Breaking: "Epstein's home" — read Trump's tone-deaf Valentine

Obama breaks his silence, Amazon kills a surveillance partnership and Democrats are all-in on gerrymandering

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Nothing says Happy Valentine’s Day like an official White House account posting candy hearts that read “Daddy’s home.” No, we’re not joking: the White House has the political instincts of a drunk toddler. Their official Valentine’s Twitter post (above) invited people to “Send to your Valentine” alongside hearts reading “MAGA” and “love.”

The internet immediately started photoshopping: “Epstein’s home” and “Daddy’s a pedophile.” It turns out trolling goes both ways. Social conservative Camille MacKenzie said, “This official account reads like a pedophile’s diary.”

So how did Fox News respond to all this? By turning child sex trafficking into a comedy routine.

Today, Jesse Watters maintained on “The Five” that Epstein was “mostly just a fixer” who “help[ed] people with their problems — [and] sometimes those problems are ‘you need a girl.’” Fox’s Greg Gutfeld chimed in: “He’s a sex rabbi!” The Fox hosts erupted in laughter.

Even Fox viewers revolted. “Fox News has hit a new low,” one commented. “Holy hell, not you guys downplaying it too.”

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Obama Breaks Silence on Trump’s Racist Video

Former President Barack Obama made his first public comments since Trump posted a racist video depicting Obama and Michelle as apes. Obama didn’t directly address the video, but called out the “clown show that’s happening in social media.”

“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 respect for the office,” Obama told podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen. “That’s been lost.”

But Obama also dropped this bombshell: he claimed aliens are “real,” though said he hasn’t seen them. “They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

Obama also praised the “heroic, sustained behavior” of Minneapolis residents protecting immigrants during Trump’s ICE raids, calling the federal agents’ actions “rogue behavior” that was “deeply concerning and dangerous.”

Ring Kills Surveillance Partnership After Dystopian Super Bowl Ad

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Ring learned the hard way that Americans don’t want their doorbells turned into a police surveillance network. The company killed its partnership with Flock Safety, which makes license plate readers for cops, after their Super Bowl ad about finding a lost dog sparked privacy concerns.

The ad showed a “Search Party” feature tracking a missing yellow lab named Milo through interconnected doorbell cameras. Instead of a heartwarming feeling, viewers got creeped out.

“Users expressed unease that the new feature presented as a technological advance appeared capable of enabling the authorities to tap into thousands of cameras that could track people’s everyday movements,” the Times reported.

Senator Ed Markey wrote to Amazon demanding they stop using facial recognition. He called the partnership’s end “an important step in guarding against the ever-expanding network of surveillance technologies.”

Ring insisted the integration “never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.” Translation: we got caught before we could turn your front door into a cop shop.

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Hakeem Jeffries Goes Nuclear on Gerrymandering

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is done playing nice. After watching GOP gerrymandering cost Democrats the House majority, he’s leading an all-out counterattack that’s forcing his party to abandon their moral high ground on redistricting.

“Republicans started this redistricting war, and Democrats have made clear, we’re going to finish it,” Jeffries told CNN. “When they go low, we strike back.”

The strategy is working. Democrats believe they’re on track to gain as many as five seats in California, one in Utah, and several in Virginia — moves that could nearly neutralize Trump’s gerrymandering push. Jeffries is willing to spend “tens of millions of dollars” just on Virginia’s April ballot initiative alone.

But the biggest fight is in Maryland, where Jeffries is pressuring state Senate President Bill Ferguson to redraw maps targeting the state’s lone GOP-held seat. Ferguson is refusing, worried it could backfire in court.

Jeffries issued a stark warning: “One man shouldn’t stand in the way of the people of Maryland” and vowed to personally apply pressure if Ferguson doesn’t back down. “At some point I’m going to have a conversation with him if he continues to stand in the way of an up-or-down vote.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher. As Rep. Glenn Ivey put it: “We better not lose the House by one seat.”

This is the new reality of American politics: both parties gaming the system to lock in power. Republicans kicked it off in Texas, now Democrats are fighting fire with fire across multiple states for the 2028 cycle.

Jeffries believes it could end up as a wash, telling CNN: “The best-case scenario for Republicans at this point is status quo, which is very different than what they were claiming when they were beating on their chest last year.”

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