Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, February 5, 2026
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41 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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ICE ICE ICE – ICE everywhere.
Today SWAT teams in my area did major narcotics arrests. Clearly marked local law enforcement.
Social media:ICE
Major rumor over the weekend, DHS (ICE) is taking over the local closed Kroger (Fred Meyer) store.
So 3 city council members and lots of staff had to stop a stupid rumor (easy no, not enough sewer)
Alligators in the sewer? Rumors
In hindsight, I was really wrong about the Epstein files.
I thought that a trove of evidence clearly documenting criminal behavior, as well as naming the wealthy well-connected, and (presumably) smart criminals, would be something that only occurs in fiction.
But, as it turned out, people were, in fact, taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy. And, moreover, sending these out via their personal Gmail accounts like it’s nothing.
The sense of impunity these perps must have had is absolutely staggering. It really tells you quite a few things about the kind of society we live in. None of them good.
This not getting national news but the Texas Republican Party (including incumbents Gov Abbott and Sen Cornyn) are going full Christian Nationalist and KKK. They are whipping up an anti Islam fever like I’ve never seen here before.
Here is just several:
Muslim group at North Texas high school prompts investigation, Republican attacks
Texas Funeral Commission chair texts Anti-Islam hate speech amid EPIC City battle
Republicans go all-in on ‘Sharia law’ attacks ahead of Texas primary
@Scott:
Out of curiosity, how are “normies” reacting to that?
Define “normie” however you like.
@Beth: I really have no idea. I’m in my own bubble also. The type where you and your neighbors don’t talk politics and religion.
@Beth: @Scott:
The old dinner party rule observed by gentlefolk was “never discuss sex, politics, or religion at the table.”
Now sex, politics, and religion are ALL anybody talks about, not only at dinner, but breakfast and lunch as well.
@Scott: Wannabe fascists need an enemy. And in TX Middle Eastern brown people are a safe enemy, Hispanic brown people are too numerous.
The world needs anti-Taco jokes. I’ve been adapting Soviet era jokes, a surprising number of which fit all sorts of fascist regimes. Also adapting anti-Franco jokes, which focus on the inherent idiocy of the target. I’ve even managed to adapt a few really offensive ethnic jokes*.
But I’ve not been able to come up with anything original yet.
I’ve also given up in adapting the jokes about Mexico’s second most corrupt president, Echeverria. Most of them are puns, which simply don’t translate.
*Technically the Franco jokes are ethnic. None mention Franco by name. Instead they are about Galicians, as Franco was from that region of Spain.
Via Digby, Trae Crowder, always hilarious, asks, “why all the QAnon crazies aren’t taking victory laps.” They kept pushing their weird conspiracy theory about a cabal of wealthy elites sexually abusing children. And son-of-a-gun, turns out they were right, there was. But QAnon isn’t talking about it.
It’s a subset of what makes me crazy about MAGA, yes, you’re right, you really are being effed over by a conspiracy of wealthy elites. But you keep voting for them!!
@Scott:
I think that’s something. I’m kind of curious about what it’s going to take to get Texans to “revolt”* against Abbott/Paxton style Republicans.
*I don’t mean manning the barricades-Molotov cocktail style revolt. More in the quiet “I’m done with this shit” and vote them out type of revolt.
@Beth: I don’t know. I do know I wish we still had Molly Ivins to explain it to us. Today’s national and Texas politics would be a target rich environment.
This is encouraging…
https://www.wrestlezone.com/news/1611804-anti-ice-chant-aew-dynamite?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
@Scott: I’m still trying to understand how the boogieman of “Sharia law” is anything other than inflammatory nothingburger in the minds of the American public. Federal, state, and local laws always, always, always have precedent and no other constructs do. Are we Americans just that gullible? Just that programmed? Just that stupid?
And how hard is it to see that the theological Right is angling to institute their own “sharia” law? In fact, ending women’s reproductive care access (even in the extreme circumstances!!!) and placing the Ten Commandments in public schools resonates with intolerant “theocracy” and patriarchy. Do not ask for whom the church bell tolls, Mormons, Hindus, Catholics, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christian progressives, atheists, agnostics — it tolls for thee.
@gVOR10: The analogy I like to make is a person arrested for going around stabbing people, and when asked why he did it, he says he was trying to stop the serial killers in the neighborhood.
When I think of the MAGA and MAGA-adjacent world and Republicans more broadly, it feels like the old terms hypocrisy and projection don’t quite cut it. What we’re seeing is a phenomenon–not at all a new one in the context of cults and authoritarian leaders, but one that isn’t traditionally talked about much in US politics–where they’ve constructed a version of reality that leads them to do the exact opposite of what they claim to be doing, to be the exact villains they claim their enemies to be. To those outside the cult, it looks like hypocrisy and projection, but within the sealed walls of the fantasy these people live in, it makes perfect sense.
Contrary to MAGA xenophobic brain farts:
Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994
The article is loaded with statistics to back up conclusions. And note: this research was produced by a Koch Brothers pet project.
Key points:
And a real zinger comes in the conclusion:
TrumpMAGA’s “cleansing of America” in pursuit of “America First” is purely a vanity project that will be costly to us all and to our descendants. Another glitzy, dramatic, false monument to a cult-of-ego, like a grand ballroom or a triumphal arch.
@Rob1:
Yes, yes, and yes.
The religious charlatans have been around since the beginning of the Republic. Nothing new.
What went on in “Elmer Gantry” (about the 20s) and “A Face in the Crowd” (50s) is still going on.
Siphoning opportunity on the heels of a powerful relative. Now that sounds familiar.
Israeli security service chief’s brother is accused of smuggling cigarettes into Gaza
Sounds like a game plan. Sequester a population, then control the commerce. Kind of like with tariffs and immigration policies and government sponsored deal-making for insiders. Tie up a citizenry and then fat pickings. Wink, wink.
@gVOR10:
But they’re OUR wealthy elites! We can have wealthy elites too!
@becca:
Well, it was just a matter of time that the fine rage towards guvamint engendered by the Right, would once again settle on guvamint, any guvamint.
@drj:
Keep in mind some of this was taking place while internet socializing was still a new toy and wikileaks hadn’t happened yet. People were naive to their exposure. We still are.
@Rob1:
Of course immigrants don’t cause deficits. neither St. Ronnie, nor Bush the toddler, nor El Taco were immigrants.
@becca:
Et tu, fans of professional wrestling? Et tu?
Et tu, Supreme Court? Et tu??
The Supreme Court lets California use its new, Democratic-friendly congressional map
@dazedandconfused: They approved Texas’ map and have taken the position that blatantly political gerrymanders are OK. Having gone there, apparently even Roberts and Alito couldn’t figure out a way to weasel out of approving CA’s clearly political and not even remotely racist map.
@dazedandconfused:
Copycat 😉
@gVOR10: Perhaps, but it would hardly be shocking if Robarts and Alito are smart enough to have realized that Trump is ruining their “brand”: Brand R (White Label). Something that even fans who buy tickets to pro wrestling matches can see.
Meanwhile, in Europe:
The US ambassador comes close to breaking off diplomatic relations because the Poles won’t gratify Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize obsession.
Dear me.
“Demanding”, re Poles is, let us say, often a sub-optimal option.
@JohnSF:
And now the Ambassador doubles down after a rather mild rebuke from PM Tusk.
Well, until not so long ago, Poland was perhaps the most pro-US country in Europe.
That shifted with the Greenland crisis, and Trump’s attempts to coerce Ukraine into a “peace deal”.
Ambassador Rose now takes the “diplomatic” course of throwing relations on the bonfire and throwing parrafin on it.
Genius move.
@JohnSF:
Look at the bright side: at some point El Taco or his so-called administration will have offended every country, there being a finite number of them, and then they’ll take up another hobby.
@Kathy:
The sad thing is, this will not go away when Trump does.
Vance, in my opinion, would be even more of disaster, because he’s a “true believer” in US unilateralist/isolationist and “civilisationist” policies.
Whereas Trump is just a petulant and performative fool.
But even a Democrat administration is going to have a hard time rebuilding all the burning bridges.
Most outsiders do not care to spend much time diffrentiating between American parties; the US is viewed as a state actor.
And it must be said, a lot of Europeans were quietly discontent with the Biden (Jake Siullivan) “calibrationist” approach to Ukraine, and other long-standing themes in US policy.
Trump is now bringing all this to boiling point.
The conclusion: “De Gaulle was right, after all.”
Meanwhile, on the financial markets:
Bitcoin has fallen off a cliff, and popcorn futures are up.
Eventually (or at least I fondly hope) someone is going to dig into the Epstein/cryptocurrency connections.
There are a lot of threads in this current world that Epstein and related link into.
ianal, stilll less an American lawyer.
So can anyone tell me: can Congress appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the entire Epstein mess?
Because what desperately need to be followed up are the redactions, the unreleased files, and setting loose some serious forensic accountants on the bank accounts.
“Follow the money.”
@JohnSF:
Yeah, next sane president will have to do something that’s big, shows a lot of trust, and can’t be altered on a whim by the next insane president.
I wish I knew what those actions are.
@JohnSF:
As I understand, Bitcoin is a huge hit for various criminal ventures. I don’t see it ever going away entirely.
As to Epstein, the big problem is the statute of limitations. A lot of what’s been revealed happened over a decade ago. El Taco’s bestie improved the world by leaving it almost 7 years ago. It may be three more years before anything further can be done. Math and limitations argue for impunity.
BTW, the other day I chanced upon info on Epstein’s estate in some Youtube video (I forget which, maybe Patrick Boyle). The value of the estate was around $600 million. A large chunk of money, no doubt, but far, far, far below the levels of the new oligarchs. So, why did so many powerful mostly men seek him out, some far far wealthier than he was?
I think the answer is obvious.
@JohnSF:
Your link is paywalled.
A lot of software stocks were down sharply today. One of the excuses is the fear of AI automating what they do. (Tech stocks and crypto tend to move together).
@charontwo:
Really? It’s BBC link. Is that paywalled in the US now?
Could be.
Sad, if so.
@Kathy:
There has always been a big US problem about foreign policy: the current adminstration commitments don’t bind the next, or Congress.
It drives US partners nuts, quite often.
See variously: Wilson and Versailles; Roosevelt’s atomic weapons deals with UK; Nixon’s promises to South Vietnam; etc.
The odd thing about the Epstein estate.
Why did a substantial slice of the petty cash and property ownership get willed to Karyna Shuliak, a Belarussian woman with *interesting” connections?
Not to mention exactly how did Epstein transition suddenly from being a mid-level trader to multi-millionaire “private wealth” advisor/manager?
And about the same time his fortunes go into orbit, Ghislaine Maxwell, newly orphaned, arrives in New York and links up with Epstein.
And both move in the same social circles as Trump, and of NY and Russian “dodgy money”.
In the immortal words of Garak:
“I believe in coincidences, coincidences happen everyday, but I don’t TRUST coincidences”
Mea culpa, but I’m a suspicious sod.
Incidentally, in UK and Europe, re serious criminal cases, ain’t no such thing as a “statute of limitations.”
A British or European prosecutor might find things to chew on re Epstein.
The Guardian has a list of ten demands by congressional Democrats concerning the DHS funding bill.
I find all of them to be unobjectionable. pretty much they can be summed up as making ICE act like what it purports to be: a law enforcement agency bound by the law.
Of course, the Republiqans, and El Taco, will rend their garments and smear excrement and ashes and wail and gnash their teeth.
Then they will call the Democrats traitors.
@JohnSF:
I think America’s problem is the threshold required to ratify a treaty in the Senate. I really don’t see why a supermajority of 2/3rds is necessary. On the other hand, I don’t know how other countries conduct treaties.
Ok, not everything need to be a treaty. But some agreements with other nations could be passed as laws. Of course, in the current climate…
And then there’s El Taco, who would rather undo whatever others before him managed to do, and take a lot of threats, drama, tantrums, and idiocy, to pass something similar with some minor alterations, so he can claim manypoeplsaythat he’s got the besetestest ever deal ever.
“Hartmann”
“Phillips Obrien”
Epstein appears to have been deeply involved with Russia, so maybe gathering kompromat for Uncle Vlad.
@Kathy:
In most countries the decision of the government binds.
In the UK, treaties fall under the preorogative power: the government, as executor of the Crown, agrees treaties.
Parliament has no say (theoretically/legally).
Of course, it could “no confidence” the government.
But that would still not negate the treaty, legally.
In practice, the government would ensure it had sufficient support.
Similar applies to most countries.
The US, as Americans often fail to realise, is odd insofar as the word of the executive binds neither the legislature nor subsequent administrations.
It has often made dealing with the US rather problematic for other countries.
Trump is now taking it to the reductio ad absurdum: his prior comittments don’t even bind him.
Negotiating and making arrangements with a state that operates in this fashion is problematic, to say the least.
@Kathy:
It’s being reported, not surprisingly, that the kidnappers of Savannah Guthrie’s mother are demanding payment in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and Ethereum have lost nearly half their value in the last 6 months, and Bitcoin is below its peak in 2021 as well as its value in the spring of 2024. All of this makes me wonder… Has Commerce Sec Howard Lutnick been selling off his large fortune of shares in a Bitcoin trust?
@charontwo:
imho, as I’ve said before, Epstein was operating a classic “multi layer” compromise operation.
With the Epstein Foundation as outer cover, and “glam parties” secondary, before things got really dirty.
In addition to his “day job” as a “private wealth” advisor/facilitator.
Which actually linked in to the “compromise spiral”.
That’s why the Epstein Files as released contain a mountain of chaff, as well as the core elements of pedophile activity, and likely related “leverage”.
And the high probability (near certainty imo, given indicators) that Epstein was selling his “take” to interested parties.
Initially likely “mob”, later Russian mob, and that becomes Russian agencies very swiftly.
Plus the financial offshore linkage.
And who else do we know in New York playing footsie with the NY mob, and shady Russians about the same time?
And Ghislaine Maxwell rocking up, whose father was a known “player”?
The whole think stinks like month-old kipper.
The problem is going to be separating the “chaff” of the Epstein Foundation, and the private banking biz, and “glam parties”, from the core vile pedo stuff, the kompromat, and the near certain Russian intel links.
What is required is a proper investigative/prosecution effort, with proper forensic accountants following the finance trial subpoenas, and squeezing the offshore banking sites.
And also access to the full, unredacted, and including unreleased, files.
Those released, are, imho, rather oddly short on financial details, and on images.
Plus a full investigation of wht the hell the Epstein Florida prosecution was “plea bargained” to a ludicrous extent, and did not lead to handover to federal investigation.
And why the f@ck were MI5/6 not telling all the UK nationals to sheer off?