Must Watch / Must Read February 17, 2026February 16, 2026 I am so proud to know this woman: 90 must-watch seconds. So much more I could say about “what might have been,” but just, please, watch. And then, sorry, but you will want to read Andrew Yang’s latest. And perhaps adjust your investment allocations and life plans a bit.
Housekeeping . . . February 16, 2026February 15, 2026 In case you sensibly took the weekend off from email . . . Saturday’s post. Sunday’s post. I worked a lot harder on those than I did on this one. Also: > Sometimes Mailchimp seems to drop subscribers for no reason. If I haven’t posted for a few days, and you care (given how swamped we all are, you might well not), just go to www.andrewtobias.com to see the ones you’ve missed and resubscribe. > Sometimes a post that looks right on my website has formatting glitches when they arrive by email. To see it the way it’s meant to be seen, just click on my fat face and it will take you straight to the post. > My fat face needs updating. I’m way older by now. I assess the reason I haven’t gotten around to fixing this to be a blend: 20% vanity, 80% sloth. > MailChimp’s RSS feed is set up to grab only one new post a day, whatever time of day I post it. So if I post something with what I come to realize is a glaring error — or if nuclear war breaks out and my post is a (fantastic) Elaine May tribute to Mike Nichols — I can’t send a correction or a “Quick! Duck and cover!” until after midnight. You’ll just have to think I’m an idiot.
Oh, Pam! February 15, 2026 “We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they pretend to hate.” — Senator Jon Ossoff (90 seconds) Congressman Jared Moskowitz holding up a bible for Pam Bondi: “Trump’s name appears more times in the Epstein files than God’s name appears in the book about God. By the way, this is a Trump Bible, move over King James. Trump’s name also appears more times in the Epstein file than Harry Potter’s name appears in the seven books about Harry Potter!” Five extraordinary minutes, beginning with sincere praise — they’ve known each other a long time. Which raises the question elaborated on below: what happened to Pam Bondi??? But first . . . Did you see Pam Bondi on SNL four months ago? Pure enjoyment, except for the fact that she is destroying the Department of Justice, so fundamental to democracy. The two most important things in life, I would argue, are love and justice. (Well, and health, which this administration is doing what it can to screw up as well.) So what happened to her? Dear Pam Bondi, writes Jon Pavlovitz: I’m writing to you as an American citizen, a former pastor, and the father of a daughter. I spent today, as much of the nation, watching you speak before the House Judiciary Committee in a state of stunned disbelief, which surprised me, as I thought you’d reached a moral bottom many weeks ago. . . . I sat incredulous, watching you appear to lie with great ease, even perverse joy, seeming, to my ears, to contradict both irrefutable evidence and your own words in the past. It was a tour de force in distraction, a true masterclass in gaslighting. And while a thousand thoughts ran through my head, when it was all over, I was left with a single question: How does someone become Pam Bondi? I wonder how an apparently intelligent human being finds themselves sitting in that chair in front of the watching world in a moment of such gravity, so completely bereft of empathy, so seemingly unencumbered by other people’s suffering, and so strident in the face of simple accountability. I try to imagine how you, the person entrusted with stewarding the Law in the highest seat of power here, arrives at a place where that Law has seemingly become irrelevant. Are the money and the power so intoxicating that they have rendered your conscience inoperable? Has your journey been filled with a million small moral compromises that burdened you in the beginning, but slowly emotionally anesthetized you to the point that now you feel nothing? Are you so beholden to the redacted man who enabled your ascension to this lofty space that you are willing to shield him from the litany of heinous sins that you must know well he is guilty of? . . . I abhor your callous disregard for the daughters who stood courageously before you today, whose eyes you did not have the dignity to look into; women whose black, cavernous hell you know full well, because you’ve pored over it countless times in words, photos, and videos that are still being concealed. It sickens me to my core to know that thousands of survivors, girls and young women not unlike my daughter, have experienced unspeakable horrors and are finding in you, not a fierce and willing advocate, not a steadfast warrior who will deliver them justice, but an unsuspecting, shame-throwing avatar of the men who brutalized them. Read in full? THE FILES In case you feel like searching around to see who’s in them, incomplete and redacted though they be, here they are.
Maureen Dowd: Doom Scrolling Indeed February 14, 2026 But first . . . Susan Collins is concerned (30 seconds). Great ad. She’s going down. We’re going to win the Senate. What Trump’s Best At, Hands Down. (Self-enrichment.) (Also: destroying things.) The President Of The 0.00001 Percent “Time to end the new Gilded Age. The way we did the last one.” — Andrew Sullivan What’s going on now in Washington is on a wholly new scale — an open, shameless exercise by those in power to benefit personally and massively from the leverage that comes with public office. In the words of Ann Coulter: “This is the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history. I mean, it is so blatant it’s right in front of our eyes.” . . . I think of that day a year ago that Elon Musk posted the following on X: << We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.>> And then I think of the tens of thousands of the poorest children on earth who were about to die in a matter of months as a direct consequence. . . . We don’t have to resign ourselves to this level of corruption and inequality. We really don’t. If this new Gilded Age has any silver lining, it may be that it becomes a prompt for the very kind of reforms the old one did. Worth reading in full. The richest man in the world is a racist. [Musk] posted about how the white race was under threat, made allusions to race science or promoted anti-immigrant conspiracy content on 26 out of 31 days in January. Trump Is a Weak, Failing President—Dems Should Act Like It As Trump’s losses mount on many fronts, TNR editor Michael Tomasky discusses our special issue, which is chock full of pieces explaining how Democrats can take advantage of this highly fluid moment. STATE OF THE SWAMP Sign up here for the FREE rebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union — 7pm Tuesday February 24 — streaming from the National Press Club, featuring everyone from Robert DeNiro and Mark Ruffalo to Stacey Abrams, Abbe Lowell, Marianne Williamson, Eric Swalwell, and a dozens more. And now (sorry!) . . . Maureen Dowd: Welcome to the Voyage of the Damned
Courage Is Contagious February 13, 2026February 12, 2026 Yesterday I wrote: “You’ve seen Ronald Reagan’s final speech (4 minutes).” Well, at least one of you had not and asked what we can do to “spread it widely.” To which I say — spread it widely! It’s so powerful. Courage is contagious. Give Congressman Jason Crow 60 seconds of your time to be inspired. Join Indivisible. Make plans to do something March 28 you may never have done before (I hadn’t either until last year): PROTEST. No Kings 3 is going to be huge. In thousands of places. Peaceful and joyful — and fun! Recruit friends and plan to go out for drinks or an early dinner afterward. Make or buy a clever sign. We’re going to win.
Ideas For Your Consideration February 12, 2026February 12, 2026 1. Amnesty It sounds insane, of course — the last president to do this was Ronald Reagan 40 years ago and we all know how that turned out. (Actually, it turned out fine. Murders and rapes did not spike; pets were not eaten.) Yet think about it. The border is now secure. We should keep it that way. And continue to pursue and imprison or deport criminals as we always have.* But for the millions eager to harvest our crops, process our meat, care for our elderly, build our new homes — and pay taxes — amnesty would (a) strengthen our economy; (b) strengthen Social Security; (c) temper inflation; (d) save tens of billions a year on mass deportation; (e) show us to be the decent people most of us have always been, doing our best to see our fellow humans as humans rather than as vermin, garbage, and scum. There could be all sorts of safeguards to address amnesty’s downsides. But wouldn’t the upsides outweigh them? You’ve seen Ronald Reagan’s final speech (4 minutes). It can never be watched too often. 2. De Minimis Just as we’ve stopped minting pennies — because, well, really? — so should the de minimis doctrine be widely adopted throughout government and business. It would make the economy more efficient, dumb annoyances less frequent. I got an UNCLAIMED PROPERTY NOTICE recently that must have cost a buck or two to print-and-mail. It contained instructions and a form to fill out for claiming cash I was due (!) lest it escheat to the state of State of New York as unclaimed property. The “token ID#” assigned to my case was 6300-0340-2502-1546. I needed only to confirm my identity and submit the form through the “OWNER REDEMTPION PORTAL (recommended)” or else via email or regular mail, after which, if everything proved to be in order, a check would be reissued to replace the one I had not bothered to cash. (For 23 cents.) What if the payor’s computer had been programmed not to issue checks under (say) $3? With a law requiring any entity choosing to apply this de minimis standard to lump all such payments into a single quarterly payment to the state so there’d be no incentive to cheat anyone; just an incentive to save on minutia. Remember the Seinfeld where Jerry got all those 12-cent checks? Have you heard the kind of wonderful story about Trump’s 13-cent check? Back when I employed a half-day-a-week housekeeper, the paperwork required to comply with the New York State unemployment tax — which I would gladly have paid — was the same as if I had 500 full-time employees. At stake was something like $36 a year. Couldn’t there have been an automatic charge you could elect to accept rather spend hours determining whether the proper amount would actually have been $28.73 or $35.19 or $49.02? There was a quarterly $1,000 penalty for not filing that paperwork! Should every state and federal and corporate and legal form have some sort of “de minimis” waiver, appropriate to the situation? 3. Upgrade To Paid The wonderful bloggers I gratefully read all want me to “upgrade to paid” for $7.99 a month. That’s more than the cost of a digital subscription to The Atlantic or The New Yorker with dozens of great writers! But that’s okay; I can afford $7.99 a month. If there’s a wonderful blogger working full time who can attract 3,000 paying subscribers — $24,000 a month — hey, more power to her. But what about the bloggers who have a hundred thousand or a million unpaid subscribers, of whom I’m one, each asking us to upgrade to paid? If we all did — and of course only a tiny percentage do — they’d be raking in $800,000 or $8 million a month. And, yes, some of them have researchers and editors to pay, but still. I feel guilty when I don’t upgrade, if they actually need my money; dumb when I do upgrade, if they don’t. Thus my idea: What if along with each request to upgrade, an asterisk led to a statement like this: << I pledge that after my subscription income from this site net of expenses (which may include assistants) reaches $200,000 a year, 30% of the excess will be contributed to the kinds non-profits that advance our progressive aims . . . above $400,000, 50% of the excess . . . and that as it becomes clear net revenue will exceed $1,000,000, I will begin lowering your subscription price automatically. (If half my unpaid subscribers upgraded, I could charge you $15 a year instead of $$96!) >> Each blogger would set his or her own criteria and formula and phrase it his or her own way — or skip this altogether. I just know that in my case, it would make me much more likely to upgrade, increasing their revenue . . . and feel better about the upgrades I’m already paying for. I doubt I’m alone. 4. Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting I couldn’t fail to plug this yet again. Combined with making it easy to vote in primaries — mailing all registered voters a primary ballot — it would de-polarize our politics and break the legislative gridlock. Moderates and centrists could get elected and work with each other to solve the nation’s formidable challenges. Join us today at 3pm Eastern on Indivisible’s weekly call. We really are going to win. PARENTHETICALLY (Pam Bondi dodges questions about the Epstein files by noting that the Dow is over 50,000. So pedophilia is okay when the market is high? Really? MAGA’s okay with that?) ______________________________________ *Obama was known as “the deporter in chief.” Biden fought for bipartisan comprehensive reform that would have solved the problem — humanely — had Trump not killed it, keeping the border open an extra year so he could use it to get re-elected, stay out of jail, and make billions of dollars.
Hey, Yang — Where’s My $1,000? February 10, 2026February 14, 2026 OPRT This strikes me as very good news. Continued steady progress. They’re using the cash they generate to pay down debt — which should leave them more cash quarter after quarter. It’s not hard to make the case that OPRT ($5.50 as I type) could triple over the next year . . . and keep growing from there. If I didn’t already have so much, I’d buy more . . . though only with money I can truly afford to lose. “TRUMP-RX HAS A FUNDAMENTAL FLAW” Whom does TrumpRx actually benefit? (Hint: Big Pharma.) MARK CUBAN’S COST PLUS DRUGS . . . . . . has no fundamental flaw. I am a sensationally happy long-time customer. ANDREW YANG HAS A FEW IDEAS OF HIS OWN Not surprisingly, as I learned listening to his latest book . . . Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks? . . . he and Cuban are pals. The ideas Andrew first explored in The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future — published in 2018 — grow more relevant with each passing year. (You can skim the first two-thirds about how technology will do away with most jobs. It’s the third-third, about how to turn those lemons into lemonade, that spark the imagination.) We’re going to have a slew of great candidates in 2028. Cuban and Yang would both add excitement to the field. UNRELATED BONUS The algorithm served this up out of the blue — Street Kid Playing Dylan’s Song with Broken Guitar—Dylan Stopped Walking and Did THIS — and I found myself watching all 16 minutes.
The Epstein Class That’s Running Our Country February 10, 2026 But first . . . IS ICE AN AGGRESSIVE IMMIGRATION AGENCY OR A PARAMILITARY FORCE? Two and a half minutes from The Economist. Recruiting neo-Nazis with $50,000 signing bonuses, incentive pay for captures — and impunity. Why are we invading our own cities and massively disturbing their peace and tranquility? To save their pets from being eaten? Show me one Minneapolis pet owner who supports this federal invasion. Watch the Economist interview. AMAZING NEWS OUT OF MISSISSIPPI Nick Kristoff: What We Can Learn From Southern Red States About Education Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana — who woulda thunk it. This strikes me as a big deal that everyone on both sides of the aisle should be aware of and act on. It’s not just that Democrats are skeptical that there’s anything significant to learn from red states. It’s also that Republican leaders themselves seem strangely indifferent. Indeed, instead of trumpeting the gains in three red states and doubling down on successful policies, Republicans even in these states are pushing hard for more vouchers (which have a mixed record at best) so that children can flee the improving public school systems — thus threatening the very progress they should be proud of. Rather than trying to scale Mississippi’s gains, national Republicans have an education agenda that focuses on trans children and school bathrooms, demolition of the federal Department of Education and erasure of ugly bits of history. There are many culture war arguments about what books are in the school library, but not enough talk about how to help children read what’s on the shelf. . . . We liberals need to wake up to the reality that we are being outperformed on education, opportunity and racial equity — supposedly our issues. As recently as 2019, blue states had better average test scores than red states, after adjusting for demographics; now, red states are mostly ahead. We used to say that education was the civil rights issue of the 21st century, and if so, we should be ashamed that by that metric, Mississippi Republicans are ahead of California Democrats. If we care about kids, we must be relentlessly empirical, and that must mean a willingness to learn from red states. Kane said something you don’t expect to hear from a Harvard professor: “I hope that there are lots of governors that are looking at Mississippi and saying, ‘Look, I want us to be next.’” Worth reading in full. And now . . . AMAZING SPEECH OUT OF GEORGIA You’ve likely heard about Senator Jon Ossoff’s speech. Take a two-minute taste . . . or in case you have time, watch the whole thing, in which he decries “the Epstein class” that is running our country. BONUS Ricky Gervais on racist pedophiles (three minutes). He names no names. If he had any in mind, they have been redacted.
Four Simple Words February 9, 2026 “THE RULE OF LAW” It’s different from “law and order.” Everyone’s for that — the notion that we should feel safe. Indeed, they have that in Putin’s Russia and any other dictatorship you can name. The rule of law is different. It’s not that most people have to obey the law. It’s that everyone has to obey the law. No one is above the law. Europe has that. The U.K., Australia, Japan, Costa Rica and others have it. We had it until this year. November is about getting it back. HOW WE’RE DOING We are climbing on the “Autocracy Index.” TAKE HEART! Democrat wins Louisiana state House special seat Saturday by 24 points in a district Trump won by 13 — a swing of 37. If we all lean in, we will win the House and Senate and pull democracy back from the brink. “STRONG FLOOR, NO CEILING” Another four words. They’re catching on. Polling in Michigan and Georgia shows a majority of voters like them. If I had to sum up in a single word what Democrats stand for, it would be: fairness. There are so many things most Americans would agree are unfair — everything from giving billionaires a tax break while taking food from the poor . . . to disparaging whole classes of people as “scum” and “vermin” . . . to shooting a VA nurse ten times in the back. But given four words: Strong Floor, No Ceiling. A strong social safety net (especially for innocent children); unlimited opportunity (paired with a fair tax code). For more, click here. And/or read the book. This cartoon made the front page of Le Monde: Have a great week.
Handing the Mic to David Corn February 8, 2026February 7, 2026 But first . . . The DNC has just launched Local Listeners, a program to engage infrequent voters — who voted in 2020 but not 2024 — in key battleground districts early in the cycle using a listening-first approach. The goal is to contact more than a million in Q1. Already, more than 2,000 volunteers have signed up to participate and 500+ joined the first session in January. Become a Local Listener! Sign up for the Volunteer Training Series HERE. And just for fun . . . Prescient Little Marco (90 seconds). Never gets old. And now . . . David Corn: When I traveled in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, I was struck by how many Russians blithely accepted that they were living in a truthless society in which propaganda was oxygen. But after decades of Five-Year Plans and a never-ending stream of glorious-revolution bullshit, it was hard to blame them. A saying that’s been attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—which he likely never uttered or wrote—captured this attitude: << We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying. >> I wonder if the United States is slipping into such a fog. The Donald Trump regime, of course, is predicated on lies. His 2024 campaign was a crusade of disinformation. Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs; criminal immigrant gangs have taken over entire cities; public schools were performing gender affirmation procedures; Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were purposefully allowing fentanyl to be smuggled into the United States. And Trump, as you might recall, was clocked by the Washington Post during his first term as spewing more than 30,000 falsehoods and lies. It’s no news flash that he’s prevaricating non-stop. But what’s most worrisome is how brazen he and the fellow fibbers in his gang are—as if there were absolutely no concern about being caught or found out. And not just regarding lying. They’re also brazen when it comes to racism, abuse of power, and corruption. In the quaint days before Trump, lying presidents and lying elected officials tried to make it seem they were not lying. Corrupt presidents and corrupt elected officials tried to make it seem they were not corrupt. With Trump and his banditos, there are no such games of pretend. It leads to a disturbing dynamic, in which Trump and his lieutenants display their atrociousness to such an extent that it can lead to inurement. We know their actions are outrageous, they know their actions are outrageous, we know they know, they know we know they know—and this circle swallows itself. Nothing changes. Trump denies he’s vengefully weaponizing the Justice Department to take down his enemies. Yet we see this clearly happening in multiple instances, with the prosecutions of James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff and the criminal investigations of others, including former special counsel Jack Smith and former CIA director John Brennan. These cases have been mounted over the objections of professional prosecutors and handled by political hacks—a true sign they are flagrant abuses of power. Yet Trump and his lackeys insist this is merely the Justice Department doing its job by the book. There has never been a more obvious perversion of the DOJ. They know we know. Trump denies he’s a racist. Yet he has a long history of racist statements and acts. I don’t need to run though all that again. But a few days ago, when he was on Dan Bongino’s podcast—to which the former FBI deputy director has returned to resume his conspiracy-mongering career—Trump said, “Minnesota is a mess. There’s something in the water up there…I won the three times but I got no credit for it…It’s a rigged state. Really rigged badly with the Somalians, and the Somalians and the theft…These are people that don’t work…We gotta get ’em out, most of them. And it’s most of them. Ninety-two percent don’t work…Many of them drive Mercedes-Benzes.” In December, he exclaimed, Somalis “are garbage” and “contribute nothing. I don’t want ’em in our country…We don’t want ’em in our country…Let ’em go back to where they came from.” Pure, unadulterated racism. On Thursday night, Trump put up on his money-losing social media site a meme depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes—which was later removed, though the White House defended it. And the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Labor have been routinely posting memes and messages that promote images and slogans used by white supremacists. In modern times there has never been such undisguised and explicit racism purposefully propagated by an administration. They know we know. Trump engages in the most overt corruption. His wife accepted a $40 million payment from billionaire Jeff Bezos and Amazon for a mediocre (at best) film—a way-above-market-value licensing fee—while Bezos and Amazon have multiple interests before the government that Trump controls. (Amazon Web Services depend on billions of dollars in contract with the NSA, the CIA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon.) It was recently revealed that an investment firm tied to the government of the United Arab Emirates invested $500 million in Trump’s crypto company and pocketed a 49 percent stake in the firm. This is just one sleazy deal of many within Trump’s wonderful world of graft and grift. (To get a fuller picture of Trump’s supersize swamp, check out this graphic.) Out in the open, Trump has turned the presidency into a cash-generating business for him, his family, and his cronies, creating a mess of conflicts of interests that previously would never have been tolerated. They know we know. And back to the lies—just the recent ones. Acquiring Greenland is a “national emergency.” The economic numbers are “spectacular” and “inflation has stopped.” Vladimir Putin wants a peace deal. Housing costs “are way down.” ICE is mainly rounding up criminals. Trump has ended eight wars. The 2020 election was “rigged.” The January 6 rioters were “patriotic” Americans entrapped by the FBI. Renée Good was a domestic terrorist. Alex Pretti was an “assassin.” All bullshit. They know we know. In fact, the Trump mob, so used to skating by, figured it could say whatever it wanted about Good and Pretti to vilify them and justify their murders by out-of-control federal agents. Yet, finally, there was a burst of blowback, with popular opposition to the smearing of American citizens killed by Trump’s secret police force. The revulsion triggered by the efforts to demonize Pretti and Good showed that Trump’s factotums—Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, JD Vance—could not pull off over-the-top, Trump-style lying as well as the grandmaster, but it has not caused Trump and his crew to ratchet back on the prevaricating. And they’re sticking with the audacity of awfulness. The racism, abuses of power, corruption, and lies are not ebbing. Trump has learned the lesson that while one outrage may stand out and cause political trouble, a flood of outrages can be numbing. Excess has always been the key to Trump’s success, and that includes excessive wrongdoing, from the petty (placing his name on the Kennedy Center) to the grand (pocketing billions in shady deals). The question is whether his tsunami of transgressions will continue to spur shrugs among many Americans or come to trigger more widespread disgust. Trump and his band of racists, profiteers, scoundrels, and flunkies seem high on their shamelessness. They defiantly flaunt their brazenness. They revel in their exploitation of power and their embrace of violence, dishonesty, intimidation, and brutality. Look what we can get away with. This has always been a favorite fix for Trump: conning the suckers. In despotic and corrupt societies, rulers and their favored elites rely upon popular acquiescence and apathy—people becoming accustomed to all the lies and corruption. Trump and his stooges are counting on the same occurring in the United States so they can turn this nation into an authoritarian kleptocracy. They know that’s the plan. Do we? Join Indivisible! Support the opposition! Become a “local listener!” Enjoy Bad Bunny!