Welcome to CaturSaturday, February 7, 2026. It’s shabbos for Jewish cats, and National Fettuccine Alfredo Day, celebrating my favorite pasta dish.

It’s also “e” Day (the first two digits of that irrational number are 2.7, and today is 2/7 in English notation), Ice Cream For Breakfast Day, International Pisco Sour Day (a good drink when properly made), National Patty Melt Day, and Ballet Day.

Here’s Mikhail Baryshnikov, now 78, doing his stuff. Although I’m not a real ballet fan, I love it when the male dancers do stuff like this. There is good explanation of his more difficult moves, which made me appreciate the art more.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*According to the NY Times and satellite image analysis, Iran has resumed work on building missiles, though progress on nuclear enrichment and nuclear bombs is apparently slow. Is anyone surprised that they’re busy building missiles again? This gives the U.S. and Israel another reason to attack Iran, as Itan and its proxies can use missiles against Israel.

Iran appears to have rapidly repaired several ballistic missile facilities damaged in strikes last year, but it has made only limited fixes to major nuclear sites struck by Israel and the United States, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery suggests.

The uneven pace of reconstruction offers clues about Iran’s military priorities as the United States amasses forces near it and President Trump weighs new military action. If the United States were to attack, Iran would most likely retaliate with ballistic missiles targeting Israel and U.S. assets in the region.

The United States and Iran were expected to meet in Oman on Friday in an attempt to stave off another conflict. The scope of the talks was not immediately clear, but Iran’s nuclear program was likely to be a key focus.

Experts who closely track Iranian nuclear and missile programs corroborated the analysis by The Times, which looked at around two dozen locations struck by Israel or the United States during the 12-day conflict last June. The Times found construction work at more than half of them.

The experts cautioned that the full extent of the repairs remains unclear, given that satellite imagery offers only an aboveground view of the construction.

Satellite images analyzed by The Times show that repair work has been carried out over the past few months at a dozen missile facilities or more, including production sites.

. . . .Intelligence assessments have found that Iran has largely rebuilt its ballistic missile program since the attacks in June.

“The emphasis that’s been put on rebuilding the missile program stands in contrast to the nuclear program,” said Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.

The White House’s National Security Strategy, published in November, says that the strikes “significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program.”

Experts say that despite some visible work, Iran’s three main enrichment facilities — Isfahan, Natanz and Fordo — appear inoperative.

Since December, Iran has erected roofs at two of the facilities, which makes it hard to determine whether any rebuilding is happening inside the structures. Experts say that could mean it is trying to recover assets without being observed from above. Much of the other aboveground damage caused in June remains visible.

Putting roofs over nuclear facilities does show that they don’t want anybody to see them, whether or not they are active. They likely want to keep their activities secret, for if nothing is happening, they can still use the threat of nukes as a bargaining chip, and if something is happening, they don’t want to give the U.S. and Israel a chance to attack. What is certain is they have not abandoned their plans to create nuclear weapons.

*The Palestinian Authority (PA’s) Martyr’s Fund, known more accurately as the “Pay for slay” program, is a fund that pays off terrorists who kill Israeli Jews and go to prison, or pays off their families. It takes up 7% of the PA’s annual budget, and of course has been widely criticized. Last year, PA President for Life Mahmoud Abbas promised to end the fund, but the Free Beacon (yes, a right-wing source, but corroborated by the Times of Israel) indicates that the fund is still active:

The Palestinian Authority is set to distribute $315 million this year to terrorists and their families in blatant violation of President Mahmoud Abbas’s pledge to end its “pay-to-slay” program, according to a new analysis by Palestinian Media Watch shared exclusively with the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo. The pay-to-slay payments typically go to Palestinians in Israeli prisons for terror offenses—as well as to their families—and to families of Palestinian terrorists who died in suicide bombings and other attacks on Israel.

The report finds that the PA is quietly routing money through its civil service, Palestinian Security Forces, as well as its pension system, allowing more than 23,500 recipients to collect monthly stipends of up to $3,800, a sizable sum in the region. Abbas’s government, Palestinian Media Watch says, “is not voluntarily disclosing that 10,000 terror reward recipients are hidden in the civil service, the PASF, and as 50-year-old PA pensioners.”

The findings reinforce last week’s State Department determination that the PA has merely disguised its terror payments rather than ending them. After Abbas, 90, declared the program dead in February 2025, international donors resumed funding some Palestinian Authority programs, unaware that terror payments had been rerouted through agencies like the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution. Telegram messages reviewed by Palestinian Media Watch show recipients confirming that “the situation … has returned to how it was before,” with prisoners and wounded fighters now classified as pensioners and paid accordingly.

The report also documents more than $86 million flowing to 13,500 terrorist families in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt via the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PA’s parent organization, which faces less scrutiny.

As Abbas seeks renewed Western backing, the evidence suggests the incentive system he promised to dismantle is actually secretly expanding. A State Department official says the deception disqualifies the PA from eventually governing postwar Gaza—which is part of the American plan for the territory—warning that “attempts … to conceal payments to relatives of those who have murdered both Americans and Israelis are unacceptable.”

This is no surprise to me.  While everyone seems to think the PA would be a good organization to run Gaza under a “two state solution,” in fact the PA, like Hamas, is dedicated to promulgating terrorism.  And it have been suggested by Trump as one of the parties to run Gaza in the interim. Nevertheless, Gazans and Hamas hate the PA, and killed many of them when Hamas won the last election in Gaza——beating Fatah, the PA’s political party. In the last two decades, Hamas has allowed no elections in Gaza. Does the UN object to that, or anybody else save Israel, for that matter? Of course not.

*I didn’t know that Emily Yoffe, a liberal who’s been writing about gender activists, has been writing for the Free Press, but I just discovered it with her FP article, “The rise and fall of youth gender medicine.”

Here’s a snapshot of something commonplace just five years ago: During a lecture on endocrinology, one medical school professor begged the students to forgive him for his offensiveness. His wrongdoing? Saying “pregnant women.” Another doctor received so many online complaints from students in real time while she was lecturing that when the class finished she burst into tears. Her misdeed? Saying “male” and “female.”

These incidents, and many more, were reported in a pathbreaking story, “Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex,” by Katie Herzog, published in July 2021 in The Free Press, or Common Sense as it was then named. It was our first story about a gender mania that was sweeping the country and undermining institutions, from education, to government, to the media, to—most shockingly—medicine itself.

This ideology had come on so quickly, and was enforced by activists so fiercely, that using the wrong pronoun could and did put one’s job in jeopardy. People were told that biological sex was a fiction. Many, depending on their profession, were forced to say they believed this. Remember the attestation that “trans women are women”?

. . .Dozens of stories later, we have done just that. And now we find ourselves at a promising, and perilous, moment of change. We have gotten here because of journalists willing to investigate and tell the truth, because of victims and whistleblowers willing to speak up, because of clinicians willing to say harm was being done to patients, and because of lawyers willing to bring suits.

Consider that earlier this week we published an exclusive account, “A Legal First That Could Change Gender Medicine,” by Ben Ryan, about the first malpractice case by a detransitioner to reach a successful jury verdict. (A detransitioner is someone who, after transitioning, later returns to living as their biological sex.)

. . .Which brings us to today. It now seems safe to (quietly) take the pronouns off your email signature. And you can probably say “pregnant women” without fearing the gulag. But the issue is far from resolved.

Upon retaking office, Donald Trump made ending gender transition of minors a high-profile domestic issue. In response, some blue states are offering themselves as sanctuaries for these minors, and their families, seeking medical intervention. In Leor Sapir’s December 2025 piece for us, “‘We’re All Just Winging It’: What the Gender Doctors Say in Private,” Sapir warns that our penchant for headlines about the end of youth transition may be premature. Envisioning a Democratic president eager to undo what Trump has done, Sapir writes, “There is the looming question of whether we will simply ping-pong between Democratic expansion and Republican restriction.”

Sapir notes such expansion would be against the desires of the majority of Democratic voters. He writes, “More than seven in 10 Americans, including more than half of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, believe minors should not be offered puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, according to a recentNew York Times/Ipsos poll.”

Yoffee gives the Free Press has been responsible for much of the change in attitudes, but I think they are taking too much credit, for right-wing sites have been banging this drum for a long time. Nevertheless, the MSM has largely ignored the problematic acts of those who, for example, say that biological sex is a spectrum, so perhaps the site has had an effect on the Left, which is largely behind the more harmful gender activism. Yoffee clearly applauds the changes she describes, and so do it.

*Oy! Nellie isn’t here for her weekly snark-and-news summary at The Free Press; she’s replaced by Suzy Weiss (nepotism) and Sascha Steinfeld, whose replacement column is called “TGIF: Sorry for all the typos .Sent from my iPhone.” I’ll steal a few items, but they don’t have Nellie’s panache.

→ Newsom gets the Beto treatment: Here’s how a new profile of Gavin Newsom begins: “He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address.” Hello! This sounds like the beginning of a sex thing, and I don’t know if I want to be a part of it. The piece went on, and on, and on, and on, about how the governor is “lithe, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye; Kennedy-esque.” And don’t forget “his stunning wife and four adorable kids, and the executive strut of a self-made millionaire.” They should’ve asked if I was 18 or older before I was prompted to read this.

I threw in the towel on this profile around when I got to “Newsom’s lanky frame was folded onto a sofa a bit too low-slung for him. This made him lean back—away from me,” because that seemed like a private moment, though you can read the whole thing here. One funny note: Newsom describes his “undiagnosed dyslexia” as a source of confusion over where he fit in the world. Which is rich. I applied to college (very poorly). I know how this goes. You gotta drum up some sob story to get the adversity points up, but low-grade dyslexia? Sir. That’s like the quarterback saying he felt bullied because he only got 15 high-fives instead of 20 after the homecoming game. I can buy that he’s “gregarious and aloof” and “sensitive” and all the other fuzzy adjectives about Newsom, but I refuse to believe that he was ever some sort of outcast. Look at his silver-seasoned hair!

→ The jury has reached no verdict: A jury in the United Kingdom reached partial or no verdicts on charges of “criminal damage and violent disorder” for a group of Palestine Action activists accused of breaking into a factory owned by Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense firm, while finding them not guilty of aggravated burglary. One of the defendants was accused of slamming a female police officer’s back with a sledgehammer, fracturing her lumbar spine. The leader of the Green Party celebrated the win: “Pleased to see the jury make this decision. We need to have eyes wide open this is exactly why the Government wants to abolish juries. People protesting against a genocide are not the criminals here—it’s the politicians who continue to provide cover.”

Ah, yes: The real criminals are the politicians and the cops, and the real victims are the burglars wielding sledgehammers. You see, in England now, nonviolent resistance means breaking a police officer’s back. Peaceful protesting is drop-kicking a taxi driver. Stabbing your neighbor is just registering a formal complaint.

→ Expired parts: A new cosmetic trend has women injecting sterilized, “ethically sourced” cadaver fat into their breasts and buttocks. One patient admitted that this “can sound jarring at first,” (no. . . really?) but insisted it is safe, regulated, and effective. “It’s like we’re recycling,” said Stacey, a 34-year-old who spent nearly $45,000 on the injections, adding that the results “outweigh any creepiness.” Any? Forget a black market for organs—by this time next year teens are going to be buying other people’s lips to sew onto their faces. Nothing says “transhumanism won” like walking around with someone else’s tushy. I defended Ozempic, which to some is already spiritually in question. But just because I’m not comfortable with the ankles I’ve been given by God doesn’t mean I’m going to rob someone’s crypt over it. Instead, I will do the dignified thing and never wear shorts outside.

One more, and who is paying for this?

→ Must remain seated: A Craigslist ad that circulated in the Boston area claimed moviegoers could earn $50 per occupied seat to attend a screening of the Melania Trump documentary during its opening weekend, on the condition that they “must remain in seats” for the entire film. Are they supposed to wear diapers? Maybe if I sit for back-to-back screenings for a whole week, I could buy myself a certain black-and-white wide-brim hat I’ve been eyeing. The movie apparently did better than expected—$7 million in its opening weekend—and we can’t wait for the sequel: Barron. By then, it will be mandatory viewing in all public schools. By the time we get to Part III: Ivanka and Others, it will be the only thing on cable.

*Funding for Homeland Security and ICE will expire soon, and it may need Democratic support to pass. The Democrats have now put their demands for such funding on the table.

Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on new restrictions for federal immigration agents that Democrats have demanded in exchange for funding the Department of Homeland Security.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) laid out their demands late Wednesday in a letter to Republicans, including barring immigration agents from wearing face masks and entering private property without a warrant from a judge.

Republicans immediately criticized Democrats’ proposals as excessive. Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama), who is representing Senate Republicans in negotiations with Democrats, described it as “a ridiculous Christmas list of demands.”

Democrats have threatened to block funding for DHS when it expires at the end of the day Feb. 13, giving the two sides barely a week to strike a deal and avert a shutdown of the department. The brunt of a shutdown would fall on agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency because Republicans last year sent DHS tens of billions of dollars in extra border security and immigration enforcement funding.

Schumer called on President Donald Trump — who said Wednesday that the administration could “use a little bit of a softer touch” after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis — to press Republicans to strike a deal.

“President Trump knows things have to change,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “He should lean on Republicans in Congress to work with Democrats and deliver.”

Some Republicans dismissed most of the Democrats’ demands as nonstarters, but others said they saw room to compromise on some of them if Democrats are willing to negotiate.

“There’s some room in there to negotiate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters Thursday. “I think there’s some things that could get done. But you have to have people at the table to do that, and as of right now there’s only one side of the table that’s filled.”

You can see the Democrats’ letter here; it has ten demands, all of which seem reasonable to me, including standardized uniforms for agents of a given type.  It doesn’t ban ICE, nor restrict their actions to detaining only undocumented immigrants who have committed some crime beyond illegal entry. It is standard law enforcement, and I’m frankly surprised that more Republicans don’t just accept the compromise. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal op-ed section has an article calling Trump’s ICE tactics unacceptable.

*As if we haven’t heard enough about EpsteinGate, the latest batch of released Epstein files show a bunch of notables (some of whom have denied ties with the man) consoling him about his legal troubles, and showing Epstein to have been a real kvetcher, especially because he got off easy in his first trial.

Since Jeffrey Epstein’s death, a parade of powerful people who associated with him have insisted they were ignorant of the true nature of his crimes. Many have issued carefully worded statements of regret.

But private correspondence recently made public in government releases and email leaks tells a different story.

Some prominent people in politics, business and academia didn’t just maintain ties with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. They actively consoled him, cast him as a victim and in some cases offered advice on how to rehabilitate his image.

In February 2019—long after Virginia Giuffre went public with her sex-trafficking allegations and newspaper investigations put a spotlight on Epstein’s activities—the political activist and professor Noam Chomsky sent Epstein a message.

Responding to Epstein’s request for advice on how to handle his “putrid press,” Chomsky counseled him to stay silent: “What the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts.”

He went further, dismissing the broader reckoning with sexual abuse: “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”

Five months later, Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.

Chomsky, now 97, was hardly the only famous associate who was privately consoling Epstein or giving him advice to rehabilitate his public image. Their messages, however, were hidden until the recent release of the FBI’s files into the Epstein case and other document disclosures last year.

The others include Richard Branson, Steve Bannon, Prince Andrew, and Peter Mandelson, the European Commissioner for Trader.  Here are a few emails and communications courtesy of the Department of Justice and reproduced in the Wall Street Journal (click to enlarge):

Prince Andrew:

Chomsky:

Richard Branson:

“As long as you bring your harem”? Oy!  Now it’s no crime to be friends with Epstein, or to console him, but the emails above make me cringe with consolation for pedophilic crimes.  Prince Andrew has already been demoted from the Firm for his dalliances, and we can expect that the others will have their reputations plummet in light of the correspondence—and that’s proper.  Chomsky, of course, is too old to care, but I wonder if, in retrospect, his works will suffer cancellation.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is, as a Jewish cat, filled with worry. Look at that face!

Hili: All of this worries me.
Andrzej: What’s bothering you, sweetheart?
Hili: I just said – everything.

In Polish:

Hili: Martwi mnie to wszystko.
Ja: Co cię martwi, kochanie?
Hili: Przecież powiedziałam, że wszystko.

*******************

Because it’s Caturday, we have all cat memes today.

From CinEmma, a Lego cat set and a real cat that looks just like it:

From reader David:

From All Things Anime Otaku:

From Masih: a video that I can’t embed but you can watch (Warning: gory!) by clicking on the tweet. Iranian security forces went to hospitals and killed the wounded protestors. Now they’re arresting doctors and nurses who helped injured protestors! Masih is one of the best sources of news from Iran.

Have a gander if you have any doubts about Mamdani’s antisemitism:

Again, twelve BILLION dollar deficit, but somehow plenty to divert health department resources to do irrelevant BS activism on behalf of Hamas.

What does this have to do with New York?

Hey, remember during the debates when Zohran refused to answer that question about Israel and… https://t.co/9XggLj1nyW

— Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) February 5, 2026

From Simon, re Epstein, of course:

You buy the season pass but they close the island pic.twitter.com/VvDQLtqMfa

— Earl of FrunkPuppy (@28delayslater) February 6, 2026

Khelif has finally admitted having a disorder/difference of sex determination, so the “female” boxer was really a biological male. Emma Hilton comments:

Plenty of us pushed back against the nonsensical and dangerous IOC rules for Olympic boxing at Paris.

Plenty of us have criticised the IOC guidelines in the mainstream and academic press.

We have called for sex screening.

We have spelled it out loud and clear. pic.twitter.com/ofa8aJN2vU

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) February 6, 2026

From Malcolm, a very lazy cat:

Bro trust the whole world😭 pic.twitter.com/uJZbsRPWXv

— Cats with Aura 😺 (@catwithaura) January 31, 2026

One from my feed; a marvel of animal behavior (imagine how it might have evolved):

This is a Tailor Bird. It makes a nest by stitching leaves together.pic.twitter.com/yNjDuvrSPk

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 6, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This German Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She would have been 90 yesterday had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-02-07T11:08:26.766Z

And one from Dr. Cobb. This starts a lovely albatross thread. I could have gone to Dunedin when I was in NZ, but didn’t. Sad.

In 1981, when I was ten, I visited Christchurch, New Zealand with my parents. I loved birds, especially albatrosses, and learned that tantalizingly close—360 km to the south—was the royal albatross colony in Dunedin. It was not meant to be that trip. But 44 years later, I finally made it happen.

— Carl T. Bergstrom (@carlbergstrom.com) 2026-02-06T09:44:42.604Z

Welcome to another cold, gray day, at least in Chicago: it’s Friday, February 6, 2026 and Bubble Gum Day.  Here’s a large bubble blown by Chad Fell, who holds the world record for bubble size: a 20-inch-diameter (50.8 cm) behemoth bubble blown in 2004. He specializes in this stuff: the record required three pieces of gum. Here he blows a 15-incher and tells you how to blow big bubbles.

It’s also The International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, National Chopsticks Day, National Frozen Yogurt Day (where has it gone?), and Ronald Reagan Day (he was born on this day in 1911).

The Google Doodle is apparently chaging every day, depicting a new sport, now that the Olympics have begun. Today is ice hockey (click screenshot below to see an animated page with today’s schedule (the games, in Milan, run through February 22):

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Supreme Court ruled that California can indeed implement its redistricting plan (i.e., “gerrymandering”) that gives extra House seats to Democrats. Earlier they allowed Texas to do the same thing, creating more Republican seats.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon cleared the way for California to use a new congressional map intended to give Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a one-sentence order, the justices turned down a request from a group of California Republicans that would have required the state to continue to use the map in place for the last several federal elections in the state while their challenge to the map moves forward.

There were no public dissents from the court’s ruling.

The court’s order came exactly two months after the justices, over a dissent by the court’s three Democratic appointees, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use a new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state. In Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, the lower court had agreed with the challengers that the “legislature’s motive was predominantly racial.” But the majority put that ruling on hold in its Dec. 4 order, with Justice Samuel Alito – who penned an opinion (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorusch) concurring in the ruling – stating that “it is indisputable … that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

California’s path to the enactment of its new map was slightly more complicated than in Texas. The California Legislature adopted the new map in August, but under the state constitution an independent redistricting commission – rather than the Legislature – normally has the power to redistrict. The legislation adopting the new map therefore proposed a ballot initiative, known as Proposition 50, that would amend the constitution to allow the use of the new map from 2026 through 2030. By a roughly two-to-one margin, the state’s voters approved the initiative in a special election on Nov. 4.

Three days later, the challengers went to court to try to block the use of the map. They argued that the map violated the Constitution because it relied too heavily on race in drawing 16 congressional districts that impermissibly favored Latino voters.

A divided three-judge district court – which Congress has tasked with hearing congressional redistricting cases – turned down their request, leaving the new map in place. Writing for the majority, U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton concluded “that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming.” Staton also rejected the challengers’ contention that even if the voters had partisan motives when they approved Proposition 50, “they were simply dupes of a racially-motivated legislature.”

. . . On Wednesday afternoon, with five days remaining before the Feb. 9 deadline requested by the challengers, the court turned down the challengers’ request to intervene.

Apparently it’s ok to gerrymander to favor a political position, but not to include or exclude membrs of different ethnic groups. As NPR noted,

The “impetus” for adopting both states’ maps was “partisan advantage pure and simple,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in a concurring opinion, which fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not reviewable by federal courts.

I don’t like this whole idea of politically-motivated redistricting. As we see with Texas and California, it leads to Gerrymandering Wars. There are procedures to create districts of equal representation without preference to the identity or politics of voters.

*Television journalist Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have released an emotional video after their mother was abducted on Sunday and is still missing. Two ransom notes have apparently been received.

Here’s a news video including the complete plea of the Guthrie family. There were two ransom notes, but the deadline for the first one passed without any word from the kidnappers.

*The WaPo discusses Trump’s proposed building of a huge ballroom on the site of the former East Wing of the White House (now demolished), saying it will be as tall as the main building. In a separate article, the paper shows the big change the ballroom will make in OUR residence (it belongs to the American people, not Trump).

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the plannedWhiteHouse ballroom will be the same “height and scale” as the existing mansion, signaling his ambitious plans for the project despite concerns from a federal judge, members of two review panels and historic preservationists that it will be too big and will spoil the centuries-old symbol of American power and democracy

The planned 90,000-square-foot addition, which Trump has said is necessary to host VIP events, represents the most significant change to the White House complex in decades. In a Truth Social post Tuesday, he defended its appearance and size.

“It is totally in keeping with our historic White House,” he wrote. “This beautiful building will be, when complete … The Greatest of its kind ever built!”

In the roughly 130-word post, Trump also unveiled an architect’s rendering of the building: a towering neoclassical structure adorned with stately columns and an imposing pediment — the triangular structure above the portico — whose apex, according to Trump, matches the main mansion’s North Portico. The rendering was prepared by Shalom Baranes Associates, the firm handling the project, according to the White House.

Trump’s announcement came as construction crews continued their work on the underground infrastructure needed to support a building of that size — and as opponents awaited a decision from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on whether to order that work to stop.

The president’s administration is also in the middle of a nine-week push to win approval for the project from two federal review committees. The goal is a green light by early March and a start to aboveground construction as early as April.

“This space will serve our Country well for, hopefully, Centuries into the future!” Trump wrote.

With historic preservationists saying they’re worried the 90,000-square-foot structure will overshadow the iconic main mansion, Leon and members of the two committees have asked whether the administration can reduce the building’s size.

I’m wondering what would happen if the project were stopped by the courts? Would they rebuild the East Wing? That doesn’t seem to be in the cards because Trump. Here are projections of the former East Wing and the new one with the ballroom, both appearing (uncredited) in the Post article; I’m not sure whether these are Trump’s renderings, but the East Wing is suddenly GIANT.

Old:

New (note that it’s nearly as high as the main building):

*In a WaPo editorial (I’m trying to quote them before the paper disappears), two law professors at NYU, Richard Epstein and Max Raski, criticize singer Billie Eilish’s “progressive” land acknowledgements at the Grammy Awards: “No Billie Eilish, American are not thieves on stolen land,” (Article is archived here.) I noted recently when I read the book Empire of the Summer Moon that the Plains Indians, at least, had no notion of “owning” land, and that roughly a half dozen tribes could use the same land for hunting, squatting, and making war.

Billie Eilish brought the house down at the Grammy Awards on Sunday when she declared, “No one is illegal on stolen land.” While the first half of the statement was a fan favorite aimed at President Donald Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the second half was a throwback evokingpopular land declarations this past decade that consider all land stolen if not derived from an original indigenous title. But it’s time to put Eilish’s theory of property out to pasture: Americans are not thieves who built on stolen land.

In 2022, Los Angeles County unanimously adopted a land acknowledgment proclaiming “that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples.” Accepting generational guilt, the county further “acknowledge[s] that settler colonization resulted in land seizure, disease, subjugation, slavery, relocation, broken promises, genocide, and multigenerational trauma.” What the resolution fails to mention is that some of this mayhem was inflicted by one Native American tribe on another. Consider the fierce conquest of the southern Plains by the Comanche or the prevalence ofNative American slavery before the European arrival. It also fails to mention that “we” — presumably White people — inflicted similar harms on one another across centuries of war, displacement and conquest.

Los Angeles inserts no time dimension into its denunciations, thus implying this principle applies identically to dispossessions that took place 1,000 or 10 years ago. Thankfully statements of apology, however sincere, don’t transfer title backward to the original owners, for if they did, civilization would collapse.

he land long ago taken from X, has in the interim centuries been conveyed to Y and Z, and countless others who then have built, torn down and built again homes, hospitals and schools for millions. The effort to undo the past would involve trillions of dollars in transfer payments and coercedtitle shifts that would unsettle every home mortgage, every mining and oil lease, and every graveyard in the United States.

To prevent this social catastrophe, every nation has always adopted a bifurcated view of property, poetically articulated in the Harvard Law Review by the influential California jurist Henry Ballantine in 1918. Principle No. 1 reads: “For true it is, that neither fraud nor might/Can make a title where there wanteth right.” From this it looks like all titles remain perpetually subject to challenge.

But every society also understands that people should be allowed to enjoy security in their purchases and not have to worry about what happened centuries ago. Thus, a second principle to protect these interests, as Ballantine writes, imposes strict limitations on when to sue, for “the great purpose is automatically to quiet all titles which are openly and consistently asserted, to provide proof of meritorious titles, and correct errors in conveyancing.”

. . . . Fortunately, Eilish does not actually practice whatshe preaches, for otherwise anyone would be free to squat in her mansion, by asserting the property belongs to the Tongva, not her. But the same legal doctrines that protect her also protect Americans against sweeping claims that they live on stolen land. Performative politics usually ends when celebrities get off stage and become, however briefly, ordinary people.

I’m wondering whether the Tongva even had a concept of private land ownership. The authors don’t deal with that question, which becomes less important in light of present property law that the authors discuss (see archived article for details).

*So much for the canard that Israel is an “apartheid state”! An Arab woman known as “Captain Ella” (her rank is now Lieutenant Colonel) has been appointed as the IDF’s Arab spokesperson. She’s the highest-ranking Arab Muslim woman in the IDF.

Maj. Ella Waweya was selected on Tuesday by the military to replace Col. Avichay Adraee as the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic-language spokesperson.

Waweya, 36, who is known as “Captain Ella,” is among the most senior female Arab Muslim officers in the military.

She was born in the central Arab town of Qalansawe and joined the IDF voluntarily in 2013, initially hiding her service from her family.

Currently, Waweya serves as Adraee’s deputy and boasts more than half a million followers on TikTok and 170,000 on X.

Adraee, who served as the Arabic-language spokesman for the past 20 years, was set to retire.

Waweya would be promoted to lieutenant colonel, and a handover ceremony was expected to take place in the coming weeks.

Adraee had become a familiar face during the ongoing war, particularly due to the military’s use of his social media pages to issue evacuation warnings ahead of strikes in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Yemen, and even Iran.

With millions of followers across his social media accounts and hundreds of interviews on Arabic-language media channels, including Al Jazeera, Adraee became the IDF’s face — and somewhat of a celebrity — in the Arab world.

Now Lt. Col. Ella will run the Arab-language communications for the IDF.  Here’s a video of the new spokeswoman, and a bit about her story.  I seriously doubt that there are any Jews in Hamas, and those who call Israel an “apartheid” state don’t know what they’re talking about. Do you ever hear them calling Palestine an “apartheid territory”?  This is one tough woman! Follow her on her  (X) Twitter page.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems unaware that thousands of people hear their conversations. But Andrzej reminded me that they have a lot more conversations that aren’t reproduced.

Hili: We’re very lucky.
Andrzej: What do you mean?
Hili: That no one hears all our conversations.

In Polish:

Hili: Mamy dużo szczęścia.
Ja:  Co masz na myśli?
Hili: To, że nikt nie słyszy wszystkich naszych rozmów.

*******************

From The Language Nerds:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

Masih’s written a letter to Mamdani in Tablet Magazine (you can see the letter here). As I expected, Jews for Mamdami is like Chickens for KFC.  (See who Mamdani appointed to be the head of NYC’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.)

.@NYCMayor, while mass killings are unfolding in Iran, you have chosen silence.

I invite you to engage with me, to listen, and to educate yourself so you can be a mayor who truly represents all who call this city home, writes @AlinejadMasih. pic.twitter.com/oKNCKTHT3f

— Tablet Magazine (@tabletmag) February 5, 2026

From Jay; a frustrated but persistent kitten FTW:

The best cat video I have ever seen ❤️pic.twitter.com/zMLmxUdbJc

— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) February 5, 2026

From Luana. I don’t know if this is the case, but the likely outcome is below it:

pic.twitter.com/Gu7CqdQ4xj

— marilyn ♡ (@marilynomics) September 19, 2025

From Malcolm. I believe this is the famous school cat named “Room 8“:

Classmates 🥰🧡 pic.twitter.com/U2NBvqKcYG

— No Cats No Life (@NoCatsNoLife_m) January 26, 2026

One from my feed: sound up to hear the pathetic meow at the end. Poor kitty: he needs to go on a diet, but instead they laugh at him!

The absolute indignation on his face 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/mCN4ZEiclS

— According2Taz (@according2_taz) February 5, 2026

. . . and one I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was five years old and would be 87 today had he lived. https://t.co/Dh2mRzZ9qL

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 6, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, bollards!

Bollards save lives AND bring immense joy and happiness to the world.#WorldBollardAssociation

— World Bollard Association™️ (@worldbollardassoc.bsky.social) 2026-02-01T21:55:22.569Z

Armadillos in the wheel! Sound up:

Our armadillos take their exercise very seriously. Happy belated #ArmadilloDay from our Ambassadors, Chaco and Willow the three-banded armadillos, and Dillon the nine-banded armadillo!🎥: Behavioral Husbandry Manager, Heather G.

— Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance (@denverzoo.bsky.social) 2026-02-03T18:13:23.717714804Z