Climate activists criticized the latest attempt by the administration to boost the image of the dirtiest fossil fuel despite its effects on the planet and public health, with one critic describing it as "one of the most heinous ways to produce energy that our world has ever seen"...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/trump-administration-coalie-mascot-fossil-fuels
But what's left unfinished — funding for the Department of Homeland Security — will be a doozy, with partisan tensions over President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda threatening another lapse for the embattled department that also includes TSA, FEMA and other crucial agencies...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/congress-ends-shutdown-00762482
The Trump administration has signaled a willingness to soften its approach to immigration enforcement in recent weeks, with Democrats threatening to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and withhold funding for the department over its aggressive tactics...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/dhs-investigation-use-of-force-ice-00761953
Bill and Hillary Clinton, like Trump, have said they had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes and have not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the late, disgraced financier...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/bill-clinton-contempt-epstein-congress-00762396
The expiration this week of a core U.S.-Russia arms control treaty could touch off a global nuclear weapons race for the first time since the Cold War.
Russia made initial overtures about a renewed pact in September, but the Trump administration has not formally responded, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. The New START treaty, which will expire on Thursday, was struck in 2010 and limited how many deployed nuclear-capable missiles, bombers and warheads both the U.S. and Russia could have...
Two new reports portend a potentially bleak future for an American democracy that counts on its engaged citizenry to do everything from count votes to make laws...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/election-officials-threat-midterms-00761210
"They're going to be the mechanism to sow discord and confusion by presenting weird stuff," Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year from his post leading the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/rfk-jr-vaccine-advisers-new-mission-00758670
Since 2023, PCMA has spent $47 million lobbying against changes to its business practices, about twice its spending from the prior three-year period. The group has assembled an army of Republican lobbyists, hiring Trump-linked lobbying shop Continental Strategy, as well as former Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Penn.) and Noe Garcia, managing partner at Forward Global and a former senior policy adviser to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn)...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/02/prescription-drug-costs-pharmacy-benefit-managers-00761503
The backtrack came after Pirro's initial comments sparked fierce criticism from GOP members of Congress and gun rights advocates. It's the latest in a series of statements from the administration that have rankled many in the party's pro-Second Amendment base...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/jeanine-pirro-second-amendment-washington-00762347
US president makes further claims of antisemitism against Ivy League school amid wider dispute with higher eduction institutions…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/trump-harvard-dispute-seeking-1bn-damages-settlement
Legislators have tried to pass a tax on high earners in the past, but polling this year shows the public is behind it...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/washington-state-millionaire-tax-00762278
Omar, 43, is a Somalian-born Muslim and the first Somali American elected to Congress. She and her family fled the country when she was 8 years old and, after spending four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, the family moved to America. She became a U.S. citizen in 2000...
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/03/trump-ilhan-omar-isis-00762273
The MP, Éric Bothorel, expressed "deep concern" at "recent algorithm changes" and "apparent interference in [X's] management" since Musk bought it in 2022. Other complaints said the changes had led to a surge in "nauseating political content"...
"We have plenty of files on Epstein's depravity. What we are missing are the files on his immunity," she said. "The question isn't just 'who was on [Epstein's] plane?' but 'who made the phone call that stopped the 2007 investigation?'
"A disclosure is not complete if it tells us something about the criminal but nothing about the shield."…
"This fight isn't over – we won't allow the federal government to simply dump a couple million documents and wash their hands of one of the largest law enforcement failures in US history," Freeman said. "At this point, we have more questions than answers. Where is the rest of Maria Farmer's FBI file? Where are the records of complaints that so many other women made to FBI and how the FBI investigated those complaints? And why is the DoJ hiding the names of perpetrators while exposing survivors?"…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/new-epstein-files-advocates-claim-documents-withheld
Today, state legislative resolutions would have far more political weight than any poll, provide a galvanizing mechanism to drive public opinion, and solidify the states as defenders of basic American rights seeking to safeguard constitutional freedoms and the safety of electoral processes. State resolutions would expose the brazen hypocrisy of the Trump administration as it tramples on the formerly sanctified principles of states' rights and free speech, and as Trump poses a clear and present danger to free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.
Using such resolutions, the state legislatures could organize debate within the legislatures, stage public hearings with witnesses and experts, hold legislative votes that force Republicans on the record, conduct signing ceremonies by governors, and send delegations for formal presentations to the Congress. The process would command both local and national media attention, especially since the Democratic-controlled states are among the largest ones and include the media capitals in New York and California. And states could either have varied resolutions or coordinate their language...
