“The seven Western states that depend on the Colorado River missed a deadline for the second time Saturday to agree on a plan addressing record drought and water shortages. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo released a joint statement calling on Upper Basin states to offer more concessions. Those states include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. ‘The Colorado River is essential to our communities and economies, and our states have conserved large volumes of water in recent years to stabilize the basin’s water supplies for years to come,’ the governors said. ‘Our stance remains firm and fair: all seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation.’ Arizona, California and Nevada have offered to decrease Colorado River allocation by 27%, 10% and 17%, respectively, according to those states.” (02/14/26)
“When I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a galaxy of left-wing, even socialist, intellectual stars such as Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal whose works were like an inkwell that politicians and commentators could draw from. Judging from the Munich Security Conference this weekend, that inkwell has run dry. Take this gem of a comment on global order from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, queen of the democratic socialists: ‘What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes.’ Allow me to translate this into English: ‘The West is bad and mistreats the marginalized rest of the world.'” (02/14/26)
“The truth is out there. Former President Barack Obama said that aliens are real but he has no idea where they are during a podcast appearance released Saturday. ‘They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,’ Obama told YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen after he asked him about extraterrestrials. The former president did not offer any further details on what he mean by ‘real’ — and no follow-up questions on the topic were asked — but he used the appearance to cast doubt on several longtime theories as to where they might be. ‘They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,’ Obama said.” (02/14/26)
“The chairman of the Marin County Republicans sounded alarms this week about possible voting by dead people during the special election last November. During a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, John Turnacliff requested that the county’s registrar of voters look into the matter. ‘I, along with others on our committee, have been dissecting Marin County voter rolls for over three years,’ Turnacliff said during the public comment portion of the meeting. ‘… And based on our analysis of the ballots that were returned for the Prop. 50 special election on Nov. 4, we found 73 people, 73 dead people had voted in that election.’ Asking Natalie Adona, the county’s registrar of voters, to review those numbers, Turnacliff said, ‘In summary, dead people are voting in Marin County, and we would like to know why.'” (02/14/26)
“President Trump’s ‘border czar,’ Tom Homan, announced Thursday that Operation Metro Surge (the violent occupation of Minneapolis and surrounding regions by DHS kidnapping squads) was going to end. At a minimum, it’s unclear how honest Homan was being; if the Minneapolis city council is any judge, ICE kidnappings were still ongoing Thursday, and Homan said that some officers would remain. On Wednesday, one particularly violent kidnapping in St. Paul left three cars wrecked and someone being taken out in an ambulance. Given the Trump administration’s outrageous dishonesty about every possible subject, it would be wise to assume that the occupation (with kidnapping squads regularly snatching people off the streets, with cars full of ICE goons hanging menacingly around workplaces, schools, and even day cares) will continue until proven otherwise.” (02/13/26)
“A mere 15 years ago, during an epoch that now seems as distant as the Paleozoic era, an American president attempted to use military power to prevent a dictator from slaughtering his own citizens. Barack Obama billed the action in Libya as a humanitarian intervention, citing the new U.N. doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). The president hoped to avert a massacre by Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi rather than, as usual, coming in afterwards …. It’s impossible to know if the U.S.-led action did indeed prevent massive war crimes. However, the disastrous aftermath of that Libyan campaign — the summary execution of Qaddafi and a civil war that would kill tens of thousands — was yet more evidence that Washington’s attempts to police the world are quixotic at best.” (02/12/25)
“Scientists are testing an entirely new way to fight heart disease: a gene-editing treatment that might offer a one-time fix for high cholesterol. It’s very early stage research, tried in only a few dozen people so far. But gene-editing approaches being developed by two companies show hints that switching off certain genes could dramatically lower artery-clogging cholesterol, raising hopes of one day being able to prevent heart attacks without having to take pills. ‘People want a fix, not a bandage,’ said Dr. Luke Laffin, a preventive cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. After co-authoring a promising study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, he said he was flooded with queries about how to participate in the next clinical trial.” (02/11/25)
“I don’t want to be that guy who throws the red challenge flag on the victims of child sex trafficking at the hands of Democrat Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator and fellow Democrat Ghislaine Maxwell, but someone has to. Someone has to because the ‘justice’ these women are demanding, or are claiming to demand, is fully and completely within their grasp, and their grasp alone. Yet, they don’t seem willing to take it. Sooner or later, they have to put up, or shut up, don’t they? There comes a point at which you either put your money where your mouth is or you stop talking trash. People who talk about how tough they are, or how good they are at something, often get really quiet when challenged to a fight or a game.” (02/12/25)
“The Paris prosecutors office on Thursday said that nine people were being detained as part of an investigation into a suspected decade-long, 10 million euro ($11.8 million) ticket fraud scheme at the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum. The arrests took place on Tuesday as part of a judicial investigation opened after the Louvre filed a complaint in December 2024, the prosecutors’ office said. The loss for the museum over the past decade is estimated to exceed 10 million euros ($11.8 million), it said. Those detained include two Louvre employees, several tour guides and one person suspected of being the mastermind, according to the prosecutors’ office. The museum alerted investigators about the frequent presence of two Chinese tour guides suspected of bringing groups of Chinese tourists into the museum by fraudulently reusing the same tickets multiple times for different visitors. Other guides were later suspected of similar practices.” (02/12/25)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman
“For months, we have warned of a drive by President Donald Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent, and over the past week the public issue has exploded. The fight for a free and fair vote is taking shape, especially after House Republicans on Wednesday night passed the euphemistically named SAVE Act. Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb. Effectively, the bill would require Americans to produce a passport or birth certificate to register and thus to vote. Brennan Center research shows that 21 million people lack ready access to these documents. Half of all Americans don’t have a passport, for example.” (02/12/25)
