As someone who spent a lot of my career writing about sports as a funhouse mirror of social and economic pathologies, I wholeheartedly recommend this @prospect.org theme issue— @ddayen.bsky.social and his team did a good job! prospect.org/sports/

We decided to send out next week's episode of Organized Money early because it's so timely. We talked to Rep. Ro Khanna about his work on the Epstein Files & how it actually changed his politics, making him recognize why elite impunity is such a primary issue. www.organizedmoney.fm/p/the-epstei...

Bob Kuttner has some news here: Democrats offered to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP, while negotiations continued on reforms. Republicans rejected that. prospect.org/2026/02/13/i...

ICYMI private prison company GEO Group is making big money by violating the human rights of detainees. 800 percent jump in revenues last year, thanks primarily to ICE. prospect.org/2026/02/12/i...

Fun @franifio.bsky.social essay on how the World Cup has often been political, and why the U.S. might get what's coming to us this year. prospect.org/2026/02/13/f...

We're going regime villain deep-cut today with a look at Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Guess what: he's bad, in all the ways Trump cabinet members are bad: anti-science, pro-selloff of public resources, and sycophantic to an absurd degree. From our friends at @revolvingdoordc.bsky.social.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted for stealing $5.7 million from a government overpayment to her company & using it to get self-fund her election. Her primary challenger pointed this out, so she sued him for defamation. But she never served the lawsuit. It was just for negative publicity.

ICE may be leaving Minneapolis, but the damage to thousands of lives is done. And economically, it's a localized heart attack not unlike the one that hit the planet in March 2020, writes @ryanlcooper.com. prospect.org/2026/02/13/i...

A birthday 🎂

Sunset in the desert

George Zoley was on a conference call just a few hours ago talking about GEO's outstanding 2025. For fiscal year 2025, the company clocked an 800% increase in profit, thanks to our tax dollars. Just a massive wealth distribution upwards to this guy and his fellow profiteers. 800%.

We've written consistently about the violation of access to counsel for immigrant detainees. prospect.org/2025/10/06/2...

ICE contracts increased private prison company GEO Group's revenues by 800% in 2025, according to an earnings call attended by @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social. But none of that money seems to be going to oversight amid a spate of sexual abuse & physical assault complaints against GEO Group guards.

As ICE retreats in Minneapolis (or at least claims to), Harold Meyerson relates it to the patriot militias that drove British troops out of Boston 250 years ago next month. prospect.org/2026/02/12/o...

Visa will be the next case settled once Bondi gets Live Naiton-Ticketmaster out of the way.

And now Gail Slater, the chief antitrust enforcer at DOJ, has just resigned, a prelude to this settlement happening. Slater was cut out of the negotiations with MAGA lobbyists on the Live Nation case. DOJ is just a corrupt shell at this point.

In a sense Venezuela was the test run for the Latin American regime change Holy Grail in Cuba. Marco Rubio is playing the long game. Great analysis from Nathan Thompson. prospect.org/2026/02/12/m...

Did The Atlantic really write a story entitled "What Happened to Pam Bondi?" Nothing happened! She's always been willing to do anything for power. She fired the only prosecutors looking into foreclosure fraud on behalf of a campaign donor. She was an Amazon lobbyist! prospect.org/2024/11/22/2...

Another year in the 18-54 age bracket. I will also be posting this next year. (Don't ask about 2028)

Tired: Getting mad at Pam Bondi for high school theater-level theatrics at a hearing Wired: Getting mad at Pam Bondi for letting the Ticketmaster monopoly continue and settling the case that would break it up. From me: prospect.org/2026/02/12/t...

To close out our sports issue, we came up with some positive examples, where financialization and the desires of oligarch ownership is not placed over basic respect for fans and athletes. 🧵 prospect.org/2026/02/12/f...

Kate is a reporter for the American Banker. Trump’s DOJ & CFPB turn a predatory lending discrimination lawsuit into an anti-immigrant crusade. Instead of providing restitution for victims of discrimination they use $ to fund more police resources aimed at “illegals.” (Full article paywalled.)

Some personal news

The 6 Rs who crossed the aisle to block Trump's Canada tariffs: Thomas Massie Don Bacon Brian Fitzpatrick Jeff Hurd Kevin Kiley Dan Newhouse Jared Golden (D) voted with the Republicans to maintain them.

Incredible that this many Republicans are still backing Trump on this wildly unpopular policy. They'll now have to do it again after Trump vetoes and an override vote is held. Just generating mountains of votes for midterm ads.

The House revolt yesterday, no longer content to serve as human shields for Donald Trump's policies, was an important moment, as Bob Kuttner explains: prospect.org/2026/02/11/h...

Court battle over surveillance footage at the Broadview ICE detention center reaches new levels of kafkaesque absurdity: The DOJ claimed it *couldn't afford* hard drives to put video footage on. Plaintiffs bought THE US GOVERNMENT hard drives. ICE "lost" them. www.404media.co/government-l...

I feel like there's an unsaid side to this line of discourse. If we're looking right now at what AI is replacing, broadly defined it's things that need to be replaced. 🧵

Invoking wealthy class solidarity to excuse sex crimes against children is sorta the Epstein Class in a nutshell

Here come the pro-AI PACs, which actually have more money than the pro-Israel PACs, into Illinois. IL02 has competing PAC support, as the pro-Israel PAC $ is supporting Donna Miller, while the pro-AI PAC is supporting Jesse Jackson Jr. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale is a major pro-AI PAC donor.

Both parties are sick of Big Medicine, and some surprising counterattacks have emerged—like flat-funding Medicare Advantage. On Oganized Money this week we talked to Olivia Webb Kosloff about some rare pushback against the privatization of Medicare. prospect.org/2026/02/11/o...

Ultimately crypto is crashing because degenerates found something more fun to bet on

Wow just a completely false statement in @axios.com, resolutions of disapproval are privileged and only need a simple majority in the Senate, in fact four of the anti-tariff resolutions have passed the Senate already. www.axios.com/2026/02/11/t...

It's underappreciated how health care companies make money by holding your money (like in an HSA account or insurance premium) & investing it before you can use it. One insurance giant, UnitedHealth, even has a bank. A payday lender! Emma Freer & Olivia Webb Kosloff have this report:

Adam Smith agreeing to give an interview witj the The American Prospect is like Pete Hegseth giving an interview to Isaac Chotiner.

Analilia Mejia was doing ICE Watch trainings at her campaign events. She was preparing future constituents for encounters with immigration agents. And she won. In an interview with @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social, one of her big priorities: end ICE's mass surveillance. prospect.org/2026/02/11/p...

Two big stories right now: the Olympics, and ICE. They will come together in 2028 in Los Angeles, damping any enthusiasm for foreign tourists to travel to the Games. That's a big moral disaster waiting to happen, but also an economic one for LA. Great @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social report.

big reason why the oligarch class went so hard for Trump. they HATE lots of job creation because when your workers can quit and get another one the next day, it's much harder to abuse them

Modest January gain in manufacturing dwarfed by the 100,000 revision downward for 2025. Just a total disaster.

With revisions, the +130,000 jobs in January is actually the best of the Trump's term. He didn't have a single month over +100,000 in 2025, with 3 months of job losses. Also Biden is no longer the only president ever to have positive jobs numbers every month of his tenure. Jan '25 is now negative.

And now the House has defeated the rule, 214-217. The expectation is Democrats will immediately get 2 votes to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Those motions are ripe and ready for voting tomorrow. Speaker Johnson can no longer stop time (that's what his motion did, procedurally speaking)

An important part of this legal ruling is that California under the anti-mask law treats its own officers separately. That was a last-minute addition by Gavin Newsom. Now it got the law thrown out. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Two DSA (or DSA-adjacent) mayoral candidates in LA and DC are trying to recreate the magic Zohran Mamdani found in NYC. Harold Meyerson looks at whether they can succeed. prospect.org/2026/02/10/d...

we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad

NEWS: a 4th Illinois open-seat House race is seeing big outside money from AIPAC, this time a $2.8 million ad buy for Melissa Conyears-Ervin, the Chicago city treasurer. AIPAC switched sides from Jason Friedman, who had raised 3x as much money as anyone in the race. prospect.org/2026/02/10/a...

There's now some chatter that Friedman might drop out, which is crazy. He has raised 3x as much as anyone else in the race!

This is interesting, the House has been routinely blocking votes to negate individual tariffs, which Democrats have the right to call, through procedural trickery. But some Republicans have had enough, and the extension of the trickery may now end, with tariff votes sure to follow.

The entire conceit of "reforming" ICE, ensuring only targeted operations, nothing without a warrant, etc., is incongruous with the $75 billion cash infusion for the agency. They're going to spend that money on *something*. Like a network of local offices.

Amazing a whole story about Eddie Bauer filing for bankruptcy can leave out the fact that it was owned by private equity from 2009 to 2021 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/b...

As ICE and CBP testify in Congress, we have updated our tracker of deaths at the hands of immigration enforcers. 25 have been killed with another 18 seriously injured, and there have also been 44 deaths in ICE/CBP custody. Wondering if this will come up at the hearing. prospect.org/2026/01/29/i...