Thune rejects Trump’s call for GOP to take over and ‘nationalize’ elections

 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5720386-thune-trump-federal-elections/

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday rejected President Trump’s call for Republicans in Washington to “nationalize” voting in the United States and “take over” the management of elections in 15 states.

Thune said that while he strongly supports requiring voters to show identification to prove they are citizens, he does not support the federal government seizing the power to run elections, noting the Constitution gives that power to the states.

Trump Doubles Down on Calls for Republicans to Nationalize Elections

 https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-doubles-down-on-calls-for-republicans-to-nationalize-elections-f0ae3f92?mod=hp_lead_pos3

President says federal government agents should be involved in counting votes, a role the Constitution explicitly grants to states

President Trump doubled down on his view that Republicans should “nationalize” voting in the U.S., questioning whether certain states should continue running their own elections as spelled out in the Constitution

“I want to see elections be honest, and if a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it,” the president said Tuesday in the Oval Office, flanked by congressional Republicans during a bill signing ceremony to reopen the federal government.

Greene rips ‘weak’ Republicans after Trump post targeting Massie’s wife: ‘You make me sick’

 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5720641-marjorie-taylor-greene-defends-massie/

After President Trump slammed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and his wife on Monday, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) criticized her former Republican colleagues for not standing by the Kentuckian.

She also said “all the weak Republicans in the House stay silent refusing to utter even a word of support for their ‘friend’ Thomas Massie.”

“Shame on every one of you. Cowards. You make me sick,” Greene concluded.

Massie became a target of the president’s ire for co-sponsoring the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the Justice Department to release all files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

Illiberal America: A History

 I'm reading "Illiberal America: A History" by Steven Hahn and wanted to share this quote with you

"One of the dangers in writing a history of “illiberal America” is laying out a story that appears to overemphasize continuities at the expense of changes. And, to be sure, there are features of illiberalism that tend to show up again and again. These features include the overriding will of the community, the suspicion of outsiders and quick resort to expulsion, the recognition of rights and standing chiefly in local or limited arenas, the abiding desire for cultural homogeneity often enforced coercively, the resistance to some forms of authority (often of the state) together with easy submission to those of place and faith, and the embrace of hierarchies of status and power."

Start reading this book for free: https://a.co/0aAhOgHX

Melania’s DARK PAST gets OUTED by EPSTEIN FILES!!

Trump wants to nationalize elections

What science says we’ve been getting wrong about exercise

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/02/03/exercise-longevity-stairs-blue-zones/

Doctors and physiologists point to studies that show tiny, regular bursts of effort — like climbing a few stairs — can capture many of the benefits of the gym.

Movement tracking studies show even tiny, regular bursts of effort — as short as 30 seconds — can capture many of the health benefits of the gym. Climbing two to three flights of stairs a few times per day could change your life. Experts call it VILPA, or vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity.

“The message now is that all activity counts,” said Martin Gibala, a professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Canada. And perhaps nothing’s better than stairs.

Images of NYC mayor with Jeffrey Epstein are AI-generated. Here’s how we know

 https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-mamdani-mother-epstein-files-ai-photos-4d2adffd9790a83b34abf1eaf6cee349

Multiple AI-generated photos falsely claiming to show New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a child and his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and his confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, along with other high-profile public figures, were shared widely on social media Monday.

The images originated on an X account labeled as parody after a huge tranche of new Epstein files was released by the Justice Department on Friday. They are clearly watermarked as AI and other elements they conThe images were created with artificial intelligence. They all contain a digital watermark identifying them as such and first appeared on a parody X account that says it creates “high quality AI videos and memes.”tain do not add up.

The photos began circulating after an email emerged in which a publicist, Peggy Siegal, wrote to Epstein about seeing a variety of luminaries, including Clinton, Bezos and Nair, an award-winning Indian filmmaker, at 2009 afterparty for a film held at Maxwell’s townhouse.

While Mamdani appears as a baby or young child in all of the images, he was 18 in 2009, when Nair is said to have attended the party.

Donald Trump Approval Rating Falls Across Every Major Issue in New Poll

 https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-falls-poll-3-11457843

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has slipped across every major policy area, according to a new national poll of Americans.

It signals a broad—if modest—shift in public sentiment on multiple fronts as the 2026 midterms move into view, with voters citing inflation and immigration among their top concerns, while also expressing misgivings about immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis and across U.S. cities.

Trump’s overall job approval slipped to 45 percent in January, down from 47 percent in December, with ratings declining across key issues including the economy, immigration, and foreign affairs, according to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.

Approval on “administering the government” declined to 43 percent from 45 percent in the previous survey, and his rating on handling inflation—already a chronic weak spot—fell again to 39 percent from 40 percent in the previous poll, matching his lowest score in a year. Tariffs and trade policy sank to 39 percent as well.

Why Republicans Are Finally Confronting Trump’s Emergency Powers | George Will

Why Trump betrayed his base on Jeffrey Epstein

 https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/419784/trump-epstein-maga-rebellion-populism

But there’s something even deeper at work here. In telling his supporters to move on from Epstein, Trump is betraying a fundamental structure of his political movement: its populism. He is showing, in short, that MAGA is not truly a movement of the people against the elites, but rather, a politics that revolves around Trump himself.

Mudde saw, long before Trump, that the future of Western politics would be shaped by populist politics. By “populism,” he did not just mean generic anti-establishment politics, but something more specific: “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”

The key word here is “ideology.” Populism is not merely a rhetorical style pitting elites against the people, but a genuine belief that this is the true axis of political conflict. In the populist worldview, the people have a unified set of common-sense beliefs (“the general will”) that would fix politics if implemented. The only reason it is not happening, for the populist, is that malign elites are preventing the people and their champions from holding power.

In a populist movement like MAGA, the “people” are defined narrowly as only those “good” or “true” Americans — meaning typically, though not exclusively, white rural Christian Republicans. Trump presents himself as their champion against the malign forces of globalist liberalism, personified by the Washington political establishment and coastal cultural elite (a construction that easily and regularly shades into antisemitism).

“What about the Epstein story is so uniquely infuriating?...It’s the frustration of normal people watching a certain class of people get away with everything every single time,” Tucker Carlson said in a Friday speech at the Turning Point USA conference.

Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’

 https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-885389

For two decades, MetroWest Jewish Day School eked out an existence in the suburbs of Boston, providing what parents say was a warm and nurturing Jewish education to just dozens of children. Now, the school says it simply cannot go on. MetroWest will shutter at the end of the academic year, officials announced last week.

Located in Framingham, Massachusetts, MetroWest Jewish Day opened in 2003 and enrolls students in pre-K through eighth grade. In its closure announcement, the school said it has served more than 300 students from over 30 towns in the greater Boston area over 25 years. According to social media posts, graduating eighth grade classes are typically between five and 10 students.

Currently, there are only about 20 students enrolled across all grades, school officials said. The school’s website shows 15 faculty and staff members.

The closure follows a spate of recent closures of small Conservative or pluralistic Jewish day schools across the country, including in New Jersey, New York City and Arizona. Many of the schools had seen enrollment dwindle sharply, although Orthodox schools are faring better.

'Highly suspicious': Sen. Whitehouse blasts Trump FBI's raid on Fulton County elections site

Gabbard defends presence at elections raid

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/02/gabbard-defends-presence-at-elections-raid-00761564

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers Monday that President Donald Trump personally asked her to be on site as FBI agents executed a politically sensitive search warrant at an Atlanta-area elections office, according to a copy of a letter sent by Gabbard and obtained by POLITICO.

Trump continues to claim the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden, and Georgia has long been at the center of his unproven claims of widespread fraud.

Even before news emerged about the call, Gabbard’s presence at the raid alarmed Democrats and current and former state election officials because the director of national intelligence is traditionally focused on foreign intelligence matters and rarely if ever plays a direct or highly visible role in domestic criminal investigations.