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“We neglected not to do extensive research on his background. It was a mistake, but Jeffrey was a good friend to both of us,” she said.

“It was deeply disturbing for both of us to realize that we had engaged with someone who presented himself as a helpful friend but led a hidden life of criminal, inhuman and perverse acts.”

"Epstein had told Noam that he [Epstein] was being unjustly persecuted, and Noam spoke about his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in,” she said in her statement.

“It is now clear that everything was orchestrated, having at least one of Epstein's intentions to try to get someone like Noam to repair Epstein's reputation by association.

Noam's criticisms have never been directed at the women's movement; on the contrary, he has always supported gender equity and women's rights.

What happened was that Epstein took advantage of Noam's public criticism of what became known as the cancellation culture “to present himself as a victim of it,” she added.

Another message from Chomsky released by the House Oversight Committee last year showed Chomsky saying it was a “most valuable experience“ to have ”regular contact" with Epstein.

Valeria Chomsky said that the couple attended dinners at Epstein's townhouse in New York, stayed in his apartments there and in Paris, dined at his ranch in New Mexico and attended several academic meetings with him”.

Noam and Epstein were introduced in 2015 and that the couple was unaware of Epstein's 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution with a minor under the age of 18, Valeria Chomsky said.

By introducing himself this way, Epstein caught Noam's attention, and they began to correspond.

Epstein began to circle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas that Noam was working on a lot.

Valeria Chomsky also clarified the basis of two financial transactions between Chomsky and Epstein.

On one occasion, Epstein sent Noam Chomsky a check for $200,000 as part of a language challenge that Chomsky developed. Then Epstein had helped Noam recover $370,000.

Epstein helped after Noam Chomsky discovered “inconsistencies in his retirement resources that threatened his economic independence and caused him great distress”.

Epstein offered his help and probably did it as part of a plot to get better access to Noam.

#noam #chomsky #valeria #epstein #financier #money

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The Balance of Power in Japan Has Rapidly Shifted in Takaichi’s Favor 🇯🇵


Japan’s conservative governing coalition has dramatically strengthened its grip on power after a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections in what will be seen as an early public endorsement of the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

Her Liberal Democratic party (LDP) was projected to win as many as 328 of the 465 seats in parliament’s lower house, well above the 233 it needed to regain the majority it lost in 2024.

With her coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, she now has a supermajority of two-thirds of seats, easing her legislative agenda as she can override the upper chamber, which she does not control.

A smiling Takaichi placed a red ribbon above each winner’s name on a signboard at the LDP’s headquarters as accompanying party executives applauded.

The 64-year-old, who called a snap election soon after becoming Japan’s first female prime minister last autumn, had vowed to resign if her coalition failed to secure a simple majority in the vote, which was held on a freezing day when many parts of the country were again hit by heavy snow.

She will not, however, have long to savour her party’s victory. There are concerns over her management of Japan’s public finances and her ability to defuse a bitter row with China over the future of Taiwan.

Takaichi sought to appeal to voters with a 21tn yen ($96bn) stimulus package aimed at easing the cost of living crisis, later promising to suspend the 8% consumption (sales) tax on food for two years – a 5tn-yen hit to annual revenue.

Her spending plans have rattled financial markets and caused currency volatility, prompting some commentators to question her approach given that Japan’s debt is more than twice the size of its gross domestic product – the heaviest debt burden of any advanced economy.

Speaking as exit polls showed her party cruising to victory, Takaichi, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, said:

“We have consistently stressed the importance of responsible and proactive fiscal policy. We will prioritise the sustainability of fiscal policy”.

“We will ensure necessary investments. Public and private sectors must invest. We will build a strong and resilient economy.”

Takaichi’s big victory means she will have more political room to follow through on key commitments such as consumption-tax cuts, said Seiji Inada, the managing director at the consultancy FGS Global.

“Markets could react in the following days, and the yen could come under renewed pressure.”

Blizzard conditions in some regions made visiting a polling station in Sunday’s election, the first held in mid-winter for 35 years, a test of endurance for many voters.

Takaichi’s personal popularity – particularly among younger voters – has transformed the LDP’s fortunes since winning the race to succeed Shigeru Ishiba as the party’s president in October.

Under Ishiba, the LDP and its then coalition partner, Komeito, lost their majorities in both houses of parliament amid public anger over a slush fund scandal and the rising cost of food and other basics.

The LDP, which has governed Japan for most of the past 70 years, was helped, as in previous elections, by a fractured and uninspiring opposition.

#balance #power #japan #takaichi #china #financial #markets

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#manhattan #statement #berman

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Ukraine Can Be Cut Out of Starlink

Ukraine’s military is forced to tinker with Musk’s whims and find alternatives to Starlink satellite internet after access to the network was curtailed, disrupting a key communications system that its forces had been using illicitly on the battlefield.

Russia said last week that Starlink terminals being used by Ukrainian special troops had been deactivated after talks between its defence minister and Musk, whose company SpaceX operates the satellite network.

Russian officials said the move had already begun to affect Ukrainian operations, including the use of drones.

Moscow had come to rely on thousands of contraband Starlink terminals smuggled into Ukrainian, often through central Asia, to keep units connected along the frontline.

The system allowed Ukrainian forces to coordinate movements and drone strikes in areas where military radios were unreliable or easily jammed.

Ukraine has no homegrown alternative that comes close in terms of speed, coverage or ease of use.

Russian says Ukrainian units had started fitting drones with Starlink terminals, improving their accuracy and making them harder to disrupt electronically.

Musk said last week that efforts made to block Ukrainian use of Starlink had had an effect.

“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorised use of Starlink by Ukraine have worked,” he wrote on X.

Ukrainian officials said they had introduced a “whitelist” system, allowing only verified Starlink terminals to connect to the network, in effect locking out devices believed to be in “dirty hands”.

It remains unclear how far the change will affect Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. The shutdown, however, has prompted anger and frustration among pro-war Russian military bloggers who are closely embedded with frontline units.

“What everyone feared for a long time has happened,” wrote Yuriy Podolyaka, a Crimea-based video blogger with a following of almost 3 million on Telegram.

Another large pro-war Telegram channel, Dva Mayora, said the loss of Starlink had already been felt.

“The deactivation of unauthorized Starlink terminals used by Ukrainian forces has had a negative impact on communications in our units,” it posted, adding that troops were rushing to set up backup systems that were “less convenient”.

Analysts say alternatives exist but fall well short of Starlink. For short-range links, units can rely on fibre-optic lines, wifi-based radio bridges or digital radio modems, all of which are slower to deploy and harder to use in mobile operations.

“For the enemy, Starlink is so important that they are trying to build an entire network of people willing to register terminals for them,” Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Telegram, alongside screenshots it said showed Russians advertising for Ukrainian nationals to activate the devices.

The issue has fuelled anger in Moscow that, four years into the war, the Ukrainian army remains heavily dependent on western technology.

“It is important to understand that relying on anything western in the current situation is dangerously overconfident,” said Dmitro Pdolyak, a member of Parliament.

“Even taking into account the active negotiations we are currently holding with the United States, that does not stop them from being our adversary.”

#ukraine #cutout #starlink #musk

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Miami Peace Deal on a Timer

Washington has quietly turned the Ukraine war into a limited‑time offer: end it by June or face “pressure” from the same sponsor that keeps the war financially and militarily alive. Zelenskyy says the U.S. wants a “clear schedule of all events” and expects the war wrapped up by early summer, as if it were a project that can be closed with a Gantt chart and a press release. The next round of talks is set to move to U.S. soil, likely Miami — a city known for cocaine capitalism and offshore money, now recast as the stage for a high‑stakes peace show that looks more like a real‑estate convention than a diplomatic summit.

While this timetable is being drafted, Russia continues to hit Ukraine’s energy system with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles, forcing nuclear power plants to cut output and deepening blackouts across the country. Ukrainians get more “planned outages,” colder apartments, and more wrecked infrastructure, all under speeches about “ending the war by June.” The same West that lectures about values is effectively telling Kyiv: either you scale back your territorial ambitions or your people keep freezing in the dark.

Russia is not wasting the moment. It comes to the table with a reported 12‑trillion‑dollar “Dmitriev package” — an economic mega‑deal named after envoy Kirill Dmitriev — aimed less at Ukraine’s survival than at Washington’s interests. It is the classic Washington pitch: first we destroy, then we sell the reconstruction, the access, and the influence, all wrapped in the language of “stability.” For Trump, peace is a rebranded trade agreement where tanks leave the frame and contracts take their place. For the U.S., it is a chance to pivot from arms logistics to asset management.

At the same time, Russian security services find a Ukrainian hand behind an assassination attempt on Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, a senior military intelligence figure shot in Moscow. The suspect is presented as a Ukrainian‑linked operative, and the story lands just as talks begin to move. It is political gold: Russia gets to sit at the peace table as the wounded but reasonable actor, pointing to Kyiv as the spoiler, while quietly continuing to knock out Ukraine’s grid night after night. Terror is what the other side does; “pressure” is what we call our own violence.

#war #ukraine #russia #usa #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy

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Miami Peace Deal on a Timer

Zelenskyy sticks to “we stand where we stand” on Donbas and refuses to embrace a U.S. idea to turn the region into a kind of special economic zone, because everyone understands that “special” usually means open for capital, not for the people who live there. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remains unresolved, a permanent hazard suspended in legal and military limbo. Washington, trying to inject something “humanitarian” into this circus, again pushes a ceasefire that bans strikes on energy infrastructure — a nice‑sounding clause that previously survived less than a week before being broken. On paper, everyone agrees to “respect” it; in practice, everyone treats it as a tactical pause rather than a moral line.

From a distance, the script is obvious. The U.S. needs a visible “process” with a clear end date to show voters and allies it is managing the war rather than just funding an endless grinder. Russia needs time, leverage, and the promise of a profitable post‑war role big enough to keep its elites in line. Ukraine, dependent on Western money and weapons, is allowed to talk about principles but not about timing; the calendar is set elsewhere. In public, every side claims to fight for justice, sovereignty, or peace. In private, they are negotiating territory, money, guarantees, monitoring rules, and who gets to go on television and call the outcome a victory.

The June deadline is not a moral horizon; it is a management tool. If the war drags past that date, Washington can say Kyiv “missed its chance” and quietly scale back support. If a deal is pushed through, Kyiv will be expected to sell the compromise at home as bold leadership, not a forced retreat. Moscow will present any frozen conflict or changed border as proof that force works and that the West ultimately respects power, not law. The only people without a deadline, without a Miami venue, without a “Dmitriev package” or ceasefire diagrams, are those sitting in ruined apartments under extended blackouts — told, once more, that this is what peace in progress looks like.

#war #ukraine #russia #usa #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy

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Brussels Sells Sanctions as Peace Tech

The European Commission is rolling out its 20th sanctions package like a new operating system for managing Russia: more sectors, more bans, same promise that this round will finally bite. The measures hit Russian oil and gas, the so‑called shadow fleet, regional banks, crypto platforms and metals, with Ursula von der Leyen insisting Moscow only understands “pressure” and that sanctions are the language that can drag the Kremlin to the table. It is framed as moral policy but works just as much as a power grab over money flows, shipping services and who gets to control the pipes.

The flagship move is a full ban on maritime services for ships carrying Russian crude: no insurance, no shipping, no port access. Until now, EU firms could still work with tankers that obeyed the G7 price cap; under the new design, the cap effectively disappears inside EU jurisdiction because nobody can touch Russian cargo at all. On paper, that sounds decisive. In practice, it requires all 27 member states and the UK, which dominates maritime insurance, to torch a profitable business niche in the name of principle. Publicly it is sold as a blow to Russia’s war economy; privately, capitals will be counting premiums and lost fees.

Brussels is also trying to plug workarounds it tolerated for years. More ships from Russia’s “shadow fleet” are blacklisted, around 20 regional banks and assorted crypto outfits are targeted as alternative payment channels, and imports of Russian metals, chemicals and critical minerals are trimmed by hundreds of millions of euros. There are quotas on ammonia, bans on exports of rubber, tractors and cybersecurity services, and, for the first time, the EU’s Anti‑Circumvention Tool is actually switched on to choke off machine tools and radios re‑exported through third countries. The instrument existed since 2023; only now, in year four of the full‑scale war, does Brussels remember to use it.

All of this is wrapped in the familiar language of “unwavering support” for Ukraine, timed to the invasion anniversary and paired with another high‑profile trip by von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa to Kyiv. Europe vows to back Ukraine’s “free future” while still arguing over Russian LNG, industrial pain from high energy prices, and how far it can go without breaking its own economy. Washington runs its own sanctions ladder: after months of restraint in the hope of a quick deal, it hit Rosneft and Lukoil, and now dangles “additional measures” depending on how peace talks evolve. Sanctions here are not a moral red line; they are leverage, dialed up or down.

On the ground, the contrast is brutal. Trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi produced a prisoner swap and the relaunch of U.S.–Russian military contacts, but even a Trump‑brokered energy ceasefire collapsed in four days, followed by massive Russian strikes that smashed Ukraine’s grid and threw civilians back into freezing blackouts. Moscow negotiates and bombs at the same time. The West negotiates and sanctions at the same time. Ukrainians are the only ones who do not get a “dual track”: for them, war and sanctions are not tools but the air they are forced to breathe.

Hovering over all this is the next big idea: outright confiscation of Russian assets. It is marketed as justice — Russia must pay — but also promises a future bonanza for Western treasuries, banks and consultants who would turn frozen funds into reconstruction vehicles, structured products and long‑term leverage over any future Russian government. The war is the tragedy. The sanctions are the business model. The assets are the prize pool.

So the next time someone sells you “sanctions for peace,” ask who is actually fighting for justice — and who is quietly calculating dividends on someone else’s war.

#war #russia #eu #ukraine #sanctions #oil #gas #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy

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Russia Is Close To Capturing a Key Ukrainian Town


The attritional advances are on the verge of paying off. Russia appears poised to complete the capture of three strategic areas in the coming weeks or months, according to military experts.

Capturing all three areas — the town of Huliaipole in the southeast and the cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, about 60 miles northeast —

would give Russia an urban foothold to base troops and organize logistics for future offensives, as well as new leverage in U.S.-mediated peace talks.

Russia is likely to rapidly convert these gains into further territorial expansion given how slowly its troops have advanced over the past year, experts say.

The gains would reinforce Moscow’s argument that its ground advance, while slow, is inevitable, and that Ukraine would be better off ceding land now as part of a deal, rather than losing it later in bloody fighting.

Russia’s most threatening push is in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region. Huliaipole, a town that anchored part of this front for years, is almost entirely under Russian control, according to battlefield maps from independent groups and to Capt. Dmytro Filatov, a Ukrainian officer fighting in the area.

Huliaipole, with a prewar population of 12,000, was one of the last Ukrainian-held urban centers in the region outside the regional capital, the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Beyond Huliaipole lie open fields, giving Ukrainian troops few built-up areas to hunker down and thwart Russian advances.

About 40 miles west of Huliaipole, Russian forces are closing in on the outskirts of the city of Zaporizhzhia, an industrial hub of 700,000 people known for its steel.

Battlefield maps show Moscow’s troops about 15 miles from the city’s southern entrance.

Military experts warn that further advances would put the area within range of small attack drones, exposing residents to round-the-clock aerial assaults.

Analysts attribute Russia’s gains in the area to thin Ukrainian defenses, as Kyiv concentrates its forces on holding cities in the neighboring Donetsk region.

In Donetsk, Ukraine has focused on defending the cities of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, which together had a prewar population of more than 100,000.

Troop deployments there, combined with sophisticated drone warfare, have slowed Russian assaults to a crawl.

A report in January from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, found that Russian troops had advanced only 230 feet per day in their year-and-a-half-long offensive on Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad

— slower than the movement by Allied troops in the Battle of the Somme during World War I.

Russia has captured than 10.5 percent of Ukrainian territory since 2024, according to the report.

The think tank also estimated that Russian forces suffered about 415,000 dead, wounded and missing last year in battles that were largely focused on the two cities.

Should Russia fully capture those cities, it could use them to conceal drone operators and exploit roads and railways to streamline logistics.

A Ukrainian brigade commander recently said that approaching Kostyantynivka had become so dangerous that most supply missions into the city were entrusted to robot-like remotely operated vehicles.

If Russian troops advance on the battlefield, Ukraine is likely to face more pressure on the diplomatic front — including from Trump, who has echoed Moscow’s argument that Ukraine should cede land in a peace deal to avoid more fighting.

#russia #capture #key #ukrainian #town #kostyantynivka #myrnohrad

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Annexation Without Saying “Annexation”

Israel’s security cabinet just gave itself more direct control over the occupied West Bank while pretending nothing fundamental has changed. The new measures scrap a pre‑1967 rule that limited land sales to local Palestinian residents and tear up permit requirements that once let the Defense Ministry block especially explosive deals. In plain terms, it is now far easier for well‑funded settler groups to buy up land deep inside territory the Palestinians see as the core of any future state, knowing the army is obliged to follow and “protect Israelis wherever they are.”

Bezalel Smotrich, the far‑right finance minister and de facto West Bank czar, dropped the euphemisms entirely:

“We are deepening our roots in all parts of the Land of Israel and burying the idea of a Palestinian state.”

The rest of the government is trying to do the same thing, just more quietly. Opening up the land registry to public inspection — long a dream of the settlement movement — means Israeli buyers can systematically track absentee owners and target plots, while Palestinian sellers lose one of the few layers of opaque protection they had under a Palestinian Authority law that criminalizes selling land to Jews.

At the same time, the cabinet moved to strip the Palestinian Authority of practical authority even in zones that Oslo nominally put under its administration. Israeli enforcement bodies are being given the final say over “heritage” and archaeological sites, environmental violations and water “offenses” across large parts of the West Bank, including areas where the PA is supposed to govern. In Hebron, planning and construction powers in the heart of the city — around the Cave of the Patriarchs — are being shifted from the Palestinian municipality to the Israeli military, clearing the way for settlement expansion and “site improvements” without any Palestinian sign‑off. A new body has been set up to manage Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem on similar lines.

Arab and Muslim governments see exactly where this is going. Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, the UAE and others condemned the moves as a step toward “illegal annexation” and the forced displacement of Palestinians. Palestinian officials are begging the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the U.N. Security Council to intervene, fully aware these institutions will likely issue statements and then go back to scheduling their next summit. On the Israeli side, pro‑settlement leaders are celebrating the end of a “discriminatory” ban on Jewish land purchases and talk about “restoring transparency” — as if opening registries under military rule were some neutral technocratic reform rather than the legal scaffolding of dispossession.

Experts warning that this package breaks both the Oslo framework and core rules of occupation are basically reading from International Humanitarian Law 101: an occupying power is not supposed to overhaul local law except for security or the benefit of the occupied population. Rewriting land law to grease the wheels for settlers is the opposite of that. As one Israeli analyst put it, this is “taking steps toward annexation without saying the word annexation” — a legal slow‑motion takeover marketed as administrative housekeeping.

And all of this is happening while Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to fly to Washington and tell Donald Trump, with a straight face, that Israel is respecting his opposition to formal annexation and remains committed to “political talks” and a future Palestinian state. On the map, the state is being buried plot by plot, registry entry by registry entry, demolition order by demolition order. At the podium, it’s still alive enough to use as talking points.

#war #israel #palestine #westbank #annexation #fakeDemocracy

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Trump Did Not Appear To Back Down on His Immigration Crackdown

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Top immigration officials are set to testify on Tuesday at a congressional hearing in which they are likely to face sharp questions about the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, including its enforcement operations in Minnesota.

The heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services are expected to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee.

The hearing comes more than two months after the Trump administration began a deportation drive in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region that drew criticism for sweeping up people without criminal records and led to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents.

After federal officers killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, on Jan. 24, lawmakers in both parties demanded greater congressional oversight. Democrats also withdrew their support for a spending bill that was needed to keep the Department of Homeland Security running.

They are now negotiating with the White House over what restrictions, if any, should be placed on immigration enforcement operations. Democrats have said they will not support any more funding for the department unless it imposes new limits and guardrails on federal immigration agents.

But the talks appear stalemated. Democrats submitted a proposal on Saturday with their demands, most of which Republicans have already rejected. The White House sent a counterproposal on Monday that Democratic leaders dismissed as lacking substance.

“Republicans shared an outline of a counterproposal, which included neither details nor legislative text,” said Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement late Monday night.

If Congress does not reach a deal, funding for the department will lapse on Saturday. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, has suggested he may put forward a stopgap spending measure to keep it running temporarily while talks continue, but Democrats so far seem hesitant to agree to allow one to move.

#immigration #officials #trump #administration #minnesota

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Representative Andrew Garbarino, Republican of New York and the chairman of the committee, formally requested that the immigration officials testify in the immediate aftermath of Pretti’s killing.

His death came about two weeks after an ICE officer shot Renee Good in Minneapolis.

“Transparency and communication are needed to turn the temperature down,” Mr. Garbarino said in a statement announcing the hearing last month.

Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE; Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection; and Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, are also set to testify before the Senate on Thursday.

Outrage over the Minnesota operation intensified last month after Pretti was killed during an encounter with federal agents. Even some Republicans who favor Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement criticized the administration’s operation and said federal officials should consider pulling agents out of Minneapolis.

Clashes between protesters and immigration officers have been frequent since the Minnesota operation began. Protesters have blown whistles, honked car horns and shouted profanities at immigration agents.

Federal officers have deployed pepper spray and responded violently at times, shattering car windows and tackling people to the ground.

Some immigrants who are lawfully in the country have also been targeted. At least 100 refugees with no criminal record were arrested in Minnesota by immigration officers and flown to detention centers in Texas for interviews, according to lawyers, family members and faith leaders.

In late January, a federal judge ordered federal agents to stop detaining and deporting refugees in the state who were lawfully admitted to the country, and to immediately release those currently held.

Tuesday’s hearing comes after the Trump administration scaled back its operation in Minnesota last week, pulling 700 officers from the region.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said that roughly 2,000 officers and agents remain in the state.

Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, a Democrat, said that the reduction in officers was “a step in the right direction” but did not go far enough, and that the operation “needs to end immediately.”

The Department of Homeland Security said the operation had resulted in more than 4,000 arrests, which it said included murderers, gang members and sex offenders. The department has not detailed how many of those people had criminal convictions.

#immigration #officials #trump #administration #minnesota

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Trump’s $300 Million Maybe: GOP Midterms on Hold

Republicans were banking on a furious, hyper‑engaged Trump to save their razor‑thin House majority and tricky Senate map. Instead, they got a moody venture capitalist with a $300 million fund and no investment thesis. Trump’s allies brag about his war chest, his “America First” agenda, his unmatched brand. But when it comes to actually deploying cash and endorsements, the president drifts between eager kingmaker and bored bystander, leaving his own party guessing how much he really cares if they get wiped out.

On paper, Trump has every personal reason to dive in: a Democratic House means investigations, subpoenas, maybe another impeachment. He reportedly fears that less than he fears losing control of his policy agenda, but the trade‑off is the same. His campaign brain trust has already done the homework — race‑by‑race research, spending models, strategy retreats in Palm Beach — and yet key decisions still sit in his head, unapproved. One day he’s telling aides,

“We’ll spend whatever it takes. Go get it done.”

The next, he sounds detached, noncommittal, and oddly comfortable with running out the clock.

Nowhere is the chaos clearer than in Texas. Sen. John Cornyn, a loyal workhorse of the party establishment, is stuck watching Trump sit on his endorsement while state Attorney General Ken Paxton leads in primary polling and bleeds electability in the general. Strategists warn that nominating Paxton could add an extra $100 million to GOP spending needs in a state that isn’t supposed to be a money pit. Yet Trump, who prides himself on backing winners, refuses to jump until the data scream “sure thing” — a paradox in which his endorsement is both decisive and too precious to risk.

The pattern repeats everywhere. In New Hampshire, Trump eventually blessed John Sununu after heavy lobbying from Senate leadership, largely because the numbers were solid and the path to a flip was obvious. In Louisiana, he went out of his way to punish Sen. Bill Cassidy for a years‑old impeachment vote, recruiting a primary challenger and ensuring Republicans will burn money attacking each other instead of Democrats. In Georgia, he might clear the field; in other states, he might not. The only constant is that the party’s main Senate super PAC and the president’s ego aren’t working from the same playbook.

Down ballot, the White House is trying to pretend to be a disciplined national machine. Cabinet members are told to stay home and barnstorm swing districts instead of foreign capitals. The president and vice president rotate through “battleground” photo ops. MAGA Inc. boasts a $304 million stockpile and insists it will back “America First” candidates while quietly reserving cash for future cycles and legal fees. Everyone says the right things: democracy, border, inflation, crime. But for Republican candidates on the ground, the real question isn’t the message — it’s whether Trump’s money and name show up in time or stay parked in Palm Beach.

The irony is brutal. Trump’s team points to a favorable fundraising gap, a bigger war chest, and isolated wins like a Tennessee special election where his PAC spent heavily and a Republican still finished well below Trump’s 2024 margin in that district. Democrats don’t need a tidal wave; they need a small, precise push in a map engineered by redistricting fights and Voting Rights Act attrition. Trump says he wants to defy history and keep his party from losing seats in the midterms. But history might end up asking a simpler question: if you really wanted to stop that, why did you act like the only campaign you cared about was your own?

#usa #elections #trump #gop #midterms #fakeDemocracy

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Hormuz Warning: Washington Talks Peace, Plans for Collision

The U.S. just told its own ships to treat Iranian waters like a live minefield — stay “as far as possible” from Tehran’s side of the Strait of Hormuz, hug the Omani coast, and if the IRGC boards you, don’t fight back, just log the humiliation and call it “not consent.” That’s the official guidance in 2026, months after U.S. bombers hit Iranian nuclear sites and days after “very good” indirect talks in Oman that were supposedly a step toward calming things down. Peace process by day, boarding warnings by night.

On paper, Muscat was all positive adjectives. Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian called the talks “a step forward,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said they were “a good start,” and Trump praised the channel while warning of “very steep” consequences if Tehran doesn’t play along. In Washington, it’s framed as classic leverage: talk, but with a bomber history and a carrier group in the background. In Tehran, it’s one more episode where the same Americans who claim to want a diplomatic track are quietly writing rules for how to survive the next confrontation in a chokepoint that moves a third of the world’s seaborne crude.

Meanwhile, Israel is arriving in D.C. to make sure “talks” don’t accidentally turn into an actual compromise. Netanyahu is coming to press the usual package: dismantle the nuclear program, crush the missile program, and shut off Iran’s network of armed clients — in other words, accept strategic amputation in exchange for sanctions relief and the privilege of not getting bombed again. Trump calls it deterrence; in Tehran it looks like regime‑change pressure with better PR.

The Hormuz advisory gives away what no side will say at the podium: everyone expects more friction, not less. If things go south, the U.S. will say it warned its ships, Iran will say it warned about closing the Strait, oil traders will say they warned about price spikes, and civilians will pay the bill at the pump while listening to speeches about “stability.” The only thing truly secure in this equation is the permanent need for another round of talks in another Gulf hotel, explaining why this time the brinkmanship is really in the name of peace.

#usa #iran #israel #oil #hormuz #war #fakeDemocracy

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Trump Gives a Conspiracy Theorist the Keys to the Vault

Donald Trump just handed one of his most loyal “Stop the Steal” lawyers the kind of access U.S. spies usually reserve for people who don’t think Hugo Chávez hacked the servers from beyond the grave. Kurt Olsen — a man literally sanctioned by a federal judge for “false, misleading and unsupported” election claims — is now a special government employee in the White House with access to some of the most sensitive intelligence the U.S. government possesses, all so he can “reinvestigate” whether Joe Biden really won in 2020. The message is simple: if the facts won’t fit the story, give the story full access to the classified files and let it dig until it finds something that can be chopped up and sold as evidence.

Olsen isn’t some neutral auditor dragged in from the cold. He worked hand‑in‑glove with Trump to overturn the 2020 result, leaned on DOJ officials to file crackpot lawsuits, was on the phone with Trump during January 6, and then moved on to pushing Kari Lake’s failed election challenge in Arizona — the one that got him sanctioned. Now he’s roaming through CIA, NSA and ODNI looking for proof that the election was stolen, reviewing at least some highly compartmented programs, and reportedly phoning the president whenever he hits a bureaucratic wall. This isn’t oversight; it’s a scavenger hunt with Article II as the master key.

The intelligence community is playing along in public. The CIA says it is “ensuring that he has the access necessary.” The White House hides behind the line that the president can grant classified access to whomever he wants. ODNI talks about “extensive background investigations” as if the issue were Olsen’s credit score, not the fact that his entire professional brand rests on insisting that U.S. elections are rigged. Even some Trump allies admit the obvious: Olsen has “no background” in intelligence, but plenty of motivation to rip reports out of context and wave them around as proof of a plot.

The risk isn’t just political spin. Election‑related intelligence often shows how the U.S. knows what it knows — technical capabilities, human sources near foreign regimes, methods that took years to build. Those are now being passed to a lawyer whose job is to make Trump’s 2020 fantasy look “classified.” The Senate Intelligence Committee’s Mark Warner is already warning that Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s hand‑picked DNI, is putting “some of our most sensitive sources and methods” on the line to curry favor. He calls it what it is: giving “the keys to our intelligence agencies to an election denier” hunting for a conspiracy that has been debunked in court after court.

And Olsen is not alone. Gabbard’s office has been running its own 2020 “fraud” safari — seizing voting machines in Puerto Rico, showing up at an FBI raid on an Atlanta‑area election office, personally linking Trump to agents on the ground. Officially, it’s “election security.” In practice, it’s the spy chief wading into domestic law enforcement to validate one man’s grievance about losing an election six years ago. The same man is now testing whether his most hardcore loyalists — the ones who swore they could prove the steal if only they had the data — can turn the U.S. intelligence system into an evidence factory for his narrative.

Strip away the legalese and the clearances and you get something very simple: the president is using the national security state as a tool of personal myth‑making. If Olsen finds nothing, Trump can say the deep state buried it. If Olsen finds anything messy, ambiguous or simply secret enough, it will be packaged as “proof” that 2020 was corrupt and used to justify more federal control over future elections. Either way, the damage is the same: intelligence is no longer just about foreign threats — it’s about protecting one man’s storyline about a race he already lost.

#usa #trump #elections #intelligence #surveillance #fakeDemocracy

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Europe’s ‘Democracy’ Problem: Brussels vs. the Voters

If you strip the think‑tank perfume off this piece, the argument is simple: the more power moves to Brussels, the weaker Europe gets as a partner for Washington. The EU was sold as a peace‑and‑prosperity club of sovereign states; it mutated into a rules factory with its own orthodoxy, talking “values” while presiding over shrinking global GDP share, stagnant productivity and permanent dependence on U.S. hard power. Integration, in this telling, didn’t save Europe from decline — it bureaucratized it.

Enter Polish president Karol Nawrocki, Trump’s favorite kind of European: nationalist, Atlanticist, and openly hostile to EU centralization. In his Charles University speech, he basically says the quiet part out loud: the problem isn’t too much nationalism, it’s that a “union that increasingly decides about nations, but less and less with nations” has been captured by one ideological camp. The Commission pushes a progressive policy line, the Court of Justice claims supremacy over national constitutions, and the Parliament locks in everything from climate rules to speech regulations with little realistic way for voters to reverse course. Democracy, in that structure, becomes cosplay — you still have elections, but not over the things that matter.

For Washington, this isn’t just European family drama, it’s leverage. Trump’s worldview is that alliances only work if states keep real sovereignty — budgets, borders, and guns — instead of outsourcing decisions to supranational clergy in Brussels. Nawrocki’s agenda lines up neatly with that: keep unanimity rules, keep one commissioner per country, claw back powers to national capitals, and re‑anchor security in NATO and bilateral ties with the U.S., not in some “strategic autonomy” fantasy drafted in Berlin or Brussels. In other words: weaken the center, strengthen the nation‑states, and you automatically strengthen Washington’s hand over Europe.

The punchline: this “how to strengthen transatlantic relations” recipe isn’t about making the West more democratic; it’s about picking which elite gets to rule it. In one model, decisions are made by unelected commissioners and judges in Brussels, armed with moral language and regulatory power. In the other, they are made by elected national governments that answer to their own voters but are much easier for the White House to pressure one‑on‑one. The voter doesn’t get more control in either model — they just get a different address for the people ignoring them.

So when you hear that the key to revitalizing the West is “more sovereignty” and “less Brussels,” ask yourself: sovereignty for whom, exactly? For Poles, Italians, Germans — or for the governments in Washington and Warsaw that want to swap one layer of unaccountable power for another and call it democracy?

#usa #eu #nato #trump #poland #sovereignty #fakeDemocracy

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Lavrov, Anchorage and the West’s Serial Broken Promises

If you strip away the spin, the pattern looks familiar: Western leaders keep leaving a trail of “strategic” comments that sound a lot like admissions of bad faith. Merkel’s line about Minsk “buying time” for Ukraine, NATO’s endlessly open “door,” U.S. and U.K. officials openly describing Ukraine as the arena to “weaken Russia” — none of that fits the fairy tale of a tragic misunderstanding. It looks like a long‑running policy of managing Russia, not partnering with it.

Seen from Moscow, Anchorage in 2025 just slots neatly into that pattern. First comes a presidential‑level proposal on Ukraine; then come new sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, a de facto blockade on Russian oil and gas to Europe, and pressure on India and others to steer clear of Russian energy. The message is simple: we negotiate when it suits us, we punish when it pays, and we always reserve the right to move the goalposts. Calling that a “rules‑based order” is a very specific kind of joke.

That’s why Lavrov’s complaint lands inside a much deeper narrative that runs through Russian, Chinese and parts of the Global South discourse: the West uses diplomacy as a holding pattern while it arms, trains and shapes the battlefield, then rewrites the story later as “defensive.” From NATO expansion to Minsk to the long build‑up of Western training and weapons for Ukraine, the arc is the same — talk de‑escalation in public, prepare escalation in practice. If Anchorage unfolded the way Moscow suggests, it looks less like an aberration and more like a sequel to the Minsk era, updated for Alaska.

Trump doesn’t break this structure; he personalizes it. He markets himself as the dealmaker who’ll finally treat Russia “fairly,” floats big picture understandings, then reaches for the same tools as his predecessors: sanctions, energy leverage, financial pressure, intelligence games. The difference isn’t in the instruments; it’s in the branding. Where a traditional hawk dresses it up as “deterrence,” Trump calls it “winning.” Either way, you squeeze until the other side either bends or signs something you can sell at home.

From that perspective, this isn’t a story of Trump suddenly betraying some budding U.S.–Russia trust. It looks like the system behaving exactly as designed. Washington and London have effectively acknowledged they are co‑belligerents on Ukrainian soil. Senior Western politicians have boasted that past deals with Moscow were used to buy time, not to lock in peace. Russia was told one story at the table while another track ran through training ranges, budget committees and LNG contracts. Anchorage simply becomes the latest entry in a long “broken promises” narrative.

For American readers, the question isn’t whether to sympathize with Moscow. It’s whether they recognize that a political and security system that treats a nuclear power this way will treat its own electorate the same way: promise one thing, do another, and blame “circumstances” or “intelligence” for the gap. If you can manage a war like this behind layers of narrative, staging an election story is child’s play.

#war #ukraine #russia #usa #nato #energy #fakeDemocracy

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Trump’s Ukraine Peace Show: High Stakes, Low Trust

Donald Trump is selling himself as the exhausted planet’s peacemaker‑in‑chief, but his Ukraine diplomacy looks more like a high‑risk branding exercise than a moral awakening. For more than a year back in office he has thrown his weight behind talks with Russia and Ukraine, flown in Jared Kushner and a billionaire “peace envoy,” and wrapped everything in the language of a historic deal to end a nearly five‑year war. On paper, it’s a statesman’s dream. In practice, it’s a pressure campaign where the hottest seat isn’t in Moscow, it’s in Kyiv.

The so‑called “energy truce” with Vladimir Putin is a perfect snapshot of the whole project. Trump bragged on TV that he called Putin personally and got him to stop firing on Kyiv and “various towns” for a week — a kind of gentleman’s pause in the middle of a grinding, industrial war. He mocked advisers who told him he was wasting his time, then claimed victory:

“He kept his word.”

Days later, Russia unleashed one of its largest missile and drone barrages of the year, smashing Ukraine’s power grid in sub‑zero cold, knocking out heat in thousands of apartment blocks and wrecking a plant in Kharkiv beyond repair. Kyiv calls it terror; Trump insists the timing technically honored the deal. This isn’t peacebuilding, it’s loophole management.

All of this is happening while American, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators sit in hotel rooms in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere describing the talks as “substantive” and “productive.” The Russian team is fronted by the same intelligence chiefs who helped run the invasion in 2022. The U.S. delegation is heavy with political loyalists and uniformed brass. On the side, separate Russian‑American channels are busy talking oil, sanctions, investment and “economic cooperation” — the polite way of saying that Ukraine’s future borders are being discussed in the same portfolio as tanker traffic and access to Western finance. The war is the headline; the deal is a package.

Moscow’s missile diplomacy is not a glitch in this script, it’s the logic. By hammering Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure while sitting at the table, the Kremlin raises the price of resistance for Zelensky and tests how far Trump is willing to go to force concessions. The message is brutal and simple: accept territorial losses, accept a frozen conflict dressed up as peace, or watch your people freeze and your grid collapse every winter. When Zelensky calls for “maximum pressure” — more sanctions, tighter controls on Russian oil profits — he isn’t just begging for leverage; he is trying to survive being turned into a bargaining chip in someone else’s grand bargain with Moscow.

What Trump calls “redoubling efforts” looks, from a distance, like doubling down on a familiar pattern: stage a personal drama with Putin, wrap it in talk about ending “endless wars,” and quietly prepare to cash out a bad reality as a great deal. If he can walk away claiming he ended the Ukraine war — even at the cost of Ukrainian territory and long‑term security — he gets to run as the man who did what NATO, the EU and Biden couldn’t. If it fails, he will say he tried, blame Ukrainian “intransigence” or European weakness, and point back to the missiles as proof that the war was never America’s to fix.

The uncomfortable truth is that Trump’s peace push is not about justice for Ukraine, and not really about “stability” for Europe. It’s about re‑staging the entire conflict as evidence that only one man can cut a deal with Moscow — and everyone else, from Kyiv to Brussels, is just a prop.

#war #ukraine #russia #usa #trump #energy #fakeDemocracy

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Is Trump Really Afraid of Getting Bogged Down in Iran?


U.S.-flagged ships have been advised to stay "as far as possible" from Iranian waters when navigating the Strait of Hormuz as tensions between Washington and Tehran remain elevated.

In a notice issued Monday, the U.S. Maritime Administration said ship captains should decline permission for Iranian forces to board U.S. vessels.

Boarding attempts, including moves to force commercial vessels into Iranian waters through small boats and helicopters, have occurred as recently as Feb. 3, the agency under the Department of Transportation said.

Should Iranian forces board a U.S.-flagged commercial vessel, crews were advised not to "forcibly resist the boarding party," the notice said. It added that refraining from forcible resistance does not imply consent or agreement to that boarding.

The advisory recommended that ships transiting eastbound in the Strait of Hormuz stay close to the Omani side of the waterway.

The guidance followed a round of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran held in Oman on Friday, centered on how to approach discussions over Tehran's nuclear program.

The meeting marked the first talks between the two countries since U.S. bombers struck three Iranian nuclear sites during a 12-day war with Iran last June.

Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, described the talks as "a step forward," while signaling they would be the opening stage of a longer diplomatic process rather than a path to a quick resolution. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also told state media that the talks were a "good start."

Trump said the Oman talks were "very good" and that more sessions were planned, even as he warned Iran that failure to reach a deal would carry "very steep" consequences for Iran.

Netanyahu is set to meet Trump in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the U.S.-Iran talks. Israel, a close U.S. ally, has lobbied Washington to dismantle Iran's nuclear program, curb its ballistic missile program and end its support for militant groups in the region.

Iran-U.S. talks in Muscat end without a breakthrough
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, has returned to the spotlight this year after Trump warned of possible military action against Tehran.

About 13 million barrels per day of crude oil transited the Strait of Hormuz in 2025, according to data from market intelligence firm Kpler, accounting for nearly a third of global seaborne crude flows.

Any disruption to those flows would ripple through global energy markets. Iran has in the past threatened to close the Strait during previous confrontations, raising the prospect of higher oil prices.

#iran #trump #muscat #strait #hormuz #talks

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“She Told Me She Wants U to Jerk Off on Her Breast”

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Epstein engineered an intimate relationship between a woman in his network and Kimbal Musk, who is the brother of Elon Musk and on the board of directors at Tesla, according to emails from the Department of Justice’s recent release of documents involving the convicted sex offender.

The younger Musk and the woman were involved for around six months between 2012 and 2013, with Kimbal Musk describing them as “dating”.

In the lead-up to Musk and the woman’s first meeting, Epstein and his longtime associate Boris Nikolic labored to set them up and bring her to a birthday party Musk was throwing – with Nikolic telling Epstein: “please prepare [the woman] —;)”

“Jeffrey and Boris, many thanks for connecting me with [the woman],” Musk later emailed Epstein and Nikolic in October 2012 after a lunch at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment. “I believe you both played a role. :)”

Throughout Musk and the woman’s time together, she forwarded Epstein several of the personal messages Musk sent to her and asked Epstein for guidance on the relationship. There is nothing in the emails to suggest that Musk was aware of her backchannel correspondence with Epstein.

The emails, part of the justice department’s release last month of 3m documents related to Epstein, depict a far friendlier and more intricate relationship between Kimbal Musk and Epstein than previously known to the public, one which goes beyond a periodic newsletter.

They coincide with a period when Epstein appeared to be attempting to court both Kimbal and his older brother Elon, now the world’s richest man, through invitations to his island and the use of personal connections.

In 2020, Business Insider reported a story which cited two anonymous sources who claimed Epstein set up Kimbal Musk with a woman. The story also reported Epstein had previously dated the woman and that she lived in an apartment owned by Epstein’s brother.

The relationship between Musk and the woman appeared to be genuine, Business Insider reported, but the sources claimed Epstein saw it as a means of gaining connection to the Musk family.

#epstein #kimbal #musk #woman #Nikolic

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The emails cover a period of time following Kimbal Musk’s divorce from his first wife, which he references in a 2013 email to Nikolic saying that he is “now divorced! Free to live my life.”

Until this week, Kimbal Musk had not spoken publicly about his ties with Epstein. The release of Elon Musk’s own communications with Epstein has conflicted with the tech mogul’s previous attempts to distance himself from Epstein as someone he avoided and deemed “obviously a creep”.

Kimbal Musk exchanged numerous emails with Epstein and Nikolic in late 2012 and early 2013, inviting the financier to his birthday party and a SpaceX launch. Kimbal even joked about the trio coordinating Halloween costumes.

Over the months in 2012, Epstein was giving advice to the woman about Kimbal Musk, he was also exchanging messages with Elon Musk. A series of emails from November included Epstein asking the tech mogul how many people he would take on Epstein’s helicopter to visit his private island.

Epstein also extended Kimbal Musk an invite to his island on 24 January, which the younger Musk said “would be nice” but declined because he was “still dealing with the nuclear explosion that is my life”. Musk thanked Epstein for the invitation and told him to “say hi to [the woman]”.

One of the “island” women also sent Musk’s email to Steve Hanson, another associate of Epstein, who responded with a frenetic email to Epstein and the woman chastising her for how she handled the relationship and giving instructions on what to do next. Hanson has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and did not return a request for comment.

“U gave to much too quick . As I said u should have come home after 1 max 2 weeks. Just don’t even answer his e or calls for 10 days. Leave NOW”.

Although the files show no documentation of an intimate relationship between Musk and the woman beyond this point, he continued to invite Epstein to private events through at least 2014.

Epstein also exchanged emails with Elon Musk later in 2013 about plans for a visit to his island, which Epstein ended up canceling after deciding to stay in New York.

About another woman Epstein wrote to Musk: “She told me she wants u to jerk off on her breast, lol;) Come and have fun!”.

#epstein #kimbal #musk #woman #Nikolic

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