Tidbits-Feb 12- Reader Comments: El Show De Super Bowl – Most Viewed Ever – MAGA Loses Super Bowl; Supreme Court Rejects Appeal — Melania’s Next Move Was AI – Portside Error; What We Can Learn From Picasso’s Guernica; the “SAVE Our Dictatorship” Act

Reader Comments: El Show de Super Bowl - Most Viewed Ever - MAGA Loses Super Bowl; Supreme Court Rejects Appeal — Melania’s Next Move Was AI - Portside Error; What We Can Learn From Picasso’s Guernica; The “SAVE Our Dictatorship” Act; Announcements

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, AND cartoons - Feb. 12, 2026 | Portside

 

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El Show de Super Bowl  --  Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz


Enjoy the historic halftime show at today's Super Bowl, starring Bad Bunny! Its soooo patriotic!

Lalo Alcaraz
February 8, 2026
Caló News
 

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Re: Virginia Gov. Spanberger Orders Termination of ICE Agreements With Law Enforcement
 

Good for Spanberger.  I had gathered that she is a moderate but I am happy to learn that even moderate Democrats are justifiably alarmed at ICE and Trump's fascist administration.

Nora Lapin




 

Washington Post  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Rob Rogers

 


Why does Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the world, feel he must pay fealty to Trump in so many unsavory ways? Is he really that scared and powerless or is it only about greed?

Rob Rogers
February 10, 2026
TinyView
 




 

Re: Could Gavin Newsom Be Worse Than You Think?
 

The real world turned into the WWF so much faster than anyone could have imagined...

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Liberals should insist on running him if they want to lose by 20 points. That is if we entertain the notion of actual elections being held at all.

Miguel A. Cruz-Díaz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page




 

Re: Supreme Court Rejects Appeal — Melania’s Next Move


Portside Correction:

The video contained in the Portside post Supreme Court Reject Appeal -- Melania Trump's Next Move is an AI-generated simulation and the statements it contains have no basis in fact. We regret the error.

Portside Moderators

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This is AI nonsense! Love you guys but please be more careful with this new kind of misinformation.

Joel Feingold

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What the heck is this about?  Evidence of what?  Immunity from what?

There has been a proliferation of fake videos on YouTube featuring Rachel Maddow, Richard Wolff, Noam Chomsky, and others.  I haven't seen this one, but this transcript bears all the marks of an "unauthorized" [by R. Maddow] video.  What is its provenance?

Cliff Conner

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There have been internet rumors about the Melania proffer. But it looks like just that, not a real thing. There is an AI video about this purporting to feature George Will that appears to be fake. Please look into this...

Jim Smith

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This article about Melania appears to be fake

Bethany Weidner

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Folks, I question this report, and suspect it is AI. There is NO date, and I am not aware of any court case with Melania. Additionally, as is mentioned that the testimony includes records to 2020, part of it may be from years ago, perhaps from Letitia James' case.

mark

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Is this some AI-generated video? It refers to Trump as "her former husband."
Rachel Maddow's  facial movements look mechanical and repetitive.
Plus, the video doesn't explain the  nature of the case.

Joe Jamison




 

Re: DSA’s “Rank-and-File Strategy” Has 60s Roots at UC Berkeley
 

In my yoot as a teenage rad, I dismissed IS because they hated Fidel. But Labor Notes is one of the few institutions that survived the post SDS sectarian wars and is now indispensable.

Ethan Young
Posted on Portside's Facebook page




 

Bad hombre  --  Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

 



Mike Luckovich
February 10, 2026
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 




 

Re: New Bio of Bay Area Author Jessica Mitford Recalls Key Housing Fight

(posting on Portside Culture)
 

so glad to hear this! Mitford was such a great person and so funny too --in The American Way
of Death. How cool to hear about this other activism. I hadn't know of it!

L A Kurth




 

Re: What We Can Learn From Picasso’s Guernica
 

For many of us who grew up in NYC in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, Picasso's Guernica, prominently placed as we climbed the stairs into the Museum of Modern Art, was a special friend. I was saddened when, following Franco's death, the MoMA returned the painting to Spain. Installed now in the Queen Sofia Museum in a series of rooms designed to put the painting in context, it draws huge crowds. I feel as though I learned a lot from Guernica in its current setting. What I had not realized then was that Picasso's work has a cousin Wilfredo Lam, a Cuban who fought on behalf of the Republic, also painted an important cubist work about the Spanish Civil War  It's in a place of honor right now at MoMA The Museum of Modern Art in NYC until April 11. Both paintings were n the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 Paris world's fair. Picasso could have seen (and probably did see) Lam's work before he painted Guernica. To me the two are intimately connected.   Thanks to Portside for sending along Hannah Gemeny's good Guernica essay (the link is in the comments.)

Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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When the Nazis took France they came to Picasso. Looking at Guernica they asked him "Did you do that?" He said "No, you did that."

Joseph Drake
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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What I learned from the Picasso show at MOMA: Picasso actually could paint. Prior to that I had only seen postcard-sized pictures of his Cubist works.

Those little postcards were what Our Lady of Pompeii used to teach art class. Those cards included the artist's name, the date he or she lived and the school (ie Hudson River, Expressionist, Pop Art, etc.)

Joanna Mezzatesta-Fredericks
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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I went to the Wilfredo Lam show with my friend Dan Segal. I hadn't heard of Lam before, and enjoyed the show a lot.

Miriam Bensman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Miriam Bensman If you get to Havana, there are many Lam paintings in the museum there (none of which made it to the Moma show).

Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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I saw Guernica many times when I was growing up in New York.

Howard Harawitz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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thanks for that background Dan. the lam show at Moma is great, not to be missed

Keith Brooks
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Faith Ringgold, American artist and quilt maker, was very inspired by Picasso's anti-fascist masterpiece and created one of her own:


 

Elly Leary




 

The “SAVE Our Dictatorship” Act  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Jen Sorensen
 



 

The SAVE Act (also referred to as the SAVE America Act) is an incredibly important issue that isn’t being talked about nearly enough. The Brennan Center has been on the case, and you can learn more on their website. The National Women’s Law Center notes the particular impacts on women and trans people who have changed their names. A passport will suffice to prove citizenship, but only about half of Americans have one. As the NWLC notes:

To be crystal clear: this bill could disenfranchise 21.3 million eligible voters who don’t have the required documents ready, and it would particularly impact married women and trans people—all in order to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. Hordes of noncitizens voting in federal elections is a myth. There is zero credible evidence that this happens in any significant numbers. Furthermore, it’s already illegal—any noncitizen caught voting would be breaking the law. 

Jen Sorensen
February 11, 2026
https://jensorensen.com
 

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47 ways Trump has made life less affordable in the last year
 

By Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and Josh Bivens

January 13, 2026
Economic Policy Institute
 


In the first year of his second term, President Trump has actively made life less affordable for working people. Affordability has two sides—prices and pay. While public debate fixates on rising costs, the administration’s most serious harm has come from its policies that hold down wages and weaken workers’ bargaining power. The 47th president has pursued an agenda that undercuts incomes for all but the wealthiest households, slows job growth, and invites employer exploitation and abuse—including unprecedented attacks on federal workers’ collective bargaining rights that make him the biggest union buster in U.S. history. His policies have systematically stripped workers of leverage in the labor market, driving down pay and making it harder for working families to afford the basics.

At its core, affordability is shaped by whether workers’ paychecks keep pace with the cost of living. What many now describe as an affordability crisis is the predictable result of decades of policies that have suppressed wage growth and eroded workers’ bargaining power. In the decades before the pandemic, owners and corporate executives claimed an ever-larger share of the income generated by what workers produced. Had pay for typical workers kept pace with productivity over the last 45 years—rather than being suppressed—their paychecks would be roughly 40% larger today. This wage shortfall is the driving force in America’s affordability crisis—and reversing it must be central to any serious affordability agenda.

While workers’ wages—particularly those of low-wage workers—saw sharp inflation-adjusted increases between 2019 and 2024, these gains fell far short of recouping the losses of the four prior decades. These wage increases were largely obscured amid the anxieties of the immediate post-pandemic period, including a large jump in inflation that eclipsed even larger wage gains for most workers. But instead of building on the first real progress in decades, Trump’s policies over the last year will make this wage shortfall worse and are likely to contribute to greater wage suppression in the longer run. Absent an about-face in Trump’s economic agenda, life will continue to become even less affordable for working people.

In this report, we examine 47 of the most significant actions Trump has taken in the first year of his second term to make it harder for working families to afford the cost of living. We organized these actions into five categories:

  1. Eroding workers’ wages and economic security;
  2. Undermining job creation;
  3. Weakening workers’ rights;
  4. Enabling employer exploitation; and
  5. Creating an ineffective government.

Our list of 47 is not exhaustive; it highlights a subset of Trump’s actions with clear impacts on working people’s economic security and ability to afford the basics. Many of the actions outlined here have impacts across categories. Trump’s attacks on union workers, for example, reduce workers’ wages, weaken workers’ rights, and promote employer exploitation of workers.


Read full report here - Download PDF 


Economic Policy Institute 
1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-775-8810 • epi@epi.org




 

February 17th Webinar on Active Duty Military Resistance  (Third Act Union, Veterans For Peace, and Veterans and Labor for Sensible Priorities)

 



Tuesday, February 17, 2026 at 7:30 PM EST

A virtual link will be communicated before the event.

PLEASE REGISTER Here

Veterans Speak: GI Resistance to Trump's Illegal Orders - Action Network
 

Join us for the second in a new webinar series exploring the intersection of the U.S. military, democracy, world peace, and the climate crisis. Hosted by Third Act Union, Veterans For Peace, and Veterans and Labor for Sensible Priorities, this timely conversation centers the voices of U.S. military veterans confronting unlawful and immoral uses of military power.

Date: February 17th

Time: 7:30pm Eastern, 4:30pm Pacific

Across the United States, anti-war and pro-peace veterans are drawing on their lived military experience to resist rising authoritarianism, oligarchy, and fascism—at home and abroad. Veterans and active-duty personnel are essential to the broader democratic resistance to Trump-era militarism, including illegal orders to deploy troops in U.S. cities, target civilian populations, or escalate wars in the Americas and beyond. As new conflicts unfold—such as war with Venezuela and threats toward Iran, Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba, and the annexation of Greenland—veterans are helping expose the human costs of militarism and the dangers it poses to democratic institutions.

This webinar will explore:

  • How veterans confront and reach out to active-duty personnel to help them navigate illegal or immoral orders, including being used to police civilian communities or to carry out extrajudicial violence.
  • How militarism, climate catastrophe, and democratic backsliding are deeply intertwined—and what that “existential” relationship means for movements for peace and climate justice.
  • How veteran-led organizations are challenging endless war, opposing the normalization of state violence, and redirecting public priorities toward meeting real human needs, including healthcare, housing, food security, education, climate justice, and employment that provides a living wage and economic well-being.
  • How non-military allies and organizations can stand in solidarity with troops who resist illegal orders and support veterans working to defend diversity, inclusion, civil liberties, immigrant and refugee communities.


If you are a veteran Third Actor and want to help with these conversations, please contact us at union@thirdact.org.




 

Fall of Freedom is Back - Because art matters and courage is contagious - KNOW YOUR RIGHTS Webinar: Featuring expert training from the ACLU - February 19
 


Last fall, artists and cultural workers across the country came together to put art on the frontlines of defending democracy. What began as a spark became a movement.

The urgency has only intensified, and so has our collective resolve to stand up to fascism.

Fall of Freedom will return with two national activations

MAYDAY: MAY 1, 2026

A focused, urgent call to artists and arts institutions across all sectors to make art, music, plays, exhibitions, comedy, and beautiful protests aligned with immigrants’ rights organizing, to amplify struggles against repression and state violence.

FALL: OCTOBER 2–3, 2026

A renewed nationwide wave of exhibitions, performances, readings, screenings, and public actions — building on the momentum of last Fall and expanding the reach of creative resistance across disciplines and communities.

(More details on how to participate coming soon.)

Fall of Freedom KNOW YOUR RIGHTS:

Featuring expert training from the ACLU

ARTS, EXPRESSION, AND RESISTANCE: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Thursday, February 19

8:00–9:00 PM ET
Online

Register Here 


In recent weeks, the world has witnessed federal enforcement activity flooding our streets, fueling fear and unrest in communities across the Nation. In moments like these, clarity, preparedness, and an understanding of YOUR fundamental rights are essential.

This month, Fall of Freedom is launching a free, rights-focused training session with expert training from the ACLU designed to equip artists, cultural workers, and community defenders with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to understand and assert their civil liberties.

This program responds to the distressing campaign of excessive force by federal agents that has led to multiple civilian deaths and placed peaceful protesters, bystanders, and communities at risk. During this training session, attendees will receive practical guidance on documenting agent encounters, precautionary steps to take when witnessing injustice, and exercising the right to peacefully protest.



Fall of Freedom, Francis Kite Club, 40 Loisaida Ave, New York, NY 10009




 

May Day Strong Solidarity School - New York City - February 21
 



 

Join this all-day training to help build May Day actions against federal attacks and for an affordable New York! Lunch is provided!

Aligning around a shared political analysis of the moment. Understanding the threats and strategies being used against working people and marginalized communities

Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers

411 Pearl Street


Reserve a spot - click here 


MAY DAY STRONG 

https://maydaystrong.org/

We are the many. They are the few. And we will not be silent. 

ICE killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. This regime is terrorizing our cities and dropping bombs on Venezuela. We stand united against the occupation of other countries and our cities on behalf of a handful of billionaires.

The Trump regime is seizing control of the mineral and energy wealth of Venezuela and handing it over to Big Oil.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s ICE militia is attacking our communities while enriching private prison corporations and the Silicon Valley companies that sell Trump surveillance tech.

None of what this regime is doing is about making our lives better. It’s about billionaires making themselves richer no matter the human cost.

Join us to join in. Stand with Minnesota. And plan for NO WORK. NO SCHOOL. NO SHOPPING. MAY 1ST 2026. 

STAND WITH MINNESOTA

Map of actions - Click here and scroll down