterfly pin to sympbolize hope and strength for survivors. “She proved what happens when an ordinary person decides they will not be erased.”
[. . .]
"She had a deep love for her survivor sisters and she had deep love for the millions of victims and surivvors around the world who may never be known by name, and whose lives mattered just the same," Roberts said.

"To say she trailblazed through obstacles is an understatements. She helped build a road for survivors to walk toward truth, toward dignity, toward justice," he said. "And we are here today to carry her torch down that road."

Her brother holds on to that now. And to how she was able to create a beautiful life with three children, even through her struggles.

Now he hopes people listen to her, through him: "Choose unity. Choose love. Choose the courage it takes to stand with survivors not only when it is easy, but when it is expensive, when it is uncomfortable and when it challenges powerful people."


Many Epstein survivors attended the State of the Union speech.  Erkki Forster (DAILY BEAST) notes:

President Donald Trump was shamed for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files at the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Democrats brought several Epstein survivors as guests to the president’s address at the Capitol and wore badges calling out the president’s handling of the files on the convicted sex offender.
“Stand with survivors. Release the files,” the badges read, with a black redaction box blocking the space ahead of “files,” a reference to the Justice Department’s much-criticized redactions.

Trump did not acknowledge the survivors or address the Epstein files during his record-breaking 108-minute speech.

He also hasn't spoken about Epstein since NPR and MSN NOW broke the story yesterday about the released files missing pages about Donald Chump assaulting a woman.  No claims of being exonerated since that reveal. 

Alison Durkee (FORBES) notes one of the mighty falling, "Former Harvard University President and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard at the end of the academic year, according to multiple reports Wednesday, the latest fallout from the Epstein files as the former treasury secretary was shown to have a close relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein."  Susan Svrluga (WASHINGTON POST) adds:

Lawrence Summers will resign from his academic and faculty appointments at Harvard University at the end of this academic year because of his connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a spokesman for the university said Wednesday.

Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary and former president of Harvard, was the latest prominent figure to resign amid ongoing revelations about Epstein’s network. Summers has resigned from his leadership role at Harvard Kennedy School, where he was co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. That resignation is effective immediately.
Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein has accepted Summers’s resignation “in connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government,” said Jason Newton, a spokesman for Harvard.

Summers, an influential figure in economic policymaking, had already stepped back from many of his public roles in the fall after the House Oversight Committee released documents revealing Epstein’s ties to many powerful figures. Summers’s connection to Epstein was revealed to be much closer than previously had been known, with numerous email exchanges between the two men over a period of years. The men had discussed a range of topics including Summers’s romantic interests, with Epstein offering advice, documents showed.



A Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist at Columbia University resigned from some of his positions with the institution over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

Richard Axel, co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, won a Nobel Prize in 2004 for discovering over 1,000 special receptors in the nose that send olfactory information to the brain.  
“My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret. I apologize for compromising the trust of my friends, students, and colleagues,” Axel said in a statement obtained by NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network. “I recognize the problems this has caused, and I will work to restore this trust.”




Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was hospitalized on Tuesday following what's been described as a suicide attempt.

The incident comes after several world leaders and global elites across Europe and the U.S. faced repercussions — including resignations, terminations and damaged reputations — in the aftermath of the Epstein documents' publication over recent months,
Few nations have experienced as much upheaval from the Epstein disclosures as Norway — a Scandinavian country with fewer than 6 million inhabitants.
The nation's economic crimes division launched a corruption inquiry into Jagland — who previously chaired the Nobel Peace Prize committee — concerning his associations with Epstein. Jagland's legal representative indicated his client would assist with the investigation.

His alleged suicide attempt was downplayed by his legal team, which has insisted that he was rushed to the hospital because of extreme stress rather than a deliberate attack.


We started with Pam da Bimbo Bondi, let's close up the Epstein section with her -- this is from Jeremiah Hassel (THE MIRROR) and the AP report as well:

Attorney General Pam Bondi has appeared hesitant to prosecute any of the American individuals identified in the Epstein files, even as demands from legislators across party lines intensify for her resignation. During a contentious hearing last week before the House Judiciary Committee, Bondi declined to recognize the Epstein victims seated directly behind her.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) delivered a blistering rebuke to Bondi after she sidestepped his question regarding her decision to halt the probe into Epstein's American accomplices.
Bondi fired back at the inquiry, "This is so ridiculous that they are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done."

Lieu's retort was damning: "There are over 1,000 sex trafficking victims. And you have not held a single man accountable. Shame on you. If you had any decency, you would resign right after this hearing concludes."



Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) are calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of perjuring herself when asked about evidence relating to President Trump in the Epstein files.

The demand – made in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche – comes after a heated exchange between the California Democrat and the attorney general earlier this month in which he accused her of lying under oath during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
“Testifying before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on February 11, 2026, Attorney General Bondi emphatically stated, ‘There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime.’ Yet a number of the documents from the Epstein files released to date by the Department of Justice directly contradict her statement. When confronted with her lie, she did not retract her statement, she doubled down. She stated, ‘Don’t you ever accuse me of committing a crime,’” the lawmakers wrote in the letter sent to Blanche on Monday. 

“We request that you immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Bondi for committing perjury. America cannot have a liar and a criminal as our top law enforcement officer.”


Let's stay with the White House for a moment more.  Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports:

A high-profile MAGA influencer on X with hundreds of thousands of followers has been exposed as being secretly run by a White House staffer.

According to Wired, "To its audience, Johnny MAGA looked like an independent voice, another outraged supporter in the MAGA media ecosystem. The account regularly boosts Trump’s Truth Social posts and goes to bat for the administration, attacking Democrats like California governor Gavin Newsom."
The account also pushed images of flag-burning demonstrators in Minneapolis after the killing of Renee Good, saying, “They’re burning the American flag right now in Minneapolis, and they really expect you to believe that ICE shot an innocent civilian.”

The account was created in January 2021 and has often been at the front of pushing far-right, pro-Trump content. It was also active throughout the 2024 election, going after former Vice President Kamala Harris often in very personal ways.
However, underneath the surface, Johnny MAGA was anything but organic.

"Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies," said the report. "A phone number associated with Wade is linked to Johnny MAGA, according to a WIRED review of publicly available records, and the connection was confirmed by a source close to the White House."

Chump's surrounded himself with con artists and grifters.  Like Ka$h Patel.  Graig Graziosi (INDEPENDENT) reports: 

A whistleblower is claiming that FBI Director Kash Patel’s use of a bureau jet delayed the law enforcement agency's ability to respond to the Brown University mass shooting late last year.

Agents from the FBI's evidence response team were reportedly delayed in reaching Brown University following a December mass shooting, which left two dead and nine injured, because Patel reportedly had the plane in Florida.

A whistleblower gave an account of the situation to Senator Richard Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office and the Justice Department's Inspector General’s office on Tuesday accusing Patel of hindering the agency's ability to conduct critical investigative tasks by misusing its resources, according to MS NOW.
Patel was reportedly in South Florida with one jet and had placed a hold on the second jet for another FBI team that would not typically respond to the scene of a mass shooting, according to sources who spoke to the broadcaster. The sources said Patel was in Florida on the day of the shooting and did not fly back until the following day.


Durbin made a point to note that the whistleblower provided the information after Patel used the FBI’s Gulfstream jet to fly to Milan, Italy to chug beer with the U.S. men’s hockey team and create pretty unsavory social media content at the Winter Olympics.

In regard to Kirk’s death during an event at Utah Valley University in September 2025, the whistleblower alleges that the FBI’s shooting reconstruction team was delayed by at least a day because there was a pilot and plane shortage “caused by the Director’s personal flights,” according to Durbin.
During the Brown University shooting in December, which killed two and injured nine, Patel was reportedly in South Florida visiting his elderly parents, an FBI official familiar with Patel’s travel told MS NOW. The outlet reports that the only other available jet had been placed on hold for another FBI team that typically wouldn’t respond to the scene of a mass shooting. Instead, a team had to drive overnight through a snowstorm from Virginia to the Rhode Island university, arriving at 9 a.m. the following morning to immediately process evidence, according to the whistleblower.


FBI Director Kash Patel’s Olympics schedule included two hockey games and hours of “personal time” with a spatter of actual meetings.
The schedule was obtained and published Wednesday by The New York Times, and it comes as the FBI director faces intense scrutiny for his use of taxpayer-funded government resources for recreational activities. When the U.S. men’s hockey team beat Canada in the gold medal game, Patel joined the team’s locker room celebrations and was seen chugging beers with the players.

In response to the criticism, Patel has emphasized that his time enjoying the Winter Olympics was only a small portion of his trip to Italy and that he was there in an official capacity.

His schedule, however, showed plenty of downtime. According to the report, Patel arrived in Rome on Thursday, February 19 and had dinner with Tillman Fertitta, the U.S. ambassador to Italy. The next day, the director had an hour-long meeting with Italy’s domestic security agency. Patel then took part in a photo op with Italian law enforcement before having “snacks and drinks” at the interior ministry. Later in the day, he flew to Milan for his first hockey game of the weekend.



About 10 F.B.I. employees, some veteran agents, were dismissed this week for their work on the investigation into President Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida, according to five people with knowledge of the move.

The firings are part of a rolling barrage of retribution aimed at those who worked on the two federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump after his first term in office. They came hours after Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, told Reuters that as part of the documents inquiry, the bureau had subpoenaed phone metadata for himself and Susie Wiles, currently the White House chief of staff.

They are not expected to be the last, those people said.

Requests for phone records are common in complex criminal investigations to establish timelines and provide proof of communication. It remains unclear if the F.B.I.’s Trump-appointed leaders have accused employees of wrongdoing. In the past, they have not. In some cases, firings have violated procedural safeguards created to protect agents from politically motivated dismissal, according to agents and their lawyers.

The F.B.I. Agents Association, a professional group representing bureau employees, denounced the dismissals in a statement, describing them as an unlawful termination that “violates the due process rights of those who risk their lives to protect our country.”




Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:

Senator Murray: “You called for you called birth control pills a quote ‘disrespect of life,’ and said Americans quote ‘use birth control pills like candy.’ You also claimed—contrary to established science—that hormonal birth control has quote ‘horrifying health risks’ for women.”

***VIDEO of Senator Murray’s Q&A HERE ***

Washington, D.C. — Today, at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing, the committee considered the nomination of Casey Means for Medical Director in the Regular Corps of the Public Health Service and Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)—a former chair and senior member of the HELP Committee—grilled President Trump’s unqualified nominee on her concerning and harmful claims regarding the safety of birth control and pressed her on whether she would call out misleading claims on vaccines for infants and antidepressants for pregnant women.

In 2018, Means dropped out of her surgical residency and in 2019, she started a functional medicine practice where she treated patients without an active medical license until 2021. A close ally of RFK Jr., Means provides unconventional wellness advice on social media and in her newsletter where she earns money promoting dozens of supplements and health technologies.

[BIRTH CONTROL]

Senator Murray began her questioning by pressing Means on her harmful and misleading statements about birth control, noting that Dr. Means has called birth control pills “a disrespect of life,” claimed Americans “use birth control pills like candy,” and asserted that hormonal birth control carries “horrifying health risks” for women. Senator Murray underscored that there are 18 FDA-approved contraceptive methods, both hormonal and non-hormonal, backed by decades of evidence showing they are safe and effective, and stressed that millions of women rely on birth control every day and deserve clear, evidence-based guidance from public health leaders. Senator Murray said: “Thank you Dr. Means for being here, let me start with this. You called birth control pills, and I’m going to quote a ‘disrespect of life,’ and said Americans quote ‘use birth control pills like candy.’ You also claimed—contrary to established science—that hormonal birth control has quote ‘horrifying health risks’ for women. Now here are the facts: there are 18 FDA-approved contraceptive methods—both hormonal and non-hormonal—and there are decades, decades, of evidence showing that every one of these birth control methods is safe and effective.”

“So, I wanted to ask you, help me understand, should women trust the FDA which approved all 18 methods of birth control after a very rigorous look at the evidence, or should they trust your statement that there are ‘horrifying health risks’ to birth control—which contradicts that evidence?” asked Senator Murray.

“Thank you, Senator Murray, for your question. I’m curious if you’re aware of what the side effects of hormonal contraception are?” Means replied.

Senator Murray pushed back, “I’m curious if you are with the FDA that went through all of these and rigorously looked at them, or as Surgeon General if you’re going to tell the truth to the American people?”

“I absolutely believe that these medications should be accessible to all women, and also, all medications have risks and benefits. And in our current medical climate, with the burden on doctors, doctors do not have enough time for thorough informed consent conversations. Some of the horrifying side effects of birth control that I have mentioned include blood clots and stroke risk in women who have clotting disorders, who are smokers, who have obesity–” replied Means.

“So, is it general?” asked Senator Murray.

“No, it’s not in general, I am very careful with my words and when I say those comments, which are taken out of context, I am speaking about particular women that can be hurt if there is not informed consent about their medical history, their lifestyle exposures, and their family history. I want those women, and I know you do too, to be able to have a thorough conversation with their doctor and know whether they are higher risk for side effects when prescribed the medication,” responded Means.

“Saying that is one thing, but saying on, you know, different shows that ‘birth control pills are a disrespect of life’ is very different,” said Senator Murray.

“I am passionate about women’s health, and I think it is disrespectful to women–” replied Means.

“Saying that people ‘use birth control pills like candy’ is very different than what you just said,” said Senator Murray.

“We prescribe a huge amount of hormonal contraceptive, and I do not believe most of those conversations have informed consent because of the pressures that doctors are under because of our broken health care system. I want what’s best for women as do you–and I want every woman who could be at risk for a side effect to know if a woman died because of a stroke or a blood clot because they did not have a thorough conversation–” said Means

“Dr. Means, I just have two minutes left and I have other questions. Let me move on. Thank you,” responded Senator Murray.

[MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH]

Senator Murray continued her questioning by pressing Means on key maternal and child health issues, including vaccine safety, infant health, and maternal mental health. She raised concerns about recent comments from FDA official Tracy Beth Hoeg casting doubt on the safety of RSV vaccines for infants and questioning the safety of antidepressants, including SSRIs, during pregnancy. Senator Murray stressed that the Surgeon General must provide accurate, evidence-based public health information and pressed Dr. Means’ ability to do so: “Tracy Beth Høeg, she’s an anti-vaccine skeptic, she was elevated by the Trump administration to serve as the top drug regulator at FDA. She made comments last week casting doubt on the safety of RSV vaccines for [babies]. As I’m sure you know, RSV can be deadly, even for healthy, full-term infants. Do you believe that Dr. Høeg is wrong to question the safety of RSV vaccines?” asked Senator Murray.

“I have not read that article or seen that quote. I would need to know what she said before I commented on that,” Means answered.

Senator Murray replied, “Well, you do know that RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization for infants?”

Means replied, “I do, I have a seventeen-week-old and I am very aware of that.”

“Do you hear her statement, as Surgeon General, would you contradict it?” Senator Murray asked.

“I certainly have absolutely no issue having very frank conversations with anyone in the administration if I believe that their statements are misguided in some way or not fully informed. That’s not a conversation I would have publicly first; I would have a private and direct conversation with anyone in the administration if I felt that patients were at risk because of views,” Means replied.

“I also want to ask you about maternal health. Mental health conditions are the leading cause of maternal death in the U.S., including suicide and overdose deaths. In her comments last week, Dr. Høeg, same woman, also expressed concern about the safety of the anti-depressants during pregnancy. Specifically, she called out SSRIs, the most commonly prescribed type, do you believe that SSRIs are dangerous for pregnant women?” Senator Murray continued.

“I don’t want to be a broken record here, but I do believe that every medication has risks and benefits and you need to have a nuanced conversation with your doctor before starting a medication. That is, I think, the most responsible position for any doctor to share,” Means answered.

“Well strong evidence has shown that SSRIs are safe in pregnancy, most do not increase the risk of birth defects, but untreated depression in pregnancy puts women at risk,” Senator Murray replied.

“Certainly, and I agree with you, but I still think a patient – I don’t think it’s responsible to make a blanket statement for all Americans,” Means responded.

“Okay, well, if confirmed as Surgeon General, it will be your job to give accurate and up-to-date public health information to the American people. I assume you will take that responsibility seriously,” Senator Murray concluded.

“I will, and I absolutely do. And I also believe that the American people are looking for a more nuanced conversation about health, and I believe that that will help restore trust in public health,” Means said.

Senator Murray, a longtime congressional leader on health care and public health issues, has been consistently holding Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services accountable. Murray has been a leader in raising the alarm over RFK Jr.’s nomination and handling of HHS since the beginning—speaking out on the Senate floor, holding numerous events, raising the alarm after meeting with him, and hammering the threat he poses to Americans’ health nonstop.

She spoke out forcefully against RFK Jr.’s ousting of the entire ACIP panel, including one ACIP member from Washington state. Senator Murray has held countless events across Washington state and in Washington, D.C. with doctors, patients, and former HHS officials to lift up how Trump and Republicans’ attacks on health care will be devastating for families. In early September, Senator Murray took to the Senate floor to reiterate her call for RFK Jr. to be fired after he pushed former CDC Director Susan Monarez out of her job for refusing to rubber-stamp vaccine recommendations without evidence.

On September 8th, Senator Murray called on Chairman Cassidy to compel RFK Jr. to testify publicly before the HELP Committee. At the September 17th HELP Committee hearing with former CDC Director Susan Monarez and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Deb Houry, Senator Murray pressed both witnesses on whether they would feel confident telling parents to trust ACIP’s vaccine recommendations now, after RFK Jr. purged the entire panel of experts and replaced them with unqualified anti-vaccine skeptics—Former CDC Director Monarez replied that she would be “very nervous” to tell parents to trust any recommendations coming from the new ACIP panel. Senator Murray also requested in September an independent, comprehensive Inspector General review by the HHS Acting Inspector General of recent actions taken at HHS to limit access to vaccines, and recent personnel changes at the CDC. In December, she spoke out against ACIP’s vote to end the recommendation of vaccinating all newborns for hepatitis B at birth, without any new evidence prompting the change. Murray continues to press Republican leadership to compel RFK Jr. to answer publicly before the HELP Committee for his nonstop assault on America’s public health infrastructure.

Senator Murray is a longtime leader in the fight to protect and expand access to reproductive health care. Over the course of her career, Senator Murray has fought to ensure widespread access to affordable birth control. She leads the Access to Birth Control Act, which would guarantee patients’ timely access to birth control at pharmacies nationwide—including by addressing pharmacists’ refusals to dispense contraception that prevent patients from obtaining their preferred form of birth control. She also pushed to ensure birth control was covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and led the fight against the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling. Senator Murray is widely credited with leading the fight to make Plan B available over the counter.

As a leading Congressional champion of efforts to expand maternal health care and improve access to care for pregnant women, Senator Murray introduced the Healthy Maternal and Obstetric Medicine (MOM) Act, which would ensure that all women eligible for coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance marketplaces, as well as women eligible for other individual or group health plan coverage, can access affordable health care coverage throughout their pregnancies. The bill would establish a special enrollment period (SEP) for expectant mothers. Currently, marriage, divorce, having a baby, adoption, and changing jobs are considered qualifying life events that trigger a special enrollment period; however, becoming pregnant is not considered a qualifying event. The Healthy MOM Act would change that. 

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The following sites updated:


Posted by at

Thursday, February 26, 2026

Taco Skillet Dinner in the Kitchen

Beth e-mailed to note Easy Family Recipe's Taco Skillet Dinner recipe:

Ingredients 

2 lbs lean ground beef

3 tbsp taco seasoning

1 cup tomato sauce

2 tbsp tomato paste

1/2 cup sour cream

4 oz cream cheese

3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, divided into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup

2 cups iceberg lettuce, shredded

2 roma tomatoes, diced


Directions

Brown the ground beef in a large skillet over medium high heat until it is no longer pink.  Drain the grease from the skillet.

Return the skillet to the stove over medium heat and stir in the taco seasoning, tomato sauce, tomato paste, sour cream, and cream cheese. Continue to stir until all of the cheese is melted and everything is well combined. Let cook until the edges of the mixture start to bubble. Turn the heat off and stir in 1/2 cup cheddar cheese.

Taco Skillet Step 2: Add sour cream, cheese, sauce and seasonings

Remove from stove and top with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and the remaining 1/4 cup cheddar cheese. Serve warm. Enjoy!

Creamy Taco Skillet Step 3: Top with lettuce and tomato


News?  


While Donald Chump, the convicted felon, ranted and raved last night, elections took place.  Dan Gooding (NEWSWEEK) reports:

Democrats celebrated election wins Tuesday night, as President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address.

In Pennsylvania, the party held on to its slim majority in the state House of Representatives following a special election, while in Maine it held a state House seat.
The victories continue a trend of Democrat wins at different levels of government across the U.S. in recent months. Ahead of the midterms in November, both the Republican and Democratic Parties will be watching local races to see which way voters might be leaning, and whether the GOP’s control of the U.S. Congress looks certain to continue or is at risk.


Democrats are going to do very well in the mid-terms at this rate.  Venessa Wong (MARKET WATCH) notes Chump spewed some big lies last night:

President Donald Trump touted progress on affordability over his first year in office in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, saying that some “prices are plummeting downward,” including eggs, chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, and gas. His comments glossed over the fact that in aggregate, prices have continued to rise over the past 12 months, with the consumer-price index up 2.4% in January from a year earlier, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[. . .]
Democrats were quick to rebut Trump’s statements about affordability. In a post on X, Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts said, “Donald Trump called this the ‘golden age of America.’ For who? Grocery prices are up. Rent is up. Utility costs are up. Health care costs are up.”

Warren also noted that child-care costs, which are a major concern for working families, were not addressed in his speech. The omission is notable as the Trump administration has positioned itself as being pro-family. Trump introduced a pregnant woman in the audience, whom he said had benefited from lower-cost IVF drugs as a result of his policies.

Researchers critical of the administration’s aggressive tariff policy also noted that tariffs have increased consumers’ expenses — the ​​Yale Budget Lab estimates households are paying $1,681 extra per year.

Some comments on the article:

Louis Drozd
42 minutes ago
I watched the thing halfway through and gave up shortly after he was claiming we now have the lowest prescription prices in the world. There was some reference he made to a woman that had fertility drugs that were some odd thousand a month I can't remember exactly, but then he said on "Trump RX it is only $500 or whatever it was. I live in Europe most of the time and with my insurance, the maximum price I pay for any prescription med is 7 Euros a month. I know a few in the US who take a few of the same meds and they are still 10-100 times more, so Trump is full of it.

R Granzo
36 minutes ago
OK. he can say whatever lie he wants . . . we know what's going on.  No net gain in manufacturing jobs in the west.  Wages simply have NOT kept up.

belinda mollen
41 minutes ago
I would like to know who feeds our president with this information or is it just in his head? Tell me the last time Trump actually pumped gas (or was a witness at a gas station where someone pumped it for him) or when our president actually went grocery shopping. He is clueless and living in his fantasy world of plummeting prices. He is so out of touch, too worried about the awards he has not been given and trying to figure out a way to get them. Sad

big AL
9 minutes ago
Trump doesn't live in the real world.  He doesn't know anything that the average American and their costs of everyday stuff.  He just makes up stuff to makr=e himself feel good.




President Donald Trump’s State of the Union (SOTU) speech on Tuesday was the least popular this century, according to a new snap poll.

A CNN survey found that Trump’s latest SOTU address drew the weakest reaction of any modern address, with positive reactions even sliding across his two terms.

But CNN’s political director David Chalian warned: “This is a poll of speech watchers. So it is not a poll that is reflective of the population overall… What we know about people who tune into SOTU addresses is that they tend to be fans of whichever president is giving the speech.”

He added: “The polling universe here is about 13 points more Republican than the overall population.”

This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Wednesday:


Wednesday, February 25, 2026.  NPR and MS NOW uncover Pam Bondi's efforts to hide Epstein Files about Donald Chump, Pam's brother is on a lucky streak when it comes to his clients being pursued by the Justice Dept, Kristi Noem and her 'assistant' continue to garner attention, and much more. 

Let's start with the big news, Convicted Felon Donald Chump's actions have been covered up by Attorney General Pam da Bimbo Bondi.  Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:


The Department of Justice withheld multiple documents including allegations against President Donald Trump from its release of files on alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, according to an investigation by NPR.

The Department of Justice failed to release documents relating to three interviews the FBI conducted between July and October 2019 with a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child. Only the first interview, conducted on July 24, 2019, is available to the public. In that conversation, she doesn’t mention Trump at all.
However, the woman’s allegations against the president still appeared in a 21-page slideshow included in files. “[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit,” the FBI said. “In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.” This allegedly occurred in the mid-1980s when she was “approximately 13-15 years old.”

A record of the FBI interviews does appear in the files—on a list of discovery files given to Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell before her trial. By allowing Maxwell to retain information that the public does not have, Trump’s DOJ has enabled her to maintain potential blackmail over the president, according to independent journalist Roger Sollenberger.


On Tuesday morning, NPR published a stunning report on serial numbers and discovery logs that do not line up with what the Justice Department has posted online. Some of the missing materials relate to allegations involving President Donald Trump. The department declined to explain the discrepancies.

Congress ordered the release of these files. The DOJ controls the archive. Reporters compare internal catalog numbers to public postings and find gaps. The department offers assurances but no reconciliation of the record.

The allegations are grave — they involve claims of sexual abuse of minors — and they remain unproven. FBI case files contain interviews and leads that do not automatically translate into charges. That distinction matters, and it makes the integrity of the release process more important, not less.

The Epstein rollout has been ragged from the start. Victim names were exposed and then corrected. Documents were pulled down and reposted. Privacy reviews were cited. Deadlines were blamed. Now the public learns that dozens of pages reflected in official logs are not available for review. Even if each decision has an internal explanation, the outward picture is disorder in the execution of a congressionally mandated transparency law.
Disorder produces the same practical result as concealment. The public cannot tell what is complete, what is withheld, and why. The record becomes contestable. Accountability drifts.

Last week, I argued that the Epstein file rollout carried the feel of a cover-up because the public was being asked to trust a process it could not independently verify. NPR’s reporting moves that concern from instinct to documentation. When internal logs point to pages the public cannot see, the question stops being rhetorical and becomes procedural.

There is also a political fact that cannot be ignored: This is very clearly Donald Trump’s Justice Department. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche serve at his pleasure. The release process that now appears to shield him from clarity is being overseen by officials loyal to him. That reality demands a level of precision and documentation that leaves no room for doubt.

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee issued the following statement:


For the last few weeks, Oversight Democrats have been investigating the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump by a survivor.

Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor.

Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the President of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover up.

And the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee also issued this yesterday:

Washington, D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released the following statement after it was exposed that the Department of Justice withheld and removed some Epstein files related to allegations that President Donald Trump sexually abused a minor, a violation of both the Oversight Committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“For the last few weeks, Oversight Democrats have been investigating the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump by a survivor.

“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. Oversight Democrats will open a parallel investigation into this.

Under the Oversight Committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these records must immediately be shared with Congress and the American public. Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the President of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover up,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia

###



The Department of Justice has withheld from public disclosure in its Epstein files database memos and notes about FBI interviews, including those of a woman who has alleged President Donald Trump sexually abused her when she was a minor, MS NOW reported Tuesday.

The woman, who was interviewed in July 2019 by the FBI about allegations against convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, alleged that "Trump forced her to perform oral sex on him 35 years ago, when she was 13 or 14 years old, and subsequently hit her," MS NOW reported, citing a source who has reviewed unredacted documents.
"That allegation appears in a 2025 PowerPoint presentation detailing each of the FBI's Epstein-related investigations and a spreadsheet of unconfirmed tips called into the bureau's National Threat Operations Center reviewed by MS NOW," the outlet reported. "MS NOW has found that of at least four interviews the FBI conducted with the woman related to the Epstein investigations, only one memo — and no handwritten notes — reflecting such an interview is included on the DOJ site."

MS NOW's report came hours after NPR first reported that the DOJ withheld from its public database of Epstein documents files related to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor.

DOJ "also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump," NPR reported.


Appearing on CNN yesterday, US House Rep Jim Jordan played dumb -- the way he has over the sexual abuse scandal -- and insisted the Justice Dept had done nothing wrong. Elsewhere, the subject got the attention it deserves. 















Hours before President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, which is expected to include comments on immigration enforcement, 18 Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops from U.S. border regions issued a strongly worded statement urging Congress and the administration to make specific policy changes on the federal treatment of migrants.

Their list of demands includes honoring migrants’ right to apply for asylum at the border, protecting their access to sensitive locations like schools and houses of worship, keeping mixed-status families together, halting intimidating enforcement tactics like roving patrols and federal agents’ use of masks, and funding reintegration programs in deportees’ home countries.

“While we acknowledge the right and duty of a sovereign nation to enforce its laws, we also believe that those laws should be upheld in a manner that protects the God-given human dignity and rights of the human person,” the bishops wrote.
The signers included bishops from states that border Mexico and Canada — Texas, New Mexico, Washington, Michigan, California, and New York — as well as Rhode Island and Kentucky.

Similar appeals have failed to move the heart of the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.  She is clearly to busy with her husband and her alleged lover to handle much -- certainly not her job duties.  Vrinda Mundara (SHOWBIZ CHEAT SHEET) ponders talk of her affair:


Undoubtedly, Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is facing heavy scrutiny in news headlines due to the rumors of her alleged affair with former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski. However, there is a new addition in the same list. According to The List, Kristi Noem and her rumored lover Corey Lewandowski’s accidental disclosure of their affair in front of President Trump has stirred more drama.
The report states that Noem, 54, is not a stranger to controversies, so it is no longer surprising to the public that after the rumors of her alleged long-time affair with former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski became public, suddenly the politician is not taking any efforts to conceal or hide her rumored romantic fling with Corey Lewandowski, the chief of staff for Noem, under tight wraps despite the official reports of them being married to their respective partners being true.
A source, in a quote to the New York Post, has opened up about the same, explaining that the American President was feeling enraged and appalled after seeing how the duo were sharing a romantic moment while drinking from a single can of soda as a couple. After seeing the duo sharing a can of sparkling soda, Trump, in his raging and scathing tone, approached them and made a hard-hitting statement, stating that Noem and Corey can not indulge in this public display of affection because it is only becoming more evident and unavoidable, citing that now the news of their affair will become public and hard to hide.



A senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is accused of entering the cockpit of a government jet during ascent and later firing a pilot over a missing personal item, according to two people familiar with the incident.

Corey Lewandowski, a "special government employee" who advises Noem, allegedly entered the cockpit uninvited while the aircraft was still climbing and below 10,000 feet, when pilots are expected to limit distractions. A U.S. Coast Guard aviation policy states that "no person shall engage in any conversation or activity that could distract or interfere with a flight crewmember properly conducting their assigned duties during critical phases of flight."
The Coast Guard operated the aircraft.

Lewandowski denied key elements of the account, telling Reuters that "there was never a conversation in the cockpit when the flight was taking off," and said the sources' description was wrong. He did not answer questions about whether he entered the cockpit during ascent.

According to the two sources, pilots asked Lewandowski to return to the cabin until cruising altitude. Later in the flight, they said, Lewandowski demanded to know who should be fired after Noem's blanket was missing following a plane change for technical reasons. The pilot reportedly accepted responsibility and was dismissed on the spot.

Coast Guard leadership later reinstated the pilot because he was needed for the return flight, the sources said.


Homeland Security lies and then lies again.  Over and over.  They lie about big things -- lying that someone rammed their vehicle, for example -- and they lie about small things.  They lie.  Over and over.  They lie to the courts, they lie to the people.  Edith Olmsted (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes one lie that Kristi's been caught in:

Surprise, surprise: Homeland Security Kristi Noem completely made up that far-fetched story about deporting a cannibal, multiple federal law enforcement officials told The Intercept.
Speaking to Fox News’s Jesse Watters in June, Noem recounted a terrible tale she claimed to have heard from a U.S. air marshal about a cannibal who tried to “eat his own arms” while being deported out of the country. Noem later repeated the story as she and Donald Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz,” the president’s wetland-themed concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE wouldn’t respond to requests to confirm Noem’s story. Now multiple federal law enforcement officials—including one from the DHS—are saying it’s a lie, The Intercept reported Monday.

“That is completely made up,” a senior federal law enforcement official told The Intercept. “That never happened.”

[. . .]

Noem’s fake cannibal is just one of the many dangerous lies being peddled by DHS—as calls for her resignation continue to mount.





The Department of Homeland Security is threatening to put legal observers monitoring ICE activity on a domestic terrorist watchlist, according to a new lawsuit. 

Politico, citing the lawsuit, reports that DHS agents used facial recognition technology and license plate readers to monitor observers in Maine who were keeping tabs on federal immigration agents. The federal law enforcement officers would then threaten protesters. 
The lawsuit against the department and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was filed Monday by two of those observers, Colleen Fagan and Elinor Hilton, who are hoping for an injunction that would stop the department from using the technology to threaten legal observers.

Hilton and Fagan allege that agents scanned their faces and license plates in two separate instances last month while they were recording ICE in Portland. In one occurrence, the lawsuit states that an agent told Hilton, “I hope you know that if you keep coming to things like this, you are going to be on a domestic terrorist watchlist. Then we’re going to come to your house later tonight.”

The lawsuit cited other Maine incidents documented in news articles, such as one ICE agent driving to a legal observer’s home and repeatedly honking their horn. Another time, a federal agent drove to the home of a protester and told her, “This is a warning. We know you live right here.”

Vic Verbalaitis (DAILY BEAST) notes in "ICE Barbie forced to scrap giant prison plan after uproar" that Kristi Noem will not be getting her immigration detention center in New Hampshire after all while Julia Ornedo's "White House blocks ICE Barbie and alleged lover’s travel chaos" (DAILY BEAST) notes,  "The White House was reportedly forced to step in after Kristi Noem and her alleged lover Corey Lewandowski cooked up a plan that briefly sent travelers into a panic."

"Our laws are clear.  You can refuse illegal orders.  No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution."  Six members of Congress taped a PSA back in November explaining/reminding those serving in the military of that fact.  It is a fact.  Members of the military are trained in that reality.  Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and House of Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan were the six lawmakers.  They angered Donald Chump -- who lied that it was sedition -- and his boy toy Prissy Pete Hegseth.  Hegseth, it should be noted, had made similar statements when he was on FOX "NEWS."  Wasn't a problem to us here because we know the law.  But Pete Hegseth is a liar and a goon (and a gooner) so he doesn't care what's legal and what's not.  Gregory Wallance (THE HILL) observed yesterday, "The video did not urge any specific command or servicemember to disobey any specific order.  The video only restated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which in fact requires servicemembers to disobey manifestly illegal orders. The Democrats arguably were acting in their capacity as elected officials with oversight responsibility for the military."


There are two outcomes this week.  Nia Prater (THE INTELLIGENCER) notes:


Jeanine Pirro’s tenure leading the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., has been marked by a poor record in court. The former judge and onetime Fox News host has seen several cases she has brought against protesters and other anti-Trump figures fall apart in front of grand juries, including a well-publicized failure to indict a resident for hurling a sandwich at a federal agent stationed in the capital city last year.
Now, following another one of those setbacks, her office is reportedly dropping its pursuit of a group of Democratic members of Congress whom President Donald Trump has accused of treason. Sources tell NBC News that the U.S. attorney will stop seeking legal action against the six Democratic lawmakers who filmed a video urging members of the military and the nation’s intelligence community to refuse illegal orders, in a clear shot at Trump and his administration.
The reported move comes just weeks after a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., rejected Pirro’s efforts to obtain an indictment against the Democrats, a once rare occurrence that has become common during Trump’s second term.

So that's Pirro learning to read the room.  Hegseth's too busy huffing males to read the room.  Leo Shane III, Connor O'Brien and Kyle Cheney (POLITICO) report: 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday ramped up his public spat with Sen. Mark Kelly, appealing a federal court ruling that blocked him from punishing the Arizona Democrat for advising troops not to follow illegal orders.

The case, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asks a panel to set aside the ruling this month from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who issued a preliminary injunction halting the Pentagon’s effort to demote the former Navy captain and reduce his retirement pay.
The move reveals that Hegseth has no plans to tamp down his battle against Kelly, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has fought the allegations against him as a threat to free speech.

Attorney General Pam da Bimbo Bondi is burying Epstein files.  She's also accused of helping her brother's clients.  Russell Payne (SALON) reports:

With the Department of Justice embroiled in criticism over its handling of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing renewed questions over her brother, Brad Bondi, and his unusual winning streak in cases involving the DOJ.
In recent months, the department has faced questions about whether it has “properly implemented firewalls and screening procedures to separate Attorney General Bondi from her brother,” per a letter sent by members of Congress in December.

In the letter, lawmakers detail recent cases in which Brad Bondi has been able to achieve favorable outcomes for his clients, even those facing long odds, in their case. For example, Bondi served as the lead attorney for billionaire Trevor Milton, who was convicted of defrauding investors in 2022, in a scheme in which Milton made misleading statements targeting “retail investors.” For this, Milton was sentenced to four years in prison — however, President Donald Trump pardoned Milton in March 2025.

Lawmakers have also questioned the circumstances of two cases from last summer that the DOJ dropped after Brad Bondi joined the legal team of the defense. In August, the DOJ dropped charges against developer Sid Chakraverty, who was accused of wire fraud and lying to secure favorable tax incentives. This came only weeks after Brad Bondi joined Chakraverty’s legal team, though Chakraverty claims that Bondi had been working on the case in an unofficial capacity since before the 2024 election.
A similar situation played out in the case of Carolina Amesty, a former Florida state House Republican, accused of fraudulently obtaining $122,000 of small business loans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. attorney on the case, Gregory Kehoe, however, requested that the case be dismissed, without providing a reason, shortly after Brad Bondi joined Amesty’s legal team. Bondi was hired shortly after the 2024 election and after Trump made clear his intention to nominate Pam Bondi as attorney general.


Convicted Felon Donald Chump gave a rambling, meandering, hate filled speech last night.  We're not wasting time on that but we will note this from Senator Adam Schiff's office;
 

Schiff: “Tonight [Trump] will claim credit for successes he did not achieve and deny responsibility for crises that he created. And he will tell us America has never been greater. But the American people deserve the truth.”

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) delivered a prebuttal address on the Senate floor ahead of the State of the Union, calling out how President Trump has not just failed to improve the state of our union, but has actively degraded it.  

In his remarks, Schiff enumerated ten ways the president has torn down our nation: denigrating our allies and alliances; undermining truth, science, education, and expertise; sabotaging climate and energy stability; making America less safe at home; politicizing and weaponizing government institutions; cutting funding to health and research institutions; eroding the rule of law; destroying health care; driving economic instability and the affordability crisis; and deepening division and social breakdown. Schiff pushed Americans not to accept this path of our failing nation, arguing that we have power to organize, vote, and speak the truth, and the power to fight for a more perfect union.  

“It depends on you. On me. Every single one of us. The work is hard. The progress is slow. The discouragement is real. But so is the possibility. So is the promise. So is the extraordinary, improbable, beautiful experiment that is America – if we have the courage to believe in it again, and the determination to make it real. The pursuit of a more perfect union has to continue. It must. And it continues with us,” said Senator Schiff.  

Watch his full speech HERE. Download remarks HERE. 

On how President Trump has divided our nation:  

[…] He has taken a diverse, complicated, and sometimes fractious country – which has always been diverse, complicated, and sometimes fractious – and instead of trying to unite it, he has done more than anyone else in our history to break it apart. He governs through fear and scapegoating. Immigrants are “invaders.” Vulnerable kids are a “lie.” Political opponents are “enemies from within.” The media is “fake news.” Anyone who disagrees with him is a traitor […] The basic trust that allows democracy to function – the assumption that even when we disagree, we share certain values and commitments – is coming apart. I’ve been in public service long enough to remember when Democrats and Republicans could team up with each other, without suffering political attack. When we could disagree without questioning each other’s patriotism or humanity. When we could make progress, on matters big and small. 

On channeling our collective power to hold the President accountable:  

[…] Tonight, the President will try to convince you that everything is fine. I’m asking you to trust your own eyes. To trust your own experience. To trust the evidence. And then I’m asking you to trust something else: Your own power. The power to organize. To vote. To speak truth. To run for office. To hold leaders accountable. The power to look at what we’ve lost and decide we’re going to fight with everything we have to get it back. Because a more perfect union doesn’t depend on any one person or President – as much as he may want it to.  

On how Trump has drove up everyday costs:  

[..] The President promised to bring down inflation. Instead, his tariffs have made it worse. And it’s not just the tariffs. The tax cuts to rich people and corporations have exploded the deficit. Regulatory rollbacks have boosted corporate profits while creating long-term risks. Attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence have undermined the nation’s economy and driven prices higher. Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs — we have lost them. He promised to bring down inflation — it has gone up. He promised to reduce the trade deficit — it has reached a record high. Americans literally cannot afford three more years of this. 

Read the transcript of his remarks as delivered below: 

Tonight, just down the hall, the President will stand before Congress and the American people.  

He will paint a picture of strength, prosperity, and national renewal. He will claim credit for successes he did not achieve and deny responsibility for crises that he created. And he will tell us that America has never been greater. 

But the American people deserve the truth. And the truth is that over the past year, we have not moved closer to forming “a more perfect union” – tragically it is quite the opposite. Our disunion has only grown. Our founders understood something when they chose the words: “A more perfect union…” They didn’t contemplate achieving perfection. They envisioned something more realistic, more achievable — the pursuit of a more perfect union. A constant effort to push the country forward. A grinding, slow, and sometimes painful process. They recognized that America is not a finished product but a beautiful, ongoing experiment in self-governance that requires hard work and constant perseverance.  

For 250 years, through wars and depressions, through slavery and Jim Crow, through periods of bitter division and hard-won reconciliation, Americans have honored our founder’s intention. And moved the nation forward. We have stumbled. We have fallen short. And at times we have failed to live up to our promise. 

But we have always — eventually – bent the arc of our own national story towards justice, towards fairness, towards a more perfect union. 

And yet, from the moment he inflicted himself on our public life, Donald Trump has done everything possible to reverse that progress. By design it appears, by virtue of the product of some defect of character, perhaps, but in every way he can, in every moment he can, he has sought to divide us.  

Today, in fewer words than the President will use tonight, I want to talk about some of the ways that President Trump has not just failed to advance our union — but done so much to bring about our disunion. 

Denigrating Our Allies and Alliances 

Now, I’ve served in our Capitol for over two decades.  

And I have visited the capitals of our friends and some of our adversaries across the world.  

I have seen firsthand that—notwithstanding our possession of the strongest and most courageous military in the world—America’s greatest strategic asset isn’t the might of our arms, or the size of our aircraft carriers.  

It is the strength of the alliances around the world.  

The web of partnerships we built after World War II – NATO, our Pacific alliances, our hemispheric relationships – they are force multipliers. They help us keep the peace. 

They are the reason that a nation of 340 million people can project power and values across a globe of more than 8 billion. 

Yet, tragically, President Trump has systematically taken apart the advantage these allies give us. 

He has insulted the leaders of Canada, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom — our closest democratic allies — not to mention countries like Denmark. 

He has questioned whether America would defend NATO members under Article 5, the collective defense provision that has kept most of Europe peaceful for 75 years.  

He has treated longstanding security commitments as protection rackets, demanding payment as if our allies were vassal states rather than partners. 

And he has done all this while praising Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and other dictators.   

The result?  

Our allies don’t trust us. And our most powerful adversaries don’t fear us.  

And that makes every American less safe. 

When the next crisis comes – and it will come, and it may even be caused by this president – we will find ourselves isolated in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. 

This weakens and endangers our union. 

Undermining Truth, Science, Education, and Expertise 

But the power of our union isn’t just about the strength of our military or ties abroad. It is also about the strength of our intellect here at home. 

I find myself thinking about an exchange from the television series on Chernobyl.  

A scientist tells a Soviet bureaucrat, “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” 

This administration has run up a debt to the truth that will take generations to repay. 

Over the last several years, the President of the United States has suggested that people inject bleach to cure COVID-19, that windmills cause cancer, that climate change is a hoax invented by China, that Tylenol use in pregnancy causes autism. The list goes on and on.   

And over this past year, we have seen systematic attacks on scientists at the CDC, NOAA, the EPA, and the NIH – career professionals driven from public service for the apparent crime of publishing findings the President doesn’t like. 

DOGE-d for speaking truth to power. For respecting facts and science, or simply, seemingly, and perversely in this cruelest of administrations — fired for the apparent “fun” of it.  

We have seen university researchers lose federal funding not because their work lacks merit, but because their conclusions contradict preferred political narratives. 

We have seen attacks on vaccines and changes to our public health system that have caused needless outbreaks of disease. This President has most assuredly not Made America Great Again, but he has managed to Make Measles Great Again. 

And when experts gently try to correct these falsehoods, they are attacked, doxxed, and threatened. 

This is part of a deliberate cultivation of ignorance as a political strategy. 

When you undermine expertise, when you treat all opinions as equally valid regardless of evidence, when you replace scientists with sycophants – you make people vulnerable to con artists and demagogues. 

You make democracy itself impossible, because democracy requires an informed citizenry capable of distinguishing truth from lies. 

The debt to the truth will come due.  

And when it does, our country will pay an enormous price. 

Slowing Renewable Energy and Speeding Climate Change 

Just more than a year ago, Los Angeles County faced one of the most destructive disasters in the nation’s history. 

Entire neighborhoods – torched and torn apart by wildfires the magnitude of which we have not seen on the suburban streets of the Southland. 

This loss – of loved ones, of homes and businesses, of precious memories — all gone in mere moments, still weighs heavy upon us. 

Since then, I have talked to survivors of those fires who have gone on to rebuild, only to see their insurance coverage dropped – with worsening drought and prolonged dry seasons, insurance companies are refusing to cover the same homes and businesses they covered just a few years ago.  

They are seeing, what we are seeing, that this may not be the last of these tragedies in our hills in our lifetimes.  

This is the climate crisis in human terms. And this administration’s response has been to make it catastrophically worse. 

President Trump has rolled back fuel efficiency standards, withdrawn from international climate agreements, opened pristine federal lands to more drilling, and—as we saw with last week’s repeal of what’s known as the “endangerment finding” —gutted the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions.  

A New York Times headline last month actually read: “E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution.” It sounds like parody, but sadly these destructive efforts are real. 

All of this while summers grow hotter, some winters grow colder, wildfires rage, hurricanes intensify, and insurance markets collapse. 

The President calls this “energy dominance.”  

But dominance over what? The laws of physics? The carbon cycle? 

Here’s what is actually happening:  

We’re sacrificing long-term prosperity for short-term profit.  

We’re driving up costs for American families through higher insurance premiums, higher food prices, and higher disaster recovery expenses. 

We’re ceding global leadership in clean energy and technology – the defining economic opportunity of the 21st century – to China and to Europe. 

And we’re doing it all while pretending that the house isn’t on fire. 

Angelinos know better.  

So do millions of Americans living through droughts, floods, and heat waves that would have been impossible a generation ago. The climate doesn’t care about your politics. 

The debt comes due whether you believe it or not. 

Making Our Communities Less Safe 

Our changing climate is not the only threat our communities face in Donald Trump’s America. 

In the aftermath of January 6th, 2021, there was a brief moment when Americans of all political persuasions condemned political violence.  

The attack on the Capitol was so brazen, so shocking, that even some of the President’s allies momentarily found their moral bearings and said, “Count me out.” 

That moment has clearly passed. 

We now have a President who has pardoned January 6th rioters, calling them “patriots” and brought them into his administration, including one caught shouting “kill ‘em” at police officers that day. 

We have an administration that treats white nationalist extremism as a core competency in the hiring process. 

And an administration that focuses federal law enforcement resources not on violent offenders, but on prosecuting political opponents, unleashing masked ICE on innocent people and deporting children and grandmothers. 

At the same time, we have seen the gutting of public health infrastructure that was built over decades to protect Americans from pandemics.  

We have seen emergency preparedness budgets slashed and the people who ran them driven out of government. 

The message is clear: If you’re a violent extremist who supports the President, you get a pardon. But if you’re a public health official who takes your job seriously, you get a pink slip. 

This makes Americans less safe from terrorism, from disease, from domestic threats that don’t care about party affiliation.  

Security and attacks against police officers aren’t partisan issues — or at least they shouldn’t be. 

But when the President treats loyalty as more important than competence, when he treats protection as something selectively offered to supporters rather than universally provided to the people— he fundamentally misunderstands the first duty of government.  

And the need to protect the public is certainly not the only thing he misunderstands.   

Politicizing and Weaponizing Government Institutions 

From the birth of our nation, our Founders were obsessed with preventing tyranny and the emergence of another king, another despot.  

They created checks and balances, separation of powers, an independent judiciary.  

They understood that the greatest threat to liberty wasn’t foreign invasion – it was the concentration of power in the hands of one person or faction. 

This President has systematically dismantled these safeguards in his second term. 

The Justice Department is supposed to be independent, pursuing justice without fear or favor.  

But under this administration, it has become an instrument of presidential revenge, a sword and shield for the president, launching investigations of critics and dropping cases against allies. 

His Justice Department, and I say “his” because it no longer represents the public or justice, and is run by his former criminal defense lawyers represents only his personal interests, sought to indict two of my Senate colleagues for stating the plain truth that members of the military may refuse an illegal order, indeed they have a duty to do so.  

Their oath, after all, is to the Constitution, not to the person of the president.  

It is difficult to overstate what an abuse of power the pursuit of that indictment represents; the effort to jail one’s opposition is a hallmark of a dictatorship, not democracy.  

Career civil servants from all across the federal government – people who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations with professionalism and integrity – are being purged for insufficient loyalty to the person of the president.  

Inspectors General who uncover wrongdoing and expose corruption are fired. Whistleblowers intimidated. 

We are witnessing the conversion of the federal government from a public trust into a personal fiefdom. 

And here’s the thing that should terrify every American, regardless of party. 

Once these norms are broken, they are immensely difficult to restore.  

Once you establish that a President can use the Justice Department to punish enemies, every future President will face that temptation. Pressure, even. 

Once you establish that civil servants must demonstrate personal loyalty rather than professional competence, you’ve replaced the rule of law with the rule of one. 

The Founders warned us about this. Their pursuit of a more perfect union was dependent upon a calculated departure from consolidated power. 

Now we are living the fears of our Founders. And seeing that threat expand rapidly. 

Triggering a Brain Drain 

With the President’s weaponization of our institutions comes a parallel, equally disturbing trend.  

America has always had a secret weapon in global competition:  

We attract the best and the brightest from around the world.  

Nobel Prize winners, startup founders, groundbreaking researchers – they come here because America offers something unique: 

Freedom, funding, and the belief in science. The ultimate intellectual melting pot. That’s being attacked on a daily basis. 

This administration has slashed funding for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Energy’s research programs.  

It has attacked universities as “indoctrination centers.”  

It has made it harder for foreign students to get visas or stay after graduation and start a business. 

I’ve spoken with researchers at Caltech, UCLA, Stanford, you name it – world-class institutions in my state.  

They tell me the same story: Graduate students from abroad are choosing to study in Europe or Canada. Even China. Postdocs are leaving.  

Even American-born scientists are considering opportunities elsewhere, because they can’t count on research funding, because they’re tired of political attacks, because they don’t want to work in an environment where basic facts are treated with partisan hostility.  

America is now for the first time losing the race for talent.  

And in a knowledge economy, talent is everything. 

China isn’t attacking its scientists. 

Europe isn’t defunding its research universities.  

They’re doing the opposite – because they understand what this administration apparently doesn’t: The future belongs to nations that invest in intellectual and creative talent, not to the nations that drive it away. 

When the next breakthrough treatments, the next transformative technologies, the next generation of innovation comes from Shanghai or Berlin instead of San Francisco or Boston, we will know why and who is responsible.  

Attacking the Rule of Law 

 In 1783 George Washington wrote: “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences… reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.” 

Washington understood that the rule of law – the principle that no one, not even the President, is above the law – is fundamentally what separates democracy from despotism. 

President Trump has spent his whole career evading the rule of law. 

He has refused to comply with congressional subpoenas.  

He has ignored court orders.  

He has pardoned co-conspirators and dangled pardons in brazen attempts at witness tampering. 

He has attacked judges who rule against him as “biased” or “partisan.”  

He has called for the prosecution of political opponents without evidence.  

He has treated the justice system not as a neutral arbiter but as a weapon to be captured and wielded. 

And increasingly, he’s succeeding. 

We have seen this partisan and dangerous Supreme Court grant presidents sweeping immunity from prosecution.  

We have seen judges appointed based on loyalty rather than jurisprudence.  

We have seen the normalization of conduct that, in any previous administration, would have been utterly disqualifying. 

After two and a half centuries of American life, we came to believe that the rule of law was so well entrenched in this country as to be sacrosanct. Beyond reproach or repeal.  

We were wrong. 

It depends on norms, on shame even, on the willingness of the people in power to accept limits on that power.  

When those restraints disappear, when corruption becomes routine and impunity becomes expected – the republic is in deep danger. 

Cutting off Access to Health Care 

The health of our democracy is at risk. But so to is the health of our nation. 

Let me tell you about a constituent of mine. Her name is Catherine. She wrote to me last November. 

She shared that as a retired teacher, earlier in her career, when she was working, she had trouble getting health insurance – because she had a pre-existing condition that made insurance unobtainable for her, until we passed the Affordable Care Act.  

The ACA changed that. It literally saved her life. 

Now, the President is trying to dismantle the ACA again. The big ugly bill [failed to extend] its tax credits and took a trillion dollars from Medicaid to give rich in the country a tax cut.  

He’s systematically attacked the health care system Americans rely on, to give more tax breaks for large corporations.  

And all the while, he’s driving up costs — all so he can claim the system is broken and he can privatize it. 

It is not hard to see.  

This is the pattern with this administration:  

Promise relief, deliver crisis.  

Promise lower costs, but drive them up.  

Promise to protect people, then cut their care. 

But those broken promises will also mean shattered families, deeper uncertainty, and an America that is sicker and poorer. 

This is what is happening to Catherine right now. She is on a fixed income, roughly $45,000 a year – with a house payment and two kids in college. 

Because of the Big Ugly Bill’s failure to extend the ACA tax credits, her premium has gone up $800 this year. $800 a month, nearly $10,000 a over the course of the year. Almost a quarter of her annual income. 

She has relied on the goodwill of her neighbors, and of her local hospital. 

But her words still ring in my ear. 

“I am not going to make do. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” 

Making the Economy Work for the Rich and Only the Rich 

In Trump’s America, the economy of opportunity is only for those on the inside – the billionaires and big corporations that can afford to donate to Donald Trump’s ballroom, buy his meme coins, or pay a million dollars to stand at his side while he takes the oath of office or celebrates the 250th anniversary of the nation. 

And the rest? Let them eat the cost of mounting tariffs. 

Remember when President Trump said trade wars were going to be “easy to win”? 

How’s that working out for us? 

Tariffs – which are taxes on American consumers, not on foreign countries – have driven up the cost of everything from groceries to electronics.  

Retaliatory tariffs from other countries have devastated American farmers and manufacturers. And he is fighting a court decision that should force him to pay those taxes back to the people. Business investment has stalled because no one knows what the rules will be from one month to the next. 

The President promised to bring down inflation. 

Instead, his tariffs have made it worse.  

And it’s not just the tariffs. 

The tax cuts to rich people and corporations have exploded the deficit. 

Regulatory rollbacks have boosted corporate profits while creating long-term risks.  

Attacks on the Federal Reserve’s independence have undermined the nation’s economy and driven prices higher. 

Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs — we have lost them. He promised to bring down inflation — it has gone up. He promised to reduce the trade deficit — it has reached a record high. 

Americans literally cannot afford three more years of this. 

Tearing the Country Apart 

Which brings me to the heart of the matter.  

He has taken a diverse, complicated, and sometimes fractious country – which has always been diverse, complicated, and sometimes fractious – and instead of trying to unite it, he has done more than anyone else in our history to break it apart. 

He governs through fear and scapegoating. 

Immigrants are “invaders.” 

Vulnerable kids are a “lie.” 

Political opponents are “enemies from within.” 

The media is “fake news.” 

Anyone who disagrees with him is a traitor. 

Think about what that has meant for all of us. What it’s meant for you. 

There are family members who are no longer speaking to one another. 

Friendships that have ended. 

Communities are turning inward, and turning on each other. 

The basic trust that allows democracy to function – the assumption that even when we disagree, we share certain values and commitments – is coming apart. 

I’ve been in public service long enough to remember when Democrats and Republicans could team up with each other, without suffering political attack.  

When we could disagree without questioning each other’s patriotism or humanity. 

When we could make progress, on matters big and small. 

That world has grown really small indeed, in no small part because of this President. 

The great tragedy, of course, is that America has real challenges that require real solutions.  

The cost of everyday life. Housing and health care. Education and energy costs. Infrastructure and the imminent challenges of the climate crisis. 

These are hard problems, and reasonable people can disagree with how to solve them. 

But we can’t solve them – or prepare for the problems of the future – if we can’t talk to each other.  

We can’t solve them if we treat politics as warfare rather than negotiation. 

We can’t solve them if the President of the United States purports to love America but spends all his time attacking Americans.  

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Lincoln said that. 

It was true then. It is true now. 

So, tonight President Trump will deliver his State of the Union address. He will claim that  

America is strong, prosperous, and united. 

But sadly, he has made us weaker abroad, more divided at home, less trusted, less prosperous, less safe, and less free than when he took office. 

The state of our union now is not strong, thanks to him.  

It’s fragile. 

Deeply, deeply fragile. 

But we cannot forget that fragility is not the same as frailty. 

We’ve been broken before and found ways to mend ourselves. 

We’ve lost our way before and found, somehow, the courage to chart a new course. 

We have forgotten our highest ideals before –and yet always, eventually remember who we are. 

We cannot think of “a more perfect union” as a destination. 

“A more perfect union” is a direction. 

It’s the choice we make, generation after generation, to see each other not as enemies but as friends. 

As partners in the boldest experiment in democracy that the world has known.  

It’s the work of building longer bridges instead of higher walls – between parties, between communities, between the America we are and the America we could be. 

It’s the recognition that our nation’s diversity isn’t our weakness – it’s the very source of our strength, our creativity, our resilience. 

A more perfect union means families who don’t go bankrupt because someone got sick.   

It means kids who can breathe clean air and inherit a livable planet. 

It means immigrants being welcomed for their contributions, not vilified for their origins. 

It means learning from our history and charting a more equitable course for the future. 

It means justice that applies equally to the powerful and the powerless. 

It means scientists free to pursue truth without fear. 

It means alliances that multiply our influence instead of isolation that diminishes it. 

It means an America where disagreement doesn’t mean demonization, where debate doesn’t mean destruction, where we can be fierce advocates for our beliefs while still recognizing the humanity in those who disagree. 

None of that is easy. And if the last ten years of American life are any evidence – none of that is guaranteed. 

The Constitution gives us the tools, but we have to do the job.  

The Founders lit the flame, but we have to keep it burning. 

They started the work, and we must continue it. 

Tonight, the President will try to convince you that everything is fine.  

I’m asking you to trust your own eyes. To trust your own experience. To trust the evidence. 

And then I’m asking you to trust something else: Your own power. The power to organize. To vote. To speak truth. To run for office. To hold leaders accountable. The power to look at what we’ve lost and decide we’re going to fight with everything we have to get it back. 

Because a more perfect union doesn’t depend on any one person or President – as much as he may want it to. 

It depends on teachers who refuse to teach lies. 

It depends on students who refuse to abandon their dreams. 

It depends on journalists who refuse to stop asking questions. 

On scientists who refuse to abandon facts.  

On neighbors who refuse to turn against each other.  

On Americans who refuse to accept that this is as good as it gets. 

It depends on you. On me. Every single one of us. 

The work is hard. The progress is slow. The discouragement is real. 

But so is the possibility. 

So is the promise. 

So is the extraordinary, improbable, beautiful experiment that is America – if we have the courage to believe in it again, and the determination to make it real. 

The pursuit of a more perfect union has to continue. It must. 

And it continues with us.  

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