I Didn't Come Here For Art: Tabs, Mon., February 16, 2026

News and things to read and watch!

Infant pygmy slow loris born at Bronx Zoo, gif by our pal Martini Glambassador!

Day 758 of the Epstein administration and still here! How’s everybody else holding up? The news:

Welp, turns out Trump was accused of team child sexual assault with Jeffrey Epstein at least twice by victims the FBI itself considered credible. And within 24 hours after the FBI’s interview with one of the victims was entered into their case database, Epstein was dead. Huh. (Roger Sollenberger)

Lookie, more nouns to put in the blanks of the Mad Lib about the superduper secret conversation between foreign nationals a whistleblower accused Tulsi Gabbard of hiding from Congress! The “person close to Trump” = Jared Kushner, and “subject of conversation” = Iran. Just what has that oily golden boy been getting up to? 👀 (Wall Street Journal gift link)

Everybody on Team Trump is battling to steal the midterms the most hardest! Kristi Noem has now declared herself in charge of being “proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.” (Independent)

Utah’s GOP-led campaign against an independent redistricting commission there is in big trouble after the company they paid $4.3 million to collect signatures, Don Junior-promoted Patriot Grassroots, was accused of forging thousands of signatures on petitions, including entire names and addresses of people who did not exist, oops. Just like Austin Smith in Arizona. (Democracy Docket)

Heartbreaking story about Minnesota’s Columbia Heights Academy’s efforts to protect, feed and shelter their students from ICE monsters. No child, parent, school employee or community should ever have to be in those positions. Whatever your current level of moral outrage, America, triple it! (Washington Post gift link)

And no refugee the US vowed to support during wartime should get deported to an enemy country to be likely killed. That’s just basic morals. (CNN)

ICE lies like they breathe, example latest, acting director Todd Lyons:

Update to Pete Hegseth being so good at his job! The guy who once almost blew up JD Vance’s motorcade used an unapproved, never-before-tested laser weapons system near the El Paso airport to shoot down a party balloon he mistook for a drone, without asking or informing the FAA. So the FAA shut down flights for 10 days because they thought the system had been breached! Amazing! And then Pentagon Sean Parnell said none of that ever happened, whilst declining to offer any alternative explanation for what actually did. (New York Times archive link)

Hegseth is also back to his boat-striking, killing three more people in the Caribbean and bringing the death toll to 133. And there sits the Republican Congress, co-signing it all, complicit! (The Guardian)

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern think Samuel Alito is about to retire. Betcha Trump’s going to nominate Emil Bove. (Slate archive link)

Things you should do: call your Senator to protest the shitawful SAVE Act. Get/renew passports for yourself and your whole family.

Whose reputation and/or career’s gotten newly or further destroyed by the Epstein files recently? A no-way-complete list includes former Norwegian Prime Minister Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland; now-former Goldman Sachs top lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler; Tommy Mottola; Naomi Campbell; talent agent Casey Wasserman; Les Wexner (some more); Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; Canadian physicist Lee Smolin; New York Giants owner Steve Tisch; Brad Karp (CEO of that law firm Paul, Weiss, which pledged to do $40m of free work for Trump); former culture minister of France Jack Lang; Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit; deceased banking heir Matthew Mellon.

Arts!

If you’re anywhere near PA, today is the last day of the Philadelphia Art Museum’s once-in-a-lifetime show, “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100.” Yes, they have a 1938 Dali Aphrodisiac lobster Telephone! And nearby at the Barnes until the 22nd, “Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets,” with 60 works, almost surely the most you will ever see in once place at one time ever from that fascinating weirdo who never actually left France. Down in Baltimore, don’t miss “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” it will be at the Baltimore Museum of Art until April 5. And over in LA, you can go take a selfie with Robert Therrien’s giant pots and pans at The Broad until April 5 too. Big art is big. Maybe it’s nostalgia for that ‘90s store, Think Big!

Not that you came here for that.

Back to our regularly scheduled snark!

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