I’m getting a little sick of saying this, but I think it’s worth repeating, that this speech sounds no different than your average white nationalist website.

When I heard this, I drafted a skeet about it, then thought "naaah, there's no way his speechwriters would allow him to contradict himself within one sentence." But they really and truly did.

Trump again claimed he brought in $18T in foreign investment in the US. No idea where that number comes from -- BEA hasn't released FDI data for 2025 yet -- but it seems pretty implausible. For context that more than half the size of the ENTIRE US economy (~$31T)

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology. We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

"Most of the published government-agency and intelligence reports [...] deliver different conclusions, seemingly on the basis of political rather than scientific arguments." Indeed. The answers are to be found in the peer-reviewed scientific literature with credible experts doing the work.

Since this will likely come up in the SOTU: Yes, US stock markets are up since Trump took office (14%). But in the rest of the world, markets are up WAY more. Cumulative market gains are more than triple ours (43%)

Aliya Rahman, woman who was dragged out of car by ICE in Minneapolis: "I've spent the last month learning the names of the tendons in my shoulder, because both of my shoulders are torn -- cartilage and tendons. But what I haven't learned is the names of the people who did this to me."

Wrote a piece about many looking at the Epstein case all wrong: He's not the thing that connects a network of rich and powerful men; he's the lens that shows us how they were already connected. newrepublic.com/article/2068...

Breaking MS NOW: Agents with the FBI's elite evidence response team were delayed in reaching the scene of a mass shooting at Brown U. in December because there was no FBI plane available. Kash Patel was in south Florida at the time with one of the FBI's two available jets.

A+ State of the Union counterprogramming by TCM.

Casey Means’ Surgeon General confirmation hearing is tomorrow. Means holds a number of extremely disturbing views, including that hormonal birth control is “disrespect for life”. She isn’t a “fringe” or “alternative” healthcare provider. She is a person who blithely ignores scientific facts.

This is the singular legacy of the Biden administration, the failing that preceeded all subsequent failings. What good there was (and there was real tangible good!) will have to be excavated from a legacy of failing while in power to punish the plotters and beneficiares of an attempted coup.

Painful to read this and think about the 2021 coup attempt, which was as blatant as it gets. An utter failure of US elites to seize the moment when everybody saw the threat right in front of their eyes. If we have history books in the future, they will be unkind.

I was briefed Ukraine would crumble. Four years later, Russia has lost over a million men — and Ukraine still stands. open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

Wrote about the progressive praise for Tucker Carlson and why it is bad. Carlson wants less money to Israel so we can murder brown people at home. He is an antisemitic ethnonationalist rather than a philosemitic one. substack.com/home/post/p-...

NEW: Many of the people that RFK Jr. nominated to be on the board that gives the government guidance on autism policy are not only anti-vaxxers. Many of them contributed to his 2024 presidential campaign. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

20% with indies is fucking apocalyptic and I think it can get lower because Donald Trump is fundamentally incapable of being anything other than who he is, and people do not like him.

Guinea-Bissau "terminated a contentious hepatitis B vaccine trial bankrolled by the Trump administration following a sharp ethical rebuke from the WHO, which warned the study risked causing irreversible harm to newborns" "It's not going to happen, period," said Foreign Minister Joao Bernardo Vieira

Incredible how much they selectively ignore their standards and practices when it’s time to pick on trans people. And as much as Singal sucks, it’s the mid- and senior-level editors at the Times who keep platforming anti-trans voices.

Company that bent the knee to Trump: we shouldn’t punish companies that bent the knee to Trump

NEW Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll: Ahead of SOTU, Trump's approval falls to new low of 37% — & just 20% among independents. Issue approval on immigration and deportations falls to new lows of -15, and voters say admin is spending on the wrong issues. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/ahead-of-s...

The tone of contempt here, in a news update, is disgraceful. "How dare Mamdani and his team...uh...wear those clothes and use social media to try to prevent bad things from happening when...um...bad things could still happen in a situation like this!" GTFO.

THE U.S. DEBT CRISIS IS SET TO REACH UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS THE CBO PROJECTS A $23 TRILLION CUMULATIVE FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT FROM 2026–2035.

NEW: Maine immigration observers sue over Trump administration "domestic terrorist watchlist" threats. The First Amendment lawsuit will seek class-action relief. Today, at Law Dork:

Something I think about often is, if a Democrat said this today, it would've been a hot mic moment and they'd have to apologize and say it was out of context. FDR said it at Madison Square Garden, 3 days before a presidential election

Again, one of the best Winter Olympics for the US in a long while. And a bunch of assholes in and around the White House have to try and ruin it for all of us. They ruin everything. All the time.

Trump Invites Caucasian Half Of Alysa Liu To Visit White House

Is the president mocking the U.S. women’s hockey team on a celebratory call with the men’s team going to attract even an iota of the sustained handwringing that the idea of trans athletes disadvantaging women’s sports has gotten

I spoke with Haley Robson, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, whom Ro Khanna invited to be his guest at Trump's State of the Union. She previously voted for Trump, but has called for his impeachment. She said "I want to see Trump, and I want to look him in his eyes" www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

If the Trump regime illegally starts a war with Iran, Congress should either immediately impeach him or dissolve itself. The president does not have unilateral authority to start a war. No one wants this.

Ralph Abraham, no. 2 official at CDC, abruptly steps down. The resignation is effective immediately. www.statnews.com/2026/02/23/r...

Thank god for Drafts again. I already have so many I will delete and I feel so much better.

NEW, w/ @danielpayne.bsky.social: How the pharma lobbying machine is trying to take advantage of a politicized FDA under the Trump administration www.statnews.com/2026/02/23/f...

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, appears to have deleted his tweet after these Democrats responded

Our latest paper shows that most aerosol sampling methods may underestimate infectious virus in air. We observed 100x more infectious flu virus and SARS-CoV-2 if it deposited directly on cells (more realistic) rather than in liquid first and then transferred to cells. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

I've heard many people say we'll need another Reconstruction after Trump, so I decided to dive into the history and look at what that would mean. The latest from my newsletter:

I'm a certified Newsom hater, but this clip and summary of what he said isn't quite right.

Deep, well sourced, moving, and enraging story from the NYT [Gift Link] www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

Trump, July 19: "All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service." Witkoff, Sunday: "They're probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material."

I don’t know that words exist to convey the magnitude of disgust I feel upon reading this.

One of the first things we were taught at Quantico was that there is never a moment in which you are not representing the Bureau; but, then again, we earned our place there, and weren’t granted its directorship as a sinecure for partisan malfeasance and a willingness to disregard the constitution.

"Less than a year after 'obliterating' Iran’s nuclear program, the administration is warning it is 'probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.'...Meanwhile, the world will have its impression of a flailing superpower reinforced." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Deliveristas ending their shift and about to head home over the Williamsburg Bridge, though the blizzard. One of them, Salvador,tells me he’s happy for the cutoff by the city. “This is more dangerous than last snowstorm, harder to move in,” he tells me in Spanish.

Quietly, the Trump administration is now ending even the life-saving aid that they had promised would be preserved Reporting from @hana-kiros.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

All it took was for Trump to say "Canada is our enemy" and all the lemmings jumped off the cliff.

The reason we're here is that tens of millions of people will punch a hole in a wall if they hear someone used food stamps to buy soda but they're fine if the right-wing podcaster turned fbi director uses his taxpayer funded private jet to go party whenever he feels like it bsky.app/profile/thed...

I'm not claiming the first Trump administration was a model of ethical behavior, but there is just a deep sense in the second term that the guardrails are gone, the boss doesn't care, and its grab-whatever-you-can time donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-the-fb...

It's so cool that the fbi is basically the make a wish foundation for one podcaster

as far as i can tell “bio hacking” is just a goofy term for giving yourself some combination of an eating disorder and a drug addiction

This is a good point: suspending programs that require less screening of travelers only boosts the total workload. It’s not like those folks will stay home. Also: “The two programs were not suspended during last year's govt shutdown.” The goal here is to annoy travelers and hope they blame Dems.