Source: US News & World Report
“A judge overseeing Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case said Wednesday that two members of Congress lacked the legal right to intervene and press their demand for a court-appointed observer to ensure the government complies with a new law ordering release of its files on Jeffrey Epstein. … U.S. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., had co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act that was signed into law by President Donald Trump in November. It required the public disclosure of files related to the sex trafficking investigations into Epstein, the late financier, and Maxwell, his longtime confidant. … They had urged Engelmayer to name an independent monitor to ensure that the government immediately released the more than 2 million documents it has identified as investigative materials. … A month after the deadline had passed for the materials to be made public, only about 12,000 documents have been made public.” (01/21/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2026-01-21/judge-rules-against-lawmakers-pressing-for-monitor-to-ensure-release-of-epstein-files
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Joanna Rozpedowski
“The US appears intent on using discrete military action while restricting rivals’ access to key regions, resources, technologies, and governance mechanisms.” (01/21/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-doctrine-spheres-of-denial/
Source: The Hill
“Nancy Lacore, a three-star admiral and former chief of the Navy Reserve before she was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, announced a run for Congress in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. Lacore, who began as a Navy pilot and rose to vice admiral during more than three decades of service, said in a video on social platform X she was removed without cause ‘along with dozens of other military leaders.’ She added that she ‘never put the uniform on again’ after leaving the Pentagon the day she was ousted, but she noted she ‘can’t stand by while Americans and South Carolinians are struggling.’ While Lacore registered Tuesday to run as a Democrat, she broadly criticized elected officials in Washington, D.C., for caring ‘more about party politics than standing up for the Constitution.'” (01/21/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5699595-nancy-lacore-running-congress
Source: Racket News
by The Fine Print
“Since Sunday, Twitter/X generated 3.4 million posts about ICE protesters bursting into the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Meanwhile, a story about a 57 year-old Hmong-American named ChongLy Thao who was led by ICE agents onto a snowy street in boxers and Crocs generated about 2,600 posts in the same time period. On the smaller Bluesky platform the situation reversed: the #Hmong story generated enormous heat, while traffic about the Cities Church affair was minimal, only what was there was nearly all negative. … Both of the viral St. Paul stories centered on video from Sunday morning. Both inspired heavy commercial news coverage. As an insight into who sees what and how gulfs in perception form about politics, it’s instructive.” (01/20/26)
https://www.racket.news/p/bluesky-brain-x-brain-two-viral-stories
Source: US News & World Report
“California Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in a bid to prevent the state from using a new congressional map designed to give the Democrats five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The state Republican Party and other challengers filed an emergency request asking the Supreme Court to block California’s new map, which was endorsed by voters as a counterweight to a similar redistricting effort in Texas aimed at boosting Republicans. A federal court on January 14 rejected the argument by the challengers that California illegally used race in redrawing the boundaries of the congressional districts.” (01/20/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2026-01-20/republicans-ask-us-supreme-court-to-block-california-voting-map
Source: The Dispatch
“Bernie Goetz and Bygone New York | Interview: Elliot Williams.” (01/21/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/bernie-goetz-and-bygone-new-york-interview-elliot-williams/
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Susan Baughman on being an AirBNB host and an AirBNB guest.” (01/20/26)
https://rumble.com/v74mlok-ff-409-susan-baughman-on-being-an-airbnb-host-and-an-airbnb-guest.html
Source: Foreign Policy
by James Palmer
“Last Friday, Canada and China struck a preliminary trade deal that would open the Canadian market to Chinese electric vehicles and lower Chinese retaliatory tariffs on key Canadian agricultural exports. … The deal will undoubtedly revive accusations of malign Chinese influence and Canadian perfidy from U.S. right-wingers and China hawks. But a year into Trump’s second term, moving closer to Beijing makes perfect sense for Ottawa, as well as the European Union. … Put bluntly, a relatively rational autocracy with limited, stable foreign-policy goals located an ocean away may seem preferable to a country run by an erratic autocrat next door. In this respect, the ongoing Greenland crisis has given Canada’s leaders brutal clarity about the United States as it is, not as it was or as they want it to be.” (01/20/26)
https://archive.is/JBeW0
Source: New York Post
by staff
“Socialism pretends to be all warm and cuddly, but Sen. Bernie Sanders is showing how heartless it can be. He’s been the sole lawmaker blocking legislation to speed up cures for kids with cancer and nudge drug makers to develop new pediatric therapies. And on Tuesday, he joined nurses who’ve abandoned their hospitalized patients to strike for fat pay hikes. For cold-blooded socialists like Bernie, ideology clearly trumps compassion. Start with the bill he’s blocking: the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act, recently renamed for a 16-year-old who died of cancer last year while lobbying for the measure. Sanders (I-VT) says he himself backs the bill, except it doesn’t push other health care measures he wants, such as funding for community health centers — so he’s holding the cancer kids hostage.” (01/20/25)
https://nypost.com/2026/01/20/opinion/bernie-sanders-is-bent-on-proving-that-socialists-have-no-heart/
Source: Orange County Register
“The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it will appeal the November ruling in favor of Meta in its antitrust case against the social media giant. The FTC said it continues to allege that, for more than a decade, Meta Platforms Inc. has ‘illegally maintained a monopoly’ in social networking through anticompetitive conduct ‘by buying the significant competitive threats it identified in Instagram and WhatsApp.’ Meta had prevailed over the existential challenge to its business that could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp after a judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.” (01/21/26)
https://archive.is/OL4LG
