February 8, 2026

Jack Smith says Trump privately acknowledged 2020 election loss

Testimony released by House Republicans shows former special counsel Jack Smith said Donald Trump admitted to others that he lost to Joe Biden, despite publicly claiming victory and facing now-dropped federal charges.

Jack Smith, the former Justice Department special counsel who brought two now-dropped criminal cases against US President Donald Trump, said that the Republican had acknowledged to others that he lost the 2020 election against former President Joe Biden, according to a transcript of a testimony by Smith. The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released 255 pages of transcript from Smith's testimony in mid-December, when he defended his investigation before the Republican-controlled panel. His private testimony came following months of disclosures from Trump appointees at the Justice Department and Republican lawmakers intended to discredit Smith's probe and bolster Trump's claims that the cases were an abuse of the legal system.

Publicly, Trump falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election. His supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the election. After taking office for a second time in January 2025, Trump pardoned the rioters. In the testimony, Smith was asked if Trump ever acknowledged "that he knew that he had actually lost the election" to Biden, according to the transcript. "Yes," Smith replied. "So this paragraph references different statements that he made in the presence of other people. One is that, 'It doesn't matter if you won or lost the election. You still fight like hell.' And then the other was, 'Can you believe I lost to this f'ing guy?' referring to Joe Biden."

The transcript showed Smith to be saying that he saw "these admissions as corroborative of the larger case." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of work hours on Smith's testimony. Smith and his team secured indictments in 2023, accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents following his first term in office and plotting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

Smith has said his prosecutors followed justice department policy and were not influenced by politics. Trump and his allies have alleged political motivation.

https://www.trtworld.com/article/a96b04744c1e

Other articles where trump admits he knew he had lost the election:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-acknowledges-lost-2020-election-whisker-rcna169526

https://www.commoncause.org/articles/indictment-8-times-trump-knew-he-lost/

Video:

So, the turmoil and lives lost on 1/6 despite knowing he had lost. The recent search of the GA voting records, despite knowing he had lost. All the lawsuits filed, despite knowing he had lost. On and on and on.

February 7, 2026

GOP fast tracks monster voter suppression bill

GOP fast tracks monster voter suppression bill that could disenfranchise millions by requiring proof of citizenship at polls

Republicans are moving quickly to pass a bill requiring voters to show proof of citizenship both to register and at the polls ahead of the 2026 midterm elections — a move that experts warn could disenfranchise millions of Americans. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the sponsor of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, said in a social media video Thursday night that House leadership would bring the proposal up for a vote next week.

The bill would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, as well as requiring photographic identification that proves citizenship to cast a ballot. In most states, that means voters, even those who are already on the rolls, would need to bring a passport or original birth certificate to the polls. Only states with ‘enhanced’ driver licenses — Michigan, New York, Vermont, Minnesota and Washington — satisfy the SAVE America Act’s heightened requirements — a REAL ID (used in most states) won’t cut it. The strict ID rules could keep millions of already-registered Americans who don’t have that documentation on hand from casting ballots. According to a Brennan Center for Justice analysis, around 21 million Americans could be disenfranchised. Half of Americans lack a passport, and millions more don’t have ready access to birth certificates to prove citizenship. The bill could also kick millions of married women who took their husband’s last name off the rolls.

The proposal would also require state election officials to aggressively scrub their voter rolls, which, history shows, would lead to thousands of improper cancellations of legitimate eligible voter registrations. The House passed a similar version, aimed just at registrations, last spring, which was also sponsored by Roy. That less expansive SAVE Act was described to Democracy Docket by one historian as “the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history.”

Republican backers say the measures are necessary to keep noncitizens from voting. But noncitizen voting is a crime that is easily caught and prosecuted, which is perhaps one reason why it’s exceedingly rare. Recent lengthy reviews of voter rolls conducted by Republican election administrators have turned up precious few instances of noncitizens even on the rolls, let alone voting. Meanwhile, registration file purges have improperly kicked thousands of legal voters off the rolls.

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/gop-fast-tracks-monster-voter-suppression-bill-that-could-disenfranchise-millions-by-requiring-proof-of-citizenship-at-polls/

This is a MUST read! I would be one of those who couldn't vote.

January 24, 2026

Why federal officers don't have absolute immunity

Deployments of ICE and CBP officers to cities around America has caused confusion about the distinctions between these federal agents and regular law enforcement officers. One key difference is that state and local police are not federal officers, and federal officers operate under different authorities than those granted to state and local police. ICE and CBP cannot be held accountable in the same ways as state and local police if they violate state law on the job, and claims have begun to circulate from the vice president and others that federal agents actually have “absolute immunity” from prosecution for their activities at the state level. They’re wrong: federal agents can face state criminal penalties, including prison time, for violent, illegal conduct on the job.

Do federal officers have ‘absolute immunity’ from state prosecution? No. A federal officer can still be charged with and convicted of state crimes they commit while on duty and working in service of the federal government. But a federal officer does have some protection from state prosecution. The Constitution subordinates state laws to the federal government under the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal laws the “supreme law of the land.” We can expect federal officers to draw on a Supreme Court case from 1887, In re Neagle, and subsequent lower court cases to argue that the Supremacy Clause immunizes them from state prosecution for actions taken within their lawful duties as federal officials.

The contours of the governing law are messy but the question of immunity likely turns on whether the prosecuted officer had a reasonable belief that federal law authorized or required the acts for which he is being prosecuted. It’s ultimately up to the discretion of a judge — or on appeal, multiple judges or justices — to determine whether the officer can be shielded from charges.
If a federal officer were charged in state court for actions taken “on the clock,” the officer would likely try to have the case moved to federal court where they could then assert their immunity argument. A judge would then use a two-part test to determine whether the officer actually qualifies for the Supremacy Clause immunity they are claiming.

The first part of the test involves determining whether the officer was acting as part of their official duties, and is a relatively low bar to clear. The second part of the test is a determination about whether the action at the center of the prosecution was “reasonable” based on the complete circumstances they were involved in. That question is evaluated from the perspective of the officer in question, and hinges also on the facts known to the officer at the moment they took the action in question. It’s typically the more difficult question to answer, and a judge relies on evidence and testimony to make the ultimate determination. Examples of conduct that would likely not be immune include (i) plainly unjustified violence, including when making an arrest; (ii) patently unjustified searches of a home or a body; or (iii) knowing use of false proof to obtain a warrant or to institute or continue legal proceedings. (emphasis mine)

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/federal-officers-absolute-immunity/

Also see important article from same site, "The Universal Constitutional Remedies Act, explained."
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/universal-constitutional-remedies-act-explained/

January 22, 2026

Looking for a good site for video posting

I have an mp4 I want to post on DU, but Imgur can't seem to upload it. Its probably a couple minutes long.

Recommendations?

January 15, 2026

The Southern Ocean current reverses for the first time, signaling a risk of climate system collapse

A few scientists huddled around the screen, some squinting through fogged-up glasses, one clutching a mug of coffee gone cold an hour earlier. The numbers were wrong. Or rather, they were right, but they described something that was never supposed to happen in our lifetime: the great current encircling Antarctica had changed direction.

No one said anything at first. Just the slap of waves on metal and the wind gnawing at their hoods. Then someone whispered, half-joking, “Did we just break the planet?” A nervous laugh, quickly swallowed. They ran the measurements again. Same result. The Southern Ocean current, the conveyor belt that stabilises much of Earth’s climate, had reversed in a key sector. The screen glowed in the damp lab, a quiet alarm in pixels and graphs. Outside, the sea kept rolling, indifferent. Inside, a single thought spread: *what else is about to flip?

From space, the Southern Ocean looks like a restless halo, circling Antarctica without ever stopping. For decades, that ring-shaped current has flowed in one dominant direction, pushing cold, nutrient-rich water around the bottom of the planet. It’s the kind of slow, steady motion we treat as a given, like gravity or sunrise. Then the data sets from moored instruments and satellites began to line up, telling the same strange story: in a crucial region, the flow had turned around.

Oceanographers had warned that warming and freshening of Antarctic waters could disrupt this system. Still, when the first models suggested a real-world reversal, most people thought “not yet”. The ocean had other plans. In the space of a single season, a pattern that had held for centuries flickered, stumbled, then shifted. The maps that once showed a clean band of current now show eddies and patches of opposite motion, like a river starting to curl back on itself. That’s when the word “collapse” stopped sounding like science fiction and started sounding like a forecast.

https://www.thepunjab.co.uk/14-165653-the-southern-ocean-current-reverses-for-the-first-time-signaling-a-risk-of-climate-system-collapse-2/

Getting rid of trump, and putting the responsible adults back in charge, is a matter of survival.

January 11, 2026

Leonardo da Vinci's DNA may be embedded in his art

Leonardo da Vinci's DNA may be embedded in his art — and scientists think they've managed to extract some
In a first, scientists have extracted DNA from a Renaissance-era drawing attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, but they can't be sure that the genetic material belongs to the Italian polymath.



Scientists say they may have extracted Leonardo da Vinci's DNA from a Renaissance-era drawing for the very first time. The trace DNA, embedded in a red chalk sketch called the "Holy Child" that some claim was made by da Vinci, shows similarities with genetic material recovered from a letter penned in the 1400s by Frosino di ser Giovanni da Vinci, a cousin of Leonardo da Vinci's grandfather, Antonio da Vinci.

Specifically, the drawing and the letter contain Y chromosome sequences that match those of a haplogroup, or genetic lineage, with a common ancestor in Tuscany, where Leonardo da Vinci was born. The researchers published their findings Tuesday (Jan. 6) to the preprint database bioRxiv, so they have not yet been peer reviewed.

Because Y chromosome sequences are passed down almost unchanged from father to son, the recovery of these sequences is "a great starting point" for researchers who want to piece together Leonardo da Vinci's DNA, Charlie Lee, a geneticist who leads the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Connecticut who was not involved in the study, told Science. However, some experts don't think Leonardo da Vinci drew "Holy Child" himself, believing instead that one of his students made the sketch.

As a result, "it's a flip of a coin" whether the DNA from the drawing is da Vinci's, said Lee. The genetic material could belong to a student or to any number of curators with Tuscan roots who handled the drawing over the years, Science reported. Researchers want to reconstruct da Vinci's DNA to help authenticate some of his art. Some experts also suggest the Italian polymath's genetic material could reveal biological reasons for his exceptional artistic and other abilities, such as better-than-normal vision.

As a result, "it's a flip of a coin" whether the DNA from the drawing is da Vinci's, said Lee. The genetic material could belong to a student or to any number of curators with Tuscan roots who handled the drawing over the years, Science reported.

https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/leonardo-da-vincis-dna-may-be-embedded-in-his-art-and-scientists-think-theyve-managed-to-extract-some

January 9, 2026

ICE officer who fatally shot Minnesota woman was dragged by car during June immigration arrest

The ICE officer who fatally shot a Minnesota woman Wednesday was previously dragged by a car during an immigration enforcement operation in June, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

During the June incident, ICE officers in Minneapolis attempted to arrest Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala during a traffic stop. He was in the country illegally, DHS said in a news release, and was previously “arrested for domestic assault and convicted of sex crimes against an underage teenager.” When the man refused to comply, the agent broke his car window and reached inside, getting his arm stuck, according to court documents. When the man attempted to drive away, he dragged the agent, which was captured on video. The agent suffered multiple lacerations and needed 33 stitches to close his wounds, according to court documents from the June incident, which identified the agent as Jonathan Ross. NBC News reached out to DHS requesting comment from Ross.

Snip--

The criminal complaint in the June dragging case said Ross was involved in the effort to arrest the Mexican immigrant, Muñoz-Guatemala. Agents pulled Muñoz-Guatemala over and demanded he put his car in “park,” according to the documents. When he refused, officers ordered him to lower his window all the way and open the door. Muñoz-Guatemala continued to refuse their orders, prompting Ross to break the driver’s side rear window of the man’s car. Ross then reached into the car through the broken window and attempted to unlock the driver’s side door, the documents state.

According to court documents, while Ross’s arm was inside the man’s car, Muñoz-Guatemala put the car in drive and attempted to drive away, dragging Ross along with the vehicle. Ross shot his taser at Muñoz-Guatemala while he was driving away, but Muñoz-Guatemala continued to drive, trying to “shake” Ross from the car, court documents state. Court documents say Ross was dragged approximately 100 yards before he was able to free his arm from the car. DHS said in a news release he was dragged about 50 yards.

Ross was injured and taken to the hospital for care, according to court documents. He sustained a cut on his right arm that required 20 stitches, a cut on his left hand that required 13 stitches, and abrasions to his left knee, elbows and face.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/ice-officer-fatally-shot-minnesota-woman-dragged-car-june-immigration-arrest/3966074/

So, this jerk has a history of being really stupid.

December 29, 2025

Seventy degrees here in southern Kentucky yesterday

My husband was out in shorts. 22 degrees today, and the wood stove going. Crazy.

December 24, 2025

Supreme Court Upholds Block to Trump's Chicago Military Takeover

President Donald Trump’s military takeover of Chicago will not go forward after the Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling halting his attempt to send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.

The court’s long-awaited 6-3 decision deals a significant blow to Trump’s authoritarian goal of exerting military control over cities and integrating soldiers into routine policing. The ruling will likely also undermine his military intervention in Los Angeles and his attempted deployment in Portland, Oregon.

(snip)

The Supreme Court Tuesday determined that because the term “regular forces” in Title 10 likely refers to the traditional forces of the U.S. military — such as the Army, Navy and Air Force — Trump did not have authority to federalize Illinois Guard members.

“This interpretation means that to call the Guard into active federal service under §12406(3), the President must be ‘unable’ with the regular military ‘to execute the laws of the United States,’” the unsigned majority opinion reads.

The majority further stated that because the Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits using the military in civilian law enforcement purposes under normal circumstances, Trump likely would be unable to use the traditional military in Chicago.

“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the majority said. “The President has not invoked a statute that provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act.”

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/supreme-court-trump-national-guard-chicago-deployment/

December 23, 2025

Gov. Beshear: Kentucky, States Win Challenge

From official email:

Gov. Beshear: Kentucky, States Win Challenge Against Trump’s Dangerous Housing Policy; $21 Million In Funding To Be Restored
Governor joined lawsuit to protect housing for 700 households and 1,200 Kentuckians

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 23, 2025) – Today, Gov. Andy Beshear announced that a federal judge has ruled in favor of Kentucky, 19 other states and the District of Columbia and demanded that the Trump administration restore federal funding for housing support through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). More than $21 million in unlawfully held funds will now be processed for housing efforts in the commonwealth, supporting veterans, seniors, families with children and individuals with disabilities.

“We should be finding ways to solve homelessness, not cause it, and unlawfully holding this congressionally approved funding was a dangerous step that would put thousands of Kentuckians and millions of Americans at risk of losing their home,” said Gov. Beshear. “As Governor, it’s my job to stand up for our people and I am thankful that today’s ruling will protect housing for 700 households and 1,200 Kentuckians.”

In November, the Governor joined the lawsuit, which focused on proposed changes to the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, a federal program that directs funding to keep families with children, seniors, veterans and disabled persons housed. The changes would have put a 30% cap on funding that states can receive for permanent supportive housing projects and would have required states to re-apply for money previously approved by Congress and awarded in 2024. Now, that funding will be processed without the need to re-apply.

Kentucky was at risk of losing 70% of the more than $15 million currently approved that supports permanent supportive housing in 118 of the state’s 120 counties. The cap would have also negatively impacted more than $20 million in federal funding for rental assistance and supportive assistance for homeless Kentuckians.

The other states represented in the challenge are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, along with the District of Columbia.