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Billionaire Trump Donor Closing U.S. Plant and Moving Work to China
New Republic • Feb 16, 2026

Billionaire Trump Donor Closing U.S. Plant and Moving Work to China

One of President Trump’s oldest donors is closing a manufacturing plant in Ohio and moving it to China, a slap in the face to the American workers he claimed to be fighting for. Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson plans to offshore the East Lake, Ohio, plant of Conn Selmer, the largest U.S. manufacturer of brass and orchestra instruments.“We can’t have American producers closing American factories and offshoring. We need to protect American jobs and protect American manufacturing,” Paulson said just last year.“We came in with a full proposal, fully prepared to bargain, and they started off with a presentation of telling us how bad we were doing,” said UAW Local 2359 president and plant worker Robert Hines. “To go publicly on CNBC to support the Trump administration’s positive views on tariffs and all that stuff, and then you turn around and [say you] want to go send the work right over to China … it’s a slap in our face.”Paulson raised $50.5 million for Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign. And like Trump, he’s pushed pro–domestic worker rhetoric while leaving those same workers out to dry. “It’s going to take a lot of money out of East Lake,” Hines said. “We’ve had people come out [and] show love to try to keep the place open, and the company just isn’t open to it. They’re not answering or returning anyone’s calls.”

New Evidence Torpedoes Pam Bondi’s Claim About Trump and Epstein
New Republic • Feb 16, 2026

New Evidence Torpedoes Pam Bondi’s Claim About Trump and Epstein

Newly uncovered details in the Epstein files reveal that the FBI spoke with a victim who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, despite Attorney General Pam Bondi’s vehement denial that the Justice Department had any such evidence, as of last week.Agents apparently spoke with a victim of Jeffrey Epstein who also accused Trump of sexually and violently assaulting her. It is unclear what happened with the investigation, though the government deemed her to be a “credible accuser,” according to independent journalist Roger Sollenberger. A woman with identical biological details sued Epstein’s estate and won a settlement in 2021.The investigation into the accuser is made apparent on a page titled “prominent names” in an internal, 21-page slideshow cataloguing the Justice Department’s various investigations into Epstein and his longtime criminal associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump’s name is listed in the document, along with two allegations against the sitting president.“[REDACTED] stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out,” reads the first entry, noting that the victim would have been between 13 and 15 years old and that the incident took place sometime between 1983 and 1985.But the second accusation against the president, which involves Trump agreeing with Epstein that a 14-year-old victim was a “good one,” carries a different kind of credibility inside the DOJ, since the person who provided the statement was also used as a key government witness to convict Maxwell, according to the files.“[REDACTED] remembered Epstein introduced her to Trump saying ‘This is a good one, huh’ and Trump responded ‘Yes’. (date range roughly 1984, [REDACTED] would have been 14),” the slide reads.Trump was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the latest batch of Epstein files, and was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache.Yet the White House has continued to vehemently deny that Trump did anything wrong while he was close pals with the child sex trafficker—even as evidence emerges to the contrary.On Wednesday, Bondi went so far as to claim the Justice Department had no evidence that underage girls were at parties attended by the president. California Representative Ted Lieu then accused Bondi of lying under oath, referring to a document from the FBI’s National Threat Operation Center that illustrated a witness had called the bureau to report such a case in 1995.

Uncovering Richard Branson’s Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
Jezebel • Feb 16, 2026

Uncovering Richard Branson’s Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

While the newly released files do not appear to show that he was an active participant in Epstein's inner circle, <em>Paste</em>’s comprehensive timeline of Branson’s presence in the documents makes the Virgin Group CEO's claims of ignorance hard to believe.

They Keep Lying To Us About Epstein...
9:41
Hasan Abi • Feb 16, 2026

They Keep Lying To Us About Epstein...

"The Alabama Solution": Oscar-Nominated Film Uses Prisoner Cellphones to Show U.S.'s Deadliest Prisons
Democracy Now • Feb 16, 2026

"The Alabama Solution": Oscar-Nominated Film Uses Prisoner Cellphones to Show U.S.'s Deadliest Prisons

Three activists — Robert Earl Council, Melvin Ray and Raoul Poole — featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution were placed in solitary confinement last month in what advocates believe is retaliation for their role in exposing the abuses of the state’s prison system and for helping to organize a prison labor strike. We’re joined by three guests who worked on the documentary: director Andrew Jarecki, investigative journalist Charlotte Kaufman and Tiffany Johnson Cole, a childhood friend of and attorney for Robert Earl Council. Johnson Cole has filed a lawsuit against her client’s transfer. She says Council, Ray, Poole and other incarcerated activists have “put themselves in harm’s way in an effort to bring about change in a system that is truly cruel and inhumane.” The Alabama Solution features footage clandestinely shot on contraband cellphones wielded by men incarcerated by the fifth-largest state prison system in the United States. The footage includes the apparent cover-up of the beating death of an incarcerated man by prison guards. “Any authoritarian administration does not want you to see what’s going on inside,” says director Andrew Jarecki. “They can’t really continue to do what they’re doing if there’s enough public pressure, which is one of the reasons why Alabama is so anxious about this film.” Kaufman adds that the problem extends throughout the country. “We spend $80 billion a year on prisons and jails and incarcerate 2 million people, and yet the public’s not allowed to see in and evaluate whether the system is fulfilling its mandate.”

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