“South Korea’s former interior minister was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison for abetting then-President Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief declaration of martial law in 2024. The verdict for Lee Sang-min came a week before a different judge at the same Seoul court rules on whether Yoon’s actions amounted to rebellion, a crime for which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Lee, who led the ministry of interior and safety, was convicted for helping carry out the declaration and passing along Yoon’s orders to the country’s police and fire chiefs to cut water and electricity to news organizations that were critical of his policies. The instructions weren’t carried out since martial law was lifted quickly after lawmakers broke through a military and police blockade at the National Assembly and unanimously voted to lift it.” (02/12/26)
“Tim and JVL go through various moments from Pam Bondi’s hearing in the Congressional Oversight Committee, in which she evades, lies, and covers for Donald Trump.” (02/11/26)
“In some of the most beautiful and prosperous places in America, a curious paradox has taken hold: the people who benefit most from capitalism increasingly appear to resent it. They live in high-amenity cities and mountain towns with preserved open space, reliable infrastructure, advanced healthcare, abundant leisure, and the freedom to choose where and how they live. These conditions did not arise spontaneously. They are the cumulative result of markets, private investment, innovation, and long-term economic growth. Yet in these same environments, it has become socially fashionable to describe capitalism as immoral, exploitative, or fundamentally broken. This is often dismissed as hypocrisy. That framing is too simple. What we are witnessing is not merely individual inconsistency, but a structural paradox produced by success itself. Capitalism generates abundance, and abundance reshapes human priorities.” (02/11/26)
Source: Semafor
by Eleanor Mueller & Shelby Talcott
“Nearly six weeks after the Trump administration ousted Venezuela’s leader with plans to effectively run the country, its manner of doing so is increasingly opaque. The first US sale of Venezuelan oil took place 11 days after President Donald Trump’s declaration that the US would rely on Caracas’ oil revenues to control its future. But one month after Semafor reported that proceeds from an initial $500 million sale were held in a Qatari account, there is no sign of a second successful sale. There’s also no clarity on when future proceeds will shift to a US-based Treasury Department account from the Qatari account, which was used to help shield the oil proceeds from Venezuela’s creditors.” (02/11/26)
“For years, public health debate has often fixated on a supposed rise in the prevalence of autism. Various culprits have been named, including the well-investigated but unsubstantiated claim that vaccines cause autism. More recently, additional risk factors have been proposed — many by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — including maternal Tylenol use, food dyes and additives, chemical manufacturing agents and other possible stressors affecting perinatal development. Concerns about autism have been spotlighted within the larger Make America Healthy Again movement, motivated by a well-founded alarm over the nation’s devastatingly high burden of chronic disease and psychiatric illness. But there is a bigger problem with the autism epidemic: It doesn’t exist. Autism diagnoses have indeed risen dramatically in recent decades. However, diagnostic criteria can change even when the underlying health phenomenon remains unchanged.” (02/11/26)
“A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 former death row inmates to a notorious maximum-security prison in Colorado, concluding that President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi had dictated the decision before the men had a chance to contest it. ‘The Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,’ U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly wrote in a 35-page opinion requiring the men to remain in their current prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Kelly, a Trump appointee, emphasized that he was not ordering the release of any of the convicts, who were convicted of ‘some of the most horrific crimes imaginable.'” (02/11/26)
“Martina Navratilova is ‘pissed off as hell.’ She fled totalitarian Czechoslovakia for the United States only to watch too many Americans now give up on freedom without a fight. She is speaking up as part of an ad campaign for an organization that shares the stories of those harmed by Donald Trump. My family and I fled Romania for the West. The contrast between our two countries, during the twilight of communism and in its aftermath, offers a stark lesson for Americans confronting threats to democratic norms today.” (02/11/26)
