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John William Waterhouse It’s Sweet Doing Nothing / Dolce Far Niente 1879
YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS THIS MIKE BENZ VIDEO.
— BelannF (@BelannF) February 7, 2026
How did Jeffrey Epstein have a meteoric rise – This explains so much.
"This is the real story of Epstein…the sooner people realize this the better off our future will be! It’s deeper and much longer, but this the super quick… pic.twitter.com/Vii0ANjJSq
https://twitter.com/NextScience/status/2020145805877977296The Pizzagate emails were originally discovered in John Podesta and Hillary Clinton's emails where secret comms involving "food," especially the word "pizza," were being used to disguise and talk about the trafficking and abuse of children.
— The SCIF (@TheSCIF) February 7, 2026
These emails were presented to the… pic.twitter.com/qyPFyuI3B9
” What exactly were prosecutors preparing to announce, and why did they need so many versions ready to go?”
• The Epstein Cover-up Just Got So Much Worse (Matt Margolis)
Just when you thought the Jeffrey Epstein saga couldn’t get any weirder… well, it has. Fresh files have dropped a bombshell that is sure to fan the flames of conspiracy theories regarding Epstein’s death. It appears that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had a draft statement ready to roll on August 9, 2019 — the day before Epstein’s body was discovered. At least 23 documents carry labels identifying them as statements from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and here’s where it gets stranger: multiple versions of similar statements show up with wildly inconsistent redactions. Some leave phone numbers or names visible while others black out nearly all identifying information. What exactly were prosecutors preparing to announce, and why did they need so many versions ready to go?Read more …
Epstein’s August 10, 2019, death was officially ruled a suicide, but the circumstances have been picked apart ever since. He was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges when he supposedly hung himself in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. His former cellmate, Nicholas Tartaglione, claimed in a pardon petition filed last summer that Epstein was “deliberately left unprotected in federal custody.” Tartaglione is a former cop convicted of multiple murders, so he’s hardly the most reliable witness, but his allegations are nevertheless another curious tidbit.
The Daily Beast has more. “Newly released records reviewed by CBS News have intensified questions about what happened inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the night before Epstein was found dead. Justice Department documents show investigators reviewing jail surveillance footage flagged an orange-colored figure moving up a staircase toward the locked tier housing Epstein’s cell at about 10:39 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2019—hours before his body was discovered the next morning. An observation log described the figure as “possibly an inmate,” while a separate review by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General identified the same image as a corrections officer carrying orange-colored linen or bedding.
CBS reported that independent video analysts said the movement was more consistent with an inmate—or someone wearing an orange prison uniform—than a corrections officer. Prison employees told CBS that escorting an inmate at that hour would have been highly unusual. The discrepancy stands in contrast to repeated official assertions that no one entered Epstein’s housing tier that night, raising further questions about activity near his cell during the estimated window of his death.”
The draft statement dated August 9, alongside multiple differently redacted versions attributed to federal prosecutors, has raised new questions about what officials were preparing before Epstein was found dead. Are we supposed to believe that this was just a clerical error? In theory, yes, it’s possible, but given the circumstances and all the other questions surrounding Epstein’s death, it’s hard to believe. Why would prosecutors need a statement ready the day before his death? Were they expecting something to happen? The Justice Department and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The whole thing reeks of a cover-up, and these newly released files are only making the official story look more ridiculous by the day.
Datacenters in orbit develop faster than they thought.
• Musk: “Time To Go Back To Moon At Scale” (ZH)
A little more than a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk had rejiggered SpaceX’s near-term space roadmap, pivoting from a Mars-first to now prioritizing the Moon, Musk has now effectively confirmed the reporting. “Time to go back to the Moon at scale,” Musk wrote on X early Sunday morning. X user Autism Capital hilariously responded to Musk with “Back”…Read more …
Late Friday evening, WSJ cited sources who said Musk had pushed back the planned late-year Mars mission, with SpaceX now targeting a Starship launch to the Moon in March 2027. The space pivot comes after SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI company, xAI, last week, combining his rocket and satellite business with his artificial intelligence startup to accelerate plans for a fleet of low-Earth-orbit data centers. The deal gives SpaceX a valuation of $1 trillion, and xAI a value of $250 billion. The combined company’s valuation of $1.25 trillion was announced to employees in a memo on Monday, with an IPO slated for later this year that could raise as much as $50 billion.Time to go back to the Moon at scale https://t.co/rFjaenmQZd
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2026
Even though Musk previously dismissed the moon as a “distraction” and argued for Mars first, it appears NASA may have nudged him, especially as Jeff Bezos’s rocket company, Blue Origin, has paused space tourism launches to focus on the moon. In a memo earlier last week, Musk told employees that the pivot will pave the way for the U.S. to construct a permanent base on the moon. “The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the moon, an entire civilization on Mars, and ultimately expansion to the universe,” he said. Musk expanded on the idea of space-based data centers last week in an eye-opening conversation with tech podcaster and researcher Dwarkesh Patel, saying: “In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space.”Kardashev II civilization or bust.
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) February 7, 2026
Starship will get us to the Moon and Mars. pic.twitter.com/L9vhMOdDPK
“Solar cells are already very cheap. They’re farcically cheap. I think solar cells in China are around 25-30 cents per watt. It’s absurdly cheap. Now put it in space, and it’s five times cheaper. In fact, it’s not five times cheaper, it’s 10 times cheaper because you don’t need any batteries. So the moment your cost of access to space becomes low, by far the cheapest and most scalable way to generate tokens is space,” Musk told Patel. All this upcoming launch activity and the return to the moon will certainly drive a new space investing theme once the SpaceX IPO debuts. We have outlined multiple ways to profit from the space industry buildout, from low Earth orbit to lunar operations and beyond.
“Since the WHO claimed it did not approve the U.S. withdrawal from the agency, it said the U.S. remains a member and that the U.S. can’t have its flag back. President Trump said in no uncertain terms, ” We will take our flag back….”
• When WHO Wouldn’t Return the Flag, Trump and Rubio Sent the Marines (Manney)
Respect is nothing more than an abstraction until somebody refuses to show it; that’s when symbols clarify moments. Flags matter because they represent authority, sacrifice, and ownership. The World Health Organization (WHO) crossed that line when it decided to keep the United States’ flag after President Donald Trump withdrew from the organization. That decision led to a rare action on the world’s political stage: Somebody acted. President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the WHO because of decades of mismanagement, compliance with hostile governments, and repeated failures during global health scares.Read more …
There are consequences resulting from the withdrawal: legal, diplomatic, and symbolic. At the WHO’s headquarters, our flag was displayed; ownership never changed when we ended our membership, and when the organization refused to return it, then it became a straightforward matter. Last year, President Trump withdrew the United States from the corrupt globalist institution, the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO said we owed them more than $100 million. This is after they lied about the pandemic at the request of the Chinese Communist Party. President Trump made it clear that they owed us for what they did during the pandemic. Since the WHO claimed it did not approve the U.S. withdrawal from the agency, it said the U.S. remains a member and that the U.S. can’t have its flag back.President Trump said in no uncertain terms, ” We will take our flag back. Ownership is something every society that fogs a mirror recognizes; nations don’t abandon property when they exit agreements, while flags sit in a separate category. A national flag represents sovereignty, military service, and the authority of a people governed by legitimate law. When an organization holds another country’s flag without consent, the situation crosses over into provocation, an action sending a message, intended or not. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the situation with clarity, as diplomatic notes had run dry and polite requests met resistance.
A dispute over an American flag has become symbolic of the bitter public dispute between the U.S. and the World Health Organization (WHO) after the U.S. withdrew from the organization on 22 January. In a joint statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr on the termination of U.S. membership in the WHO, they accused the organization of keeping the American flag that hung outside its Geneva headquarters captive. “Even on our way out of the organization, the WHO tarnished and trashed everything that America has done for it. The WHO refuses to hand over the American flag that hung in front of it, arguing it has not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation. From our days as its primary founder, primary financial backer, and primary champion until now, our final day, the insults to America continue.
That’s the point where Rubio authorized the United States Marines to retrieve American property. Marines follow orders: they arrived, asked politely, and left carrying the flag. Strong leadership doesn’t chase approval; it understands where it begins and ends. President Trump established a foreign policy grounded in sovereignty, not chasing consensus. Rubio exercised that policy with precision; neither Rubio nor Trump escalated unnecessarily, shouted, or apologized for defending our national property. There are times when distinctions matter, such as when the Marines didn’t threaten or posture; they simply carried out a lawful order that civilian leadership issued. When leadership uses authority sparingly and decisively, civilian control of the military works best. Sending Marines to retrieve a flag communicates seriousness without chaos.
“Fox Business noted how hopes for EVs replacing gas-powered vehicles and popularity were completely unfounded:”
• Automaker Loses $26B on Unwanted Electric Vehicles (Catherine Salgado)
An automaker which foolishly thought that there would be a huge demand for unreliable, expensive, and accident-prone electric vehicles is now having to eat tens of billions of dollars for committing to the climate alarmist agenda. Stellantis is hardly alone in taking a major financial hit after investing heavily in electric vehicles (EVs) during the Biden administration. Ford, for instance, lost almost $20 billion on EVs. The reality is that EVs were only ever going to appeal to a small portion of the population who can both afford them and are woke enough to care about the fake emissions propaganda. In fact, EVs cannot compete in an open market, and rely on government subsidies. And since the United States federal government is no longer propping up EVs, sales of the vehicles are crashing and burning like an EV engine fire.Read more …
Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa, who came to the position last year, confessed his company was “over optimistic” about EVs, according to Fox Business. “What we are announcing today is an important strategic reset of our business model… to put our customer preferences back at the center of what we do, globally and in each region,” he said. Imagine asking customers what they actually want to buy instead of telling them what they ought to wish to buy! What a novel strategy! The automaker began to implement the changes in the second half of 2025. Stellantis also had to address serious quality issues, and ended up hiring 2,000 engineers to improve its products. It appears that the automaker previously made a lot of errors with longterm consequences.Fox Business noted how hopes for EVs replacing gas-powered vehicles and popularity were completely unfounded: Across the auto industry, fully electric vehicles represented 19.5% of European sales last year and just 7.7% of new U.S. car sales…The [Stellantis] charges also included reductions to the company’s EV supply chain, revised assumptions for warranty provisions due to poor product quality, as well as previously announced job cuts in Europe. Ross Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, dryly commented that Stellantis “got it wrong on how quickly the world would transition from combustion engines to electric power.” Reality has once again triumphed over climate alarmist ideology, and as usual, the financial cost was extremely high.
EV batteries are extremely toxic to manufacture and to dispose of. They are also more prone to catch fire, and can have shorter battery lives than those in gas-powered vehicles. Not only that, but overall emissions for EVs can equal or even exceed those from gas-powered cars. Charging Advisor admits that colder weather can indeed impact “EV battery performance, range reduction, and charging speeds.” The crowning irony of EVs is that misnamed “green” energy cannot generate enough power to charge significant numbers of electric vehicles, meaning they depend on gas and coal power indirectly, even if they do not do so directly. It is no surprise that EVs, which were always more about ideology than quality or demand, are tanking.
“A more equitable approach, they say, would be to set prices globally and adjust them country by country based on gross domestic product and purchasing power…”
• Trump’s Demand for Lower Rx Prices Means Immediate EU Price Increases (CTH)
If President Trump will no longer permit Americans to pay the research production costs for pharmaceutical companies through high prices, essentially subsiding pharmaceutical costs for the world, then Rx companies will have to increase their prices throughout Europe. This is making the Europeans very unhappy.Read more …
(Bloomberg Businessweek) — For the past few years, Swiss oncologist Christoph Renner has treated blood cancer patients with Lunsumio, a new drug that helps the immune system recognize and destroy malignant cells. Then, last summer, Renner got an email from Roche Holding AG, Lunsumio’s manufacturer, informing him the treatment would no longer be available in Switzerland because health insurers there wouldn’t pay for the infusions. “You see what’s possible,” says Renner, a professor at the University of Basel, “and then you’re told you can’t use it.”The move was a response to rules President Donald Trump introduced that force drugmakers to reduce their prices in the US to the lowest level paid in other developed countries. In Switzerland, new medications typically cost far less than in the US, so in theory Americans should benefit from the change. The problem is, instead of bringing prices down in the US, pharmaceutical companies are raising them elsewhere. Yet Switzerland has shown little political willingness to pay more—threatening both the availability of medications in the country and its role as a global leader in developing therapies. Drug prices are the primary driver of the increasing cost of mandatory health coverage, and the topic generates heated debate during the annual reappraisal of insurance rates.
“The Swiss cannot and must not pay for price reductions in the USA with their health insurance premiums,” says Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, Switzerland’s home affairs minister. […] Drug companies say they need to charge high prices on new medications because so much of their work doesn’t pay off. They spend billions of euros on research, but relatively few formulas turn out to be effective. Even fewer provide the massive profits needed to fund further research—and pay off shareholders. Moreover, companies typically need to make that money early on, because after about two decades on the market, drugs lose patent protection, which drives prices down as generics producers start selling copycats.
Manufacturers argue that American patients bear most of these innovation costs and that it’s only fair for other countries to pay more—especially Switzerland, given its prosperity. A more equitable approach, they say, would be to set prices globally and adjust them country by country based on gross domestic product and purchasing power”: (read more)
First President Trump starts making Europe pay for their own defenses and NATO commitments; then he has the audacity to tell them the U.S. will not accept European censorship or free speech rules. President Trump follows by hitting them with the end to the Marshal plan of one-way tariffs, seriously weakening the amount of revenue within the EU, forcing budget cuts. Then, as if Trump wasn’t bad enough, he makes it even worse by dispatching expensive Green New Deal energy agreements such as the Paris treaty, and using cheap abundant energy in the U.S. while Europe tries to operate on expensive windmills and solar panels covered in snow. Now, in addition to forcing them to spend money on their military, now Trump expects the EU to just accept the end to their healthcare subsidies and higher prescription medications. The absolute nerve of this man.
“Senator Warner knows very well that whistleblower complaints that contain highly classified and compartmented intelligence—even if they contain baseless allegations like this one—must be secured in a safe..”
• Warner, NSA Whistleblower, British Intel Seek Impeachment of DNI Gabbard (CTH)
The attempted framing of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard continues with senate intelligence committee Mark Warner and/or his collaborating whistleblower attorney Andrew Bakaj (also Ciaramella’s attorney) leaking details to the British intelligence services and their preferred media outlet The Guardian. DNI Tulsi Gabbard has responded to the ongoing nonsense but first let’s review the newly disclosed details for some interesting information. The UK Guardian now shares the agency for the “whistleblower” as the NSA, likely an NSA contractor, and the basic details of an intercepted phone call which the contractor deemed “unusual”. I’ll pull citations from the article.Read more …
“SUMMARY VERSION: In/around March of 2025 an NSA contractor “detected evidence of an unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, according to Whistleblower attorney, Andrew Bakaj.” The NSA contractor then wrote up a report and gave it to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. DNI Gabbard then took the report to Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. “One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office.” (Guardian citation)The NSA whistleblower was upset that DNI Gabbard didn’t share the report with others and filed a whistleblower complaint on April 17, 2025, with the Intelligence Community Inspector General. Within the complaint the NSA whistleblower included the details of the phone call leading to the complaint being labeled Top Secret Compartmented Information (TSCI classification). This format of including TSCI material complicates how the complaint can be reviewed. This looks like it was done on purpose. Because the complaint contained TSCI material, it could not follow ordinary whistleblower pathways toward congress.
(Guardian) […] Acting inspector general Tamara A Johnson dismissed the complaint at the end of a 14-day review period, writing in a 6 June letter addressed to the whistleblower that “the Inspector General could not determine if the allegations appear credible”. The letter stipulated that the whistleblower could take their concerns to Congress, only after receiving DNI guidance on how to proceed, given the highly sensitive nature of the complaint. (citation)The inclusion of the TSCI material, the ‘highly sensitive‘ part, creates a conflict within the process. [The TSCI material is the name of the individual associated with foreign intelligence, and the name of the person close to President Trump.]
The NSA whistleblower complaint is against DNI Gabbard, but any complaint containing TSCI material must carry guidance from DNI Gabbard for further sharing. The NSA whistleblower likely intended to create this problem as part of the scheme to set up the events. (Guardian) […] The contents of the whistleblower complaint are still largely unknown. Bakaj, the whistleblower’s attorney, said that Gabbard’s office had redacted much of the complaint that was released to intelligence committee members on Tuesday, citing executive privilege. “I don’t know the contents of the complaint, but by exercising executive privilege they are flagging that it involves presidential action,” he said. On 3 February, Bakaj again requested guidance from Gabbard’s office about how to share the whistleblower’s full report while taking appropriate precautions. “As you are well aware, our client’s disclosure directly impacts our national security and the American people,” Bakaj wrote. “This means that our client’s complete whistleblower disclosure must be transmitted to Congress, and that we, as their counsel, speak with members and cleared staff.” Bakaj said that the DNI’s office did not respond to his letter by its Friday deadline. He plans to contact members of the Senate and House intelligence committees on Monday to schedule an unclassified briefing on Gabbard’s conduct and the “underlying intelligence concerns”.
Members of the gang of eight have contacted the NSA to request the underlying intelligence that the whistleblower says Gabbard blocked, according to staff in Warner’s office. (more) NOTE: At this point I’m more interested in the name of this NSA contractor who is listening to the phone calls of foreign intelligence and the Trump administration. Much like the heavily protected Eric Ciaramella (2019 effort), this NSA contractor likely carries similar motivations. Both Ciaramella and this “whistleblower” are using the same lawyer, Andrew Bakaj. Regardless, DNI Tulsi Gabbard responded today via her X account:
“Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI “hid” a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months. This is a blatant lie. The truth:
– I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or control of the Whistleblower’s complaint, so I obviously could not have “hidden” it in a safe. Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson was in possession of and responsible for securing the complaint for months.
– The first time I saw the whistleblower complaint was 2 weeks ago when I had to review it to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress.
– As Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner knows very well that whistleblower complaints that contain highly classified and compartmented intelligence—even if they contain baseless allegations like this one—must be secured in a safe, which the Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson did and her successor, Inspector General Chris Fox, continued to do. After IC Inspector General Fox hand-delivered the complaint to the Gang of 8, the complaint was returned to a safe where it remains, consistent with any information of such sensitivity.
– Either Senator Warner knows these facts and is intentionally lying to the American people, or he doesn’t have a clue how these things work and is therefore not qualified to be in the U.S. Senate—and certainly not the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Hot air.
• NSA-Whistleblower Claims Against Tulsi Gabbard Get More Absurd in Context (CTH)
You know the IC narrative is falling apart quickly when even the New York Times paints the background as gossip. Within the New York Times reporting we discover more of the underlying context for the NSA intercept. According to the Times, the NSA intercept was of “two foreign nationals” discussing an American person with some relationship to President Trump. The underlying concern was about the conversation they intercepted. Just pulling out the pertinent:Read more …
“…a whistle-blower report about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing a person close to President Trump” … “It is not clear what country the two foreign nationals were from, but the discussion involved Iran.” … “The identity of the person close to Mr. Trump could not be immediately determined.” […] “One official said there was no other intelligence that led officials to think the two officials had been speaking truthfully. Some intelligence analysts concluded the two foreign nationals were either gossiping or deliberately spreading misinformation. As a result of those doubts, Ms. Gabbard moved to restrict the report’s visibility. She also provided the information to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, according to people briefed on the events.The acting intelligence community’s inspector general [a Biden appointee] cleared Ms. Gabbard of wrongdoing after she responded to questions about her actions.” {source} Summary: The NSA intercepted two foreign nationals talking about Iran and gossiping about someone close to Trump. The NSA snooper documented the conversation. Intel analysts concluded the two foreign nationals were just gossiping. DNI Gabbard did not put credibility on the issue, but to be safe informed Susie Wiles of the intercept. That’s it. The NSA snooper then got big mad about the intelligence analysis of the conversation labeling it as gossip and took out their frustration by blaming Tulsi Gabbard for dismissing it.
I simply don’t understand how they can keep protesting against a vorer ID. But they do.
• Raskin: Voter ID Law is Denying the Vote to Women (Turley)
With polling showing over 80 percent of Americans in favor of voter ID laws, it is hard to come up with reasons why you need an ID to board a plane but not vote in a federal election. That was particularly glaring this week when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) required people to show an ID to attend his campaign events after opposing an ID requirement to vote. So if you want to hear Ossoff speak against voter ID, you will have to show your ID. Now Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has a rather bizarre argument: the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, if passed, would likely violate the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. CNN Host Kasie Hunt told Raskin that “Voter ID is supported by the majority of Americans. But there are Democrats on the Hill and you voted against this? Why not support voter ID?”Read more …
Raskin then had this curious response: “… what’s wrong with the Save act? What’s wrong with it is that it might violate the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote, because you’ve got to show that all of your different IDs match. So if you’re a woman who’s gotten married and you’ve changed your name to your husband’s name, but you’re so now your current name is different from your name at birth. Now you’ve got to go ahead and document that you need an affidavit explaining why. And why would we go to all of these, troubles in order to keep people from voting when none of the states that are actually running the elections are telling us that there’s any problem.”In fact, under various voter ID laws, states can create systems to address issues such as different maiden names or name changes following a divorce, including requiring a standard attestation provided by the state. Nothing in the SAVE Act requires birth certificates be brought to polling places. It allows for the use of a signed attestation supplied by the state. As for identification, various forms are allowed: The legislation would require documentation that shows an individual was born in the U.S., including either:
An ID that complies with the REAL ID Act and indicates the holder is a citizen;
A passport;
A military ID card and military record of service that shows a person was born in the U.S.;
A government-issued photo ID that shows the person’s place of birth was in the U.S.;
Other forms of government-issued photo ID, if they’re accompanied by a birth certificate, comparable document or naturalization certificate.
Now, on the 19th Amendment, Raskin’s argument is simply ridiculous. Indeed, if this were credible, why has it not been used successfully against prior state voting ID laws? Rather than making this claim on CNN, it would be interesting for Raskin to try it in court once the SAVE Act passes. It is unlikely to succeed because the 19th Amendment guarantees the right to vote, but, like all citizens, women can be asked to prove their eligibility to vote. The suggestion that requiring a signature on an attestation form is a barrier to voting is simply incredible.
The Nineteenth Amendment provides: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Requiring proof of your identity neither denies nor abridges the right to vote. Indeed, for supporters of voter ID laws, it protects the right to vote by ensuring that only eligible voters are counted in elections.
Would requiring the REAL ID also violate constitutional rights like the right to travel or association for those with name changes? Of course not. The government may require basic identification for such transactions while creating reasonable methods of addressing name or address changes. The claim of a 19th Amendment violation is spurious but par for the course in our current political environment. As with claims that democracy is about to die, these inflammatory claims are designed to distract voters who overwhelmingly support Voter ID. Democratic members are unified in opposing such laws. That is a debate that should be resolved on the merits, not meritless constitutional claims.
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” he said in a statement. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”
• Pentagon to Cut Academic Ties With Harvard, Hegseth Says (ET)
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Feb. 6 that the Pentagon will cut all academic ties with Harvard University as the institution “no longer meets the needs of the War Department or the military services.” Hegseth said the Pentagon would discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs with the Ivy League school beginning in the 2026-27 academic year for active duty service members. This policy will apply to service members enrolling in future courses, while military personnel already enrolled at Harvard will still be allowed to finish their courses, according to the Pentagon chief.Read more …
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” he said in a statement. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.” Hegseth said Harvard is no longer a welcoming institution for military personnel, citing its partnership with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on campus research programs and a campus culture he said enabled attacks on Jewish students and “promotes discrimination based on race in violation of Supreme Court decisions.”In a separate post on X, Hegseth said the institution was promoting “woke” ideology, which goes against the department’s values. The Pentagon and military services also will evaluate similar relationships with other Ivy League schools and civilian universities in the coming weeks, according to the statement. “The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities and our military graduate programs,” Hegseth said. The Epoch Times has reached out to Harvard for comment and did not receive a response by publication time.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said his administration would demand Harvard pay $1 billion in damages, accusing the university of being “strongly antisemitic.” “Harvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly! They wanted to do a convoluted job training concept, but it was turned down in that it was wholly inadequate and would not have been, in our opinion, successful,” he wrote on Truth Social. The Trump administration has attempted to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding from Harvard following an investigation into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and claims of anti-Semitism in higher education last year. The White House said in April 2025 that Harvard failed to protect its students from harassment and violence on campus.
Harvard President Alan Garber filed a lawsuit against the administration in April 2025, seeking to restore $2.2 billion in grants and contracts withheld by the government. A federal judge later reversed the funding freeze, ruling that the government violated the First Amendment through its efforts to combat anti-Semitism. The Justice Department appealed the decision in December 2025.
Define “Brains”.
• Humanoid Robots Get “Brains” As Dual-Use Fears Mount (ZH)
Chinese humanoid robotics firms are laser-focused on advancing “robot brains” for next-gen platforms already entering series production and headed to factory floors this year. Once these intelligent models push beyond scripted video stunts – we’ve all seen in promotional videos – into real-world autonomy, the systems become battlefield-ready, dual-use robots. The Shanghai Morning Post reports that China-based robotics firm Dobot has developed Dobot-VLA, a vision-language-action model that allows its full-size humanoid Atom robot to “see through” clusters of tasks, “understand” ambiguous instructions, and make autonomous decisions to “get the job done.”Read more …
“[This] ability to adapt autonomously based on an understanding of the environment is the starting point for humanoid robots to create value in industrial applications,” the company told SCMP. Rival UBTech open-sourced its humanoid-focused multimodal model, “Thinker,” on GitHub and Hugging Face, aiming to address common embodied-robot issues such as lag and spatial inaccuracies. UBTech claims strong benchmark results against Nvidia and ByteDance models and reports near-perfect performance (99.9%) on certain factory-floor tasks, such as moving boxes and sorting parts, with its “Walker S2” humanoid robot.mSCMP pointed out, “China’s robotics industry is accelerating a shift from physical stunts that rely on preprogrammed routines to sophisticated abilities that require learning and adapting in the real world, seen as essential for mass commercial adoption in manufacturing and other scenarios.”The broader theme is that humanoid robot brains are being developed at hyperspeed, suggesting these robots will be marching on factory floors in the very near term, not just in China but also across the Western world, starting later this year. We’ve warned readers that “Humanoid Robots Begin March on Assembly Lines and Beyond,” meaning some of these systems could be dual-use and could soon appear at polygon weapon-testing facilities in Ukraine, potentially headed for battlefield deployment later this year if there’s no peace deal by spring. The same could be said of Russian forces, which may soon be experimenting with Chinese bots.
Skynet is already here.
To the tune of €6.6 million. This is ann industry.
• EU-funded German NGO Sues X For Access To Data On Hungary Election (RMX)
A German non-governmental organization that receives substantial funding from the European Union, as well as the German and Dutch governments, has filed a lawsuit seeking access to social media platform X’s data related to Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Berlin-based Democracy Reporting International (DRI) has taken legal action in Germany against the social media giant, demanding access to platform data under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The group says the data is necessary to study potential disinformation and interference surrounding Hungary’s parliamentary elections scheduled for April 12.Read more …
Another German NGO, the Society for Civil Rights (Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, GFF), and law firm Hausfeld Rechtsanwälte are also parties to the lawsuit. According to court filings reported by EUObserver, this is the second legal action brought by the same plaintiffs against X in Germany, after a previous case seeking access to platform data around Germany’s 2025 snap federal election. With campaigning intensifying ahead of Hungary’s April vote, the legal battle over platform data now adds another layer to an already charged political environment, one in which the question of who defines and defends democratic legitimacy remains deeply contested across Europe.Under the DSA, very large online platforms are required to provide researchers access to data when studies concern systemic risks to the European Union, including election integrity. DRI argues that X has failed to comply with that obligation, saying repeated requests for data access have been rejected. Critics, however, argue that the DSA is being used as a vehicle by the European Commission and those it funds to control the narrative during critical election cycles, a claim amplified by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in its bombshell report published on Feb. 3.
X has previously argued that broad data access risks infringing user privacy and free expression, and has also challenged whether German courts have jurisdiction over disputes involving the platform, whose European headquarters are located in Ireland. The new lawsuit comes as Hungary prepares for what analysts describe as one of the most competitive elections in recent years, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán facing a consolidated opposition campaign amid continuing tensions between Budapest and Brussels over rule-of-law disputes, migration policy, and EU governance.
Orbán has repeatedly accused EU institutions of attempting to influence domestic Hungarian politics. Responding to criticism over election conditions earlier this week, he wrote on social media, “Keep your hands off our elections! Decisions about Hungary’s future belong to Hungarians alone. Foreign meddling will not be tolerated.” His remarks followed a recent report by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which argued that European authorities have used regulatory pressure and cooperation with digital platforms in ways that affected political debate in at least eight EU member states since the introduction of the DSA in 2023.
Entries in Germany’s Bundestag Lobby Register reveal that DRI received substantial public grants during the 2024 fiscal year, including funding from the European Commission totaling approximately €3.9 million, as well as roughly €1.9 million from Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and associated agencies, and approximately €880,000 from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for “democracy-related projects” abroad.GFF, DRI’s co-plaintiff, has also received support from EU-funded initiatives and participates in projects financed under various European civil society and rights programs, according to a written response by the European Commission to a parliamentary question in 2025.
“The Digital Freedom Fund is the beneficiary of an EU grant for the implementation of project DIGIRISE, ‘Developing Information, Guidance, and Interconnectedness for (Charter) Rights Integration in Strategies for Enforcement,” it wrote. The funding amount was not disclosed. Critics argue that litigation seeking access to election-related data by organizations financed in part by European institutions risks creating the perception of external supervision over national political processes, particularly in countries already engaged in disputes with Brussels.
“C-17s are massive, and can deliver huge amounts of equipment or large numbers of troops in a single go.”
• At Least 112 USAF C-17 Aircraft Headed To Middle East (ZH)
An eye-opening and massive number of C-17 Globemaster military transport and cargo planes have been observed heading to Europe and the Middle East, in what some monitors have forewarned looks like the build-up to major war in Iran. One regional watcher and pundit commented in response: “112 C-17s are in or on their way to the Middle East. Guys, that’s a lot. Like Desert Storm a lot. Stay tuned.” This as on Friday the prominent open source account Armchair Admiral and others used public flight tracking data to tally that the huge armada of US Air Force C-17s and counting are en route – a trend since mid-January.Read more …
“A total of 112 U.S. Air Force C-17’s have now either arrived or are en route to the Middle East with a further 17-18 in-progress flights, a number of Royal Air Force logistics flights from RAF Marham to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, and movement on U.S. Air Force CORONETs,” the source said. C-17s are massive, and can deliver huge amounts of equipment or large numbers of troops in a single go. The US military lists some of the following key capabilities:• Payload capacity of over 170,000 pounds
• Ability to operate on short, austere runways as small as 3,500 feet
• Intercontinental range, with in-flight refueling extending reach even further
• Rapid load/unload design to keep missions moving under pressure
Iran and the US just concluded an initial round of indirect talks mediated by Oman, but despite some hopeful statements issued by either side, it is very clear Iran is not willing to negotiate its ballistic missile program – a sticking point being demanded by Washington. A second round is expected in the coming days, unless military action ensues first. Iran’s foreign minister has newly questioned whether Washington is taking these talks seriously, or if they are merely a pretext for more time to allow for a US force build-up in the region.
112 since mid January, here is the original source:https://t.co/opZmBMG8q3
— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) February 8, 2026FM Abbas Araghchi asserted Tehran is not intimidated but that this raises “doubts about the other party’s seriousness and readiness to engage in genuine negotiations.” He added: “We are closely monitoring the situation, assessing all the signals, and will decide whether to continue the negotiations.” Prior to these weekend comments, the Iranian top diplomat stated, “If the United States launches an attack against us, we do not have the capability to attack its territory, so we would target American bases in the region. This would draw the entire region into war. We do not attack neighboring countries; we target American bases.”
Elon Musk: I think probably the biggest danger of AI and robotics going wrong is government
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) February 8, 2026
People who are opposed to or worried about corporations should really worry most about government
Government is just a corporation in the limit, it is the biggest corporation with a… pic.twitter.com/Wo98AcJoHs
Elon has a real knack for getting to the point of the matter, doesn't he?
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) February 8, 2026
Elon just nailed it – the insane hatred and violence exploding right now proves we're actually winning big against corruption and waste in government.
He drops the mic: if we weren't succeeding they'd… pic.twitter.com/FTURUmxoKe
This is not right https://t.co/TVrt6hfcXX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2026
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