
Minneapolis is no longer acting alone. Following the arrest of Don Lemon yesterday the standoff at the Whipple Building has evolved into a multi-city mobilization. The “Surge” was supposed to demonstrate force; instead, it created martyrs.
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Attribution: Trump distractions by Dave Whamond, Canada, PoliticalCartoons.com
Dave Whamonds work has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest and many more. He has won 7 Silver Reubens from the National Cartoonists Society and several book awards. Dave has written and/or illustrated over 50 books and his syndicated comic, “Reality Check”, has appeared in newspapers since 1995.
https://trending.knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/
huh? Be Pretti Good is pro-ICE? I saw it yesterday on protester signs. It started with “Be Good” in solidarity with Renee. Then they added Pretti after his killing.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Our daily ‘ELEVEN TO NOON’ live chat airs today at 11:00 AM ET on YouTube. JOIN the chatroom here — or WATCH yesterday’s show here.
What America is Clicking: January 31, 2026
— Silas
Open Thread: With 3 million pages released, is this the “transparency” we were promised, or just a massive data dump designed to bury the truth in redactions?
We dig into the data behind the noise — special dispatch
THE EPSTEIN ALMANAC: New Revelations & Redaction Wars
The Department of Justice has officially declared the end of its “comprehensive document review” with a massive Friday dump of 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images. While the DOJ frames this as the ultimate act of transparency under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the sheer volume of newly unsealed material has created a fresh wave of scrutiny—specifically regarding unvetted FBI tips and digital forensics from Epstein’s private devices.
Rather than a definitive “client list,” the cache presents a chaotic mosaic of corroborated interactions, anonymous allegations, and internal DOJ debates over what constitutes a “fake” tip versus an investigative lead. For the first time, we are seeing the raw logs of the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC), which acted as a clearinghouse for every lead—sensational or otherwise—collected over the last two decades.
What Supports the “New Information” Narrative
The NTOC logs provide the first public look at unvetted sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump, including an anonymous tip detailing an alleged forced encounter with a 13-year-old girl in the early 90s. While the DOJ explicitly labeled these tips “sensationalist and false” in their cover letter to Congress, the files confirm the FBI maintained these records as part of the formal case file for years.
New digital forensics from 2012-2013 show Elon Musk explicitly asking Epstein, “What day/night will be the wildest party on [y]our island?” while coordinating a helicopter trip. This directly complicates Musk’s previous public assertions that he had “repeatedly rebuffed” Epstein’s overtures.
Internal 2019 FBI reports describe a previously unknown “ruse” used by Metropolitan Correctional Center staff, who allegedly used boxes and sheets to mimic a body in a van to distract the media while Epstein’s actual remains were removed, raising new questions about the chain of custody immediately following his death.
What Challenges the “Transparency” Narrative
Despite the 3.5-million-page total, the DOJ admits that over 2.5 million pages identified as “potentially responsive” remain withheld or heavily redacted. Lawmakers are specifically pointing to the absence of a draft 60-count federal indictment from 2007 and the FBI’s “302” witness interview statements, which are widely believed to name high-profile co-conspirators.
A coalition of Epstein survivors has condemned the release, noting a “disturbing double standard” where the names of several victims were left unredacted while the names of prominent men accused in the same documents were obscured to protect “deliberative process privilege.”
The DOJ’s preemptive labeling of certain files as “fake”—specifically a letter from Epstein to Larry Nassar mentioning Trump—has led to accusations that the department is acting as a “narrative filter” rather than a neutral record-keeper.
Known / Not Known / Plausible
Sources
NOTES
Robins are having a block party outside my window this morning. Puffing up to stay warm and hunting for berries. First sign of spring or just a cruel myth?
Craig – The storylines are converging. The guy (Warsh) that tRUMPsky has picked to head up the Federal Reserve next is in the Epstein files. The SpaceX guy is also in the Epstein files.
https://ew.com/catherine-o-hara-had-rare-medical-condition-situs-inversus-dextrocardia-11896581
According to the National Library of Medicine, the rare congenital abnormality (also known as cardiac inversus, or dextrocardia with situs inversus) is a condition in which a person’s heart and other vital internal organs are located on the opposite side of their body. Essentially, their abdominal and thoracic organs are a “mirror-image” of what most people’s look like. The condition is asymptomatic on its own but can cause complications.
She explained that she learned about her diagnosis during a routine tuberculosis test with her husband, Bo Welch, before their son started nursery school. She realized something was off after taking an EKG when the nurse kept making her take new tests using different machines, and the doctor ultimately required her to get a chest X-ray.
*So, the house MAGAt read the headline & concluded that’s why she died. I told him the part about her having it her whole life and not even knowing & he is pissed because I negate everything he says. (I didn’t say it didn’t cause her problems later, just that she was born that way and found out later in life.)
Yesterday, he said we were taking the car, but then put something to take with us in the truck. I just said I thought we were taking the car. He went off on me & said he could drive whatever damned vehicle he wants. I told him I was just confused.
It is NOT safe here.
BiF, MAGAts are all about the Dunning Krueger Effect
Ghislaine Maxwell Claims 29 People Who Reached ‘Secret’ Epstein Settlements Were Not Indicted
Will she name names and are they in the recently released files under all those redactions?
Ghislaine Maxwell claimed in a habeas corpus petition that four co-conspirators and 25 men reached “secret settlements” related to the Jeffrey Epstein case but were not indicted
Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 and is seeking to have her conviction overturned
She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in a federal facility in Texas
BiD, living with a magat is living under siege. I 🙏you find a solution.
today’s meme…
I really like this Minneapolis Anthem
There’s no rationalizing the irrational.
Wonder what’s the chances that Stump purposely made sure that the wife was thoroughly under the bus.
She’s had him over a barrel for quite a while.
meme #2…
it’s cuz he knows he’s stupid and you confirm it
Snow Don’t Silence Us
i’m not a conspiracy theorist, but why did every powerful political person have a relationship with Epstein
but no people of color, huh?
https://www.newsweek.com/us-issues-warning-over-iran-military-drills-near-its-warships-11447397
The U.S. has warned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) it will not tolerate unsafe actions in the Strait of Hormuz, where Tehran has announced a two-day live-fire naval exercise.
The Epstein-Bannon connection exposed and why the “farmers market crowd” is finally marching in Minneapolis.
Plus: Jack’s 6-hour ER horror story (yes, they left the needle in his arm) and a live investigation into the “Maple MAGATs” of Alberta.
TODAY’S RUNDOWN
00:00 Intro: The Robins of Spring
02:15 Minneapolis Protests: The “Farmers Market” Crowd
06:40 Epstein Files: Trump, Bannon & Israel
14:15 Tom Morello’s Speech & Rage Against The Machine
18:00 Springsteen Blocked in Russia?
26:15 Jack’s ER Nightmare: 6 Hours & A Needle
39:00 Viewer Q: Is Alberta Leaving Canada?
43:15 AI Fact Check: The “Maple MAGATs”
Full Replay 🎥
good observation, anon.
Favorite TV segments on Saturdays are Ali Velshi’s Banned Book Club. Today’s feature was Greg Ketter, owner of DreamHaven Books and Comics in Minneapolis. Greg is the “old man” who went viral on the scene of Alex Pretti’s murder.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/99561-minneapolis-booksellers-resisting-ice-go-viral-sales-spike.html
i wish i knew all the cool libs were in Minneapolis earlier
Jack we were just talking about your experience and wondering what do rich people do for emergency room.care. they must have something like the concierge doctor system??
how rich
yeah private and concierge doctors
listen, medical professionals have to turn off their empathy to do their jobs properly and you need to advocate for yourself, which is difficult, but you gotta do it
I am surprised greedy hospitals haven’t come up with the idea for VIP emergency rooms for a huge up front fee. Or have they?
Deep Dive: The Trump Tips in the Epstein Files (Jan 30 Release)
Here are the specific allegations regarding Donald Trump that apparently worried him so much. DOJ labeled the claims “untrue and sensationalist,” noting they are raw, uncorroborated leads submitted to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center. But there is also no record these tips were ever investigated, so how can the DOJ be so sure they are not true?
Here is the itemized list of tips found in the file dump:
they call their private doctor on the way and that doctor manages care until they get there
they got networks, don’t need to advertise
Jack, I’m glad you’re okay. Is it possible they left that needle in just in case they’d need to run an IV and not have to poke you up again?
I’ve told it before, but I’m reminded of the time Mr. Ivy had to go to a hospital emergency room in poor rural lower Alabama. Conditions were abominable including the main entrance being collapsed, and patients entering through the loading dock.
The bad memories are flooding back. There was no pay phone available in the waiting room and no internet service or wifi. I was going crazy for 13 hours not knowing wtf was happening.
It was an eye-opening experience that Mr. Ivy still recounts as a witness to how terribly certain populations are treated under the health care system in parts of this country. It has only gotten worse since then.
Hey, Google, what are the special health care services that rich people get?
Willie just posted this song
for the knitters…Norwegian Resistance Hats
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/31/nx-s1-5693767/red-hat-protest-minnesota
IMG_3509
My favorite memory was a woman whose job was to come around to us periodically out in the waiting room and take our vital signs. She would go up and down the isles yelling peoples names. It was kind of a cross between the prompt you get when on hold that tells you how much they appreciate your business and this
100,000 people. One city. And a massive surprise: The Left and Right are marching together.
Our Minneapolis correspondent Katie reports on the ground about the unlikely alliance forming over 2A rights and lethal force.
Watch the clip from today’s ELEVEN TO NOON:
Ivy
you could probably make a similar hat with felt or fleece material, Mrs Jack made me several hats that way.
Jack
Sometimes it seems like our protest movement gets more coverage abroad…
France24 TV
France24 is legit
BBC operates like US captured media when they cover our politics for some reason
Jack, those are probably very warm hats in felt or fleece. Was Mrs. Jack a crafter? Sounds like she was a woman of many talents and skills.
Some folks are objecting to red hats for obvious reasons and wanting to make them in blue. Some are going to bring out their “pussy hats” from 2017. I still have that pattern.
My mom was a “private duty nurse” for part of her career which involves many hours of bed-side sitting, during which time she would knit. I have countless numbers of her crafts – hats, mittens, socks, sweaters, afghans – all of which I have kept. She was always a better and faster knitter than me.
On dealing with the healthcare system.
I know from watching my sister, the nurse, as she managed the healthcare system for first my mother and later for Sherry, an advocate is essential. unfortunately, most of us don’t have one nor are we lucky to know one. It used to be the job of your personal physician but now they work within the system and are no longer your doctor but an advocate for the system. The way my sister came in and got Sherry’s pain meds straightened out was a blessing. Unfortunately my sister is now dealing with her own health issues and in that role, she can’t advocate for herself, nobody listens to the patient.
Jack
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-coalition-peter-tatchell-arrest-b2911451.html
Mr Tatchell, 74, was arrested, it said, over a placard reading: “Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”
He said: “The police claimed the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in law.
“The police are engaged in overreach by making it an arrestable offence.
“This is part of a dangerous trend to increasingly restrict and criminalise peaceful protests.”
Mr Tatchell said “intifada”, an Arab word, means “uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza”.
He added: “It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.”
The Metropolitan Police said in December that protesters chanting “globalise the intifada” would be arrested because the “context has changed” in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack.
*His sign literally read “non-violent resistance.”
Mr Tatchell had been marching near police officers and with the sign on display for about a mile from Russell Square to the top of the Strand when the group came across a counterprotest, according to a witness.
At that point, he was stopped and “manhandled by 10 officers”, according to Jacky Summerfield, who was with him.
*Lights, camera, action!
CHARLES RAFFERTY
The Problem with Early Warnings
People don’t like to leave a party unless the house is actually on fire.
Even then, if the flames are far enough away to be pretty, they’ll finish their drink, take one more pass at the hors d’oeuvres.
How things happen has always been unclear.
Hurricanes begin in a place where no one lives.
Agents of the government start to wear masks.
Fascism is a word my neighbors won’t use yet.
They are following the law, they say, and the sirens are coming for someone else.
Tomorrow’s Starter Topic…
Forget the beauty pageant. The REAL action at Westminster happened on the agility course. 🐕💨
Tomorrow morning, we’re breaking down the “Mutt Mayhem.” It’s scruffy rescue dogs vs. pristine purebreds at top speed.
📺 Sunday @ 11:00 AM ET
a friend in a federal agency here just got his furlough notice, so I guess this next shutdown is really happening on Monday
I am in the market for athletic dog videos to put in a montage for watching the agility championship in chat tomorrow.
No video but there Is the story of Jim the wonder dog
Jack
DHS will be one of the departments in shutdown mode.
I do have a couple of videos
I forgot about Bo Dog. He was quite the athlete, a champion at the mad cross the street dash. He would wait for me to tell him when it was safe and then make a mad dash across the street leaping the final 5 feet as hard as he could. One time one of his feet came down on a sweet gum ball and he was injured. In one video the splint is obvious but in the other he is practicing his mad dash even injured.
just keep that right column closed
Legal status expiring soon:
• Haiti: February 3, 2026
• Ethiopia: February 13, 2026
• Yemen: March 3, 2026
• Somalia: March 17, 2026
• Lebanon: May 27, 2026
*ICE SUVs were on a trailer to Columbus, OH this week. Look at February 3rd.
ICE is procuring:
• 23 new concentration camps across 18 states
• 200 soundproof Ford Transit vans
*If they are deporting folks, why all of the new beds? This is a money-making scheme based on cruelty and human suffering. Slavery.
There was a tv sitcom awhile back Royal Pains about a concierge medical practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Pains
Didn’t we do this in 1942?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
Judge Fred Biery of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas has ruled that the detention of Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, was unconstitutional. They are both asylum seekers.
The father and son’s case “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” the judge noted.
Biery wrote of the detainment: “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency.”
Judge Biery accused the federal government of “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence” and “that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment.” At the end of the ruling, he includes that now indelible photo of Liam with two Bible verses.
Matthew 19:14, which quotes Jesus: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
And John 11:35, “Jesus wept.”
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166837
Reports indicate that young migrants are being held in windowless cells, denied adequate medical care and separated from their parents or caregivers for long periods.
In fact, between January and August 2025, average custody time rose from roughly one month to six, while releases to family caregivers dropped by more than half: from approximately 95 per cent to 45 per cent.
18 February 2025, the US Department of the Interior ordered nonprofit legal service providers to halt work and ended funding for attorneys representing unaccompanied children.
Although the development has been challenged in the courts, many of the 26,000 affected children lost legal counsel and remain at risk of forced removal.
The American Civil Liberties Union has accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of allowing “horrific acts of intimate torture, sexual abuse, and brutal violence” against men held at the facility, one of the largest immigration detention centers in the United States. In a letter to ICE and a set of sworn declarations, the ACLU said men detained at Fort Bliss reported beatings, sexual assault, denial of medical care, and pressure tactics meant to push them into self-deportation.
In closing, the organization warned: “‘If this is the state of a brand-new, billion-dollar facility within its first 90 days,’ the ACLU wrote, ‘the outlook for the next wave of military-base detention centers is dire.’” It added, “‘What we are witnessing at Fort Bliss is not an accident,’ the ACLU said. ‘It is the predictable result of reckless expansion, minimal safeguards, and virtually no oversight.’”
Just finished watching Nuremberg. It can be rented or purchased on Prime. It is a brilliant movie. Do not watch if you don’t want to be terrified about the camps Trump is creating. It is only a matter of degree not fact.
NEW THREAD by our trail friend Jack