Evanston’s “First In The Nation” Reparations Program Continues To Make Payments; The Silly Plaintiffs [Against It] Are Effectively Moth-Balled In Chicago Federal Court…

You will recall that we have been foolowing this narrative arc — since early 2019.

It is working well — and is widely supported by the fine people who live here. [Legal pot / sales taxes fund the payments.] Here’s the latest from the Chicago Tribune:

…Evanston’s Reparations Committee announced Feb. 5 it will issue reparation payments to 44 additional descendants this summer, while providing an update on its DNA Roots Program and exploring a potential tax on Delta-8 THC products in an effort to expand funding.

The Reparations Program, established in 2019 and later approved by City Council in 2021, is the first government-funded initiative in the United States aimed at providing reparations for Black Evanston residents who experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969 and to direct descendants of those residents.

Each of the 44 descendants will receive $25,000 in reparation payments intended for housing expenses, Cynthia Vargas, Evanston’s Communications and Community Engagement Manager, stated in an email to the Tribune.

“Over the next few weeks, residents assigned numbers 127 through 171 will be contacted to let them know their payment is on the way,” Tasheik Kerr, assistant to the city manager, said….

[Separately,] LaKisha David, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, updated the committee on Evanston’s DNA Roots Pilot Program, which offers free DNA testing for African American descendants of [formerly-enslaved persons] to trace back their ancestry and possibly connect them with living relatives in Africa….

I’m increasingly fascinated by the use of sophisticated DNA testing — to aid people, in re-discovering their “roots information” — a spiritual possession that was stolen from them (when their names were discarded, and they were forced onto ships, across the ocean) centuries ago. Excellent progress — for social good — or at least partially remediating… social harms.

नमस्ते

A Look — At What Wall Street Guesses — Will Be Gilead’s Q4 ’25 Results: A Solid Quarter And Year.

I’ll not belabor it, but for Q4, the company may post a slight decline in quarterly earnings — but all of that will very likely be reversed here in 2026. [So that headline… is a bit of a red herring.] Gilead reports tomorrow morning.

[Yep — this is just a quick “power alley” cut and paste job. Heh.] Here’s the latest:

…The consensus EPS Estimate is $1.83 on revenue of $7.68B, which translates to a 1.5% jump compared to the corresponding quarter a year ago.

Seeking Alpha analyst Narek Hovhannisyan expects the company to outperform market expectations, driven by strong demand for its core drugs and controlled costs. Over the last 2 years, GILD has beaten EPS and revenue estimates 88% of the time.

UBS holds an extremely optimistic view of the company for FY26 on expectations of strong HIV PrEP sales from Yeztugo, which, analysts say, are likely to drive revenue and earnings growth and boost confidence in longer-term performance….

Beyond its core business, Gilead has moved into a more measured phase of dealmaking, focusing on strengthening its oncology and immunology pipelines, analysts at Bernstein noted.

“They continue to highlight Cymabay style deals ($4.3B in PBC – liver/inflammation). This scale of deal & spend aligns with investor’s willingness to see Gilead diversify,” UBS analyst Courtney Breen said….

Now you know — onward, into the chilly glass canyons — to find excellent bespoke chocolate delights. Smile.

नमस्ते

Note To Those Powerline & Ringside Boys: The Five Year Old Bad Bunny Gave His Grammy To…Was Not Liam Ramos!

These idiots won’t get the message. Nor will these ones.

But the rest of us thinking Americans will.

A five-year-old was kidnapped and taken to a prison in West Texas more than 1,200 miles from his home.

Two weeks later, a United States District Court judge ordered him immediately released under habeas corpus.

This evening — on national television, and broadcast and watched around the world, Benito “Bad Bunny” handed an actor portraying Liam the Grammy he won for album of the year, last Sunday night… it was a metaphor for Noem’s malign lunacy.

So, that’s what the racists missed.

That’s America! That’s… all of us — of good will.

Suck it, Donald Trump.

[Noem is still trying to find an admin. law judge to remove Liam and his father — so on the advice of counsel, they are staying out of sight, in hiding — until they can get a firm continuance of the latest Noemite proceedings.]

[NSFW!] In Which… Hinderaker Is AFRAID — Of… Dildos?! [Updated, For Better Graphic!]

This afternoon, Hinderaker would tell us that the throwing of six inch rubber dildos at slow rolling SUVs… is an imagined life-threatening event — to his buddies / ICE agents. No — John, it is a clever protest.

Maybe only to John — is it threatening — and maybe to his raging homophobia / sexual insecurity / or whatever largely self-invented psycho-sexual malady it is… he is suffering from.

Out.

I promise something more substantive, tomorrow after the Super Bowl…

“Get some, Bad Bunny!”

Updated Schedule, On Mr. Khalil’s NJ Habeas Case — Noem Is NOT Allowed To Move To Remove Him.

Mr. Khalil remains free — but even after appeals that did not break her way, Kristi Noem is still trying to find an immigration court “judge” (i.e., not an Article III independent judicial officer — just an administration employee) to declare that he may be removed from the US, despite papers preventing the same.

Here’s the latest, after the Third Cir. opinion — on what’s due up, next in the real US District Courts:

Immigration Proceedings:

Following the Third Circuit’s January 15 panel decision, the BIA issued a notice stating that a briefing schedule would be set “forthwith.” 1 Ex. B. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Khalil filed a notice requesting that the BIA defer setting a briefing schedule until January 20 to allow the parties an opportunity to meet and confer. Ex. C. On January 16, the BIA issued two briefing schedules. The first ordered sequential briefing, allotting twenty-one days for Mr. Khalil’s opening brief and twenty-one days for the government’s opposition. Ex. D. Later that day, the BIA issued a second revised schedule requiring simultaneous briefing by both parties — due within twenty-one days of the Third Circuit’s panel decision — by February 6, 2026. Ex. E. 2. The parties then conferred and filed a joint motion seeking a revised briefing schedule consistent with their agreement before this Court at the November 14, 2025, conference. Ex. F; see ECF 413, Tr. 4:1-5:3. On January 31, 2026, the BIA granted the joint motion and issued a third revised briefing schedule. Ex. G. Under the current BIA schedule, Petitioner’s opening brief is due March 2, 2026, and the government’s opposition brief is due March 23, 2026….

Shared Understanding Of The Status Quo Following The Third Circuit Panel Decision:

Petitioner intends to file a petition seeking rehearing or rehearing en banc of the Third Circuit panel decision. See Khalil v. Trump, 3d Cir. No. 25-2162, ECF 135. The parties share the understanding that the district court’s existing orders — including the bail order prohibiting detention (ECF No. 316), the preliminary injunction orders (ECF Nos. 214, 272, 299, 355), and the All Writs Act order staying removal (ECF No. 81) — remain in effect, including during the pendency of en banc proceedings, unless and until the Third Circuit mandate issues. The government has further confirmed its understanding that these district court orders remain in effect unless and until the Third Circuit mandate issues, even if the BIA were to issue a final order of removal.

Dated: February 4, 2026….

Now you know — and we do feel for Lindsey Vonn — at 41, that was probably her last shot at it. But she went out, doing what she loves to do. We will keep a good thought that she will be up on two legs, and healthy — in about a year.

नमस्ते

Theorem, Proved: Hinderaker Has Lost His Soul.

Rather than take any position at all on the fact that far more tech savvy hard right bloggers are making and posting clearly defamatory and false — as well as deeply racist and misogynist — AI and CGI infused videos that odiously purport to be one or more genuine opposition candidates speaking… John thinks it’s appropriate just to say “well this is the new age…” And so be it.

He even goes so far as to say the days of the Lincoln v. Douglas debate are long gone — all while wholly forgetting to mention that both he and the candidates have a responsibility to tell the truth.

He is indeed the nihilist’s nihilist. He only cares about what these despicable liars, and their lying tech, can do for “his side.”

He is (seemingly) hoping / believing that liberals will be more moral than his team is. [About that, he may actually be right.]

But… in this “hellscape” environment, I wouldn’t bet on it — and the videos that could be made of Trump in various states of depravity with Epstein should be something that would give him pause.

But it won’t — because he, and (I think) most of the nation believes that Trump’s base wouldn’t care.

After all, it’s essentially true that Trump is the most frequently mentioned prominent figure in all of the Epstein documents released thus far. And still his moron base doesn’t care. He is their kind of pervert.

All of which — as I say, establishes what I’ve long said: John’s lost his soul.

Out.

Bill Glahn Seems Unaware That Habeas Is A Constitutional RIGHT.

And soon, the Supremes will remind the rogue Fifth Circuit of this fact.

Bill is a stupid yutz — to call Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, and the Fourth Amendment… a “strange phenomenon”.

Here’s the well-argued Fifth Circuit dissent (see at page 35 and beyond); it will be the majority at the Supremes:

Why [would] Congress… have preserved “one of the most significant advantages available for unlawful entrants” despite its general purpose of placing applicants seeking admission on equal footing with applicants already present in the country. Ante at 21. This “seems strange to suggest.” Id. at 20. Petitioners, the majority opines, offer “no commonsense explanation why, as a general matter, Congress would want to deny bond only to those lawfully seeking admission into the country.” Id. at 21. There are a few: (1) bond has always been available to detained noncitizens already present in the United States; (2) as this practice exemplifies, government intrusions have always been tolerated at the border that would be intolerable in the interior, for the obvious reason that citizens and noncitizens alike expect to be able to go about their business without having to show that they are “clearly and beyond doubt entitled to be admitted” if taken, or mistaken, for an otherwise inadmissible noncitizen; and (3) with only a little imagination, the government’s and the majority’s reading means that anyone present in this country at any time must carry the precise kinds of identification they would otherwise have only carried to the border for international travel, lest they be mistaken for an inadmissible noncitizen “seeking admission” into the country. [The Supremes have ruled repeatedly that that will never be the law.]

The majority seems to be unable to imagine what it might mean to be detained within the United States without the appropriate proof of admissibility, and, without a bond hearing, to require the services of a federal habeas corpus lawyer to show that one is entitled to release and deserves to see the outside of a detention center again.

This is not, or not just, a matter of human sympathy, but rather a matter of understanding one of the core distinctions in immigration law, and the very good reasons for it. See Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 693.…

Confidential Note to Bill: if you’re going to report on legal matters, you probably should read some actual law.

I Won’t Spend Time (Or Pixels) Refuting Hinderaker’s “Racist’s Racist” Defense Tonight.

Nothing Hinderaker said makes any sense, nor does it deflect from the fact that Trump is openly lying about having personally posted the odious video. The Obamas as apes appear in the opening scene and he claims that he never saw it — that he stopped watching.

I guess “stupid is as stupid does” — in so far as lies and liars go.

So to switch it up, I will post an older picture, and a video, of what actual presidential behavior looks like.

Hint: Donald Trump is — in almost every detail — the opposite.

Out.

Power Alley: More FDA Good News, In Certain Lymphomas, For Kite/Gilead’s Yescarta®…

This is more very good news — for a public company I’ve long felt is and was very well run.

The ability to simply get full coverage from insurers, for very sick lymphoma patients, without weeks or months of haggling about off-label benefits, is worth its weight in gold, to Gilead and its Kite Pharma unit. Trust that. Here’s the latest, from Friday — [with earnings due next week]:

…Gilead’s Kite unit announced on Friday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a label update for its CAR-T therapy Yescarta, removing a limitation that prevented its use in a subset of patients with a rare form of lymphoma.

The revised prescribing information removes Yescarta’s previously limited use in patients with relapsed or refractory ((R/R)) primary central nervous system lymphoma, a rare type of lymphoma that mainly affects the brain and spinal cord….

Now you know — and my favorite exotic chocolates tasting season is upon us…. starting Monday, I will frequent the best bespoke chocolatiers of this fine city, and bring home nightly treasures — to try, with hot coffee or ice-cold milk. Grin!

नमस्ते

Welp — It’s Probably Time For NASA To Officially Declare The Mars MAVEN Mission… At End Of Life.

I think the time — for reconnecting — has come… and gone.

I am not happy about it, but the craft served admirably, for well over a decade.

If it is in fact tumbling erratically, its solar panels have been unable to completely charge the spacecraft’s batteries.

That state of affairs has been true — since about December 6, 2025.

Two months of drain on the batteries is probably beyond its ability to recover and send a signal home, by radio. Thus — “travel well, but travel light, oh Maven.”

Onward, resolutely.

नमस्ते