Source: decrypt
“Shares in publicly traded crypto exchange Gemini (GEMI) have fallen more than 14% on Tuesday following word that the firm has decided to part ways with three of its executives following a recent announcement of mass layoffs across the company. Gemini Chief Financial Officer Dan Chen and Chief Legal Officer Tyler Meade will be replaced in the interim by Danijela Stojanovic and Kate Freedman, respectively. Marshall Beard, the firm’s chief operating officer, will also depart and leave the board, though his executive role will not be filled. Instead, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss will assume his responsibilities.” (02/17/26)
https://decrypt.co/358325/gemini-stock-dives-winklevoss-crypto-exchange-dumps-executives
Source: New York Post
by Andrew Arthur
“President Joe Biden not only allowed 6 million to 10 million illegal [sic] aliens to walk across the border during his term, he also granted a ‘quiet amnesty’ to nearly 1 million. We’re only learning this now, as the Department of Justice revealed Biden officials improperly ‘terminated,’ ‘dismissed’ or ‘closed’ that many cases before the nation’s immigration tribunals. The tool for this deception was the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (‘EOIR’, pronounced like Winnie the Pooh’s sad donkey friend), which oversees deportation cases. Under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration used EOIR to manipulate removal hearings, tanking pending cases in the name of ‘prosecutorial discretion.'” (02/16/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/16/opinion/bidens-quiet-amnesty-for-nearly-1-million-illegal-immigrants/
Source: Fox News
“Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has ordered Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col. Dave Butler from his current job serving as chief of Army public affairs and chief advisor to Driscoll, who currently is in Geneva serving on the negotiating team to end the Ukraine war, Fox News has learned. Butler served as the head of public affairs for the Joint Chiefs when Gen. Mark Milley was chairman, and was slated to receive his first star. His name appeared for two years in a row on an Army list of 34 officers selected for promotion. That list has been held up by Hegseth for nearly four months because he reportedly has concerns about four to five officers selected by the Army board, but by law he cannot remove them from the list. Butler volunteered to take his name off the promotion list if it would help unlock the other promotions, according to an Army official.” (02/17/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/scoop-hegseth-orders-removal-army-public-affairs-chief-amid-broader-pentagon-purge
Source: AI Summer
“AI safety in India, AV operators in the Philippines.” (02/16/26)
https://www.aisummer.org/p/ai-safety-in-india-av-operators-in
Source: CounterPunch
by Laura Flanders
“There’s a reason we talk more about power than individual people. Take Jeffrey Epstein. The man is dead, but the power problem lives on. The files not only revealed a whole lot of individual predators, but also an entire ecosystem of money, and power, and abuse, and protection by bankers, and billionaires, and politicians, and protectors, many of whom continue to wield enormous power at the very height of our society today. Put that creepy picture next to another, one of a sprawling network of secretive detention centers and camps where tens of thousands of people, including women and girls, are hidden away in far off places and moved from camp to camp and state to state and cage to cage without documents or phones or anyone to hear their calls. We do not come to this moment uninformed.” (02/17/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/17/the-trafficking-never-stopped/
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andrew Koppelman
“Hierarchical structures within religion are largely acceptable to liberalism so long as they are based on consent rather than coercion. Hierarchy must be justified, but consent suffices to justify. Shifting our focus from theory to practice, American law has never questioned the right of the Catholic Church to confine the priesthood to males, or to impose on the priesthood difficult demands such as celibacy, or to condemn as immoral homosexual sex and contraception. Liberals often harshly denounce and stigmatize these ideas, putting painful social pressure on those who hold them, but the postliberals claim more than this: outright coercion and censorship. Liberals believe in free speech, even for ideas we don’t like.” (02/16/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-unbearable-intellectual-lightness
Source: Show-Me Institute
by Susan Pendergrass
“A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal lays out what has been on the minds of many (or at least mine) for some time. The traditional education establishment that was in charge of all things K-12 in the last century is crumbling. In the last decade, millions of children have exited their assigned public schools in exchange for a scholarship that is a fraction of what was spent on them by the education blob. It is becoming clear — parents want to be able to choose from a range of options when it comes to the education of their children.” (02/16/26)
https://showmeinstitute.org/article/education/teachers-unions-get-desperate/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Hamas has rejected remarks by an Israeli government official calling for the Gaza-based group to disarm in 60 days and threatening to resume Israel’s genocidal war if it fails to comply. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi told Al Jazeera Mubasher on Monday that he had no knowledge of such a demand. ‘Statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu … and through the media are merely threats with no basis in the ongoing negotiations,’ Al Jazeera Arabic cited him as saying. Mardawi’s comments come after Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, during a conference in Jerusalem on Monday, threatened to renew the genocidal war on Gaza if Hamas failed to disarm in 60 days, local media outlet the Times of Israel reported.” (02/17/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/17/hamas-rejects-netanyahu-aides-60-day-ultimatum-for-group-to-disarm
Source: My History Can Beat Up Your Politics
“Bill Clinton’s 1993 — Part One.” (02/16/26)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mcmxciii-bill-clintons-1993-part-one/id169078375?i=1000750023655
Source: Glenn Greenwald
by Glenn Greenwald
“One of the towering questions hovering over the Epstein saga was whether the illicit sexual activities of the world’s most powerful people were used as blackmail by Epstein or by intelligence agencies with whom (or for whom) he worked. The Trump administration now insists that no such blackmail occurred. … There are still many files that remain heavily and inexplicably redacted. But, from the files that have been made public, we know one thing for certain. One of Epstein’s two key benefactors — the hedge fund billionaire Leon Black, who paid Epstein at least $158 million from 2012 through 2017 — was aggressively blackmailed over his sexual conduct. ” (02/16/26)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-epstein-files-the-blackmail-of