This Is Just Who Trump Is  —  What motivates President Trump?  —  Not what motivates Trumpism, whatever that is.  Not what motivates his MAGA supporters.  Not what motivates the infrequent and marginal voters who delivered him his victories in 2016 and 2024.  —  No. What specifically motivates Donald J. Trump?

Prosecutors Began Investigating Renee Good's Killing.  Washington Told Them to Stop.  —  Federal prosecutors had a warrant to collect evidence from Ms. Good's vehicle, but Trump administration leaders said to drop it.  About a dozen prosecutors have departed, leaving the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office in turmoil.

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump  —  Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff  —  Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) detected evidence …

ICE detainees from Maine being held under ‘inhumane’ conditions in Mass. facility, attorneys say  —  An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said the allegations of overcrowding and lack of access to lawyers are false.  —  Communities:  —  9 min readFont size +

Who were the other men in the Epstein files?  This is the FBI's own list  —  After the Justice Department shut the door on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files in July 2025, FBI agents worked on drafts of a 21-page presentation of all the evidence the FBI had gathered in the case, including a summary of allegations against 11 men.

208. The Fifth Circuit Jumps the Immigration Detention Shark  —  I've written before about the deeply contested (and contestable) reinterpretation of federal immigration law that the Trump administration adopted last summer, under which any non-citizen who was never lawfully admitted …

State Department will delete X posts from before Trump returned to office  —  The State Department is removing all posts on its public accounts on the social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025.  —  The posts will be internally archived …

The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe's political class.  In the US, they're getting a pass. … But as Europe's political class moves to clean up its mess and address its shame concerning ties with the convicted sex offender, it's inadvertently highlighting something else — the comparative lack of accountability in the U.S.

The Real Threat Isn't Trump.  It's the MAGA Apparatus.  —  The round table convenes to debate whether we need to worry about the midterms being free and fair.  —  Can President Trump really nationalize elections?  This week at the round table for “The Opinions,” the Times Opinion national …

US gave Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach agreement to end war, Zelenskyy says  —  The U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the nearly four‑year war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, as Russian strikes on energy infrastructure …

Immigrant whose skull was broken in eight places during ICE arrest says beating was unprovoked  —  Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles …

Ohio man charged with threatening to kill Vice President JD Vance and possessing child abuse files  —  An Ohio man has been charged with threatening to kill Vice President JD Vance while he was visiting his home state last month.  But the man's lawyer said his health makes it unlikely he would have been able to carry out the threat.

Now We Know What All Those People Got From Epstein  —  Jeffrey Epstein, as has become clear again with the latest Department of Justice file dump, will go down in history as perhaps this century's most horrifically accomplished social climber.  He knew pretty much everybody, name-dropping …

Marco Rubio Will Let 2.5 Million Children Die so Sarah Rogers Can Fund Far Right Extremists in Europe  —  The last ten days or so provide a slew of examples of what I'm tentatively calling, “the big shift” — very obvious examples where we can show Trump taking funds away from something …

Trump administration won't let student deported to Honduras return  —  President Donald Trump's administration on Friday called a judge's proposal that the government issue a student visa to a college student it deported to Honduras in violation of a court order “unfeasible” …

Conflict of Disinterest … Last month, just ahead of the devastating layoffs at The Washington Post, a group of wealthy D.C. locals approached Post publisher and chief executive Will Lewis with a proposal: Would the Jeff Bezos-owned paper consider spinning off its local and sports sections and selling to them?

Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters  —  Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism  —  The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters …

Lutnick and Epstein were in business together, Epstein files show  —  Add CBS News on Google  —  U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said he had “limited interactions” with Jeffrey Epstein, but documents show they were in business together as recently as 2014.

Republicans instructed not to bring up Epstein files in upcoming Pam Bondi hearing: report  —  Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 11, but according to journalist Aaron Parnas, Republicans on the committee have been instructed …

What X's $1 million creator contest revealed about Musk's platform  —  X said it would give $1 million to a user who had previously shared racist posts, including one supporting Hitler.  —  Listen to this article with a free account  —  When Elon Musk's social media platform X launched …

Military Pressured to See ‘Melania’ Against Their Will  —  ‘PEOPLE ARE SCARED’  —  A military group has evidence of troops being ordered into theater—the movie theater.  —  Thousands of active-duty military personnel may have been “pressured” into seeing the Melania documentary at cinemas around the country, a watchdog has warned.

Judge extends block on Trump admin's bid to slash social services funds to 5 states  —  A New York judge on Friday extended a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from slashing funds to social service programs in five Democrat-led states.

How Picasso, Van Gogh And Cézanne Helped Finance Epstein Client Leon Black's Billionaire Lifestyle  —  The Epstein files detail private equity tycoon Leon Black's massive, multi-billion-dollar art collection—and how he leveraged it to grow his wealth.