False and misleading Trump claims in his speech

NY Times

MS NOW

Senator Elizabeth Warren

Coffee is up 18.3%

Ground beef is up 17.2%

Cereal is up 6.2

Bananas are up 5.4%

Fish is up 5.1%

Cookies are up 5%

OccupyDemocrats:  Yale Budget Lab estimates Trump's tariff taxes will cost the average family hundreds of dollars every single year. This is the largest tax increase in US history and Republicans voted to protect billionaires instead of stopping it.

Trump's own website 

 

Progressive presidential candidates

Pete Buttigieg

Kamala Harris

Gavin Newsom

Alexandria Ocasio-Corte

Presidential candidates

Pete Buttigieg: "About $1,000 is what his tariffs cost the average American household last year. And maybe to him and his billionaire allies, the kinds of people who got most of his tax cuts, that's not a lot of money. But of course to most Americans, $1,000 is a lot of money. You can't be tricked about that."

Housing

Newsweek - Almost 40,000 U.S. home-purchase agreements were canceled in January, the highest share for the month in records dating back to 2017, a new report found.  Real estate brokerage Redfin reported that 13.7 percent of homes that went under contract in January fell out of escrow, up from 13.1 percent a year earlier, based on an analysis of sales data going back to 2017.

The increase in cancellations underscores a national shift toward a buyer's market, where an excess of sellers and lingering affordability pressures are giving purchasers more leverage to walk away from deals.

Climate

NY Times - In a new book, “Plastic Inc.,” the journalist Beth Gardiner digs into an industry that mostly flies below the radar but has huge impacts on human health, environmental pollution and global warming. She reveals a set of corporate actors, including some well-known names like Exxon Mobil and Saudi Aramco, that are doing everything in their power to get the world to use as much plastic as possible.

It’s a sobering read that exposes disinformation campaigns, efforts to foist responsibility onto individual consumers and brutally effective political lobbying, all of it very similar to the playbooks used by Big Tobacco and Big Oil.

Polls

Independent, UK - Over two thirds of Americans, including a significant chunk of Republicans, think that Donald Trump has become “erratic” in his old age, a new poll has found.  Overall, 61 percent of respondents to the survey, conducted by Reuters/ Ipsos said that the 79-year-old president had “become erratic with age.” This included 30 percent of Republicans who were questioned.

Some 89 percent of Democrats agreed with the sentiment, as did 64 percent of independent voters, compared with 30 percent of Republicans. The poll was conducted in the days leading up to Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday

NY Times - A CNN poll, released on Monday, finds that the percentage of Americans who say that the president is focused on the wrong things went up to almost 70 percent from 55 percent in February 2025. Large majorities of young voters, independents and nonwhite voters — key constituencies that helped re-elect Mr. Trump — say that the president is not focused on the country’s most important issues.

While 47 percent of Americans approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, only 40 percent approve of his other immigration policies, according to a poll conducted last week by ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos. That is a 10-percentage-point drop since he took office.

And only 34 percent of Americans approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of tariffs, even as he moves to find ways around the Supreme Court ruling on Friday that struck many of them down.

PollingNumbers |
2028 presidential polls

🔴 Vance 51%
🔴 Rubio 15%


🔵 Newsom 21%
🔵 Harris 18%
🔵 AOC 11%
🔵 Buttigieg 11%

YouGov  

Meanwhile. . .

The Guardian -   The justice department sued the University of California, Los Angeles on Tuesday, alleging the university created a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff after protests against the war on Gaza broke out across campus.

NY  Times - Trump’s new tariffs on global imports went into effect yesterday at 10 percent, despite his pledge to impose a 15 percent rate.

NY Times - Fifteen states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over changes in federal vaccine recommendations saying the changes were not based on science.

Word

Via 

                      Via Glenn Tunes

Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump

NPR - The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.

Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.

NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR's investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.

Marijuana

Nautilus  - As marijuana use among teens has grown in the past decade, researchers have been trying to better understand the health risks of the drug. Now, a new longitudinal study finds that cannabis use among adolescents increases risks of being diagnosed with bipolar and psychotic disorders, as well as anxiety and depression, years later.

"This is very, very, very worrying," says psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Sultan at Columbia University, a cannabis researcher who wasn't involved in the new study published in the latest JAMA Health Forum.

Researchers analyzed health data on 460,000 teenagers in the Kaiser Permanente Health System in Northern California. The teens were followed until they were 25 years old. The data included annual screenings for substance use and any mental health diagnoses from the health records. Researchers excluded the adolescents who had symptoms of mental illnesses before using cannabis.....

They found that the teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were at a higher risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later, compared to teens who didn't use cannabis.

Most and least diverse cities

WalletHub - To determine the places in the U.S. with the most mixed demographics, WalletHub compared the profiles of more than 500 of the largest cities across five major diversity categories: socioeconomic, cultural, economic, household and religious.
 

Most Diverse Cities in America	Least Diverse Cities in America
1. Silver Spring, MD	492. Derry, NH
2. Gaithersburg, MD	493. Dover, NH
3. Arlington, TX	494. Anaconda, MT
4. Germantown, MD	495. Lebanon, NH
5. Houston, TX	496. Morgantown, WV
6. New York, NY	497. Bangor, ME
7. Danbury, CT	498. Brattleboro, VT
8. Charlotte, NC	499. North Platte, NE
9. Los Angeles, CA	500. Keene, NH
10. Orlando, FL	501. Rochester, NH

 
To view the full report and your city’s rank

Record 36% of Unemployed Americans Hold 4-Year College Degree

Headline USA - A record 36 percent of unemployed Americans aged 25 and older now hold four year college degrees, marking the highest share ever recorded, according to Bloomberg analysis. The figure comes from Bloomberg examination of Bureau of Labor Statistics data for January 2026. Specifically, 36.6 percent of unemployed Americans aged 25 and above possessed bachelor’s degrees or higher. Bloomberg columnist Justin Fox noted this partly reflects that college degree holders now comprise a larger share of the overall labor force, with 45.4 percent of employed Americans 25 and older holding bachelor’s degrees in January.

Ukraine

The Guardian -  Russia will be able to keep fighting against Ukraine throughout 2026 despite emerging economic and manpower pressures, while its missile and drone threat to Europe is growing, according to a leading military thinktank. Even if these pressures cause Moscow to cut back on military spending this year, it would come after this expenditure “doubled in real terms since 2021”, said Fenella McGerty, a defence finance expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

ICE

The Hill - A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) whistleblower accused the agency of lying about shortchanging its training, including legal training over whether they are permitted to use deadly force, amid a hiring surge of new officers.

Ryan Schwank, a former lawyer for ICE, said training for new officers has been pared down to the point where it is “deficient, defective and broken” during a forum organized by congressional Democrats about “constitutional violations and abuses” within ICE policies. He accused ICE leaders of shielding training shortcuts from the public.

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.

Iran

Washington Post  - As the Trump administration weighs an attack on Iran, the Pentagon’s top general has cautioned President Donald Trump and other officials that shortfalls in critical munitions and a lack of support from allies will add significant risk to the operation and to U.S. personnel, according to people familiar with internal discussions.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed his concerns at a White House meeting last week with Trump and his top aides, these people said, cautioning that any major operation against Iran will face challenges because the U.S. munitions stockpile has been significantly depleted by Washington’s ongoing defense of Israel and support for Ukraine. Caine’s remarks at the White House meeting have not been previously reported.

The Guardian - Trump Iran airstrikes decision to be guided by Kushner and Witkoff’s advice

President has not yet made a final decision on any strikes as the US prepares for ‘last-ditch’ negotiations on Thursday. Plus, most US adults feel the country is moving in the wrong direction

A bit of presidential history

   

Via Annie

Trump Regime

Shortlysts - The Education Department announced it’s handing over more programs to other federal agencies, moving President Trump closer to his goal of shutting down the department, bypassing congressional approval.

The Department of Health and Human Services will now manage grant programs sending millions to schools for safety and community engagement, while the State Department takes over tracking foreign gifts to universities.

Notably absent from the transfers is special education. Education Secretary Linda McMahon stated her intention to move special education programs, which manage billions in grants and oversee compliance with disability law, to HHS, but the new agreements carefully avoid that third rail. The department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services remains untouched for now.

The future of transferred programs appears uncertain, as Trump’s 2026 budget request proposes zeroing out funding for five of the six programs moving to HHS. In December, some grant recipients were notified their funding would not continue, ending those initiatives as federal support expired.

Polls

Center for Western Priorites  -  Both Project 2025 and the second Trump administration’s actions over the past year are deeply unpopular with Westerners. In the 16th annual Colorado College State of the Rockies Project Conservation in the West poll, conducted in January 2026, 84 percent of Western voters described rollbacks of protections for public lands as a serious problem, and 86 percent described funding cuts as a serious problem—including 75 percent of self-identified MAGA supporters. This is a clear and overwhelming rejection of the Trump administration’s overarching agenda for national public lands.

Similarly, voters are not fooled by the administration’s stubborn efforts to force a return to reliance on coal and other fuels of the past. In the Conservation in the West poll, when asked to indicate their preferred energy source to encourage in their state, a mere seven percent of Western voters ranked coal as their first or second choice. 

The Guardian - Most US adults think Donald Trump is moving the country in the wrong direction during his second presidency, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released the day before his State of the Union speech. Fifty-five percent of adults feel that Trump is changing the country for the worse, a 13-point increase from around the same time of his first presidency, the survey conducted from 27 to 30 January found.

Axios 

• 58% of Americans don't trust AI much or at all. 63% say AI will decrease the number of jobs in the U.S., according to an Economist/YouGov poll out last week.
• In a separate YouGov survey out in December, 77% of Americans were concerned AI could pose a threat to humanity. It's one thing to fear higher taxes. It's another thing to worry about the existence of your species!
• 79% of Americans don't trust companies to use AI responsibly, a Bentley-Gallup survey found. 

The governor who gets to talk after Trump

The Hill -  Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) is set to take the national stage following Trump’s address when she gives the Democratic response to the State of the Union. Spanberger’s selection continues what has been a notable few months for her.

She easily won Virginia’s gubernatorial race in November to become the commonwealth’s first female governor, flipping the governor’s mansion from red to blue. Her victory was seen as a sign of strong Democratic turnout heading into the midterms, as well as her own political prowess.

Now, she’s the latest in a line of high-profile figures who have given the opposition party’s official response to the president’s address. While those who have given the response have had mixed political futures, they all were seen as rising stars within their party when they were chosen.

Spanberger’s speech is one of several ways Democrats are planning to respond and protest Trump’s address Tuesday.

Several House and Senate Democrats plan to skip Trump’s speech entirely to attend other events opposing his agenda. One of them is a counterrally called the “People’s State of the Union,” held on the National Mall.

Democrats are also expected to invite various guests to the speech to call attention to controversies of Trump’s presidency, including survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and those impacted by immigration enforcement actions.

Meanwhile. . .

NPR - Scientists discovered a new species of large, horned, fish-eating Spinosaurus dinosaur — the first in over a century. The dinosaur species dates back to the Jurassic period, over 140 million years ago.

Immigration

Independent, UK - A former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer who was responsible for training new deportation officers warned Monday that the agency's training program for new recruits is “deficient, defective and broken.”

Ryan Schwank's comments during a forum held by congressional Democrats come at a time of intense scrutiny of the officers tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. Critics, including rights groups and Democratic politicians, have accused deportation officers of using excessive force when arresting immigrants, attacking bystanders who record their conduct and failing to follow constitutional protections of people's rights.

The Department of Homeland Security is rapidly scaling up the number of deportation officers, raising concerns that it will sacrifice proper screening and training of applicants in a rush to get them into the field. The department denied it was cutting corners, saying new officers get trained on firearms, use-of-force policies and how to safely arrest people.

NPR - A new federal class action lawsuit alleges federal agents are unconstitutionally retaliating against observers recording immigration enforcement. The nonprofit Protect Democracy and the law firms Dunn Isaacson Rhee and Drummond Woodsum filed the suit, alleging that federal  agents are gathering information about observers and labeling them as “domestic terrorists” after telling them they would be added to a “watchlist.” After the lawsuit was filed yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security told NPR that it doesn’t have a database for domestic terrorists. DHS also said that it follows the U.S. Constitution in its law enforcement methods.

Donald Trump

NPR - Millions of pages of Epstein files have been released to the public, but an NPR investigation reveals a gap: The Justice Department has removed or withheld dozens of pages related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor decades ago. The Justice Department declined to answer NPR's questions on the record about these specific files, what's in them, and why they are not published.

NPR's Stephen Fowler tells Up First that an NPR review of the files found an FBI email from last July listing various claims and tips it received about Trump. One report accused Trump of sexually abusing a minor around 1983, when Jeffrey Epstein also allegedly abused her. A field office investigated the report, and the records show the FBI interviewed the accuser four times. Only one of the accuser’s interviews was made public, but it doesn’t mention Trump. According to the DOJ’s tracking system, the Justice Department did not make at least 50 pages of the files public. The White House and the Trump administration have consistently stated that nothing in the documents incriminates the president. 

Tariffs

NBC News - FedEx is suing the Trump administration for tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruled the president had exceeded his authority in deploying sweeping taxes on almost all U.S. trading partners. Trump’s reworked global tariffs took effect today at a rate of 10%, even though he said over the weekend that they would start at 15%.

Presidential candidates

Headline USA -  California Gov. Gavin Newsom drew ridicule Monday after making condescending comments to a crowd at an Atlanta forum with Mayor Andre Dickens.

Newsom was in Atlanta promoting his book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, reflecting on his upbringing, during which he compared himself to attendees in a way critics called tone-deaf and even racist. 

“I’m not trying to impress you, I’m just trying to impress upon you, ‘I’m like you. I’m not better than you.’ I’m a 960 SAT guy,” Newsom told Dickens, who is black. 

“And I’m not trying to offend anyone. I’m not trying to act all there if you got 940 … You’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech,” he added, as quoted by the New York Post.

Critics pounced on Newsom’s below-average 960 SAT score, noting that his analogy felt especially patronizing coming in Atlanta, a predominantly black city. 

Among the critics was rapper and Trump supporter Nicki Minaj, who wrote on X: 

“His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read,” Minaj wrote on X. “This means my first read on him was correct. He’s been handed so many things & put in high positions he never earned or deserved.” 

Trump’s Plan to Twist the News

Trump Insiders Briefing Against the President’s War Plans

.Tom Latchem, Daily Beast -  Trump insiders appear to be running a briefing campaign against the president’s Iran war plans—and they are not being subtle about it.

Over roughly 48 hours beginning Sunday, at least five major news outlets each received strikingly similar tip-offs from anonymous U.S. officials warning that a major military operation against Iran would carry grave risks.

As the Daily Beast reported on Monday, Trump’s indecision over whether to bomb Iran is sending the Pentagon into meltdown.

The USS Gerald R. Ford—the U.S.’s largest warship, already at sea since last June—has entered the Mediterranean and is expected to be within striking distance of Iran within days. Plane-tracking data has registered multiple flights toward Diego Garcia, the U.S. military base in the Chagos Islands, south of Iran across the Arabian Sea.

The U.S. has also moved 13 guided-missile destroyers into Middle Eastern and Mediterranean waters to counter Iranian threats, according to reports. Diplomatic talks between U.S. envoys and Iranian officials are scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.

Trump’s flip-flopping appears to have led officials to begin issuing ominous briefings against an Iran strike on Sunday, when the New York Times reported that the president, 79, was weighing a limited strike “in the coming days,” citing officials and sources familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations, all of whom spoke anonymously.

By Monday, Axios had spoken to two sources with direct knowledge who said Gen. Dan Caine—the Joint Chiefs chairman and Trump’s most trusted military adviser—had privately been warning that any Iran campaign risked dragging the U.S. into a prolonged conflict. The same report revealed that Vice President JD Vance, as well as envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, had each separately urged the president to give diplomacy more time.

Polls

PBS - More than three-quarters of Americans say that the issues that divide the United States pose a serious threat to the future of the nation's democracy, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist Poll. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said there is a serious threat to American democracy, a concern shared by a majority of all political parties.

Interactive Polls
NATIONAL POLL By CNN/SSRS

Pres. Trump Approve: 36% (-27) Disapprove: 63% —— • White: 45-55 (-10) • Black: 21-79 (-58) • Hispanic: 22-77 (-55) — • GOP: 82-18 (+64) • Dem: 5-95 (-90) • Indie: 26-73 (-47) — • College: 28-71 (-43) • No college: 41-58 (-17) --- • Age 18-34: 25-74 (-49) • Age 35-49: 35-64 (-29) • Age 50-64: 46-53 (-7) • Age 42-58 (-16) — • White College: 32-68 (-36) • White no college: 54-46 (+8) — • Men: 40-60 (-20) • Women: 33-66 (-33) https://

Newsweek - A survey by The Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos, found that 60 percent of U.S. adults disapprove of the president while 39 percent approve of him, leaving him with a net approval rating of -21 percentage points.

                                Via The Data of Everything

Via Thursday

Student loan defaults leap

Newsweek - Student loan delinquency has climbed to roughly 25 percent of borrowers with payments due during the first year of the current Trump administration, according to new analysis.

Researchers from The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers said the sharp rise in missed payments, nearly triple the pre-coronavirus pandemic rate, has pushed millions into default risk and lowered credit scores, warning of broader financial fallout for households and colleges facing higher nonpayment rates. 

More than 42 million Americans hold student loan debts, according to the Education Data Initiative.

The analysis estimated nearly 9 million borrowers, about one in five, are in default, exposing them to potential wage garnishment and tax refund offsets, though some federal collection tools have been paused.

Being in default on a student loan generally means you have failed to make payments for an extended period and the loan is considered seriously delinquent. For most federal student loans issued by the U.S. Department of Education, a borrower enters default after 270 days, about nine months, of nonpayment.

The delinquency rate for borrowers with payments due reached about 25 percent, nearly three times the 2019 rate, after the end of the pandemic-era protections and subsequent policy changes during 2025.