Something to Know - 20 February

Remember when a great newspaper declared on its banner page that it had all of "news that is fit to print"?   Today, it is very difficult to find great newspapers, and many newspapers are threatened with financial problems.   We are left with news organizations owned by financial corporations whose business plan is influencing public opinion, not journalism.   The same thing is now happening to television news.   We see it every day.   Trump is even carrying out his retribution agenda by clamping down on the freedoms afforded by the Constitution.   Some of the "stuff" gets out.    Public attention generated by marches, protests, and similar actions brings some truth to power news.   Newsletters are one level of rousing public attention.   Substack writers, and some gifted editorial writers offer an avenue for knowledge.    Take for instance HCR today.   You will learn more about "stuff" that you did not know before.

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>	9:42 PM (41 minutes ago)
to me

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more February 19, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Feb 20   READ IN APP   In the United Kingdom this morning, Thames Valley Police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, on suspicion that he committed misconduct in public office. Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles last October because of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice suggest that when Mountbatten-Windsor represented the United Kingdom as a trade envoy, he gave confidential government documents to Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor's arrest is the first arrest of a senior royal since 1647, when supporters of Parliament arrested King Charles I during the English Civil War. Today is Mountbatten-Windsor's 66th birthday. King Charles III said the investigations into his brother have his "wholehearted" support and that Buckingham Palace will cooperate. He said that "the law must take its course." In South Korea, Seoul Central District Court Judge Jee Kui-youn sentenced former president of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison after he was found guilty of leading an insurrection against the government. With his approval rating plummeting as his administration was engulfed by scandals, on December 3, 2024, Yoon declared martial law and tried to paralyze the parliament by using troops to blockade the National Assembly building and arrest opposition politicians. As Lim Hui Jie reported for CNBC, five other conspirators have also received prison sentences of up to 30 years. During the trial, prosecutors told the court that Yoon had declared martial law "with the purpose of remaining in power for a long time by seizing the judiciary and legislature." Yoon claimed that he was within his constitutional authority to declare martial law and that he did so to "safeguard freedom and sovereignty." After Yoon declared martial law, 190 of the 300 lawmakers in the National Assembly fought their way into the chamber and overturned his edict, forcing Yoon to back down about six hours after his martial law announcement. Lawmakers impeached him 11 days later and removed him from office. Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty for Yoon. The judge said that in sentencing Yoon, he had taken into consideration that Yoon is 65 and that he did not order his troops to use lethal force during the period in which he declared martial law. In Washington, D.C., today, President Donald J. Trump held the first meeting of his so-called Board of Peace at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), newly renamed the "Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace," a change being legally challenged. Last year, officials from the Trump administration seized the USIP building, which housed an independent entity created by Congress in 1984, and fired nearly all the employees. Trump has made it clear he wants his new board to replace the United Nations. Twenty-seven countries have said they will participate, but so far none appear to have tossed in the $1 billion that would give them permanent status. The countries participating include Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Trump extended invitations to Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russia's president Vladimir Putin, both of whom have been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Trump withdrew an invitation to the board from Canada after Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced Trump's foreign policy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, so Canada is out. Rejecting Trump's invitation are Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the Vatican. They cite their continuing support for the United Nations, concerns about Russian influence in Trump's board, and concerns about the board's organization, which gives Trump final say in all decisions, including how to spend the board's money. Today, Trump announced that the U.S. will put $10 billion into the Board of Peace, although since Congress is the only body that can legally appropriate money in our system, it's unclear how he intends to do this. The event at the board appeared to be the Trump Show. Representatives from the countries who had accepted Trump's invitation stood awkwardly on stage waiting for him while his favorite songs blared. Once he arrived, he rambled for an hour and then appeared to fall asleep at points in the meeting as dignitaries spoke. Lena Sun and Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post reported today that having pulled out of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Trump administration has called for creating an alternative run by the U.S. that would recreate WHO systems. The cost would be $2 billion a year funded through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), up from the $680 million the U.S. provided to the WHO. The secretary of HHS is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Public health experts told the journalists it was unlikely that any new U.S.-based system could match the reach of the WHO. Director Tom Inglesby of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said: "Spending two to three times the cost to create what we already had access to makes absolutely no sense in terms of fiscal stewardship. We're not going to get the same quality or breadth of information we would have by being in the WHO, or have anywhere [near] the influence we had." Only sovereign nations can join the WHO, but California, Illinois, New York, and Wisconsin, as well as New York City, have joined the WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network. Today Trump's Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump's 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump's plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative. According to CNN's Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the "greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world." Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors. Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building. On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. "Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?" Trump answered: "Well, you know I'm the expert in a way, because I've been totally exonerated. It's very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it's a shame. I think it's very sad. I think it's so bad for the royal family. It's very, very sad to me. It's a very sad thing. When I see that, it's a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what's going on with his brother, who's obviously coming to our country very soon and he's a fantastic man. King. So I think it's a very sad thing. It's really interesting 'cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I'm the one that can talk about it because I've been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents." In fact, Trump has not been exonerated. When he got to Georgia, Trump's economic message was that "I've won affordability." More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, "We'll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won't lose a race." —

--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC

Andy Borowitz

The Borowitz Report <borowitzreport@substack.com>  Unsubscribe	11:23 AM (1 hour ago)
to me

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Trump Says Andy's Arrest Sets Dangerous Precedent of Pedophiles Facing Consequences Andy Borowitz Feb 19   READ IN APP   Trump refused to comment on the character of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, stating, "I never met him." (Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images) WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A visibly shaken Donald J. Trump told reporters on Thursday that the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor set a dangerous precedent of pedophiles facing consequences. "King Charles released a statement where he said no one is above the law," he said. "That was a horrible thing to say." Calling Andrew's arrest "disgraceful," Trump said it had made him "rethink the whole idea of becoming king." "If you can be a member of the royal family and still get arrested, what's the point in having a crown?" he said. "You're better off just having your own supreme court."

--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC

Something to Know - 19 February

Continuing the worst governance in US history, spreading the truth that exposes faulty, or deliberate policies by the White House, Trump and his minions seek to punish the truth-tellers.

Geddry's Newsletter a Publication of nGenium <marygeddry@substack.com>	2:34 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more A Regime at War With Arithmetic As the Fed warns inflation may prove stubborn, Trump's team calls for punishment of economists who say tariffs raise prices. Mary Geddry Feb 18   READ IN APP   The Trump administration is now doing that thing authoritarian movements always do when reality refuses to cooperate: it's trying to discipline the economists. This week, Kevin Hassett, director of Trump's National Economic Council and longtime court jester of trickle-down economics, went on CNBC to denounce a New York Federal Reserve study that committed the unforgivable sin of noticing something true about tariffs. The study found that in 2025, nearly 90 percent of the cost of Trump's levies has been paid not by foreign exporters, not by China, not by some mythical overseas villain, but by American businesses and consumers. Tariffs are doing what tariffs have always done since the dawn of trade policy: acting like taxes. Hassett's response was not to dispute the findings with evidence, or commission competing research, or even pretend to be having a normal grown-up policy disagreement. Instead, he declared the paper "an embarrassment," called it "the worst" in the history of the Federal Reserve system, and suggested that the economists involved should be "disciplined." Not debated or challenged, punished. Apparently the real problem here is not that tariffs raise prices; the real problem is that someone wrote it down. The timing is almost too perfect. Just hours later, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its January policy meeting, and they read like a calm, bureaucratic dispatch from the last remaining adults in the room. Fed officials warned that progress toward the inflation target "might be slower and more uneven than generally expected," and that the risk of inflation remaining persistently above 2 percent is "meaningful." Meaningful, persistent, and uneven. These are not the words of a central bank preparing to throw a "Mission Accomplished" banner over the CPI chart. The Fed held rates steady after three straight cuts, and the minutes make clear that most policymakers are in no hurry to resume easing. Some even noted that a rate hike could be appropriate if inflation stays above target. Which is central banker code for: please stop screaming at us to cut rates while you light price pressures on fire. The minutes also reveal something else: the Fed is increasingly focused on inflation rather than employment. Officials no longer see major downside risk in the labor market. In their view, hiring has stabilized. The bigger danger is price growth that refuses to behave. Hovering behind all of this, like a foghorn in the background, are the tariffs. Policymakers expressed cautious confidence that the effect of tariffs on prices should decline this year, but they also cited business contacts who expect tariffs and demand pressures to keep fueling price increases. Translation: companies are still telling the Fed that tariffs are making things more expensive, no matter how many times the White House insists foreign exporters are politely paying the bill out of gratitude. So here is the collision course. The administration needs tariffs to be politically magical: a tax foreigners pay, a free lunch that funds government revenue while boosting domestic wages, a patriotic cheat code that somehow produces prosperity with no cost. Hassett even claimed consumers are "made better off" by tariffs, a statement so upside-down it belongs on an Econ 101 exam with a big red circle around it and the words "Kevin, please see me after class." The Fed, inconveniently, lives in the world of arithmetic. Tariffs raise costs. Businesses pass them along. Inflation does not care about campaign messaging. When economists publish research confirming what decades of trade literature already suggest, that Americans bear most of the burden, the administration does not respond with analysis. It responds with threats as part of a pattern so obvious you could set it to a metronome. Trump has attacked Jay Powell personally, calling him a "moron" and a "stubborn mule." His Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the Fed chair. He has attempted to remove Fed officials. He has already sacked the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report. Now his top economic adviser is floating the idea that Fed economists should be disciplined for publishing data-driven conclusions. Talk about institutional capture. It begins with the insistence that experts are partisan. It escalates into punishment for analysis. And eventually, the only "acceptable" economics is whatever flatters the leader's preferred storyline. The danger here is larger than one working paper or one set of meeting minutes. The entire monetary system depends on credibility, credible data, credible analysis, credible independence. Markets can survive bad news. They cannot survive a government that tries to break the instruments measuring the news. The Fed is telling us inflation progress may be uneven. The New York Fed is telling us Americans are paying the tariff bill, and the White House is telling us the economists should be disciplined for noticing.

--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC

Something to Know - 18 February (Part 2)

HCR's newsletter is a follow up with information related to hos Trump is driving our business community into the ground.  Also, the international community is backing away from dealing with American markets.   This is not good news.   The Trump administration is opently declaring that we are a White Christian Nation and is changing rules and laws to accommodate it.   Of course this blatantly defies the Constitution—which his administration does at least 20 times a day—but it causes many to wonder who we are and where we are going.   Of course, others know and are working to stop it.

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>  Unsubscribe	9:08 PM (23 minutes ago)
to me

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more February 17, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Feb 18   READ IN APP   Trump's White House website welcomes visitors with a pop-up that reads: "WELCOME TO THE GOLDEN AGE!" But on this heavy news day a year into Trump's second term, it is increasingly clear that as his regime focuses on committing the United States to white Christian nationalism, the country is becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, and its own economy is weakening. At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's endorsement of white Christian nationalism does not appear to have swayed European countries to abandon their defense of democracy and join the U.S.'s slide toward authoritarianism. Instead, as retired lieutenant general and former commander of U.S. Army Europe Mark Hertling wrote, it squandered the strategic advantage its partnership with Europe has given the U.S. Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted that the word in Munich was that "Europe needs to emancipate itself from the U.S. as fast as possible." In Germany, Der Spiegel reports plans to bring Ukrainian veterans to teach German armed forces drone use and counter-drone practices the Ukrainians are perfecting in their war against Russian occupation. Canada's prime minister Mark Carney is working to reduce Canada's defense dependence on the U.S., ramping up domestic defense production. Carney has advanced a foreign policy that centers "middle powers" and operates without the U.S. That global reorientation has profound consequences for the U.S. economy, as well. Canada is leading discussions between the European Union and a 12-nation Indo-Pacific bloc to form one of the globe's largest economic alliances. A new agreement would enable the countries to share supply chains and to share a low-tariff system. Canada also announced it is renewing its partnership with China. As of this week, Canadians can travel to China without a visa. Today France's president Emmanuel Macron and India's prime minister Narendra Modi upgraded Indian-French relations to a "Special Strategic Partnership" during a three-day visit of Macron to Mumbai. They have promised to increase cooperation between the two countries in defense, trade, and critical materials. Trump insisted that abandoning the free trade principles under which the U.S. economy had boomed since World War II would enable the U.S. to leverage its extraordinary economic might through tariffs, but it appears, as economist Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute wrote today for Bloomberg, that the rest of the world is simply moving on without the U.S. While Trump boasts about the U.S. stock market, which is indeed up, U.S. markets have underperformed markets in other countries. Today, Carl Quintanilla of CNBC reported that the S&P 500, which measures 500 of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S., is off to its worst year of performance since 1995 when compared to the All Country World Index (ACWI), an index that measures global stocks. In May 2023 the Florida legislature passed a law requiring employers with 25 or more employees to confirm that their workers are in the U.S. legally. The new law prompted foreign farmworkers and construction workers to leave the state. Now, the Wall Street Journal reported in a February 6 editorial, employers "are struggling to find workers they can employ legally." The newspaper continued: "There's little evidence that undocumented migrants are taking jobs from Americans. The reality is that employers can't find enough Americans willing to work in the fields or hang drywall, even at attractive wages. Farm hands in Florida who work year-round earn roughly $47,000, which is more than what some young college graduates earn." "The lesson for President Trump is that businesses can't grow if government takes away their workers," the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board concluded. Today Florida attorney general James Uthmeier reacted to the Wall Street Journal editorial, explaining on Fox Business that the Republican Party expects to replace undocumented workers with young Americans: "We need to focus on our state college program, our trade schools, getting people into the workforce even earlier. We passed legislation last year to help high school students get their hands dirty and get on job sites more quickly. So I think there's a lot more we can do with apprenticeships, rolling out, beefing up our workforce, and trying to address the demand that is undoubtedly here in the state." Steve Kopack of NBC News reported on February 11 that while the U.S. added 1.46 million jobs in 2024, the last year of former president Joe Biden's administration, it added just 181,000 jobs in 2025. That makes 2025 the worst year for hiring since 2003, aside from the worst year of the coronavirus pandemic. Manufacturing lost 108,000 jobs in 2025. Peter Grant of the Wall Street Journal reported today that banks that have loaned money to finance the purchase of commercial real estate are requiring borrowers to pay back tens of billions of dollars as the delinquency rate for such loans has climbed to a high not seen since just after the 2008 financial crisis. About $100 billion in commercial real estate loans that have been packaged into securities will come due this year and probably won't repay when they should. More than half of the loans are likely headed for foreclosure or liquidation. Trump vowed that he would cut "waste, fraud, and abuse" out of the country's government programs, but cuts to social programs have been overwhelmed by spending on federal arrest, detention, and deportation programs, as well as Trump's expansion of military strikes and threats against other countries. In his first year back in office, Trump launched at least 658 air and drone strikes against Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Just today, U.S. Southern Command announced it struck three boats in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean yesterday and killed 11 people it claims were smuggling drugs, bringing the total of such strikes to more than 40 and the number of dead to more than 130. Now Trump is moving American forces toward Iran, threatening to target the regime there. The administration is simply tacking the cost of these military adventures onto government expenditures, apparently still maintaining that the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations Republicans extended in their July "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" and tariffs will address the growing deficit and national debt by increasing economic growth. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week projected that the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, will be $1.85 trillion. Richard Rubin of the Wall Street Journal notes that for every dollar the U.S. collects this year, it will spend $1.33. The CBO explained that the Republican tax cuts will increase budget deficits by $4.7 trillion through 2035. If the American people have suffered from Trump's reign, the Trump family continues to cash in. Today Trump's chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Michael Selig, announced he will try to block states from regulating prediction markets, saying they "provide useful functions for society by allowing everyday Americans to hedge commercial risks like increases in temperature and energy price spikes." Republicans insist that prediction markets are more like stock trading than like betting, but a group of over 20 Democratic senators warned last week in a letter to Selig that prediction market platforms, where hundreds of millions of dollars are wagered every week, "are offering contracts that mirror sportsbook wagers and, in some cases, contracts tied to war and armed conflict." They added that the platforms "evade state and tribal consumer protections, generate no public revenue, and undermine sovereign regulatory regimes," and urged Selig to support regulations Congress has already put into law. Prediction markets also cover the actions of President Trump, whose son Don Jr. is both an advisor to and an investor in Polymarket and a paid advisor to Kalshi. Polymarket and Kalshi are the two biggest prediction markets, and both are less regulated than betting sites. The Trump family has announced it is starting its own "Truth Predict." David Uberti of the Wall Street Journal reported that Eric Trump is investing heavily in drones, particularly in Israeli drone maker Xtend, which has a $1.5 billion deal to merge with a small Florida construction company to take the company public. The Defense Department has invited Xtend to be part of its drone expansion program. And yet it is clear the administration fears the American people. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), a statewide program that specializes in police shootings, said yesterday that it has received formal notice that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will not allow it any "access to information or evidence that it has collected" related to the shooting death of Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti. The BCA says it will continue to investigate and to pursue legal avenues to get access to the FBI files. Fury at ICE continues to mount, with voices from inside the government complaining about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, Jonathan Allen, and Julia Ainsley of NBC News reported today on her alienation of senior officials at the Coast Guard as she has shifted their primary mission of search and rescue to flying deportation flights. Noem's abrupt removal of Coast Guard commandant Linda Fagan only to move into her vacated housing at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling herself also rankled, along with Noem's lavish use of expensive Coast Guard planes. Daniel Lippman and Adam Wren of Politico reported today that Noem's spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, is resigning. Marissa Payne of the Des Moines Register reported today that in Iowa, Republican state lawmakers are working to rein in the power of the state governor before the 2026 elections, a sure sign that they are worried that a Democrat is going to win the election. That fear appears to be part of a larger concern that the American people have turned against the Republicans more generally. Last night, late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert told viewers he had been unable to air an interview he did with a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas, James Talarico. "I was told…that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on," Colbert said. "And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about this." Talarico is a Texas state lawmaker studying to be a minister, who criticizes the Republican use of Christianity as a political weapon. Such politicization of Christianity both distorts politics and cheapens faith, he says. The true way to practice Christianity is simple but not easy, he says: it is to love your neighbor. Political positions should grow out of that to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and heal the sick. "[T]here is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism," he told Colbert. "It is the worship of power in the name of Christ, and it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth." Although Talarico is locked in a tight primary battle with Representative Jasmine Crockett, his message offers a powerful off-ramp for evangelicals uncomfortable with the administration, especially its cover-up of the Epstein files. Without evangelical support, MAGA Republicans cannot win elections. Talarico has the administration nervous enough that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation of the morning talk show The View after Talarico appeared on the show earlier this month. Lawyer Adam Bonin explained that Carr changed the FCC's enforcement of the Equal Time Rule (which is not the Fairness Doctrine). It says that when broadcast networks (not cable) give air time to someone running for office, they have to give the same time to any other candidate for that office. The obvious exception is when a candidate does something newsworthy outside the race, in which case a network can interview that person without interviewing everyone else. For 20 years, that rule has applied to talk shows, but Carr announced last month that if a non-news talk show seems to be "motivated by partisan purposes," then it will not be exempt. For Colbert's show, it would have meant that after interviewing Talarico, the network would have had to give equal time to all other Democrats and Republicans running for the Senate seat. CBS could have challenged the rule but chose not to. Why is the administration worried about Talarico in a state Trump won in 2024 by 14%? "I think that Donald Trump is worried that we're about to flip Texas," Talarico said. "Across the state there is a backlash growing to the extremism and the corruption in our politics…. It's a people-powered movement to take back our state and take back our country." As of 10:00 tonight, Colbert's 15-minute interview with Talarico has been viewed on YouTube 3.8 million times. Forbes says it is Colbert's most watched interview in months. —

--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC