A visualisation of Greystoke’s proposed Elsham Tech Park in north Lincolnshire. Photograph: Elsham Tech Park brochure
Emissions understated by factor of five in Essex plans for tech giant, while Greystoke’s Lincolnshire plans show similar error
Developers working for Google have significantly misstated how much carbon two proposed AI datacentres will contribute to the UK’s total emissions in planning documents reviewed by the Guardian.
The tech company wants to build two huge datacentres – one 52-hectare (130 acre) project in Thurrock and another at an airfield in North Weald, both in Essex. To do so, developers are required to submit planning documents calculating how much carbon these projects will emit as a proportion of the UK’s total carbon footprint.
In both cases, they appear to have compared one year of the proposed datacentre’s emissions with the UK’s entire five-year carbon budget, understating the significance of their emissions by a factor of five, according to experts at the tech justice nonprofit Foxglove.
Greystoke, a company planning to build another datacentre in north Lincolnshire, one of the largest in the UK, also appears to have misstated the emissions of its project in the same way. Taken together, the three developments will account for more than 1% of the UK’s carbon budget in 2033. This is the equivalent to the emissions of a mid-sized city such as Bristol.
“Google has serious questions to answer about its dubious datacentre pollution figures,” said Tim Squirrell, the head of strategy for Foxglove, which discovered the errors. “By comparing one year of datacentre emissions with five years of UK emissions, they’re making the environmental impact look five times smaller than it really is.”
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Public sector pensions have ploughed billions into opaque investment funds which are financing ruinous gas projects on the US Gulf Coast
In brief
UK public sector pension schemes are bankrolling rapid expansion of liquefied natural gas production in the US South, posing a major climate threat
US gas projects are reaping rewards from price shocks caused by Trump’s war in Iran
Gas terminals are frequently built in poor neighbourhoods, causing health problems in nearby communities
Trump’s war in Iran has boosted the fortunes of US gas companies – and UK savers are unwittingly bankrolling their expansion.
Sixty local government pension funds have invested a total of £8bn into funds paying for the rapid construction of gas infrastructure on the Gulf Coast of the US. Residents say these terminals are already causing health problems in their communities. Experts say they represent one of the biggest threats to the future of the planet.
Over 7 million school staff, civil servants and other public sector workers either save with, or receive their pension from, local government pension schemes. Our revelations have sparked concerns among local councillors, who have urged fund managers to divest from fossil fuels.
While the companies behind these projects are enjoying a boost from the war in Iran, they could tumble in value as the world switches to renewable forms of energy. Councillor Andrew Scopes, who sits on an advisory panel for West Yorkshire Pension Fund, said: “We will still be paying benefits out in 60 years’ time. We need to be looking beyond the possible short-term gains, at the long-term risk.”
Members of the scheme were dismayed to find what they were bankrolling. “The UK could be funding a safer, healthier future for all via renewable energy generated in the UK that is cheap, safe, clean and owned by us,” said Jane Thewlis, a retired social worker.
The news comes as the government is making changes to the law governing pension schemes. During a debate in the House of Lords, peers from several parties raised the issue of pension fund investments in climate-wrecking companies.
Baroness Hayman, a crossbench peer, told us: “Many UK pension funds are already reducing their exposure to fossil fuels, recognising the risks these investments pose. But with £3 trillion held in UK pensions, and the climate and nature challenge growing, there is a clear opportunity to better protect savers from rising financial and environmental risks.”
A gas explosion
The giant white orbs containing liquefied natural gas (LNG) look almost alien. Scores of these terminals are popping up along the 1,200km Louisiana and Texas coastline, a building frenzy turbo-charged by Trump’s second term. If all the planned terminals are built, the LNG produced in the US would generate the same amount of greenhouse gases each year as every EU country combined, says Jeremy Symons, a former official at the US environmental regulator.
UK pension funds have supported this expansion for years. In 2019, a little-known infrastructure fund called Stonepeak put up $1.3bn to complete the construction of the Calcasieu Pass gas terminal in the south-west corner of Louisiana. Twenty miles inland, building has started on another terminal also funded by Stonepeak.
Calcasieu Pass LNG terminalVenture Global
UK savers in 12 local government pension schemes, including West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Worcestershire, have invested over £360m in Stonepeak funds that financed these plants, according to figures from council records and data provider Pitchbook.
Since starting operations, Calcasieu Pass has reported hundreds of emissions violations and paid authorities a $245,000 settlement. That’s unlikely to make much difference to its owner, Venture Global, a major Trump donor. Its shares rocketed by more than 80% after the US and Israel started bombing targets in Iran.
Roishetta Ozane, a resident turned activist, lives near both terminals. She told us that pollution from the nearby gas, petrochemicals and oil infrastructure has caused asthma and an increase of cancer in the area – an account borne out by academic research.
“We’re seeing more women develop health issues that are living near these facilities, having pre-term babies or having miscarriages,” she said. “We’re seeing our air quality deteriorate. We have a drinking water crisis.” She said residents had to deal with noise pollution from construction and the flaring of excess gas from the terminals.
Roishetta Ozane (second left)
Two of her children have asthma. She told us the doctor said pollution may have exacerbated the seizures suffered by her son, who died last year. “When my son passed away, I was like, what are we doing this for?” she said. “We’re fighting for our children, for our future, for our community, but yet they’re dying.”
Further down the coast, a huge fireball at Freeport LNG in June 2022 made the risks of these installations vividly clear. IFM Global Infrastructure Fund – which counts among its investors more than 20 UK pension funds, including Avon, East Sussex and Aberdeen – paid $1.3bn to help build Freeport LNG in 2013. It continues to hold a stake in the project.
Travelling south, the construction boom continues. Right next to the Mexican border, Rio Grande LNG is building a sprawling complex that the NGO Sierra Club estimates will match the emissions of 50 coal-fired power plants every year. Campaigners say the project is already contributing to habitat loss in an area critical for endangered animals such as ocelots, falcons and sea turtles.
French bank Société Générale backed out of funding the controversial project. But it was able to proceed thanks to a $5bn commitment from BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners Fund V – which is supported by nearly £200m of UK savers’ pensions, from Waltham Forest to Greater Manchester.
In total, we found eight US-based LNG terminals backed by UK pension money. Taken together, those terminals would give rise to more CO₂ every year than the entire UK several times over, according to Sierra Club data.
A spokesperson for IFM Investors told us that the fund publicly discloses its infrastructure equity assets. They added: “Natural gas is increasingly utilised as a transition fuel for decarbonisation globally … These assets benefit from investment from long-term, trusted capital partners like pension funds, who can reinvest in them and pave the way for carbon emissions reduction.”
LNG is often promoted as a cleaner alternative to traditional fossil fuels. However, a peer-reviewed study found it is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.
Worcestershire Pension Fund said it invests through structures that mean “exposure to any single asset is indirect, limited, and a very small component of a broader portfolio.” It said the Stonepeak fund in question “publishes detailed annual reports and complies fully with statutory disclosure requirements”.
A greener pension
When it comes to curbing carbon emissions, council pension funds and campaigners have tended to focus on selling their shares in companies like BP and Shell. But a growing portion of pension funds are invested in so-called “private markets”. Typically this involves putting money into a number of big funds, which in turn invest in everything from private equity to property to company loans.
Private markets can offer healthy returns. They’re also something of a black hole for information, which makes following the money much more difficult. And they’re often excluded from the scope of council climate commitments.
The upshot is that even pension schemes that have promised not to invest in fossil fuels have ploughed money into funds that are paying for major gas projects.
Take Waltham Forest Pension Fund, which in 2016 became the first local authority to make such a commitment. Simon Miller, a former councillor who chaired the pension fund committee, said the council already had a number of green goals to improve the lives of residents. “[But] we had a pension fund that was merrily invested in fossil fuels that was absolutely out of lockstep with the political direction and philosophy of the borough.”
The council’s pension fund proceeded to sell its investments in fossil fuel companies over the following five years.
According to its latest report, however, Waltham Forest is still invested in funds managed by Global Infrastructure Partners that have financed Rio Grande LNG and Allete, which owns an 18,000-acre coal mine in North Dakota.
Lewisham Pension Fund has also brought down the emissions associated with its investments after committing to sell its holdings in fossil fuel companies. But it remains invested in a huge infrastructure fund operated by JP Morgan Asset Management. While this fund has substantial investments in renewable energy, it continues to hold a 50% stake in Third Coast, which spilled over 1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2023.
In February 2024, West Yorkshire Pension Fund said it would no longer lend to the oil, gas and coal sector. According to the new standards set by the authority, councillor Andrew Scopes said, the decision to invest in a Stonepeak fund that bankrolled an LNG plant on Ozane’s doorstep would be “very difficult to justify”.
Jane Thewlis, a campaigner and member of the scheme, said: “We are particularly concerned if [West Yorkshire Pension Fund] is funding LNG infrastructure in the US, which is not compatible with a livable climate. We expect our elected representatives to use our money to fund a safe future – not to hasten the end of humanity.”
West Yorkshire Pension Fund said its environmental, social and governance policy “takes account of the current status and role of gas and oil within the energy transition, particularly with regard to reliability, affordability and coal displacement”. It said LNG is seen as “a bridge between today’s fossil‑fuel‑dominated energy system and a future low or zero‑carbon one”.
JP Morgan, Stonepeak and Waltham Forest council declined to comment on the record. Lewisham council said it cannot comment in a pre-election period. Third Coast, the LNG port operators, Global Infrastructure Partners and other local councils did not respond to requests for comment.
What next?
We are providing our research to campaigners and pension fund advisory panels so they can challenge decision makers on investments in infrastructure funds
New rules mean that council pension funds will be combined into pension fund pools, limiting councillors’ power over investment decisions. We will investigate what that means for funds that have committed to invest responsibly
Parliament is discussing the first of a number of pension reforms, where campaigners are pushing for greater recognition of climate risk
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Reform has run councils for a year. As local elections near, we ask: how has the party performed in power?
Broken promises, broken roads, and broken council leadership teams – that’s the outcome of Reform UK’s first year in power, an investigation by openDemocracy reveals.
Twelve months ago, Nigel Farage’s latest party took control of 10 English councils, meaning they now hold a total of 985 seats across Britain. Now, as Reform seeks to increase its foothold at elections in other English local authorities and pick up seats in the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments next week, we have examined its track record in office, finding that it failed to deliver on its pledges across the board.
Reform is still a young party, founded in 2022. To win so many seats after just three years – and on a promise to do things ‘differently’ – demands scrutiny, particularly when early polls suggest they could win government at the next general election.
While Reform was never going to be able to meaningfully deliver on many of its 2025 campaign points, which focused on policy areas not devolved to local government – such as illegal immigration, net-zero “madness” and law and order – we have been able to shed some light on its local priorities by reviewing election leaflets that it distributed in different areas of the country.
These materials reveal that Reform intended to slash council tax, fix potholes, and cut council waste by emulating Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ drive in Donald Trump’s White House. Yet even in these areas, our analysis shows it frequently fell short on its promises.
Instead, Reform raised taxes in every council where it holds or shares power. Potholes continue to cause accidents and damage, and councillors’ struggles over where to make promised savings have put much-loved local services at risk of closure.
For some Reform councillors, the broken promises were too much. The party has lost more than 70 of its elected local politicians in the space of a year, according to research by Liberal Democrat peer Mark Pack, although some were forced to resign or sacked.
One former Reform councillor, David Taylor, resigned from the party during a live BBC interview in February over the 9% council tax rise in Worcestershire, where Reform is the largest party but lacks overall control.
Taylor, who now represents the ward of Redditch East as an independent councillor, told openDemocracy of his discomfort at being expected to pass both the tax increase and bonuses of up to 10% for the council’s senior staff, who reportedly have six-figure salaries.
“I run a small recruitment company, and the party wanted me to sit on the council’s employment panel,” he said. “The discussion was on bonus payments. This was to pay a retention bonus to all staff, but realistically in that panel you are only dealing with senior staff. I was not going to vote for that, not when there is so much debt, redundancies and people being put on shorter hours – and then put up council tax.”
The policy shift felt at odds with the reasons why Taylor ran for office in the first place.
“I live in my community, all my family live in my constituency, all my friends live in my constituency. I talk directly with people who are impacted every day and who know the things we want to change,” he explained. “As a councillor, I could focus on helping people who matter most to me. We campaigned on lowering taxes and saving money, and none of it happened.”
‘If anything, it’s worse’
As last year’s local elections neared, Farage seized on one particular issue that he said was “getting worse all over the country”. He rode into a Reform rally on a JCB Pothole Pro and posted videos of himself playing ‘pothole golf’ and planting flowers in holes in the road.
Since then, though, Reform has struggled to keep its promise to drivers, according to Freedom of Information data obtained by openDemocracy.
We asked the ten Reform-led councils how many complaints they received about potholes in the years before and after the party took power. Only five councils responded; complaints had increased in four.
Staffordshire, where Farage filmed himself planting flowers in potholes, was among four councils to fail to respond to our FOI request within the 20-day legal time limit, while a fifth rejected our request.
In West Northamptonshire, residents made an average of 1,193 complaints about potholes each month after Reform took power – a sharp increase since the council was controlled by the Conservatives, when it received an average of 860 pothole-related complaints each month, according to data obtained by openDemocracy.
The data also shows that many of the complaints made since Reform took office concerned potholes that the council claimed to have already fixed, and that council staff marked 381 as “unable to fix”..
In March of this year, one aggrieved local complained: “Pot hole has been reported, a bodge job infill was done, this was not done to any standard, when your workmen arrived today they were very rude to my husband when he asked if he could help. THIS POT HOLE IS STILL THERE.”
“I had an email though today, marking this pothole as fixed at 15:12,” wrote another resident. “I can confirm that I drove past this pothole at 15:49 and it definitely has not been repaired, and if anything has got significantly worse!”
This sentiment was echoed by Sally Keeble, the leader of the Labour group at West Northamptonshire council. “They are not repairing potholes,” she told openDemocracy. “If anything, it has got worse.”
Doncaster City Council received an average of 165 pothole complaints a month before Reform took power, rising to 147 complaints a month after. It did, however, also fix more potholes under Reform. Other councils recorded smaller numbers of complaints.
While complaints persist, one company benefiting from the pothole crisis is JCB, which donated £200,000 to Reform in 2025 and whose owner, Conservative donor Lord Bamford, paid £8,400 for Farage and an aide to visit the firm’s factory via helicopter in October 2024.
The Reform-run council in Lincolnshire has invited the heavy machinery outfit back to re-trial its Pothole Pro despite it previously being rejected by the council after a nine-week trial in 2021, when engineers concluded “better tools” were available. The same model is now also being trialled by the Reform councils in Derbyshire and Staffordshire.
Culture wars
Reform also promised to cut council waste by slashing spending on projects linked to “diversity, inclusion and equality” and “net-zero”. Once in power, however, the party found little to cut.
Four of the 10 councils had no equality officers even before Reform took control, according to their Freedom of Information responses to openDemocracy. The three that did have a small number of equality staff still employed them one year later (three councils did not respond to our request). DEI training programmes were also still being run at the same levels.
“Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away, but there just aren’t,” one anonymous Reform cabinet member at Kent County Council told the Financial Times in October last year. Months later, a cabinet member at the council, Matthew Fraser Moat, told the same paper that Reform had “not actually made any cuts”. He later resigned from cabinet over the comment, which he said had been “twisted to fit what I believe to be an anti-KCC narrative”.
Durham council chose to attack “DEI” by withdrawing the £2,500 funding set aside for the annual local Pride march, a celebration of LGBTQ+ rights, which is due to take place on 30 May this year. It justified its decision in an email to organisers, and seen by openDemocracy, by saying that “the focus of the modern Pride movement has shifted in a way that many find divisive”.
The council said it was taking “a principled stand that the council should not be in the position of subsidising events that have become primarily associated with the promotion of a specific and contested political ideology.”
This week, it was reported in local media that Reform’s leader of the council, Andrew Husband, had been accused of homophobia after using an offensive slur on a social media post that openDemocracy has reviewed but is choosing not to repeat for legal reasons. We put this allegation to Husband, who called it “desperate deflection from the Labour Party which doesn’t deserve a response”.
Despite the cut, Pride is going ahead, with organiser Mel Metcalf saying: “We are fighting hate with love. We have a lot of support. A lot of unions are coming together to support us.” Still, Reform’s attitude to LGBTQ+ rights has had an effect, he said.
“Some of our volunteers no longer feel confident wearing their rainbow T-shirts or lanyards in public for fear of being challenged. That’s the difference. There is a hesitation now in Durham, about not being as out or open as previous,” he said. “It is sad that people are feeling that way.”
But, Metcalf insists, “what will get us through is love, not hate.”
Reform councils have become embroiled in culture wars on issues surrounding flags, misogyny and racism.
“The equalities stuff is appalling,” said Sally Keeble in West Northants. “Reform’s Peter York was in trouble for saying women should never have left the kitchen. Female councillors have resigned and when I challenged the leader of the council Mark Arnull about what he was doing to get more women into the cabinet, he accused me of promoting toxic identity politics. I thought it was an appalling response when you have to provide services to all communities.”
Further north, in Derbyshire, councillor Stephen Reed apologised at the end of last year after using a council meeting to declare that if having a “view that says our citizens should come first rather than people jumping on boats and getting into the country illegally is racist, then guess what? I’m a racist and I’m proud of it!”
The climate crisis is another front in Reform’s culture war.
Derbyshire council scrapped its climate change committee, with Labour group leader Anne Clarke telling openDemocracy: “They don’t believe in climate change. The committee ran for four years and was looking at the reductions on carbon in the council portfolio. Work was progressing’.” She added that the savings Reform made by scrapping the committee “are small”, describing the decision to do so as “disappointing”.
Reform councillor Carol Wood, Derbyshire County Council’s cabinet member for net zero and environment, said: “Making sure this council is as efficient as it can be and that every pound of council tax-payers’ money is accounted for and spent wisely is our top priority.” Focus on environmental issues, she said, has moved under the “existing ‘Place’ scrutiny committee to streamline operations.”
Kent council has similarly abandoned its Net Zero 2030 Plan in favour of an Energy Efficiency Plan, branding the original as “unattainable” and a source of “financial and operational risk.”
In Lincolnshire, rejecting what Conservative MP-turned-Reform mayor Andrea Jenkyns called “the net-zero bandwagon” has opened the doors to US fracking interests. According to reports in The Guardian, Jenkyns has courted Egdon Resources and its parent company, US fracker Heyco Energy, in the hope of bringing fracking to the region. The controversial energy method was effectively banned in England in 2019 due to earthquake concerns.
Losing out
Despite promises to put Britain’s people first, our investigation learnt that Reform is failing local residents, including by threatening to close much-needed local services such as Glossop tip.
“The local tip is something that everyone uses; it impacts on everyone,” Derbyshire’s Anne Clarke told openDemocracy. “It has really sparked local concerns and the savings made will be small. It’s in a Reform councillor’s patch and even he is campaigning to keep it open!”
Clarke is concerned that a longer drive to a local tip will lead to more fly-tipping, which affects quality of life and tourism. “We are reliant on our visitor economy, so even a small increase in fly tipping could affect our local businesses.”
Also facing permanent closure is the Grange care home, a centre that is close to the heart of Labour district councillor for North East Derbyshire and parish councillor for Eckington, Kathy Clegg. Her grandmother, also a councillor, helped to open the home.
“It’s a special place,” she said. “Everyone would consider this as the place to go to for care. It’s local, we all know each other. It’s hugely sad to see it closed. Residents had to move out and were effectively homeless. There’s an issue of relocation stress syndrome. People die due to the stress when moved out of care homes.” Some of the residents have lived there for more than two decades.
The Grange is one of eight care homes facing closure following a decision by the previous Conservative administration. Local businessman Matt Davison has since offered to buy the Grange, to rescue it for the community and residents, but said he was rebuffed by the Reform council, which planned to sell all eight homes to one buyer. When that sale fell through, Davison again made an offer, telling local media that he was ignored and Reform wants to “close the home.”
This is in contrast to a second care home, with the council currently in negotiations with a private buyer.
Derbyshire council’s cabinet member for adult care, Joss Barnes, told openDemocracy that “all offers to buy [the care homes] were carefully considered – whether singly, in groups, or as a whole package. Unfortunately, despite intensive negotiations with a provider to take over the running of the homes, the sale fell through and we are now in the process of ensuring residents find new, suitable homes to live in.”
“I think people feel let down, people feel terrified,” said Kathy Clegg. “Some of the Grange carers went to visit a former resident in his new care home. He was inconsolable. I am choking up thinking about it, because he was saying ‘I want to go home, I want to go home.’ Our local Reform councillor is silent. He’s done nothing at all.”
“Derbyshire County Council led by Reform has failed in every promise they made before the election,” she added.
A year of broken promises, attacks on equalities, and unfair spending decisions is a warning for the UK as a whole, said Sally Keeble. “What we are seeing is the reality of how Reform behaves, and what they would do if they got into power.”
openDemocracy approached Kent, Durham, West Northants councils and JCB for comment, as well as Peter York and Mark Arnull. We did not receive a response before publication.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Lord Peter Mandelson is seen leaving his home in Wiltshire, England, on February 20, 2026, days before his arrest by UK police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images)
“In the UK, they are prosecuting the Epstein class…” said Rep. Ro Khanna. “We need accountability in the United States.”
After a second prominent associate of Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in the UK, calls are growing louder for those in the US who may have been complicit in his crimes to face similar accountability.
Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the US, was arrested by police on Monday on “suspicion of misconduct in public office.” The arrest is reportedly in connection with an investigation opened into the former minister earlier this month.
Mandelson was dismissed from his ambassadorship by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September after leaked emails showed that he’d maintained a close friendship with Epstein long after the financier had been convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
A criminal probe was opened last month after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released more files, suggesting that in 2009, Mandelson—then a member of the UK government—had passed Epstein sensitive internal economic information that could have affected international markets.
Bank statements also show Mandelson accepting $75,000 from Epstein over several years for an unknown purpose.
He is the second powerful figure in British society to be arrested amid scrutiny of his relationship with Epstein this month. Last week, former Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in office, after emails showed him forwarding trade reports to Epstein, which were produced during his role as an official UK envoy.
Epstein had been charged with the sex trafficking of dozens of underage girls before his death in jail in 2019, and connections with the financier have led prominent individuals across Europe to be shamed out of office or out of influential corporate positions.
Neither Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor nor Mandelson has been criminally charged with any sexual misconduct related to the billionaire. However, at least two women have publicly accused Mountbatten-Windsor of having sex with them while underage after procuring them through Epstein.
In 2022, Mountbatten-Windsor settled a civil suit for about £12 million with Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that the former prince had sex with her when she was 17.
Peter Mandelson, the former British Ambassador to the US, was arrested today on suspicion of misconduct in public office. This is after files revealed Jeffrey Epstein sent $75,000 to accounts connected to him. As we have said before: no one is above the law. We will make sure… https://t.co/Sjf8FjnWSu
The arrest of yet another British government official for inappropriate dealings with Epstein has only heightened the contrast with the unaccountability of American elites, who have thus far emerged from the Epstein scandal unscathed despite damning connections.
“Peter Mandelson, the former British Ambassador to the US, was arrested today on suspicion of misconduct in public office. This is after files revealed Jeffrey Epstein sent $75,000 to accounts connected to him,” wrote the official social media account for the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which oversees the release of the files. “As we have said before: No one is above the law. We will make sure accountability and justice come to everyone in Epstein’s world.”
Files released by the DOJ in January, in compliance with a law passed last year, showed that at least one woman had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s after being introduced to him by Epstein, and that the FBI considered her to be credible, speaking to her on at least four occasions. It is not known what happened as a result of the investigation, and the DOJ slideshow referencing her allegation has since been scrubbed from the department’s website.
Meanwhile, at least six other members of the current Trump administration have documented ties to Epstein revealed by the files.
Most notably, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was revealed to have lied when he claimed to have cut off connections to the billionaire in the early 2000s. In fact, Lutnick maintained a relationship with Epstein for nearly a decade after the billionaire registered as a sex offender and even visited his infamous Caribbean island with his family.
Many other figures in the upper echelon of American society also maintained close relationships with Epstein despite his criminal conviction, including former President Bill Clinton, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Following news of Mandelson’s arrest, US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—who has led the charge for the release of the files in full to the American public, along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—said he wanted to see similar investigations and charges against Epstein’s American associates.
“In UK, they are prosecuting the Epstein class [Massie] and I have exposed,” Khanna wrote on social media. “We need accountability in the United States.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Keir Starmer discusses the UK Labour Party’s tradion of excusing and protecting child rapists.
An ad supporting a proposed wealth tax on California billionaires aired during the final day of the 2026 Winter Olympics on February 22, 2026. (Photo: Billionaire Tax Now)
“Massive federal funding cuts will shut hospitals and emergency rooms forever because billionaires refuse to pay their fair share.”
Organizers behind a proposed billionaire wealth tax in California aired their first campaign advertisement on the final day of the 2026 Winter Olympics over the weekend, styling the 30-second spot as an emergency alert warning of a looming healthcare catastrophe in the Golden State.
“This is not a drill,” the ad says. “California healthcare is facing an emergency. Hospitals will close. Expect longer wait times and overcrowded emergency rooms. Massive federal funding cuts will shut hospitals and emergency rooms forever because billionaires refuse to pay their fair share. Prepare to make alternative plans for care, or vote yes to make billionaires pay their fair share.”
If enacted, billionaires residing in California as of the start of 2026 would face a one-time 5% tax on their fortunes, and the revenue—around $100 billion, according to supporters—would go toward counteracting the impacts of federal cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance approved last summer by congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump. Proponents of the billionaire tax note that more than 3 million Californians could lose healthcare coverage if the state doesn’t act.
Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff at Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which is leading the campaign for the wealth tax, said the new ad “underscores the choice California faces—more tax breaks for billionaires, or keeping our hospitals open.”
“It’s important to alert as many Californians as possible to the healthcare collapse that is looming, because it’s preventable if billionaires pay something closer to their fair share,” Jimenez added.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Calcasieu Pass LNG terminalVenture Global
Roishetta Ozane (second left)
