A “Vote Here” sign is posted on November 4, 2025 in the Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Trump may try to push “oddball, ludicrous, unconstitutional theories” to keep the GOP in power, one Democratic attorney general said.
Democratic state attorneys general across the US are preparing for President Donald Trump to take unprecedented actions to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections.
As reported by Politico on Monday, the Democratic AGs have been conducting war games aimed at countering “a series of increasingly extreme scenarios” where Trump tries to block Democrats from retaking the US House of Representatives later this year.
Among the many possibilities that the AGs are preparing for are that the Trump administration orders the seizure of ballots and voting machines, defunds the post office to block the delivery of mail-in ballots, and sends federal immigration enforcement officials or even the US military to patrol polling places.
The AGs have also been carefully monitoring Trump officials’ rhetoric for hints of future election subversion plots, such as when US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said recently that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would “make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.”
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown told Politico that such statements are a “red-alarm fire that people need to take very seriously,” and emphasized that Democrats need to be ready for the president to commit outright crimes to keep the GOP in power.
“He will try anything,” warned Brown. “We have to just sort of think creatively about: If you were the president and you were trying to invalidate an election or undermine an election, what are the oddball, ludicrous, unconstitutional theories that you might advance?”
In addition to Noem’s comments about DHS getting involved in elections, Trump ally Steve Bannon has floated sending US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to monitor polling places, while Trump in January said that “we shouldn’t even have an election” this year.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Politico that it was “sad and tragic” that his office had to take such preparations, but said it was necessary because the president “wants to continue to have his party prevail, seemingly by whatever means necessary.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel pointed to the recent FBIseizure of materials related to the 2020 election from Fulton County, Georgia as a sign of what’s to come during the midterm elections.
“We recognize that what happened in Fulton County could happen in Detroit,” she said. “Not because there’s any merit to claims that anything wrong happened in Detroit, but because we know that those claims will be made again.”
Politico also reported on Monday that Democracy Defenders Action has recruited Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) to deliver a “State of Our Democracy” speech on Tuesday ahead of Trump’s State of the Union address where she will outline the threats the president and his administration pose to Americans’ voting rights.
Norm Eisen, executive chairman of Democracy Defenders Action, told Politico that the speech was necessary because “the threats facing our democracy have never been greater.”
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.
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.
In Nuuk, Greenlanders protested against Trump’s threats to annexe the island | Alessandro Rampazzo/AFP via Getty Images
“If the United States takes over and annexes Greenland, what legal rights will they have to try to stop Putin in Ukraine?”
That was the question posed by Jens B. Frederiksen, Greenland’s former deputy prime minister, when we met over coffee in central Copenhagen last week. “Which legal rights will they have to try to defend Taiwan, if China wants Taiwan?” he continued. “Trump [is] just the same person as Putin. Trump wants to own Greenland. He wants to make the US bigger.”
Three weeks before our conversation, Frederiksen had addressed 30,000 Danes and Greenlanders as they gathered in the Danish capital to oppose Donald Trump’s threat to invade Greenland some 3,550 kilometres away. The strategically important island, two-thirds of which lies within the Arctic Circle, has been a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark for more than 70 years, and a Danish colony for 140 years before that.
One crucial dividing line in Greenlandic politics is independence. When the country was fully integrated into the Danish state in 1953, it established its own Parliament, constitution and introduced a host of electoral reforms. But in recent years, polls suggest around two-thirds of Greenlanders want to break away from Denmark, not least due to long-running issues such as pay inequality and the legacy of colonialism. For now, though, the threat from the US has prompted a renewed sense of unity with Denmark and Europe, with a poll from last month finding only 6% of Greenland’s adult population wants to join the US.
“I would say that everybody has been agreeing that Greenland will be independent at some point, and the disagreements were on when,” said Camilla Siezing of Kalaallit Peqatigiiffiisa Kattuffiat Inuit, an organisation that represents Greenlanders living in Denmark. “But this situation has moved back a lot of things in this regard, because I think Greenland realised how fragile we are. A lot of the discussion for independence has been on the economic and social parts. But now we also have to think about the international security issue.”
The US has had extensive access to and a military presence in Greenland since 1951, when it signed the US-Denmark Defence Agreement as the Cold War intensified. The treaty granted it operational rights on the island, including over construction, logistics, military activity and mining. Earlier this year, the concession of Greenland’s Tanbreez mining project was sold to New York-based Critical Metals Corp.
For Trump, though, the agreement is no longer enough. He began signalling his expansionist aims towards Greenland in his first presidency, initially arguing that the White House should be able to buy the island from Denmark. Earlier this year, he upped the ante, claiming US annexation of the island is necessary to secure his “golden dome” defence system, in which the Pentagon would use Greenland to launch its air defences against a hypothetical missile attack from Russia.
Similarly, as the Arctic becomes a high-pressure region in terms of security and resources, the US president says he is also concerned by China’s expansionist aims. With Greenland, he says, he could better defend his country against any eastern aggression.
Defence experts say Trump’s logic is flawed. “The US falsely claimed that there has been an increase in Russian and Chinese presence in and around Greenland,” wrote Rachel Ellehus of the Royal United Services Institute, a UK defence and security think tank, last month. “Actually, there has been little to no Chinese and Russian military activity around Greenland over the last decade.” This was echoed days later by Spenser A Warren, the Stanton nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, who branded Trump’s national security claims “grossly overblown” in the War on the Rocks blog.
There is a more extractive motivation behind the US’s interest in the Arctic. Greenland is rich in mineral wealth, including much-coveted rare earth minerals essential for technologies such as phones and the growing AI industry. Seizing Greenland would give the US access to the minerals and mining territories desired by its government and its billionaire class.
“To some of Trump’s supporters, some of the tech billionaires, Greenland has become a new territory from where the US can expand and enlarge,” said Cecilie Felicia Stokholm Banke, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, when we met in her book-lined office in Copenhagen.
Greenland is not an empty island, existing only to provide minerals and military bases – despite how some members of the US right have sought to portray it in recent months. It’s home to 70,000 people, and has a diaspora of around 18,000 in Denmark.
Its population includes an Indigenous community with a close relationship with nature and the land, who “live in ways that are not only organised around capitalist markets and profits”, said Danish trade unionist, writer, campaigner and Red-Green Alliance member Bjarke Friborg. “Many people still hunt and fish, share food within families and communities, and plan their time around seasons, weather and ice conditions. When you depend directly on nature like that, it shapes how you think about work, time and what really matters.”
While Friborg is clear that the “Indigenous people have been subject to colonisation and domination from Denmark,” he warned against “how the US has treated its native populations. Greenlanders know this, too, and they are not encouraged.” Greenland’s Inuit people, he added, fear what a US annexation would mean for their wellbeing and safety.
Former deputy PM Frederiksen is a member of Greenland’s historically unionist Democrats Party, which has in recent years shifted its stance to support independence in the long term, as part of a gradual process that starts with increased self-determination. He pointed out that Greenlanders, like residents in Denmark, are entitled to free healthcare, receive payments to support their education, and a generous welfare system – which he fears could all be lost under US control.
“Look at Alaska, look at Puerto Rico,” he said, adding: “Our people are incredibly anxious. We are anxious about our country, our families, our own lives. We are anxious about all the connections we have. And it’s all just because a bully wants our country for his own ‘psychological welfare.’”
These anxieties have also led politicians on the island to put aside their differences, said Frederiksen. “Greenland’s political parties, at this time, realised they have to stand up together. You couldn’t imagine that three, four months before that they should work together. And I was so proud, because I think it was a very, very strong signal to send to all the world that we don’t want to be a part of the United States.”
The signal was particularly loud and clear when 30,000 people marched in Copenhagen. Anders Franssen, one of the co-founders of the Hands Off Greenland campaign group, told openDemocracy he knew he had to do something after Trump’s vice president, J D Vance, visited Greenland in March last year.
“We all know what that visit meant,” Franssen told openDemocracy. “It meant they were going to try to convert the Greenlandic people to look more positively on Trump and the Trump administration. “I called up the police, and I said, I’m going [to organise] a demonstration. He said, ‘How many people are gonna show?’ I said, it’s going to be me, then two cops, it’ll be three of us. We ended up being 3,500.”
A child watches the Hands off Greenland protest | Provided by Jens B Frederiksen
Since then, the Hands Off Greenland protests have grown in size and number, with several large marches held in Danish cities and Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.
Like their cause, the protests transcend traditional politics, said Siezing, whose organisation is non-political but joined one of the many demonstrations that took place across Denmark. “It was really emotional because it was so peaceful, and everybody just got together. There were a lot of Danish people there, and they just supported the demonstrations. Greenland has been shown a lot of support.”
“I think the demonstration showed that we are all together,” said Franssen.
Frederiksen agreed. “I really feel like it was we were united,” he said. “I’m the first person who had a speech in Greenlandic at that place in the middle of Copenhagen. At one point, I shouted to the crowd, ‘Greenland is not for sale,’ and thousands of people shouted it back. It was really powerful, a really amazing feeling.”
European security
Earlier this year, Denmark’s European allies sent troops to Greenland in response to Trumpian aggression – a display of solidarity with the embattled country. The move did not come without cost. In response, Trump tried to escalate his trade war against the region, though he later reversed a threat to increase tariffs on the UK and the EU.
This increased military presence has created, said Friborg, a “new and dynamic situation” that is forcing the Danish and Greenlandic left to ask new questions about its approach to independence, military force, NATO and international security.
“Our traditional policy in the Red-Green Alliance is that the Arctic should be a low-tension area and preferably demilitarised,” said Friborg. “But for the time being, this is just wishful thinking. When faced with classical imperialist and open imperialist behavior like we see from Trump, then the military presence is a way of supporting the people of Greenland. You could say it is also a way of keeping Danish unity, but in a situation where Greenland actually has increasing autonomy and positive attention.”
It’s a question of Western solidarity, too. What happens in Greenland does not stay in Greenland. Trump’s actions, said Fribog, who is also the Red-Green Alliance project manager for Ukraine, “is an encouragement to other imperialists such as Russia and China, saying it is okay to annex other countries, it is okay to try to dominate other countries, whatever the wishes of the local population.”
Russia’s pro-government media praised Trump’s ambitions for Greenland, with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta writing: “If Trump annexes Greenland by July 4 2026, when America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he will go down in history as a figure who asserted the greatness of the United States.”
In Beijing, the reaction has been more circumspect, with Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry, telling a regular news briefing, “We have no intention of competing for influence with any country, nor would we ever do so.”
Annexing Greenland also risks European security and the future of NATO. The defence organisation’s Article 5 states that if one member state is attacked, others will come to its aid – a protocol invoked only once, when European soldiers, including from Denmark, joined the US in its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. In January, as Trump escalated his demands against Denmark, it seemed possible that its second invocation would lead to the end of the alliance, as it’s hard to imagine it surviving a scenario in which one NATO member attacked another.
For this reason, insisted Frederiksen, “this is not only for Greenland. It’s not only for Denmark. It’s not only for the kingdom. This is about the world order. It’s about the international laws we have. It’s about NATO. ”
The impact on European security has served, said Banke, who leads the foreign policy and diplomacy research unit at the Danish Institute for International Studies, as a “wake-up call to Europeans” who are having to confront the reality that the region can no longer rely on the US as an ally.
“Now it’s time that we as Europeans take care of our own security,” she told openDemocracy. While she believes that Europe “cannot be completely independent of the Americans”, Trump’s threats combined with a combative US national security strategy must prompt “Europe to be much stronger in security and defence. We have to see European countries developing their own and stronger defence, and we have to see this moving as fast as possible.”
The US president’s meeting with NATO’s secretary general Mark Rutte in Switzerland last month pointed towards a framework that recognises both US and European priorities in the island – details of which have not yet been confirmed. But, said Camilla Siezing, “I am not calm yet.” She, and others, recognise that Trump can renew his threats at any time.
“There’s a dialogue and diplomacy is working,” said Banke. “But one issue of the Trump administration is its unpredictability. You cannot be sure of what you’re dealing with, and that’s a big change from the very tight transatlantic relationship we have had.”
Trump’s administration, Banke said, “doesn’t respect that Greenland is part of the kingdom. They don’t respect people’s rights, and national sovereignties. These are all very fundamental principles for Europe and are fundamental in the multilateral framework developed after the Second World War.”
For now, Trump has withdrawn his threats. Some of the European troops that headed north have gone home. But the future is still uncertain, with Greenlanders still hoping for peace and a more self-determined future. “I think the only thing that we hope for is just to have some peace and quiet, leave us alone and just let us be,” said Siezing.
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.
In 1976, the film Network premiered, featuring one of the most iconic scenes in film history. Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, unleashes a rant that would be right at home in the present day:
“We know things are bad—worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms.’”
He was right, then and now. And while Beale was raving against the media’s pursuit of sensationalism over journalistic integrity, we see the same thing happening today. Things are indeed bad, to put it mildly, and we do not have the luxury of hiding away in our living rooms.
In early January of this year, a New York Times headline read, “The EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses.” The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is openly letting the American people know that it does not care about us. Dead people are just the cost of doing business, and boy, business is booming.
In yet another glaring example of the business owners and the ruling class placing profits over people, the EPA under the current Republican administration is shifting its policy from environmental protection to the economic costs of regulations. The EPA will no longer track the health impacts of air pollution or quantify the financial impacts of health improvements; instead, it will focus on the financial impact of regulations on businesses. The return of the days when smog was a staple in large metro areas is looking to make a comeback, and it’s only a matter of time before the Cuyahoga River catches fire again.
The shift at the EPA is at odds with the Make America Healthy Again movement, but then again, so is nearly everything else in this administration. While the MAHA movement continues to wage a war against vaccines, thereby ensuring a victory for preventable diseases, the American people will soon be dealing with a rise in air pollution. Clean air and water, once considered a human right, are an impediment to big business shareholders, and the Trump administration sided with big business.
At the same time, the EPA under the Trump administration revoked all scientific findings that greenhouse gases endanger public health. This revocation comes on the heels of the past three years being the hottest years on record. While states and cities grapple with the escalating costs of dealing with extreme weather, the federal government has not only effectively abandoned them but also removed years of climate research and findings.
President Donald Trump departs with Environmental Protection Agency director Lee Zeldin and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, right after announcing the EPA will no longer regulate greenhouse gases, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, in Washington.| Evan Vucci/AP
“President Trump will be taking the most significant deregulatory actions in history to further unleash American energy dominance and drive down costs,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. Lower costs are not only a plus, but they will also be necessary, as we will need more money to offset the rising healthcare costs associated with polluted air.
Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees, said, “Communities across the country will bear the brunt of this decision–through dirtier air, higher health costs, and increased climate harm. The Trump EPA is surrendering its responsibility, turning its back on families and communities already facing the highest pollution and health risks, and dismantling decades of science and progress.”
It comes as no surprise, then, that Big Oil spent almost half a billion dollars on the last election. Oil company CEOs and shareholders need allies in powerful places, and it doesn’t get any higher than Congress and the President. And no one spends that much money without expecting large dividends.
A panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recently released a statement reading, in part, “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute.” The current argument against this is “nuh uh,” often used by the dumbest people you went to high school with, making it very difficult to know who to believe.
The most recent National Climate Assessment, released in 2023, reported that temperatures in the contiguous U.S. have increased by 1.4 °C since 1970. The frequency of annual heat waves has tripled since the 1960s, while storms are producing heavier rainfall, and wildfires have become more severe. Since the Earth is on track to reach 2-3 °C, we are rapidly approaching the point of no return, where climate scientists say that no matter what we do to mitigate climate change, it will be too little, too late.
Recent scientific findings point to tipping points that, in turn, lead to feedback loops. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest releases carbon into the air that would otherwise not have been released, thereby amplifying global warming. Capitalists are actively killing the planet in the name of profit, and since money is all they care about, there is no incentive for them to stop. It also doesn’t help that most of them are sociopaths. And because there is a lack of class consciousness in the U.S., this Steinbeck quote is all the more relevant: “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”
The ruling class loves to place the blame on the working class, insisting that we carpool and recycle our cardboard boxes and plastic bottles. And while we should do these things, that alone will not solve our problem, and it ignores the fact that over 70% of emissions come from 100 corporations. They want us to carpool so they don’t have to pay for public transportation, and they want us to recycle our cardboard so we feel like we’re saving the planet from the comfort of our living room. We do not have that luxury, which means Howard Beale was right.
As with all news-analysis and op-ed articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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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.
Late last month, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) published 3.5 million pages about convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
On top of the grotesque and horrifying photos and emails that appear to offer more evidence of systemic and widespread child abuse, the Epstein files revealed further allegations of his ties to Israel and its intelligence agency Mossad.
The Epstein/Israel revelations have been covered at length by independent and overseas media outlets:
“The Israeli government installed security equipment and controlled access to a Manhattan apartment building” that Epstein managed (Drop Site News, 2/18/26). Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli spy Yoni Koren were frequent guests at the apartment, and Rafi Shlomo, then–director of protective service at the Israeli mission to the United Nations, “controlled access to the apartment for guests, and even conducted background checks on cleaners and Epstein’s employees.”
An informant told the FBI he “became convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent” (Middle East Monitor, 2/8/26).
Epstein emailed Barak in December 2018: “You should make clear that I don’t work for Mossad :)” (Dissident, 2/2/26). Barak responded, “You or I?” Epstein replied, “That I don’t :).”
Epstein emailed Barak twice in November 2017 (London Times, 2/8/26): “Did Boies ask you to help obtain former Mossad agents to do dirty investigations?” and “Boies said he got to the Mossad guys through you? True? This is getting a lot of press.” Barak responded, “Call me. [Redacted] in Paris.” (Epstein was likely referring to attorney David Boies, who was facing scrutiny at the time for hiring a private firm, run largely by former Mossad officers, to investigate women who accused his client Harvey Weinstein of rape, and journalists trying to expose the allegations—New Yorker, 11/6/17.)
It is important to note that the Epstein emails contain allegations and intimations, and don’t prove that Epstein was an Israeli agent, formally or informally. However, they do add to the existing evidence that Epstein used his considerable connections and wealth to assist the Israeli state.
The Epstein/Israel ties were reported before the latest DoJ release by various independent media outlets, particularly Drop Site News. Drop Site’s reporting received scant coverage by US corporate media, as I documented at the time (FAIR.org. 11/14/25).
Drop Site based its reporting on a hack purportedly emanating from Iran’s government. The hack’s source seemed to have explained—at least in part—the lack of US corporate media coverage. The latest Epstein/Mossad ties, on the other hand, were uncovered in a release by the DoJ—a more acceptable source by US corporate media standards. (The Justice release confirmed some of the details in Drop Site‘s reporting based on the Iranian hack, such as Epstein’s close ties to the Israeli spy Yoni Koren—Drop Site, 11/11/25; Al Jazeera, 2/9/26.)
And yet only a few US corporate media outlets—most notably Axios, New York magazine, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Atlantic—have referenced the latest Epstein/Israel revelations.
Even then, these outlets cast doubt on the legitimacy of the connections by framing them as conspiracy theories, or conspiracy-adjacent—hardly a surprise, given previous US corporate media coverage.
FBI source reports and internal emails contain unverified claims and secondhand suspicions about Epstein’s possible ties to Mossad and other intelligence services—material that stops well short of proof, but offers ample fodder for speculation.
A week later, Axios (2/10/26) acknowledged that Barak and his wife “stayed at Epstein’s apartment multiple times from 2015 to 2019,” citing Israeli media reports. Axios‘ Rebecca Falconer wrote that Barak “has said he ‘deeply regrets’ his past relationship with Epstein, and that he never saw nor participated in any inappropriate behavior during their meetings.” Falconer added:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected conspiracy theories peddled online that his longtime political rival Barak’s “unusual close relationship” indicated that Epstein was an Israeli spy.
Although New York features writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood (2/6/26) mentioned “former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak” as one of the “seemingly endless list of VIPs” corresponding with Epstein, it warned against looking too hard at Epstein’s ties to the Israeli state by linking an interest in the issue to antisemitism:
The horseshoe nature of the scandal makes it hard to untangle speculation about, say, Epstein’s intelligence ties from the antisemitism that is pervasive in Epstein discourse. “Yes, we are ruled by Satanic pedophiles who work for Israel,” announced the YouTuber Candace Owens, who may have been reading the same emails that prompted the left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur to post, “To my knowledge no one in legacy media has ever even discussed the possibility that Epstein was Mossad when it is all over the files.”
Right-wing conspiracy theories based in antisemitism (like Owens’) are a toxic form of discourse. But the latest batch of files—and Drop Site’s previous coverage, which Uygur has previously covered—is not hard to distinguish from antisemitism, and does more than just offer “ample fodder for speculation.”
Still, pundits like the Wall Street Journal‘s Barton Swaim (2/11/26) treated questions of Epstein and Israel as necessarily conspiratorial, heaping scorn on “influencers and politicos determined to attribute all bad things to the dark workings of cabals,” and citing how “Tucker Carlson conjectured that Epstein worked with the Mossad to blackmail its enemies.”
And the Atlantic (2/7/26) wrote that, “in death, Epstein has taken on far more significance than he did in life”:
Some Americans were already primed to believe in international pedophilia rings. Bonus points if they were run by wealthy Jews—Jews who were perhaps on the Mossad payroll, as many conspiracists have insisted Epstein was.
Jacob Shamsian of Business Insider (2/14/26) asked whether “there were any truth to the rumored connections to the CIA or the Mossad,” only to handwave away those connections by citing anonymous sources. Shamsian pointed to “four people who had access to the Justice Department’s files,” who “said there was no trace of intelligence material, which would have been the case if Epstein or Maxwell’s crimes were tied to the CIA or Mossad.”
To Compact editor Matthew Schmitz (Washington Post, 2/12/26), the “scourge of rising antisemitism in recent years has found its latest manifestation in the government’s release of millions of files about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” Schmitz referenced “antiestablishment voices” that “have advanced the claim that Jewish networks and interests are corrupting American society.” He lumped together “antisemites on the left and right,” linking Owens and Tucker Carlson with “progressive influencers” Ana Kasparian and Briahna Joy Gray. But Schmitz omitted any mention of Epstein and Barak’s very real relationship.
The New York Times, for its part, largely downplayed the relationship between Epstein and Barak, and omitted key context. A Times article (2/5/26) on Epstein’s ties with tech start-ups briefly mentioned that Epstein “suggested to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, that he speak with Mr. Thiel about an advisory role” at Palantir.
The Times quoted a Palantir spokesperson as denying “Epstein ever investing in or being a shareholder in Palantir,” and asserting that Palantir “has never had a business relationship with Ehud Barak.” They failed to mention that Palantir signed its first contract with the Israeli government a year after the Epstein/Barak conversation.
Less than a week later, the Times (2/11/26) wrote that “political score-settling has played a part in the reaction in other countries,” including in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “played up disclosures of emails” between Epstein and Barak.
The Times noted in that piece that “India’s foreign ministry dismissed an email from Mr. Epstein, in which he appeared to take credit for the ingratiating approach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a landmark state visit to Israel in 2017.”
The paper omitted the detail that Epstein had connected Barak to Anil Ambani, an Indian billionaire close to Modi, ahead of the trip. Drop Site (1/31/26) reported that the introduction “helped accelerate the burgeoning relationship” between Israel, India and the US.
The sparse US corporate media coverage of the Epstein/Israel angle sharply contrasts with the extensive reporting of Epstein’s alleged ties to Russia.
Epstein visited Russia at least three times during the 2000s. He maintained a network of recruiters in Eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, whom he tasked with finding “girls”—often using modeling agencies as a front to traffic them to the US or Europe. He maintained Russian bank accounts and sought investments in Russia.
Although Russia was referenced somewhat more often than Israel in the files—about 5,400 to 4,800 times—Epstein’s connections to Barak were far more tangible than his ties to Russian government figures.
Epstein tried to meet with Putin multiple times, but there is no evidence that he ever succeeded (Washington Post, 2/7/26). Epstein maintained relationships with Russian oligarchs, tech investors and former Russian government officials, but there isn’t a Russian equivalent to Barak, with whom Epstein shared over 4,000 email messages.
Indeed, Epstein and Barak arranged to meet face-to-face more than 60 times between September 2010 to March 2019. At least seven of these meetings took place while Barak was serving as minister of Defense for Israel (Jacobin, 2/6/26).
At least one email thread even connected Epstein to an anti-Putin dissident. Politician Ilya Ponomarev sent an email in 2011 to Bill Gates’ adviser Boris Nikolic, asking how he could gain access to the World Economic Forum in Davos “to communicate what is going on, so that not only official Putin’s voice is heard.” His email came as Ponomarev was participating in mass protests against Putin and his reelection during the 2011 Russian presidential election.
Nikolic forwarded Ponomarev’s email to Epstein, writing: “We should go soon to Russia and you should meet my friend Ilya Ponomarev,” who he described as the “main organizer of the uprising against Putin.” He “might replace Putin and become a president by himself” if “he does not get killed before,” Nikolic said. He asked how Epstein could help, “not with Davos but with the other stuff in general.”
It’s not clear from the files whether Epstein ever met with Ponomarev, but the email thread was noteworthy, showing Epstein’s willingness to meet with an anti-Putin dissident.
Yet it received only one mention in the US corporate media—from Yahoo (2/5/26), which republished an article from the Kyiv Independent (2/5/26), a Ukraine-based news outlet that receives funding from the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy.
Beyond including the email in the article, the Kyiv Independent didn’t bother expanding on its significance. Instead, the outlet wrote:
The documents do not prove that Epstein worked for Russian intelligence.
They do, however, reveal sustained, multi-year efforts by Epstein to embed himself in Russia’s political, financial and diplomatic circles—efforts marked by persistence, access-seeking and repeated attempts to present himself as useful to the Kremlin.
Among the US corporate media outlets to cover the Epstein/Russia connection in-depth are the New York Post, Washington Post and New York Times.
A headline in the New York Post (2/2/26) read: “Emails Reveal New Theory About Whom Jeffrey Epstein Was Really Working For.”
The right-wing outlet relied on two anonymous sources—”people close to the Russian tyrant” and “US security officials”—and an article by the British tabloid Daily Mail (1/31/26), which based its reporting on “intelligence sources.”
In the final four paragraphs of the article, the New York Post acknowledged Epstein’s well-established connections to Israel—noting that his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was the daughter of British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, widely reported to be a Mossad agent—but excluded any mention of the recent revelations.
Two days later, the New York Post ran an article (2/4/26) that detailed how Poland was launching a probe into whether Epstein was working as a Russian spy.
The right-wing outlet also published an article (2/7/26) about Epstein’s ties to “key Russian government figures.” These figures included Sergey Belyakov, who the Post described as “Russia’s deputy economic minister at the time, and a Kremlin secret service–trained spy who Epstein often appeared to use as his personal fixer in Moscow,” as well as Vitaly Churkin, “Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, between 2015 and his 2017 death.” The New York Post did not mention that Epstein introduced Belyakov to Barak in April 2015 (Reason, 8/27/25; Drop Site, 10/30/25; Washington Post, 2/7/26).
The Washington Post (2/7/26) similarly hyped up a Russia connection under the headline “Epstein Built Ties to Russians and Sought to Meet Putin, Files Show.”
Jeff Bezos’ Post—which recently largely gutted its foreign reporting desk—wrote that the files “show repeated attempts in the 2010s to arrange a meeting” with Putin, but added that there was “no evidence in the Justice Department files that such a meeting ever took place.”
The Post (2/6/26) ran another article about the Russia ties, this time about “Russian expatriate tech investors who have drawn scrutiny from US intelligence agencies over their past ties with the Kremlin.”
The Post speculated:
The newly revealed extent of Epstein’s Russian connections, which also include senior Russian government officials, has added momentum to previous suspicions that he worked with or was targeted by intelligence agencies because of his personal connections to international elites.
In its own longform article on the Epstein/Russia connection, the New York Times (2/10/26) similarly wrote that the latest batch of files have “raised new questions among Russia’s critics about whether the relationships opened the door to Russian intelligence activity.”
It is possible that Epstein was a Russian intelligence asset. However, there is no good reason for the US corporate media to frame these allegations as a real possibility, while ignoring the Epstein/Israel ties, or continuing to paint them as a far-fetched conspiracy theory.
The latest batch of files deepens the evidence, documented by Drop Site and others, that Epstein was engaged in assisting the Israeli state, serving as a go-between on commercial, diplomatic and intelligence matters. Although Epstein maintained relationships with Russian oligarchs, tech investors and former Russian government officials, no evidence has yet surfaced that he advocated on behalf of Russian interests. The only reasons to think that the former is more newsworthy than the latter are purely political.
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Donald Trump and his pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein.Donald Trump with his paedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein’s associate Ghislane Maxwell.Donald Trump picture with one of his wives, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
