Mandates…. https://t.co/GaJxZPf8xL pic.twitter.com/rNZeUQBubE
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) February 10, 2026
Category: new authoritarianism
Khanna Names 6 Men ‘Likely Incriminated’ by Epstein Files That ‘DOJ Hid for No Apparent Reason’
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) hold a news conference after reviewing unredacted portions of the Jeffrey Epstein files in Washington, DC on NoMa on February 9, 2026. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images) “The reality is that Donald Trump’s FBI scrubbed these files in March, long before Thomas Massie and I passed the Epstein Transparency Act,” said the California progressive.
Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna on Tuesday read aloud on the House floor the names of half a dozen men he said are “likely incriminated” in files concerning Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted child sex criminal and former friend of President Donald Trump.
“Yesterday, Congressman [Thomas] Massie [R-Ky.] and I went to the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files,” Khanna (Calif.) said. “We spent about two hours there, and we learned that 70 to 80% of the files are still redacted.”
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“In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason,” the congressman continued. “When Congressman Massie and I pointed this out to the DOJ, they acknowledged their mistake, and now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men.”
“These men are: Salvatore Nuara; Zurab Mikeladze; Leonic Leonov; Nicola Caputo; Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, CEO of Dubai Ports World; and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner, who was labeled as a ‘co-conspirator,’ by the FBI.” Khanna said.
“Now my question is: Why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the Justice Department to get these six men’s identities to become public?” Khanna asked. “And if we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files.”
Last year, Congress passed Khanna and Massie’s Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the public release of all relevant documents within 30 days. The legislation also empowered Attorney General Pam Bondi to redact large amounts of information that critics fear could include material that incriminates Trump, who Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Tuesday is mentioned “more than a million times” in the unredacted Epstein files.
Democratic lawmakers and Massie have accused the DOJ of violating the law by incomplete disclosure and blowing the legal deadline for publishing the documents.
“The story gets worse,” Khanna said Tuesday. “The reality is that Donald Trump’s FBI scrubbed these files in March, long before Thomas Massie and I passed the Epstein Transparency Act… That means the survivors’ statement to the FBI naming rich and powerful men who went to Epstein’s island… they’re all hidden.”
None of the six named men had responded to Khanna’s action as of late Tuesday afternoon. A legal representative for Wexner previously told the Associated Press that prosecutors had informed the 88-year-old billionaire that he was “neither a co-conspirator nor a target in any respect,” and that he cooperated with investigators.
The names of the six men were entered into the Congressional Record as part of Khanna’s remarks. Inclusion in the Epstein files does not by itself prove or even imply any criminal wrongdoing.
“It’s time to begin with accountability for the Epstein class,” Khanna said during his remarks Tuesday. “Hold them in front of Congress, those people who visited the island or did business with Epstein after he was a convicted pedophile. Investigate them. Prosecute them. And let us return to democratic accountability in the United States of America.”
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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. 
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. 
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then. Warnings of ‘Permanent’ Damage to People and Planet as Trump EPA Set to Repeal Key Climate Rule
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Emissions billow from smokestacks at a factory in Cleveland, Ohio in this undated photo. (Photo by Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) One critic blasted the impending move as “an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok.”
In what experts warn would be the most sweeping rollback of US climate policy ever, the Trump administration is expected this week to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” the Obama-era rule empowering climate regulation over the past 15 years.
The endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—caused by burning fossil fuels are a single air pollutant that threatens public health and welfare, rather than treating each gas individually, for regulatory purposes.
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The 2009 finding has served as the legal foundation for EPA climate rules, including limits on power plant emissions and automobile fuel economy standards under the Clean Air Act.
The new rule would end the regulatory requirement to measure and report vehicle emissions, certify the results, and comply with limits. It would also repeal compliance programs and credit provisions.
“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a Monday interview with the Wall Street Journal.
However, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned Tuesday on the upper chamber floor that “this week, the Trump administration is set to take one of its most nakedly corrupt steps since Donald Trump returned to office, and that’s saying a lot: a wholesale reversal of essentially all greenhouse gas regulations.”
“Trump is making a radical move that will send shockwaves across the economy—uncertainty for manufacturers, states, regulators everywhere. And it flies in the face, of course, of basic science,” Schumer said. “Let’s be very clear what this announcement represents: It is a corrupt giveaway to Big Oil, plain and simple.”
“Big Oil has worked tirelessly for decades to undermine rules that protect against emissions, and now that they have their guy in the White House, they are taking their biggest swing yet,” the senator added. “Remember, in the spring of 2024, Donald Trump invited top oil executives to Mar-a-Lago and told them, if you raise me a billion dollars to get me elected, I will cut regulations so you can make more money. That devil’s bargain is now coming true.”
Big Oil spent over $445 million to elect Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle.
Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit advocacy group, said in a statement Tuesday that “Zeldin took a chainsaw to the endangerment finding, undoing this long-standing, science-based finding on bogus grounds at the expense of our health.”
“Ramming through this unlawful, destructive action at the behest of polluters is an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok,” Goldman added.
More than 1,000 scientists and other experts have implored EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to not repeal the endangerment finding. In a statement last year, the Environmental Protection Network warned that repealing the finding would result in “tens of thousands of additional premature deaths due to pollution exposure” over the next several decades and spark “accelerated climate destabilization with greater risks of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and disease spread.”
While Trump administration officials told the Journal that the new rules would not apply to regulation of emissions from power plants and oil and gas facilities, some said that repealing the endangerment finding could set the stage for additional rollbacks favoring such polluters.
UCS noted Tuesday that the Trump administration “relied heavily on shoddy science in a report developed by a ‘Climate Working Group,’ composed of five skeptics well outside the scientific mainstream in its proposal to repeal the endangerment finding.”
“The report, which was commissioned by the Department of Energy (DOE), has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community, which found that the report ‘misrepresents the state of climate science by cherry-picking evidence, exaggerating uncertainties, and ignoring decades of peer-reviewed research,’” UCS continued.
On January 30, Judge William Young of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, ruled that the DOE violated the law when Energy Secretary Chris Wright—the former CEO of a fracking company who denies there is a climate emergency—handpicked the five researchers for the dubious report.
Republicans have been working toward killing the endangerment finding for years. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a right-wing overhaul of the federal government, explicitly mentions the rule as ripe for repeal. Project 2025’s policy lead, Russell Vought, now directs Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
OMB Acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Jeffrey Clark—a purveyor of the “Big Lie” that Democrats stole the 2020 election—has also been working hard at dismantling federal climate regulations, which he once likened to a “Leninistic” plot to control the US economy.
“Instead of rising to the challenge with necessary policies to protect people’s well-being, the Trump administration has shamefully abandoned EPA’s mission and caved to the whims of deep-pocketed special interests,” Goldman said. “Sacrificing people’s health, safety, and futures for polluters’ profits is unconscionable. We all deserve better and this attack against the public interest and the best available science will be challenged.”
Climate scientist Michael Mann called the campaign to repeal the endangerment finding “a reminder that, while some of the damage that Trump [and the] GOP are doing might seem temporary, the damage they’re doing to the planet is permanent.”
Or, as Cardiff University ecologist Aaron Thierry put it, “You can repeal an endangerment finding. You can’t repeal the endangerment.”
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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. 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. Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then. Amid Secretive Expansion, Leaked Docs Reveal Locations of New ICE Facilities Nationwide
Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Hundreds protest against shootings by immigration agents in Los Angeles, California on January 10, 2026. (Photo by Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) Many new facilities will be located near schools, hospitals, and places of worship such as churches and mosques.
Leaked documents obtained by Wired show that federal immigration enforcement operations in the US appear set to expand even more significantly in the coming years.
Overall, Wired reported on Tuesday, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—has been aggressively expanding its footprint across the country, with “more than 150 leases and office expansions” that “have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas.”
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Many of these new facilities are near sensitive locations that ICE has targeted in its immigrant abduction campaigns, including schools, hospitals, and places of worship such as churches and mosques.
For example, records show ICE is planning to occupy an office building just blocks away from a preschool in Houston, Texas, and to move into offices in Irvine, California located near a childcare facility.
To speed up this rapid expansion, DHS has been leaning on the Government Services Administration to write off standard lease procurement procedures and to even conceal lease listings in the name of “national security concerns.”
Taken as a whole, Wired found that “ICE agents and officers will share buildings with doctors, restaurants, and businesses,” and will “expand existing offices and move in with unrelated government agencies,” such as in Philadelphia, where they are set to share space with the local Division of Motor Vehicles.
“The leasing plans give a clear picture of 2” the report concluded.
The leaked plans about ICE’s aggressive expansion come as immigrants being held in ICE detention centers give disturbing accounts of conditions at facilities.
Seamus Culleton, an Irish citizen who has been held at a Texas ICE detention center for five months despite having a valid US work permit and no criminal record, told Ireland’s RTÉ that the facility is akin to a “modern-day concentration camp.”
“It’s a bunch of temporary tents,” he explained. “There’s a room for, probably, a thousand detainees in each tent… I’ve been locked in the same room now for four-and-a-half months. I’ve had barely any outside time, no fresh air, no sunshine. I can probably count on both hands the number of times I’ve been outside. So I’m just locked inside this room all day, every day.”
Culleton also said that the facilities were “filthy,” with toilets and showers being “completely nasty.”
On Monday, ProPublica published letters that children detained at an immigration center in Dilley, Texas had written while they were being held with their parents.
Ender, a 12-year-old from Venezuela who has been detained in Dilley for over two months, complained about people getting inadequate medical care at the facility.
“Going to the doctor and… the only thing they tell you is to drink more water,” Ender wrote in his letter. “And the worst thing is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here.”
Ariana, a 14-year-old from Honduras who has been at the facility for a month-and-a-half, used her letter to explain the mental toll the detention has taken.
“Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression,” explained Ariana, who added that children being held at the facility are “being damage (sic) mentally, they witness how the’ve been treated.”
Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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. 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. Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then. - Warning of New ‘Show Me Your Papers’ Era, Rights Advocates Vow to Fight Unlawful Trump Plan for Expedited Deportations ›
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‘Everything Is for Sale’: Trump Exploits 250th Anniversary of US Independence for Yet Another Grift
Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The Washington Monument is illuminated with a projection of US President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” initiative during the New Year’s Eve show at the National Mall in Washington, DC on December 31, 2025. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) “Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise.”
Allies of the Trump administration, in partnership with the White House, are reportedly using the upcoming 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as another opportunity to solicit deep-pocketed donors, enticing them with promises of access to the president and other rewards.
The New York Times reported Sunday that donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250—a group announced by President Donald Trump in December—have been promised a path to “gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fundraising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters,” including through his crypto scam and ballroom project.
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Trump has described Freedom 250 as a “public-private partnership” dedicated to organizing “a celebration of America like no other” later this year. Listed as official corporate sponsors of the initiative are prominent corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Palantir.
The Times obtained a donor solicitation document circulated by Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s top fundraiser. Donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250 “will receive prominent logo placement at Freedom 250 events,” which are expected to include UFC fights and an IndyCar race.
Freedom 250 appears to have been created to dodge oversight that applies to America250, a bipartisan congressional commission formed to plan official celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
“American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality,” Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore wrote in Mother Jones last week. “The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.”
“Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints,” they added, pointing to the launch of Freedom 250.
Public Citizen demanded a congressional probe of Freedom 250’s activities, which the watchdog organization’s co-presidents described as a “potential diversion of taxpayer funds for highly partisan purposes.” According to the Times, roughly $10 million in taxpayer funds has “already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called ‘Freedom Trucks’ that rolled out last month.”
“ Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise,” said Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert. “Once again, nothing is sacred in the Trump administration, not even the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests.”
Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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. Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then. 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.
