Former Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said Donald Trump was the person who “fought the hardest” to block the Epstein files from being released, Mediaite reports.
Said Greene: “I know a lot of people have a hard time with that, but that is the truth. He fought the hardest. To stop these files from being released.”
Former President Barack Obama argued Democrats have a “harder job” because they believe the government is a “tool for good” and should be used as such — unlike Republicans, who are “mean, tough, and nasty” and more focused on “tearing stuff down,” Mediaite reports.
Said Obama: “We have to try to figure out how do we get working majorities to actually pass laws and to implement those laws and to make things happen. Tearing stuff down doesn’t require all that.”
Former President Barack Obama spoke out a week after President Donald Trump’s social media account posted a video depicting him and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, condemning behavior on television and social media as a “clown show,” ABC News reports.
Said Obama: “Well, first of all, I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling.”
He added: “And there’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television… What is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety, and respect for the office, right? So, that’s been lost.”
Former President Barack Obama criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ conduct in Minnesota as dangerous, saying “the rogue behavior” is akin to what “we’ve seen in authoritarian countries” and “in dictatorships,” CNN reports.
He added that American citizens should be commended for engaging in “peaceful protests and shining a light on the sort of behavior that, in the past, we’ve seen in authoritarian countries and we’ve seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America.”
Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, CNN reports.
“Aleksei Navalny was most likely poisoned by a toxin found in a South American frog, five European countries said on Saturday, making the most concrete Western accusation yet that Russia’s leading opposition figure was murdered by his government in an Arctic prison two years ago,” the New York Times reports.
Wall Street Journal: “The U.S. campaign to block Cuba’s oil imports is deepening a humanitarian crisis on the island, the United Nations said Friday, as Mexico and other countries shipped food and emergency supplies.”
“The U.N.’s human-rights office said the shortage of imported fuel is undercutting the supply of food and disrupting essential services like water systems and hospitals in the country of 10 million people.”
Politico: “Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for years communicated with experts in the cybersecurity community and expressed interest in attending two of the largest hacker conventions in the world, according to documents released by the Justice Department. It’s unclear if Epstein ever attended either DEFCON or Black Hat, where thousands of hackers and researchers gather annually in Las Vegas to discuss the latest cyber vulnerabilities and trends.”
“According to his emails with several prominent researchers and business people, his interest in cybersecurity and cryptography appeared to be widespread, ranging from discussions about removing information about himself from online search engines to network security.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) issued a dire warning about the state of America’s election system ahead of the midterms, Politico reports.
Warner said he’s now more concerned by domestic interference from the Trump administration than from foreign actors like China or Russia.
Said Politico: “A year ago, I thought c’mon. Today, I’m extraordinarily afraid.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin praised Hillary Clinton during her time as a New York senator as someone who was fully focused on her job, Politico reports.
Said Zeldin: “If she was to walk into a meeting with a company… she’ll already have memorized the first two PowerPoint slides.”
Zeldin added she could win over even a “hardcore conservative who absolutely despises the Clintons.”
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio made an unapologetic defense for American might and pursuit of national interests Saturday while seeking to recast President Trump’s sharp disputes with Europe as a form of tough love with the U.S.’s closest allies,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: “Unlike Mr. Vance, who scolded Europeans for sidelining far-right parties and accused them of limiting free speech, Mr. Rubio struck a diplomatic tone, emphasizing centuries of shared history between Europe and the United States, from the colonization of America to the struggle against Communism during the Cold War.”
“Now, the United States wants to work with Europeans, not against them, Mr. Rubio said in his speech, which was met with bouts of applause and laughter, contrasting with the stony silence Mr. Vance faced last year.”
“A chorus of top MAGA voices are calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s removal over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and her combative congressional testimony on Wednesday,” Axios reports.
New York Times: “The premise of Murder Bimbo, Rebecca Novack’s deviously intelligent new novel, is bracingly straightforward.”
Says the narrator: “I’m a 32-year-old sex worker who just killed a politician on what I thought were the orders of the American government.”
“The Democratic National Committee, which began 2026 in debt and nearly $100 million behind its Republican counterpart, made a $6.5 million bet in the final weeks of 2025 to buy former Vice President Kamala Harris’s old email list of supporters,” the New York Times reports.
“That money almost immediately went to help Ms. Harris pay off expenses left over from her 2024 campaign.”
“Ms. Harris’s new political group, Fight for the People PAC, spent nearly $7 million in the final month of 2025, new federal filings show, overwhelmingly on presidential campaign expenses that had not previously been disclosed as debts.”
Wasatch County GOP chairman David Johnson, who is also a father, was charged with waterboarding his teenage daughter, KSL reports.
“President Donald Trump is barreling ahead with the first State of the Union address of his second term, despite concerns among Republicans that it’s set to hit during a partial government shutdown,” Politico reports.
“The speech, set for 11 days from now, is poised to land in the middle of a funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security – the product of a standoff with Democrats over immigration enforcement that the White House had hoped to avoid. Behind the scenes, some administration officials and senior Capitol Hill Republicans are quietly fretting about the optics, according to six people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) is using his book tour and 2026 reelection campaign to further build out a national fundraising network that could prove quite useful in a potential 2028 run, Politico reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.