“2025 was a good year for the stock market. Americans who invested in a broad market index like the Standard and Poor 500 did really well. But not as well as 29 members of the U.S. Congress who beat the market in 2025. Beating the market is not easy and beating an index like the S&P 500 in 2025 means getting gains of more than 16.8%. Unusual Whales compiled a report on the members of Congress whose investments beat that return in 2025. I compiled the chart below from the report to focus on the 29 members of Congress whose investment portfolios grew by more than 16.8% last year.” (02/16/26)
“A Dallas-area federal jury indicted five people this week accused of defrauding customers of their cattle company of $220 million. The defendants operated through the company Agridime LLC, the Justice Department said Thursday. … Federal prosecutors allege that between January 2021 and December 2023, the five told clients, including feedlots, cattle ranchers and people wanting to buy individual cattle, that Agridime would use the money the clients paid to buy and raise specific cattle before selling the meat at a profit. … The Justice Department accused the group of instead using incoming payments from customers to pay off company operating expenses, pay money owed to previous customers, pay personal expenses and buy real property.” (02/16/26)
“Perpetual Trumpworld figure Steve Bannon is taking a lot of heat this month as newly released Jeffrey Epstein files show he maintained close ties with the notorious sex trafficker, even after many of Epstein’s worst crimes were exposed. But that’s not the only perilous legal matter on Bannon’s plate. The influential conservative podcaster also finds himself in hot water for his management of the disastrous ‘Fuck Joe Biden’ cryptocurrency.” (02/16/26)
“The history of ‘President’s Day’ is a convoluted one. (Isn’t everything with government?) Legally, for the FedGov, it is officially still ‘Washington’s Birthday’ and just the calendar date was changed back in 1971, from 22 February to the third Monday in February. (Many States have officially changed the name; the common title reflects the popular belief that it also replaced any celebration of Honest Abe’s birthday (12 February) honored ‘all POTUS.’ Yup, even Nixon.) But since most of us treat this like ‘All Presidents’ Day’ (and absolutely nothing to do with the idea behind All Saints’ Day), let us look back at one of the few POTUS that has some really good things to say about him. Thomas Jefferson.” (02/16/26)
“Newly elected Bangladesh lawmakers have been sworn into parliament, days after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) swept the first vote since the 2024 student-led uprising that expelled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Tarique Rahman will take the oath as prime minister later on Tuesday, as the BNP is expected to form a new government after securing more than a two-thirds majority in the elections last week. … The BNP won at least 212 seats in the 300-seat parliament, giving it a strong majority, while the Jamaat-e-Islami party won 77 seats. Hasina’s Awami League was banned from participating in the polls.” (02/17/26)
“As ICE tactics continue to undermine due process rights, the New York Times editorial board and kindred others have reflected on the role ICE plays in a broader challenge the Trump administration poses to democracy. Trump’s immigration policies are dramatically unjust. But meaningful reflection on what’s wrong with them means recognizing an uncomfortable fact: they are not ‘undemocratic’ but all too much a product of democracy. It’s an uncomfortable fact that Donald Trump won the 2024 election, not just in the electoral college but by 2 million in the popular vote. And he did it by loudly campaigning for his immigration policy. He promised to carry out ‘the largest deportation effort in American history,’ and his running mate suggested starting with deporting 1 million people. Remorseful Trump voters have no excuse for thinking they voted for something else.” (02/16/26)
“The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 84. … Jackson had had progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for more than a decade. He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was also twice hospitalised with Covid in recent years. A fixture in the civil rights movement and Democratic politics since the 1960s, Jackson was once close to Dr Martin Luther King Jr.” (02/17/26)
“The downside of the budget impasse is that it has made police state tactics a point of negotiation. In any other era, if a local police department were doing what ICE and Border Patrol have done in Chicago, Portland, and Minnesota, a state attorney general or federal government would have launched investigations, and the architects of the policy — Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski — would be sweating out questions at oversight hearings. Instead, we’re talking about these abuses in the context of a budget fight. And that risks giving the impression that basic constitutional rights and restraints on police and executive power that date back to the Founding are, actually, negotiable. I guess we’ll see over the next couple weeks if the Democrats believe they really are.” (02/16/26)
