Purple Rain 😱 ✡️🌻😱 👿 

Hail Britannia: Whoa. The man formerly known as Prince but now known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested this morning on suspicion of misconduct in public office, a very British way of saying Epstein 💩.  Meantime, the Orange guy who appeared around one million times in the Epstein files still hasn’t faced any consequences and appears to be prepping to attack Iran while also cooking up ways to disrupt the midterm elections. Overnight freelance journalist Roger Sollenberger who broke the story about footballer/Senate candidate Herschel Walker paying for an abortion posted on his Substack additional details about the allegations provided by the woman who asserts that as a tween she was trafficked by Epstein who then introduced her to Trump who she says raped her. She says that she was interviewed by the FBI four times though curiously only one of those interviews appears, albeit heavily redacted, in the released Epstein files.  In other Epstein news, as expected during his deposition former Victoria’s Secret head Les Wexner denied knowing anything about Epstein’s sex trafficking of girls and young women, while also claiming that he’d been duped and conned by him.  He added that he’d cut off communication with Epstein in 2007 although there are a few emails that contradict that assertion.  The Wexner deposition was held at his Ohio estate.  No Republican members of Congress attended though a few members of their staff did.  It’s probably not a stretch to surmise that the Republicans were all “advised” that attendance would make a certain someone very unhappy, subjecting them to Truth Social attacks or worse.  With no Republicans in attendance the five Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducted the closed-door questioning.  The five were Representatives Robert Garcia (ranking member), Jasmine Crockett, Dave Min, Yassamin Ansari, and Stephen Lynch.    

MAHA 🤷‍♀️:  Yesterday morning the FDA announced that despite its previous refusal it will review Moderna’s mRNA application. Politico reports that the reversal was the result of pressure from the White House, likely a response to polling that indicates that most Americans, even those who don’t bother to get their flu shots support vaccines as well as an acknowledgement that hurting a US manufacturer might not be pro-business. Moderna has agreed to tweak its application, but the change seems mostly a way to allow the FDA to save face about their earlier refusal. In other MAHA news, yesterday Trump issued an executive order intended to spur the domestic production of glyphosate, the weedkiller that is the active ingredient in Roundup. Glyphosate is widely believed to cause cancer including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  In 2018, RFK helped win a landmark $289 million jury verdict against Monsanto, the maker of Roundup by arguing that the company knew that. However, now that it’s in his interest to support Trump’s actions, which are likely the result of lobbying (contributions?) by the Chemical industry, RFK says he’s cool with glyphosate because, really what’s a little lymphoma among friends. Chalk that up as one of the things that happens when an unprincipled toilet seat sniffing coke guy who attributes his academic success to heroin becomes the Health Secretary.  One more piece of health news,  NIH head Jay Bhattacharya is now also the head of the CDC.  Bhattacharya was one of those who thought that the best way to handle COVID was to just let it spread so maybe just maybe putting him in charge of disease control is not the best idea. 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️

More 💩:  In December, noting that he was a terrific Congressman, Trump endorsed the reelection bid of Texas Republican Tony Gonzales. Apparently, the affair that the married Gonzales had with a member of his staff who committed suicide by self-immolation in September 2025 was not a disqualifier.  Only the best.              .