Letters from an American - February 12, 2026

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

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February 12, 26. In a ceremony at the White House yesterday, surrounded by coal industry leaders, lawmakers, and miners, President Donald J. Trump was presented with a trophy that calls him the undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal. At the event, Trump signed an executive order directing the Defense Department to buy billions of dollars of power produced by coal and decried the radical left's war on the industry. Anna Betts of the Guardian noted that Trump also announced the Department of Energy will spend $175 million to modernize, retrofit, and extend the life of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky. As Lisa Friedman pointed out in the New York Times last month, the United States has been the largest polluter

since the start of the industrial era, but emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, have been declining since 2007. Trump maintains that climate change is a hoax and has withdrawn the U.S. from the main global climate treaty. Since he took office in January 2025, U.S. emissions have increased 1.9 percent, largely because of the renewed use of coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked the scientific finding that has been the basis for regulating emissions from cars and power plants since 2009. That finding, called the endangerment finding, reflects the consensus of scientists that greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels

like coal, oil, and natural gas endanger the health and general welfare of the American people. The Trump administration says scientists are wrong about the dangers of climate change and that the regulations hurt industry and slow the economy. It claims ending the rule will save Americans $1.3 trillion, primarily through cheaper cars and trucks, but it did not factor in the costs of extreme weather caused by climate change or the costs of pollution-related health issues. Last year, Josh Dossi and Maxine Jossolo of the Washington Post reported that at a campaign event at Marilago in April 2024, then candidate Trump told oil executives they should raise a billion dollars for his campaign. In exchange, Trump promised he would get rid of Biden-era regulations and make sure no more such regulations went into effect, in addition to lowering taxes. Trump told them a billion dollars would be a deal, considering how much money they would make if he were in the White House. Tyler Pager and Matina Stavis Gridneff of the New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump's threats to stop the opening of the Gordy Howe International Bridge between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, came just hours after billionaire Matthew Maroon, whose family operates a competing bridge. called Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik.

Maroon has tried to stop the construction of the new bridge for decades. The $4.7 billion construction cost of the Gordy Howe Bridge has been fully funded by Canada, although the bridge is partly owned by Michigan and will be operated jointly by Canada and Michigan. The new bridge will compete with the Ambassador Bridge, the one the Maroon family operates, for about $300 million in trade crossing the border daily. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt told reporters that this is just another example of President Trump putting America's interest first.

This afternoon, Dustin Volz, Josh Dawsey, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal reported that the whistleblower complaint of last May involved another country's interception of a conversation between two foreign nationals who were discussing Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, issues related to Iran, and perhaps other issues. Kushner runs affinity partners, an investment fund that has taken billions of dollars in funds from Arab monarchies. He does not have an official role in the U.S. government,

but appears to be acting in foreign affairs as a volunteer. The Wall Street Journal reported on the existence of the whistleblower complaint on February 2nd, 26, reporting that Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had bottled it up for political reasons, taking it not to Congress, but to White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. On February 3rd, Gabbard released a highly redacted version of the complaint to the gang of eight, the top member of each party in the House and Senate, and the top member of each party on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It may or may not be related that in early April 2025, the administration abruptly fired National Security Agency Director General Timothy Hawke and his deputy, hours after dismissing several staffers at the National Security Council. At the time, conspiracy theorist Laura Lumer, who is close to Trump, posted on social media that Hawk and his deputy have been disloyal to President Trump.

is why they have been fired. In Talking Points Memo, editor Josh Marshall has been exploring the contours of what he calls the authoritarian international, which he identifies as a host of authoritarian governments around the world, the princelings of the Gulf monarchies, the sprinkling of European right-revantious governments, the rightward portion of Silicon Valley, which accounts for a larger and larger percentage of the top owners, if not the larger community, the Israeli private Intel sector, various post-Soviet oligarchs, and, increasingly, the world's billionaire class. Marshall notes that those in this world are not just anti-democratic. They're constructing a private world in which deals are done secretly without any democratic accountability, mixing national interest with

individual financial interest. The model operates in part by maintaining control over figures thanks to compromising material on them. Marshall points out that the system can be oddly stable if everyone has something on everyone else. Marshall's description dovetails neatly with former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller's 2011 explanation of the evolving organized crime threat. Organized crime had become multinational, he said, making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement, and cornering the market on natural gas, oil and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder. He explained, these groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign

powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called iron triangles of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat. To protect this system, transparency must be prevented at all costs. The administration seems to be illustrating this principle as it denies the right to the right and duty of Congress to conduct oversight of the government. The Department of Justice, or DOJ, has refused to release all the Epstein files to the public, as Congress required when it passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee,

but it was clear she was not there to answer lawmakers' questions or explain why she had not released the files. nor did she acknowledge the survivors of Epstein's sexual assaults and sex trafficking, many of whom were in the audience and noted that she had not met with them. When Representative Primalogia Apoll, a Democrat of Washington, urged her to apologize to the survivors for the sloppiness of the release that had left many survivors' names, identifying information, and even sexually explicit photos, unredacted,

while covering the names of perpetrators, Bondi accused Jayapal of Theatrics, and, as Glenn Thrush of the New York Times reported, of dragging the hearing into the gutter. Instead, she came prepared with a book of insults to aim at Democrats and met questions with attacks on the questioners and praise for Trump. Republican Thomas Massey, a Republican of Kentucky, who has been instrumental in pressuring the White House over the Epstein files, posted on social media, a funny thing about Bondi's insults to members of Congress who had serious questions. Staff literally gave her flashcards with individualized insults, but she couldn't memorize them so you can see her shuffle through them to find the flashcards insult that matches the member. Bondi was not only stonewalling, but also demonstrating the tactics of authoritarian power, turning her own shortcomings into an attack on those trying to enforce rules.

Even more ominously, Kent Nishamura of Reuters captured a photo of a page of the book with a printout titled Jayapal Pramila search history. It appeared to be the files representative Jayapal accessed after the DOJ made some of the Epstein files available at DOJ offices earlier this week. This is a shocking intrusion of the executive branch into surveilling members of the legislative branch and weaponizing that information. The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat of Maryland,

said he will ask for an investigation of this outrageous abuse of power. Bondi's performance drew widespread condemnation from outside the administration, and even Republicans seemed to realize she was toxic. Scott McFarlane of CBS News, noted that in the committee hearing, Republicans didn't use all their time to question her, but simply yielded their time allotted to ask questions back to the committee. But Bondi appeared to be playing to Trump, as she made clear when she veered into the bizarre claim that what the committee should be talking about was not the Epstein files, but rather the booming stock market.

Last month, Josh Dossie, Sadie, Sadie, German, and C. Ryan Barber of the Wall Street Journal, reported that Trump was complaining to AIDS that Bondi is weak and ineffective. Yesterday's performance pleased him. This morning, Trump's social media account posted, A.G. Pam Bondi, under intense fire from the Trump-deranged radical left lunatics, was fantastic at yesterday's hearing on the never-ending saga of Jeffrey Epstein, where the one thing that has been proven conclusively, much to their chagrin, was that President Donald J. Trump has been 100% exonerated of their ridiculous Russia, Russia, Russia-type charges.

Nobody cared about Epstein when he was alive. They only cared about him when they thought he could create political harm to a very popular president who has brought our country back from the brink of extinction and very quickly at that. An economist UGov poll released Tuesday shows that 85% of U.S. adults agree with the statement, there are powerful elites who helped Epstein target and abuse young girls. They protected him and need to be investigated. Only 3% of American adults disagree. 50% of American adults think Trump was involved in crimes allegedly committed by Jeffrey Epstein, while only 29% think he wasn't. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.