Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
The Felon's Cratering Poll Numbers
The past two months have been some of the worst for Donald Trump’s approval rating—ever. Polling aggregators have his net approval in the low 40s, with 34 percent approval on the economy and 30 percent on cost of living. In individual polls, his overall approval dips down into the mid 30s. The last time Trump’s numbers looked this bad was right after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The slippage is especially drastic with young voters. In the 2024 election, a majority of 18-to-29-year-olds voted for Kamala Harris, but compared with 2020, young voters swung hard toward Trump. According to the Cook Political Report, on March 1, 2025, Trump’s net approval rating with these voters was minus 7. Yet by February 1 of this year, it was an astonishing minus 31.8. Now young people are abandoning Trump faster than any other voting bloc.
It’s tempting to think that this is all happening because of this administration’s blatantly authoritarian and norm-shattering actions: deploying masked ICE agents into American cities, stonewalling on the Epstein files, demolishing the East Wing, capturing Venezuela’s president, sharing racist videos on social media. All of those actions matter, and are slowly chipping away at Trump’s base of support.
But they’re not the whole story—or even the main story—of why Trump is losing young people. I run focus groups with voters every week, and what I’ve heard from this age group is much simpler: Trump is not doing the things that he told Americans he would do to fix prices and the economy. In the focus groups, young people who voted for Trump have said that they believed him during the campaign when he promised to “build the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Now they say they feel duped and let down.
For these young people to have placed their faith in a con man like Trump might seem naive. But most members of Generation Z were still children when Trump came down the escalator. They don’t remember a lot of the chaos and dysfunction of Trump’s first run for president, or even his first term. They don’t view Trump as sui generis or beyond the pale, because he’s been the dominant force in our politics for as long as they’ve been politically aware.
Now, though, they’re young adults entering the workforce. Many of them have student loans, and they’re at a particularly cost-sensitive point in their lives. They notice when a politician like Trump promises to lower prices, and then doesn’t deliver.
Compared with 2020, in 2024 young voters swung to Trump in every key battleground state except Georgia. That includes a 24-point swing in Michigan, an 18-point swing in Pennsylvania, and a 15-point swing in Wisconsin. About 56 percent of young men voted for Trump in 2024, the same share that voted for Biden in 2020. Trump’s overall youth support jumped 10 points relative to his performance in 2020. . . . .The red-Solo-cup energy that sustains MAGA was in full effect, and America’s youngest voters—especially young men—were drawn in.
Young people like these were receptive when Trump said he would bring down prices and tame inflation, fix America’s broken health-care system, make housing affordable, create millions of new jobs, and do away with other economic woes that were plaguing many Americans, but that felt especially acute for young voters just entering the job market. The young people in my focus groups talk about how their student-loan debt is rising, housing is out of reach, and looming AI-powered disruption makes many jobs feel precarious. They’re clear-eyed that they might not be as well off as their parents’ generation.
Over the past 13 months, though, America’s young people have watched as Trump did a whole lot of things that weren’t what they elected him to do. Relative to when Trump took office, housing prices are up, job growth is stagnant, inflation has been persistent, college is less affordable, and people are more likely to be uninsured. That, more than anything else, is why young people in the focus groups say they’re disappointed.
“ From an economics factor, so many of the things that I would say are not wants, but instead needs, have just absolutely skyrocketed,” Joseph, from Michigan, said in September. “And basic families are spending so much on just the cost of living that they don’t have a cost to save, or anything like that. There’s just no financial way out.”
All of this suggests that Trump didn’t own the votes of young people who supported him in 2024; he rented them. And many of them are now getting tired of antics that, in their minds, take the focus away from the economy. When we asked a recent group about Trump’s threats against Greenland, Mukesh, a Trump voter from California, said: “I think we should just respect it, and leave it, and just focus on what’s actually happening inside the nation.”
Based on what I’ve heard in the focus groups, Democrats have a big opportunity with young people, because they’re some of the latest arrivals to Trump’s coalition. Democrats need to offer these voters a platform that addresses their concerns, while hammering Trump for his failure to do so.
In a recent focus group, the moderator asked Ruben, a Trump voter in Georgia, what advice he would give Democrats. He said: “ I’d say put a larger focus on the economic development. A lot of people these days are really coming of age, like being able to vote. And the younger Generation Z, we care about our finances, being able to pay rent, being able to afford food.”
These young people want someone who sees the economic pain they’re going through, and promises to actually do something about it. They don’t want policy papers. They want hope, good vibes, the red-Solo-cup energy—but directed toward what actually matters to them.
The Felon played these voters for fools. Hopefully, they will not be duped by him again.
Monday, February 16, 2026
Pam Bondi's Sickening Behavior
I have never been a fan of Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general and now the Felon's attorney general who has jettisoned any pretense that the Department of Justice ("DOJ") exists to protect the American public and turned the DOJ into the Felon's personal tool for seeking revenge on critics and real or perceived foes and the main line of cover up for the Felon's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Given the lengths that the DOJ is going to redact the Felon's name - and the names of other wealth and powerful elites, a number of whom are in the Felon's cabinet - one can only assume the full truth would be severely damaging to the Felon and might warrant criminal prosecution. As for the victims of Epstein's sax trafficking network, Bondi made it clear that she could care less about seeing justice done, Indeed, during last week's congressional hearing, Bondi would not even look at the assembled victims in the audience. GOP Rep. Thomas Massie said the following about Bondi's behavior:
She came with a book full of insults, one for each congressperson. She obviously had one for me. And, you know, I’ve been there when Merrick Garland was there. Obviously, politically, I don’t agree with him, but he performed much better in terms of at least not looking bad. And, unfortunately, we didn’t get the answers we wanted about the Epstein Files Transparency Act from her. . . . . “Donald Trump told us that even though, you know, he had dinner with these kinds of people in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration, and they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
Sadly, everything the DOJ is doing currently is aimed at protecting the guilty, including the Felon. piece at The New Republic looks at where things stand:
During and right after Pam Bondi’s House testimony Wednesday, I flipped on Fox News and Newsmax to see how they were covering it. I was expecting to see a celebration of how the attorney general really put those America-hating libs in their place. To my surprise, I did not. I saw mostly ads, to be honest, but the little programming I did catch was devoted entirely to the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping story.
Disappointed, I flipped back to MS NOW and didn’t think much of it. But Wednesday evening, The Daily Beast reported that my experience was not aberrational: Bondi testified for about five hours, and Fox News ran roughly 10 minutes of it live.
It’s an old, old Murdochian ploy: When there’s news that doesn’t suit the agenda, just ignore it. I’ve seen this movie many times. Back in a different era, Rupert’s favorite politician was Al D’Amato, the hacky and corrupt Republican senator from New York. Whenever there was a new allegation about D’Amato’s ethics, or a Senate report reviewing same, it would be on the front page of The New York Times and get prominent play in the Daily News—and in the New York Post, there usually wasn’t a word.
Fox’s near silence on Bondi is an admission that the hearing was an indefensible horror show. And it gets worse if you really think about it for a few minutes. Think of all the planning and strategizing that went into that performance. Employees of the Department of Justice, working on our dime, spent hours prepping Bondi on exactly how to insult each and every Democratic member of the committee. They came up with the idea of requiring each House member to have an individual log-in to peruse the Epstein files so the DOJ could spy on them. They spent hours assembling Bondi’s little burn book. She had to have been coached for hours about exactly how to ignore the questions and try to turn the tables on her interrogators. In other words: Her aides, whose salaries we pay, probably thought this would be great. That she’d walk away with a catalog of sound-bite knockout punches.
Instead, Bondi walked away with the image that will haunt her for the rest of her life: her back turned to those Jeffrey Epstein victims as Representative Pramila Jayapal asked them to stand and raise their hands “if you have still not been able to meet with the DOJ”—and they all raised their hands. That image looked horrible Wednesday; as more and more details about the Epstein story leak out in the coming weeks and months, it’s only going to look worse.
In substantive terms, her performance at that hearing may not even have been the worst thing Bondi did this week! The morning after the hearing, she fired Gail Slater, the head of the department’s antitrust division. Slater actually had a decent reputation—she was part of the populist-MAGA anti-monopoly movement, and she brought a high-profile case against Google over its monopolization of the ad tech market.
Many progressive anti-monopolists were cheering for Slater. Said Senator Elizabeth Warren upon hearing this news: “A small army of MAGA-aligned lawyers and lobbyists have been trying to sell off merger approvals that will increase prices and harm innovation to the highest bidder. . . . . Bondi’s firing of Slater is a big nail in the coffin of the idea that Trumpian right-wing populism is willing to take on powerful interests. It may—but only as long as they’re designated enemies of Trump.
To circle back to Fox News: If they’re going to follow the old Murdoch edict of ignoring all bad news, pretty soon they’re going to be reduced to airing nothing but scare stories about woke Olympic athletes and Spanish-speaking superstars.
It’s not even clear Bondi had the worst week among Trump Cabinet officials. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got seriously pulverized twice this week. First, when a grand jury refused to indict six Democrats for their earlier video reminding soldiers that they had a duty to disobey illegal orders; as Chesa Boudin and Eric Fish point out in a Times op-ed today, grand juries convened by the mighty Justice Department almost never fail to return an indictment. Second, when a federal judge blocked Hegseth from punishing one of the six, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, writing that Hegseth had grossly violated Kelly’s First Amendment rights.
And Kristi Noem had to endure the indignity of seeing rival Tom Homan, the border czar, make her ICE-men goeth out of Minneapolis. Thursday night, The Wall Street Journal posted a long and devastating story about the mayhem at the Department of Homeland Security under Noem and her rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski. It’s the kind of Washington story that appears only when inside sources decide to start running to reporters to spill saucy details they once sat on—a clear sign that no one is scared of her anymore.
None of these people, of course, belongs in a high position in the federal government. They’re psychopathic monsters. There’s no doubt Bondi and her advisers think she knocked a home run on Wednesday. But one day, we’ll all learn what she’s hiding about the Epstein story. Can’t wait for that hearing.
Sunday, February 15, 2026
The Felon's Regime Wants to Silence Social Media Critics
As the Department of Homeland Security and ICE continue to act as the Felon's secret police aimed at terrorizing undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike - ignoring literally thousands of court orders against its actions - the New York Times reports that now DHS wants information on social media accounts that are either critical of the Felon's increasingly fascist regime or track the misdeeds of ICE. Claims are disingenuously made that this is necessary for the safety of heavily armed and lawless ICE agents, but the reality is that the Felon and his cabinet of unqualified misfits and grifters cannot tolerate criticism and being called out for who and what they really are. Disturbingly, DHS is using administrative subpoenas that circumvent judicial review to seek information on critics and their social media accounts. This leaves Felon/DHS targets unprotected by judicial review and left to their own devises to oppose these administrative subpoenas (we all may want to have the ACLU on speed dial) that seek to intimidate and silence critics. I suspect as the Felon's poll numbers continue to crater thanks to unpopular policies and no meaningful action to lower consumer prices, the offensive against free speech will escalate. Here are highlights from the Times piece:
The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.
In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said. In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents. The New York Times saw two subpoenas that were sent to Meta over the last six months.
The tech companies, which can choose whether or not to provide the information, have said they review government requests before complying. Some of the companies notified the people whom the government had requested data on and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court.
“The government is taking more liberties than they used to,” said Steve Loney, a senior supervising attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. “It’s a whole other level of frequency and lack of accountability.” . . . . its [DHS] lawyers have argued that they are seeking information to help keep ICE agents in the field safe. . . . Meta, Reddit and Discord declined to comment.
“When we receive a subpoena, our review process is designed to protect user privacy while meeting our legal obligations,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement. “We inform users when their accounts have been subpoenaed, unless under legal order not to or in an exceptional circumstance. We review every legal demand and push back against those that are overbroad.”
The Trump administration has aggressively tried tamping down criticism of ICE, partly by identifying Americans who have demonstrated against the agency. ICE agents told protesters in Minneapolis and Chicago that they were being recorded and identified with facial recognition technology. Last month, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, also said on Fox News that he was pushing to “create a database” of people who were “arrested for interference, impeding and assault.”
Unlike arrest warrants, which require a judge’s approval, administrative subpoenas are issued by the Department of Homeland Security. They were only sparingly used in the past, primarily to uncover the people behind social media accounts engaged in serious crimes such as child trafficking, said tech employees familiar with the legal tool. But last year, the department ramped up its use of the subpoenas to unmask anonymous social media accounts.
In September, for example, it sent Meta administrative subpoenas to identify the people behind Instagram accounts that posted about ICE raids in California, according to the A.C.L.U. The subpoenas were challenged in court, and the Department of Homeland Security withdrew the requests for information before a judge could rule.
Mr. Loney of the A.C.L.U. said avoiding a judge’s ruling was important for the department to keep issuing the subpoenas without a legal order to stop. “The pressure is on the end user, the private individual, to go to court,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security also sought more information on the Facebook and Instagram accounts dedicated to tracking ICE activity . . . . On Sept. 11, the Department of Homeland Security sent Meta a request for the name, email address, post code and other identifying information of the person or people behind the accounts. Meta informed the two Instagram and Facebook accounts of the request on Oct. 3.
“We have received legal process from law enforcement seeking information about your Facebook account,” the notification said, according to court records. “If we do not receive a copy of documentation that you have filed in court challenging this legal process within ten (10) days, we will respond to the requesting agency with information.”
The account owner alerted the A.C.L.U., which filed a motion on Oct. 16 to quash the government’s request. In a hearing on Jan. 14 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the A.C.L.U. argued that the government was using administrative subpoenas to target people whose speech it did not agree with. . . . Two days later, the subpoena was withdrawn.
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