Maryland Governor Wes Moore said on Sunday that he was "snubbed" by Donald Trump, and confirmed that a bipartisan group of governors was behind him.

Moore over the weekend took to social media to explain how he had been left out of an event, even after going to the White House for a successful meeting.

"This week, I learned that I was uninvited to this year’s National Governors Association dinner — a decades-long annual tradition meant to bring governors from both parties together to build bonds and celebrate a shared service to our citizens with the President of the United States. My peers, both Democrats and Republicans, selected me to serve as the Vice Chair of the NGA, another reason why it’s hard not to see this decision as another example of blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership," the governor wrote. "As the nation’s only Black governor, I can’t ignore that being singled out for exclusion from this bipartisan tradition carries an added weight — whether that was the intent or not."

He continued:

"What makes it especially confounding is that just weeks ago I was at the White House with a bipartisan group of governors, working with the administration on reforms to lower energy costs and strengthen grid reliability. We proved in that moment what’s possible when we stay focused on outcomes over politics. As Governor of Maryland and Vice Chair of the NGA, my approach will never change: I’m ready to work with the administration anywhere we can deliver results. Yet, I promised the people of my state I will work with anybody but will bow down to nobody. And I guess the President doesn’t like that."

Moore also went on cable news earlier in the day, where he confirmed the NGA had decided that it would not be a NGA-sponsored event if any of its members are left out.

https://x.com/GovWesMoore/status/2020544415693947242

This week, I learned that I was uninvited to this year’s National Governors Association dinner — a decades-long annual tradition meant to bring governors from both parties together to build bonds and celebrate a shared service to our citizens with the President of the United States. My peers, both Democrats and Republicans, selected me to serve as the Vice Chair of the NGA, another reason why it’s hard not to see this decision as another example of blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership.

As the nation’s only Black governor, I can’t ignore that being singled out for exclusion from this bipartisan tradition carries an added weight — whether that was the intent or not.

What makes it especially confounding is that just weeks ago I was at the White House with a bipartisan group of governors, working with the administration on reforms to lower energy costs and strengthen grid reliability. We proved in that moment what’s possible when we stay focused on outcomes over politics.

As Governor of Maryland and Vice Chair of the NGA, my approach will never change: I’m ready to work with the administration anywhere we can deliver results. Yet, I promised the people of my state I will work with anybody but will bow down to nobody. And I guess the President doesn’t like that.

President Donald Trump was widely ridiculed Sunday after targeting American Olympic skier Hunter Hess in a blistering attack, an attack labeled by some critics as “genuinely embarrassing.”

Hess, a 27-year-old Oregon native, was asked in Italy on Friday about what it meant to represent the United States in this year’s Winter Olympics, to which he said it was “a little hard,” and that he wasn’t the “biggest fan” of "everything that’s going on in the U.S.,” Reuters reported. Trump had apparently seen Hess’s remarks by Sunday, and attacked him as a “real loser” that was “hard to root for.”

The unprecedented instance of a U.S. president publicly attacking an American Olympic athlete was met with exhaustion from critics, such as X user “Gandalv,” a political commentator who’s amassed nearly 60,000 followers on the platform.

“From a European perspective, this is genuinely embarrassing. You would have to search far and wide to find a country that manages to look this ugly in its politics and public behavior, and a president who so perfectly mirrors it,” they wrote in a post on X.

“In most democracies, a leader would rise above it, defend the country’s values without acting personally wounded, and avoid turning a citizen into a national punching bag. This is not strength and the MAGA regime drags the entire country’s reputation down.”

The closest parallel in American history occurred during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, when two Black American athletes – Tommie Smith and John Carlos – raised their fists during a performance of the National Anthem in solidarity with the ongoing fight against racial inequality. And, while Smith and Carlos were ultimately expelled from the Olympic Games for their act of protest, they were not attacked by the sitting president, then Lyndon B. Johnson......

https://x.com/krassenstein/status/2020540119254483204

Survivors of the late child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein released a video ad on Super Bowl Sunday, naming Pam Bondi specifically and saying simply, "We deserve the truth."

Ex-CNN journalist Jim Acosta is among those who broke the news on social media, writing, "BREAKING: The Epstein survivors are releasing this ad on this Super Bowl Sunday to send the message that they will not 'move on' from the largest sex trafficking scandal in the world."

Aaron Parnas also wrote, "Epstein survivors release this powerful PSA in advance of the Super Bowl demanding answers from the Justice Department. This is the Super Bowl ad every American should see. Spread it everywhere."

Right-wing influencer Ben Shapiro insisted that President Donald Trump did not have the "attention span" to realize that a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes had been posted on his Truth Social account.

Media Matters first reported that Shapiro had addressed Trump's racist meme on his Friday show.

"There's a video that he posted over at Truth Social that apparently contains an image of the Obamas as apes," the MAGA star noted. "Do I think that President Trump even watched the whole video? I have serious doubts. President Trump has a habit of late-night Truthing, where he just sort of gets up at 3 AM, or he's up at 3 AM, and he just starts Truthing things out."

"And I'm almost certain that the president never watches the entirety of any video," he continued. "I don't think he has the attention span to get through any of the videos that he has tweeted. I think he sees that there is something that is pro-Trump, he puts it out there. And if there's an ugly image in there, either he ignores it or he didn't see it in the first place as a general rule."

"Now, does that justify it? It doesn't justify anything, but I think that the suggestion that the president did not watch the entirety of the video and that he just put that out late at night because he watched the first 25 seconds of the video or 40 seconds of the video, I would say that that is extremely high probability."

In recent weeks, Marin County Registrar Natalie Adona has been largely focused on the many mundane tasks of local elections administrators in the months before a midterm: finalizing voting locations, ordering supplies, facilitating candidate filings.

But in the wake of unprecedented efforts by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections, Adona said she has also been preparing her staff for far less ordinary scenarios — such as federal officials showing up and demanding ballots, as they recently did in Georgia, or immigration agents staging around polling stations on election day, as some in President Trump’s orbit have suggested.

“Part of my job is making sure that the plans are developed and then tested and then socialized with the staff so if those situations were to ever come up, we would not be figuring it out right then and there. We would know what to do,” Adona said. “Doing those sort of exercises and that level of planning in a way is kind of grounding, and makes things feel less chaotic.”…

Across California, local elections administrators say they have been running similar exercises to prepare for once unthinkable threats — not from local rabble-rousers, remote cyberattackers or foreign adversaries, but their own federal government.

State officials, too, are writing new contingency plans for unprecedented intrusions by Trump and other administration officials, who in recent days have repeated baseless 2020 election conspiracies, raided and taken ballots from a local election center in Fulton County, Ga., pushed both litigation and legislation that would radically alter local voting rules, and called for Republicans to seize control of elections nationwide….

Trump has said he will accept Republican losses only if the elections are “honest.” A White House spokesperson said Trump is pushing for stricter rules for voting and voter registration because he “cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections.”

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said some of what Trump says about elections “is nonsensical and some is bluster,” but recent actions — especially the election center raid in Georgia — have brought home the reality of his threats.

“Some worry that this is a test run for trying to seize ballot boxes in 2026 and prevent a fair count of the votes, and given Trump’s track record, I don’t think that is something we can dismiss out of hand,” Hasen said. “States need to be making contingency plans to make sure that those kinds of things don’t happen.”

The White House dismissed such concerns, pointing to isolated incidents of noncitizens being charged with illegally voting, and to examples of duplicate registrations, voters remaining on rolls after death and people stealing ballots to vote multiple times.

“These so-called experts are ignoring the plentiful examples of noncitizens charged with voter fraud and of ineligible voters on voter rolls,” said Abigail Jackson, the White House spokesperson.

Experts said fraudulent votes are rare, most registration and roll issues do not translate into fraudulent votes being cast, and there is no evidence such issues swing elections….

JD Vance sat down with The Daily Mail’s Phillip Nieto for an interview that covered quite a bit of ground, though one exchange stood out — in large part because Nieto asked the vice president a question that’s been on the minds of many.

Reporter: Do you plan to apologize to the family of Alex Pretti?

Vance: For what?

— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) 2026-02-04T15:03:19.787414258Z

....Vance again described the intensive care unit nurse who was shot and killed by federal immigration officers as “a guy who showed up with ill intent to an ICE protest,” despite the fact that there was no such protest and that the vice president isn’t in a position to tell the public what Pretti was thinking.....

Let’s not forget that it was literally just hours after Pretti was killed when Donald Trump’s political operation kicked into high gear. The White House’s Stephen Miller, for example, said the ICU nurse was a “domestic terrorist” and a “would-be assassin.” Gregory Bovino, who helped lead Border Patrol operations, told the public that Pretti intended to “massacre” law enforcement personnel.....

The falsehoods weren’t just at odds with eyewitness accounts, they were also plainly contradicted by unambiguous video evidence that documented exactly what happened. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told The Washington Post that the Republican administration’s claims were “flat-out insane.”

Vance was part of that operation. After Miller falsely claimed via social media that Pretti was “an assassin who tried to murder federal agents,” it was the vice president who decided to amplify the smear online.

That’s precisely why “for what?” was such an offensive answer to a good question about the apology owed to the victim’s family.

As is true in so many areas of public life, things now are … different. The Boston Globe reported:

President Trump attacked Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, an outspoken critic of the president, during his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday, calling him a ‘moron.’ […]

Trump then attacked Democrats in his speech saying, ‘I don’t know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat. I really don’t.’ Later, Trump repeated his false claims that he won the popular vote in 2016 and that his 2020 loss to former president Joe Biden was ‘rigged.’

Over the course of roughly 75 minutes, the Republican turned the National Prayer Breakfast into a roast of sorts, lashing out at enemies, condemning immigrants, peddling absurd election conspiracy theories, expressing annoyance that House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to pray before meals, lying about the repeal of the Johnson Amendment (which still has not actually happened, no matter how many times Trump claims otherwise) — all while complaining about transgender people and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The president even took the opportunity to boast about the efficacy of the deadly military operations he’d ordered.

Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: "We hit 'em. And we want to hit 'em right, sir, and we want to hit them from the top! East, west, north, south. Sir, they won't know what the hell! And we'll knock them out. We did it politically correct. Five years."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-05T14:21:04.999Z

At another point, Trump decided it’d be a good idea to mock Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over the Democrat’s recent emphasis on honoring the Constitution.

Trump on Minnesota: "If we didn't have to fight this horrible governor and this horrible fake mayor -- Frey. 'This is the Constitution of the United States.' People don't want to be mugged!"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-05T14:44:40.760Z

,,,,,Those who assumed Trump would approach the National Prayer Breakfast with a degree of maturity or solemnity were kidding themselves: He has a void where his gravitas should be.

Every speech, interview and appearance, public or private, is rooted in the same conspiratorial and grievance-filled foundation. The president was an embarrassment to himself on Thursday, not because he tried and failed to honor the occasion and to respect his audience, but because it apparently never occurred to him to bother in the first place.