https://www.politico.eu/article/washington-lobbies-eu-against-buy-european-push-for-weapons-donald-trump/

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has threatened to retaliate against European countries if the EU favors domestic weapons-makers in a drive to rearm the continent.

The U.S. Department of Defense objected to any EU effort to limit American arms-manufacturers' access to the European market and warned that would trigger a reciprocal response.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/politics/randy-fine-muslim-islamophobic-democrats.html

Representative Randy Fine, Republican of Florida, on Tuesday faced a barrage of calls for his resignation from Democrats — and silence from Republican leaders — after making an Islamophobic statement suggesting he prefers dogs to Muslims.

Mr. Fine, a Jewish first-term congressman who was known in the Florida Legislature as “The Hebrew Hammer” and often makes Islamophobic remarks on social media, made the statement in question on Sunday in response to a post from a Palestinian activist based in New York City.

Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian Muslim New Yorker and organizer, said in a social media post that dung-filled snowdrifts in the city proved that dogs should not have a place in society as indoor pets because, she wrote, “like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.”

Mr. Fine responded: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

The comment prompted immediate and unequivocal condemnation from Democrats.

Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoecker clinched mixed team skeleton gold.

It came after Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the snowboard cross mixed team event earlier on Sunday.

Weston produced a stunning race to make more of his own history in Cortina - he is the first Briton to win two gold medals at a Winter Olympics having claimed individual gold just two days ago.

Stoecker, 25, had given Weston a tough task with her run of 1:00.77, 0.30 seconds off the pace of the Germans, with the British pair - ranked top seeds - the last to run.

"The individual event is amazing but doing it as a team when we're normally an individual sport is amazing," said Weston.

"To have my team-mate by my side as Olympic champions, two-time for me which is crazy. I'm looking forward to the celebrations!"

A second British team, Marcus Wyatt and Freya Tarbit, missed out on a medal by an agonising 0.01secs as the two German teams of Christopher Grotheer and Jacqueline Pfeifer and Axel Jungk and Susanne Kreher took silver and bronze, respectively.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/articles/cm2x7m17jydo

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7genjx9njo
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has said it has released all of the files required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but lawmakers have argued the release is insufficient.

A letter sent to members of the US Congress on Saturday from US Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy said all documents held by the DoJ had been released. It contained a list of names appearing in the files.

Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who co-wrote the law, called for the DoJ to also release internal memos outlining past decisions on whether to charge Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.

Millions of new files relating to the late sex offender Epstein were released by the DoJ earlier this month. At the time, the deputy attorney general said three million pages were not released.

This was due to the existence of personal medical files, graphic depictions of child abuse or other material that would jeopardise investigations, said Todd Blanche on the day of the documents dump.

In the latest letter, Bondi and Blanche wrote: "In accordance with the requirements of the Act, and as described in various Department submissions to the courts of the Southern District of New York assigned to the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions and related orders, the Department released all 'records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department' that 'relate to' any of nine different categories."

No records were withheld from the DoJ's release "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity", the letter added.

The individuals listed in the letter include people who "are or were a government official or politically exposed person", and whose name appeared at least once in the files, the letter says.

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/zohran-mamdani-nyc-mayor-budget/
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his preliminary financial plan Tuesday on the heels of the announcement that the state will give the city $1.5 billion to help fix a massive budget shortfall.

His tax-centric new fiscal plan seeks to close a multibillion budget gap with two choices: sock it to the rich or sock it to property owners.

Mamdani says his new spending plan is the truth, gimmick-free. To some, however, the threat of raising property taxes if he doesn't get a wealth tax from Albany is the biggest gimmick of all.

"As the mayor of New York City, I have a legal obligation to balance the budget. I will meet that obligation," Mamdani said. "When we took office, we inherited a historic budget gap."

Mamdani said that what had initially been a $12 billion gap was lowered to $7 billion due to steps his administration has taken, as well as incorporating income from Wall Street bonuses. That gap has since been lowered even further to $5.4 billion due to an infusion to New York City of $1.5 billion from the state, thanks to Gov. Kathy Hochul.

"While considerably less, it is still a significant chasm," Mamdani said. "There are two paths to bridge this gap. The first is the most sustainable and the fairest path. This is the path of ending the drain on our city and raising taxes on the richest New Yorkers and the most profitable corporations. The onus for resolving this crisis should not be placed on the backs of working and middle class New Yorkers. If we do not fix this structural imbalance, and do not heed the calls of New Yorkers to raise taxes on the wealthy, this crisis will not disappear. It will simply return, year after year forcing harder choices each time."

Mamdani said the only other option - a so-called "second path" - is the city would have to raise property taxes and raid its reserves.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/candace-owens-tpusa-charlie-kirk-death-conspiracy-theories-elijah-schaffer

TURNING POINT USA COMMUNICATIONS staffer Aubrey Laitsch was called into a meeting last month and abruptly told she was being fired, according to a video she posted online last week.

In her telling, the reason Laitsch was given for being let go involved a convoluted story about an Uber ride. It went like this:

A TPUSA executive had taken an Uber and asked his driver what he thought of the organization. The driver replied that he had heard it was in chaos in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination—and that no one inside TPUSA liked Erika Kirk, Kirk’s widow and now TPUSA’s CEO. Then the Uber driver revealed to the TPUSA executive that the source of his information was Laistch, who the driver claimed was a high school friend of his daughter’s.

A strange story, and one Laitsch said she didn’t buy. She then offered up another explanation—one she said didn’t come up during her discussion with TPUSA executives but which she sensed was a factor in her termination.

Laitsch, as she outlined in her video, seems to genuinely believe that her own organization had something to do with its founder’s murder or an ensuing coverup.

The unfounded claim that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was some sort of inside job is growing in popularity on the right after being promoted by YouTuber and former TPUSA employee Candace Owens. Laitsch claims that others at TPUSA are suspicious about Kirk’s murder too—and that they had been discussing among themselves how they couldn’t raise the issue internally.

https://www.wjcl.com/article/ice-chase-crash-savannah-georgia-1/70404554

A woman was killed in a crash in Savannah as a driver fleeing federal immigration officers ran a red light and hit her vehicle.

A Savannah teacher was killed in a crash after a driver fleeing federal immigration officers ran a red light and struck her vehicle, Chatham County police said.

Police identified the suspect as Oscar Vasquez Lopez, 38. He was taken into custody and charged with felony first-degree vehicular homicide and multiple traffic offenses. Vasquez Lopez was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System identified the victim as Dr. Linda Davis, a teacher at Hesse K-8 School.

Daily reminder the conspiracy theorists were always right.

> Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-knHXSKYY

> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545403/Epstein-jail-guards-used-fake-body-trick-media-waiting-outside-prison.html

Jail guards overseeing Jeffrey Epstein used a decoy body to mislead reporters gathered outside the prison after his death, while his real corpse was secretly removed in a separate vehicle, newly unsealed files claim.

According to an internal memo, a jail supervisor told FBI agents that staff at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center staged the ruse amid an intense media presence following Epstein's apparent suicide in 2019.

The files allege that boxes and sheets were arranged to resemble a human body and loaded into a white van marked as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, prompting reporters to follow it as it drove away.

Unbeknown to the media, Epstein's actual body was instead placed into a black vehicle that left the facility 'unnoticed,' allowing officers to transport the corpse privately.

The alleged deception was carried out after an official warned guards about the large number of journalists gathered outside the jail and said he would arrive at the loading dock with a separate black vehicle to remove the body.

The records also reveal investigators highlighted a handwritten note found inside Epstein's cell at the time of his death, which was not treated as a suicide note by the medical examiner.

The note, which investigators said was 'difficult to read', appeared to list grievances about jail conditions, including complaints about food, showers and bugs.

The records, included in a tranche of three million newly released documents, describe how officers responded to the heavy media presence outside the jail in the hours after Epstein's death.

Democrat donor David Gadis (https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=David+gadis&cycle=&state=DC), CEO of DC Water is quite literally flooding the zone with shit. He has flooded the Potomac with 300 million gallons of liquid shit, elevating e coli levels to 10,000x above EPA levels.

According to his bio on DCWater.com, he was hired to do the exact opposite of this thing: Under his leadership, DC Water is delivering on its $2.7 billion commitment to build a massive system of deep tunnels and other infrastructure to nearly eliminate combined sewer overflows to the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and Rock Creek in the nation’s capital.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5740260-potomac-sewage-collapse-repair/
What to know about the disastrous Potomac sewage spill

The spillage, which resulted from a section of the Potomac Interceptor sewer line collapsing last month, resulted in an overflow of roughly 243 million gallons of wastewater as of Feb. 6, according to DC Water.

Although public health officials have said the spillage did not impact drinking water quality, residents are still encouraged to avoid contact with the Potomac River.

President Trump weighed in on the matter in a Truth Social post Monday, blaming local and state Democratic officials in Maryland and saying he would direct federal efforts to assist in the operation.

Here is what to know:

On Jan. 19, a section of the Potomac Interceptor along the Clara Barton Parkway in Montgomery County, Md., collapsed. The DC Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) says the interceptor carries up to 60 million gallons of wastewater daily from Virginia and Maryland to Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant on the banks of the Potomac in southwest Washington.

The collapse resulted in a “significant quantity of untreated sewage” flowing into the Potomac, according to the DOEE.