Pritzker demands a $1,700 refund per family for the people of Illinois after Trump's tariffs were ruled unconstitutional.

Dems, pay attention. This is your midterms message.

The Dramatic Rise of Farm Labor Contractors Has Led to Rampant Abuses. Here’s Why Regulators Have Failed to Stop Them. Experts say there aren’t enough state and federal inspectors to adequately vet whether labor contractors who oversee farmworkers are following the rules. Nor is there broad political support to invest...

The dramatic rise of farm labor contractors has led to rampant abuses. For the latest story in my @propublica.org series on the H-2A visa program, I've looked into some of the reasons why regulators have failed to stop foreign farmworkers from getting harmed:
www.propublica.org/article/h-2a...

Tell Your Members of Congress to rein in ICE NOW On January 24, federal forces with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. This was just over two weeks after the killing of Renee Good. These killings are a direc...

We’re a few days away from the DHS funding deadline, which means Democrats have real leverage to stop the regime’s secret police.

Demand that Democrats refuse to fund DHS without ironclad limits on ICE and CBP, actual accountability for abuses, and clear guardrails to stop raids and intimidation.

After Years of Silence, Texas Medical Board Issues Training for Doctors on How to Legally Provide Abortions The course includes examples of when abortion is permitted to protect the life of the patient, but many experts say the complications women face in pregnancy are impossible to capture in a brief prese...

The new training from the Texas Medical Board comes nearly 5 years after the state passed its strict abortion ban in 2021. ProPublica’s reporting has shown that pregnancy became far more dangerous in the state after the law took effec www.propublica.org/article/texa...

Melinda French Gates on moving past the ‘muck’ and building a beautiful life : Wild Card with Rachel Martin Melinda French Gates has been through some painful and public transitions — ending her marriage of 27 years, stepping away from the foundation she built with her ex-husband Bill Gates and turning her professional focus to women’s health and social progress. She talks to Rachel about forgiveness, learning to trust, and her ex-husband’s association with Jeffrey Epstein. To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard

Melinda French Gates has been through some painful and public transitions. She talks about forgiveness, learning to trust, and her ex-husband’s association with Jeffrey Epstein. Watch or listen to the full Wild Card episode, available now.

LA sunrise treading a fine line between gorgeous and apocalyptic

Best Sources for News and Information Our goal here at Unaffiliated is to provide you with the most accurate news and information available. We are not investigators or reporters, we do not work for or thrive off of clicks, we just want t...

www.unaffiliated.info/post/best-so...

They Banned Woke And Suzy Still Can’t Read Far-right school board officials are finding out the hard way that the political pendulum has swung

Right-wing school board members across the US leveraged bad faith arguments to gain power. Now they're losing elections after being exposed.

badfaithtimes.com/they-banned-woke-and-suz...

A Fire To Stop The Fire There are ways to preserve American democracy. None of them are ideal.

Denny Carter writes about the concept of a democracy-saving "back burn" that has begun in Democratic-held states:

https://badfaithtimes.com/a-fire-to-stop-the-fire/

How To Save America From An Anti-Democracy Supreme Court "Red-teaming" the vulnerabilities of U.S. institutions has to be a top priority for the post-Trump era, whenever that begins.

The anti-democracy SCOTUS majority must pretend to believe the president should have unencumbered power to run every part of the executive branch as he sees fit.

badfaithtimes.com/how-to-save-america-from...

JD Vance Is Awfully Close With These Race Science Guys <blockquote><em>A quick hello to all the new BFT readers who found their way here via my (new) </em><a href="https://www.wonkette.com/p/if-it-wasnt-for-bad-faith-theyd-have" rel="noreferrer"><em>monthly Gawker column</em></a><em>. A reminder that you can join the lovely little Bad Faith Times discord community </em><a href="https://bad-faith-times.ghost.io/we-need-a-new-concept-of-free-speech-and-we-need-it-now/#/portal/account" rel="noreferrer"><em>if you upgrade to BFT supporter status</em></a><em>. I also wanted to mention that after extensive talks with my trusted and highly-paid advisors (my wife and some trusted folks who enjoy the BFT blog) I've decided to make one blog per week accessible to paid subscribers only, since this is a site supported entirely by subscriptions. Thanks for all those who support Bad Faith Times, and I hope you understand this decision. </em></blockquote><p>This is a story of how the bad-faith sausage gets made, a miserable little tale of how ideologically-committed right wingers use bad faith arguments to change public discourse around long-settled issues, and how their nightmarish proximity to power means, unfortunately, we have to care about it. </p><p>Bad Faith Times readers know this isn’t the first time I’ve analyzed (and fretted about) how bad-faith tactics have been expertly wielded to wrench far-right political views into the political and cultural mainstream. Back in February 2024, for example, I <a href="https://badfaithtimes.com/the-infrastructure-of-a-bad-faith-political-attack/" rel="noreferrer">wrote about fraudulent scientific research</a> – financially backed by right-wing astroturf groups – creating the legal legitimacy right-wing judges needed to erode abortion rights in the US. It’s tricky shit, and it works. </p><p>The impact of this expensive and highly coordinated attack on science goes beyond court rulings and laws passed on the state level. The establishment of the right’s farcical unreality as reality itself is now fed into AI chatbots, meaning everyday folks – normies – are inundated with right-wing propaganda posing as objective facts and figures. Yes, they hear from their favorite chatbot, a zygote is in fact a fully human person worthy of constitutional rights. </p><p>You might be unfortunate enough to know that race science is hot right now in fascist online circles. On X, the official communications platform for international fascism, hundreds of accounts with huge followings post about supposed scientific findings proving without a doubt that they were right all along: White people are naturally more intelligent than all other races. </p><p>Their priors were pristine, they say. Shame on you for ever doubting them, they say, with their X posts reaching hundreds of thousands if not millions of social media users who then absorb this race science toxin as part of their daily media diet. Log on to check the score and highlights from last night’s game and get a face full of faulty data legitimizing white supremacy. The owner of X, after all, is <a href="https://badfaithtimes.com/elon-musk-cant-be-allowed-to-shape-our-reality/" rel="noreferrer">big into race science</a>. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://badfaithtimes.com/the-robots-must-be-racist/"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">They Want The Robots To Be Racist</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">I have a bad habit of pretending the right-wing mind is some labyrinthian construct that one can only comprehend by sinking oneself into the deepest depths of conservative thought. Then I see right wingers begging machines to be racist and I realize how fucking stupid I’ve been, how needlessly</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><img class="kg-bookmark-icon" src="https://badfaithtimes.com/content/images/icon/Screenshot-2025-01-28-at-7.26.32-PM-295.png" alt="" /><span class="kg-bookmark-author">Bad Faith Times</span><span class="kg-bookmark-publisher">Denny Carter</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"><img src="https://badfaithtimes.com/content/images/thumbnail/cute_friendly_robot__coding_3_by_gabimedia_dg25jrg-fullview-6.jpg" alt="" /></div></a></figure><p>The New York Times (here's a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/children-genetics-race-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IFA.U9tB.d6Cjce6Zj7vd&amp;smid=url-share" rel="noreferrer">gift link</a>) this week offered some valuable if horrifying insight into how race science is being reanimated by far-right zealots posing as scientists, hacking federal government data, pretending to really, truly care about the health and well being of Brown and Black folks, and publishing half-baked research papers on race-based intelligence, which are then funneled into X’s fascist online environment and into the brains of journalists and politicians who spend all day playing on the diseased playground of <a href="https://badfaithtimes.com/american-free-speech-is-just-slurs/" rel="noreferrer">Elon Musk’s blackpilled mind</a>. </p><p>The (very) long story short: Race science freaks gained access to what was supposed to be private data from a NIH project tracking children's brain development, shared it amongst other race science freaks, and used the data to underpin published studies on the superiority of the white race. </p><p>That Vice President JD Vance cavorts with quite a few sketchy, racist, sexist, homophobic, and very openly and plainly fascist accounts on the X platform formerly known as Twitter is an open secret – one that, for whatever reason, does not interest the Beltway media. So maybe it’s not entirely shocking that Vance – as NYT mentions at the very bottom of its story on race scientists misusing federal data – follows and interacts with Jordan Lasker, who opines frequently on X about the brain sizes, IQs, and other measures proving that Black and Brown human beings are inferior to the white man (Lasker recently told his 300,000 X followers that Trump’s Department of Justice needed to “go after” UCLA because the university had admitted too many Latino students for his liking, and he’s obsessed with birth rates, another <a href="https://badfaithtimes.com/the-gross-bad-faith-of-birth-rate-worries/" rel="noreferrer">fertile ground for bad-faith political actors</a>). </p><h3 id="upgrade-and-become-a-bft-supporter-to-keep-reading"> <a href="https://bad-faith-times.ghost.io/we-need-a-new-concept-of-free-speech-and-we-need-it-now/#/portal/account" rel="noreferrer">Upgrade and become a BFT Supporter to keep reading!</a></h3><div class="gh-paid-content-notice"><h3>This post is for subscribers only</h3><p>Become a member to get access to all content</p><a class="gh-paid-content-cta" href="https://badfaithtimes.com/jd-vance-is-awfully-close-with-these-race-science-guys/#/portal/signup">Subscribe now</a></div>

Government data is being used to normalize and mainstream race science

Tell Your Kids This Shit Is Racist American children deserve to know they're being raised under a white supremacist regime.

Denny Carter on talking to your children about the president's racism, which becomes more normalized all the time:

badfaithtimes.com/tell-your-kids-this-shit...

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Planned Trip to Epstein’s Island

NEW: Howard Lutnick, the billionaire who serves as President Trump’s commerce secretary, planned a visit to Epstein’s island in 2012.

Lutnick previously claimed that he was so revolted by Epstein that he had cut ties with him years earlier.

1/6

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

Standing up to DOJ’s voter roll power grab Why would the administration place your personal data in harm’s way? The answer returns to Trump’s Big Lie.

NEW: Why is your personal data being put in harm’s way?

The answer is simple: Trump wants to control who can vote in elections.

The DOJ’s voter data scheme is nothing more than an attempt to incorrectly purge eligible voters from the rolls — all in the name of winning, Dan Vicuña writes.

it will fit well into lessons on propaganda or narcissism

House Republicans propose stricter voting requirements as Trump administration eyes the midterms House Republicans are proposing sweeping changes to the nation’s voting laws

Politicians in the House have introduced a bill that would radically change election laws and threatens to disenfranchise millions of voters.

The so-called Make Elections Great Again Act is a disaster for our democracy.

“… Epstein and Musk appeared to be emailing back and forth about timing and travel logistics … Musk said he would already be in the Virgin Islands and asked Epstein if ‘there [is] a good time to visit?

'any day 1st - 8th. play it by ear if you want. always space for you,’ Epstein responded.”

After Alex Pretti’s Murder, it’s Clear That MAGA Media Views White Liberals as Race Traitors MAGA is committed to the belief that the people ICE is pursuing are inherently bad and that therefore opposing ICE is standing with criminals and rapists against the American people.

Nick Fuentes called Alex Pretti a “race traitor” for opposing ICE.

I argue that sentiment is actually widespread on the MAGA right.

My latest for @liberalcurrents.com

www.liberalcurrents.com/after-alex-p...

Students at the University of Minnesota, united with hundreds of groups across the country, are imploring people, young and old, to join a general strike on Friday.

No school, no work, no economic participation, all toward the goal of ceasing funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

From: Lesley Groff < To: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com> Subject: Reminder: Elon Musk-Christmas and New Year's Date: Tue, 31 Dee 2013 17:40:25 +0000 Just a reminder Elon Musk was asking about coming to your island on Jan. 2.... Begin forwarded message: From: Elon Musk < Subject: Re: Christmas and New Year's Date: December 25, 2013 11:35:38 AM EST To: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com> Cc: Lesley Groff < Actually, I could fly back early on the 3rd. We will be in St Bart's. When should we head to your island on the 2nd? On Dec 25, 2013, at 12:30 PM, "Elon Musk" < <mailto: >> wrote: I need to fly back to LA on the night of the 2nd, so w On Dec 25, 2013, at 6:34 AM, "Jeffrey Epstein" < jeevacation@gmail.com<mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com>> wrote: the 2 or 3 would be perfect. I will come and get you. On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Elon Musk - Ok, probably the 1st then. Kmailto: >> wrote: On Dec 15, 2013, at 2:25 PM, "Jeffrey Epstein" <jeevacation@gmail.com<mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com> <mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com-mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com>>> wrote: any day 1st - 8th. play it by ear if you want. always space for you On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 11:35 PM, Elon Musk <mailto: <mailto: mailto: → wrote: Will be in the BVI/St Bart's area over the holidays. Is there a good time to visit? *********************************************************** The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of Jeffrey Epstein EFTA00680523

Elon Musk has publicly claimed he never visited Epstein's island and barely knew the man.

New documents show Musk emailing Epstein in Dec 2013: "Is there a good time to visit?"

Epstein: "always space for you"

This was 5 years after Epstein's 2008 conviction and sex offender registration.

Elon Musk Emailed With Jeffrey Epstein to Plan Island Visits in 2012 and 2014 Epstein wrote an email to Musk in 2013 discussing a visit with four "assistants," newly released DOJ documents show.

Elon Musk Emailed With Jeffrey Epstein to Plan Island Visits in 2012 and 2014 gizmodo.com/elon-musk-emailed-with-j...

BREAKING: Bernie Sanders is introducing an amendment to cut ICE’s $75 billion funding increase, and to use those funds to restore the federal cuts to health care.

The Department of Justice just pulled this document of allegations against Donald Trump down off their website. Why? End the Coverup.

DOJ releases 3 million pages of Epstein files, taking in 180,000 images and 2,000 videos • Michigan Advance WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice released more than 3 million pages of documents Friday related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The release, which in the 3 million pages includes ...

The release, which in the 3 million pages includes more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, comes more than 40 days after the agency was legally required to release the full set of files involving the disgraced financier, in compliance with federal law.

Shot and chaser from new Epstein batch

DOJ has since killed this link. This is what was there:

Q: Can you explain Tulsi Gabbard's role in DOJ activity regarding the Fulton County search?

BLANCHE: She happened to be present in Atlanta. I saw the same photo you did. She doesn't work for the DOJ or FBI.

The arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort underscore the gravity of this moment. This has never happened before in our history. We shouldn't pretend it's normal.

More reason for us to hold the line and demand a DHS budget that stops funding lawlessness.

OK, so Musk was planning to go to Epstein's island, but it's not like he went there with the intent to go to a wild party or something, it was probably just some business. Excuse me, an email just came in.

*Reads:* "What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?"

As the Trumpers well know, these actions, as well as their now regular public defamations of purported "criminal suspects," risk undermining any prosecutions they might bring -- but often they don't even pursue actual cases.