The Common Ills: The Snapshot

Tuesday, February 24, 2026. More tied to Epstein face consequences, Chump is not among them and he prepares to deliver the State of the Union address, Democrats hear from a Homeland Security whistle-blower, and much more.

AFP reports, "London police on Monday arrested former ambassador Peter Mandelson in a probe into allegations over his ties to disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein, only days after ex-prince Andrew was detained. Mandelson, a pivotal figure in British politics and the UK's former envoy to Washington, was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office following allegations arising from the latest set of documents linked to Epstein, released by the US government last month." Pan Pylas and Jill Lawless (AP) add, "Under U.K. law, police can hold a suspect without charge for up to 24 hours. This can be extended to a maximum of 96 hours. Mandelson could be charged, released unconditionally or released while investigations continue.Police are investigating Mandelson over claims he passed sensitive government information to Epstein a decade and a half ago." Callum Sutherland (TIME) notes, "Once a prominent figure in the U.K.'s ruling Labour Party, Mandelson was sacked as ambassador in September, just months after his appointment, following disclosures from a former batch of Epstein files that showed his relationship with the financier extended beyond what he’d previously disclosed."

Laura Strickler (NBC NEWS) notes former prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson as two who have stepped down over revelations of their ties to Epstein and Stickler notes others stepping down include former prime minister of Norway Thorbjorn Jagland, US attorney Kathy Ruemmler, US attorney Brad Karp, former US Senator George Mitchell, Emirati business man Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, media mogul Casey Wasserman, former prince Andrew's wife Sarah Ferguson (she shut down her charity Sarah's Trust -- for more on her see Ann's many posts), Norway's Ambassador to Jordan and Iraq Mona Juul, Miroslav Lajcak who had been the national security advisor to Slovakia's prime minister, Jack Lang who resigned from The Arab World Institute, and former president of the Maldives Mohmed Waheed Hassan.

Alex Weprin (THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER) types, "Longevity guru Dr. Peter Attia is stepping aside as a contributor to CBS News, after correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and the researcher and health media personality came to light in the release of the Epstein Files from the Department of Justice. CBS News staff were informed of the decision Monday in a note from the network's booking department, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Attia told CBS that he would be resigning effective immediately." Types? He did not step down. That's a face saving move. As Ava and I noted two weeks ago, he thought he could stay with CBS NEWS and Bari Weiss, who picked him, thought he could as well. And they both tried to ride it out. However, his crude remarks were not going to be overlooked by CBS NEWS no matter what Bari thought and wanted. That was made clear to her Sunday and she informed Peter on Monday at which time they prepared the statement to allow him to save face. There is no face saving for him nor should there be. It's amazing -- and telling -- that he was removed from a protein bar company for his Epstein ties before CBS NEWS sent him packing.

Sara Braun (GUARDIAN) notes:

The Guardian spoke with students, employees and alumni at some of the universities implicated.

On 9 February, faculty at Barnard College, the private women’s liberal arts’ college affiliated with Columbia University, published an open letter signed by more than 70 faculty members calling on the university to “acknowledge and investigate” recently released correspondence between Epstein and Francine LeFrak, a prominent donor and member of the school’s board of trustees. LeFrak appears in the Epstein files 15 times, according to reporting from the Barnard Bulletin.

In one appearance, LeFrak asked – in 2010 – to join a close friend and Epstein during “the holidays”; in another, later that year, she invited Epstein “as her guest” to a trip to Rwanda, where she founded an initiative that provides occupational training and employment for female survivors of that country’s genocide.

The letter notes that the connection between Epstein and LeFrak is “repugnant”, particularly since the interaction took place following Epstein’s 2008 conviction of soliciting prostitution from a minor.

“We do not believe that people who maintained contact with a notorious sex trafficker and convicted sex offender express our values, nor have they behaved as proper trustees of Barnard College,” the letter states. It also calls on Barnard to remove LeFrak’s name from the newly constructed Francine A LeFrak Center for Well-Being, which houses the school’s sexual violence education, prevention and outreach program, among other initiatives.

Many faculty members expressed confusion and outrage specifically regarding LeFrak’s relationship to a program that is meant to encourage the health and wellbeing of young women.

“I just feel a real, deep disappointment, because I think, as a women’s college, our mission is directly antithetical to every revelation of those files,” a Barnard professor, who asked to remain anonymous, said.

“It is some very privileged, powerful, in many cases secretive and nefarious men controlling the lives and narratives around a wide swath of women. How can a women’s college – with its stated commitments to women’s health, wellbeing, excellence – have a prominent name on campus that is now associated with a sex offender?”

A Barnard spokesperson the school has “retained independent counsel to review the facts and advise the college accordingly”, and noted that “Barnard is a place where women’s education is championed and where women are supported, uplifted and given the tools to become the best versions of themselves. Barnard has never accepted money from Jeffrey Epstein, and we are not aware of any connection to the college.”

Elsewhere, Columbia University disciplined two people affiliated with its dental college after documents revealed that they helped Epstein’s girlfriend get into the school. Dr Letty Moss-Salentijn was stripped of her title as vice-dean of the dental college while Dr Thomas Magnani was removed from the school’s admissions review committee and volunteer leadership roles.

The university also noted that they will be making a donation of $210,000, the same amount it received from Epstein and related entities, to two New York-based non-profit organizations supporting survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Across the world, people are paying for their questionable relationship with a convicted pedophile and a sex trafficker. All over except in the White House where you have so many people who've had relationships with Epstein. Dareh Gregorian (NBC NEWS) noted earlier this month:

During a testy oversight hearing on Wednesday. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi on whether any current administration officials have been questioned by the Justice Department about their ties to Epstein.

"I'm stunned that you want to continue talking about Epstein," Bondi replied while sidestepping the question.

Gregorian notes Robert Kennedy Jr., Howard Lutnick, Doctor Oz, Stephen Feinberg, John Phelan, Kevin Warsh, Tom Barrack, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon and Donald Chump all had ties to Epstein.

David Bauder (AP) writes about the journalists, citizen journalists and activists working on the released pages of The Epstein Files. That could include people like Ryan Goodman. Who? Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) reports:

A bombshell report revealed Monday that under the first Trump administration, the FBI appeared to have issued a “stand down” order to New York Police Department investigators regarding their criminal probe into Jeffrey Epstein, an order that came just five days after the disgraced financier’s arrest in 2019.

The existence of the supposed directive was revealed by law professor and legal scholar Ryan Goodman, who found it buried within the Justice Department's recent release of around 3.5 million files on Epstein.

“The directive applied to NYPD’s Special Victims Unit – the group specially trained and equipped to handle sex crimes and child abuse cases,” Goodman wrote in a report published Monday in Just Security, a non-partisan law and policy journal.

“At the time, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY) had an ongoing investigation involving Epstein’s victims, the documents reveal, but the FBI assumed that would come to a halt as well following the Bureau’s directive.”

The relevant file is an email dated July 11, 2019, sent just five days after Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges.

“[Redacted] just called – FBI reached out to NYPD leadership already and they were told that SVU has been directed to stand down and that all Epstein stuff needs to go to and through us,” reads the email, of which both the sender and recipient’s names had been redacted.

In another email, this one dated Jan. 29, 2020, apparent FBI agents seem to confirm the existence of the supposed “stand down” order, with one noting that the NYPD’s investigation was likely closed after the directive was issued.

Tonight, Chump offers some form of State of the Union address. MEIDASTOUCH NEWS and MOVEON.ORG will be highlighting an alternative featuring Democrats while Chump stumbles through whatever he has planned. Katie Phang and Joy Reid will host. It will kick off 8:00 pm EST and you can stream it here.

Ariel Edwards-Levy and Jennifer Agiesta (CNN) note that Chump is doing poorly in the lead up to the speech:

When President Donald Trump gives his State of the Union address Tuesday, he will face a public that increasingly questions his priorities and expresses broad doubts about whether his proposed policies are helping the nation, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Adding to the pile of alarming indicators for the president’s party heading into this year’s midterms, Trump’s approval rating among political independents has dipped to a new low in CNN polling.

Just 32% of Americans now say that Trump has had the right priorities, while 68% say he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. That’s the president’s most negative reading on that question to date during either of his terms in office. At the same time, Americans say, 61% to 38%, that Trump’s policies will move the country in the wrong direction rather than the right one. And Trump’s job approval rating among all adults remains mired at 36%.

[. . .]

Some of the steepest declines include a 19-point drop in approval among Latino Americans and an 18-point drop among Americans younger than 45. Among political independents, Trump’s approval rating has dropped 15 points over the past year to 26%, the lowest it’s been in either of his terms.

Courtney Subramanian and Hadriana Lowenkron (BLOOMBERG NEWS) cover some of the topics that have resulted in Chump losing support:

His second year, however, is already suffering from many of the same problems that plagued the first term — erratic messaging, policy reversals, plummeting poll numbers and intraparty tussles.

The president’s crackdown on immigration was met with bipartisan blowback. He posted a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, prompting several Republicans to condemn the post and to demand an apology that didn’t happen. Six House Republicans defied him to join Democrats in overturning his Canada tariffs. Then the Supreme Court struck down his preferred method of imposing global tariffs as unconstitutional, throwing his economic agenda into chaos.

And as Trump readies his State of the Union message on Tuesday, Republicans facing disappointed voters in the midterms fear the White House isn’t sufficiently focused on the economic message that could allow them to keep control of Congress. A Democratic takeover of either chamber or both could halt any legislation Trump tried to pass and invite aggressive oversight and investigations.

“Things are starting to unravel a little bit, and I think it gives Republicans an opportunity to step away from the Trump world and really kind of take back the messaging to voters, because they’re going to need to, if they want to not get completely blown out of the water come midterms,” Republican strategist Maura Gillespie said.

Caitlin Yilek (CBS NEWS) reports:

When President Trump gives his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, more than a dozen Democratic congresswomen plan to again make a sartorial political statement by wearing white, according to the Democratic Women's Caucus.

Democratic congresswomen have used fashion as a form of protest against Mr. Trump since his first address to a joint session of Congress in 2017, then donning suffragist white in support of women's rights.

In the years since, they've mostly stuck with that choice, with the exception of 2018, when some wore black in support of the #MeToo movement. They also broke tradition during last year's speech, which wasn't technically a State of the Union, wearing pink to highlight their opposition to Mr. Trump's policies.

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico, who leads the 96-member Democratic Women's Caucus, told CBS News that the color choice "depends on where we're at in the moment."

"This year, there are specific attacks on women's ability to vote," she said. "The Democratic Women's Caucus is wearing white both to honor that fight that women have always had and to signal we are still in the fight."

Leger Fernández will skip the State of the Union address itself, but other members of the caucus are expected to be in attendance. Members who have alternate plans will still wear white, according to a spokesperson for the group. A number of Democrats in Congress plan to attend a rally organized by the group MoveOn, dubbed the "People's State of the Union," on the National Mall during Mr. Trump's speech.

And then there are the mid-terms. Adam Lynch notes:

The White House's plan to dispatch members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to competitive districts for the midterm elections to aid Republican efforts is the best thing Democrats could hope for, said MS NOW Producer Steve Benen.

“[President Donald Trump’s] first-term Cabinet was a mess,” said Benen. “… But a month into the sixth year of Trump’s presidency, it’s probably fair to say that his second-term Cabinet is worse.”

Eleven months ago, New York Times’ Frank Bruni criticized Trump’s fledgling Cabinet in a scathing report, outlining the fact that Trump was not hiring for aptitude or intelligence. Trump, Bruni said, wanted bootlicks.

“Trump chose people for senior administration positions not because they had demonstrated the skills and disposition that those jobs required, not because they had paid their dues, not because they had proved their mettle. He wanted provocateurs. He wanted sycophants. … Competence didn’t enter the equation, so competence isn’t among the results. He got exactly what he paid for, and now a nation is paying the price," Bruni wrote.

One year later Benen said the results are clear.

“Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is at the center of a variety of ongoing controversies and faces bipartisan calls for her ouster,” said Benen. “Attorney General Pam Bondi recently humiliated herself during a congressional hearing. Around the same time, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talked about his past history of snorting cocaine off toilet seats against a backdrop of systemic problems at the federal department he ostensibly leads

Rachel Maddow noted the corrupt administration last night on her MS NOW program.

Yesterday, a hearing took place.

Christopher Vondracek (MINNESOTA STAR TRIBUNE) reports:

A former ICE teacher at a Georgia training center told congressional Democrats on Feb. 23 that new agents are trained to run roughshod over constitutional rights, including the right against a home invasion, and that the federal agency is “broken.”

Ryan Schwank, who resigned from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Feb. 13, told the forum that ICE is training new agents to violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

“ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 10,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution,” Schwank, who joined ICE as legal counsel in 2021, said in the draft.

The DHS on Monday denied his allegations.

But Schwank said one two-hour program was cut to 10 minutes, “shoe-horned into a lesson [on the Fourth Amendment,” Schwank said, answering a question from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat.

Klobuchar asked Schwank to go over what programs had been skipped or condensed, noting, “It’s been my constituents that have been dragged out of their homes.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE, has said all of its officers were following federal law throughout Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and other widespread escalations such as in Chicago.

Schwank said he was told to teach officer candidates they could apprehend individuals with only an administrative removal order, not a judge’s warrant — a practice used in Minneapolis.

Rebecca Beitsch (THE HILL) adds:

Schwank countered administration claims that it has maintained training standards even as it has condensed some aspects of its program.

“For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584 hour program, classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits of officers’ authority,” said Schwank, who recently trained cadets at the ICE academy in Georgia.

“They ceased all of the legal instructions regarding use of force. This means that cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable, the very standard which the law requires them to meet when deciding whether or not to use deadly force. Our jobs as instructors are to teach them so well that they can make split second decisions about what they can and cannot do in life or death situations,” he added.

“Yet, in the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job, all to satisfy an administration demanding they train thousands of new officers before the end of the year.”

Michael Kaplan and Camilo Montoya-Galvez (CBS NEWS) note:

Schwank is an attorney and former career ICE employee who resigned from the immigration agency less than two weeks ago. A spokesperson for Whistleblower Aid, the legal group representing Schwank, said he quit the agency in protest. It stands as one of the first instances of an ICE official who has served under the second Trump administration publicly rebuking the agency and the adequacy of its training. Schwank resigned from ICE on Feb. 13, according to congressional aides.

The hearing, organized by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, comes as calls for accountability grow in the wake of several incidents where federal immigration officers have deployed deadly force, including the January killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Schwank's testimony will likely fuel Democrats' refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration agrees to a number of reforms for ICE, including a prohibition on agents wearing masks.

"I am duty bound to tell you the ICE Basic Immigration Enforcement Training Program is now deficient, defective, and broken," Schwank said Monday. He alleged ICE officials are lying about the amount of training new recruits receive.

Nicholas Nehamas and Hamed Aleaziz (NEW YORK TIMES) note:

Some of the previously unreported documents released on Monday indicate that ICE officers are now training for significantly fewer hours than they did before President Trump’s hiring surge. Others suggest that several training classes appear to have been cut from the required syllabus, including one titled “Use of Force Simulation Training” and others on immigration law and ICE’s legal authorities.

Together, the new disclosures underscore concerns about the conduct and preparedness of Homeland Security Department agents, who have shot and killed at least three American citizens over the last year. Mr. Trump’s decision to order immigration officers into major American cities has led to a rise in violent encounters with members of the public, leading to fears that poor training for new agents will produce more chaos.

We'll wind down with this from Senator Richard Blumenthal:

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Today, U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released a memorandum and previously undisclosed documents revealing new details about drastic cuts the Trump Administration is making to the training and testing of new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) officers.

The documents were produced to Blumenthal via a disclosure from two Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers who have requested that they not be identified. Specifically, these documents provide new evidence regarding: (1) the aggressive graduation targets that ICE aims to achieve for new ERO officers in fiscal 2026; (2) cuts of more than a dozen significant practical examinations which potential ICE ERO officers no longer must undergo; (3) numerous classes which appear to have been wholly cut from the training curriculum for ICE ERO officers; and (4) the drastic reduction in the hours of training for potential ICE ERO officers.

These documents appear to directly contradict representations made under oath to Congress by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.

“We know about the Trump Administration’s decimation of training for immigration officers and its secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans who are speaking out today,” Blumenthal said. “They are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again.”

“To anyone else who is repulsed by what you’re seeing or what authorities are asking you to do, please know that you can make a real difference by coming forward. You’ll meet a moral imperative. Our door is open, we are here for you when you are ready, and we will do everything within our power to protect your rights.”

Blumenthal released the documents ahead of a bicameral public forum he is hosting with U.S. Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on constitutional violations and abuses by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The forum will feature testimony from Ryan Schwank, a whistleblower who is speaking publicly for the first time about his experience as an Instructor for the incoming “surge” of new ICE recruits at the ICE Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (“FLETC”) in Glynco, Georgia.

Teyana Gibson Brown, a U.S. citizen and resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, will also testify about ICE agents forcefully entering her home without a judicial warrant, breaking down her door and pointing guns at her family. Stevan Bunnell, the General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017, will testify as well.

A link to the memorandum and attachments is available here.

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The following sites updated: