Two threats are tightening around Donald Trump at the same time.
Ghislaine Maxwell filed suit late Friday from prison to block 90,000 pages from a civil defamation case brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who took her own life last year. The pages include more than 30 depositions and financial and sexual information about Maxwell and others. Maxwell is already convicted and serving 20 years, and nothing in those files changes her sentence, which means someone is paying lawyers to keep you from reading what those people said under oath.
Six Supreme Court justices ruled Friday that Trump never had the authority to impose his signature tariffs. Within hours he launched a new 10% global tariff using a different law, then raised it to 15% today. That’s the legal maximum, and it expires in five months unless Congress acts. Americans pay these tariffs through higher prices. Coffee is up 20% in a year. Beef is through the roof. Your grocery bill knows exactly what his decisions cost.
Those 90,000 pages must terrify Trump and other American politicians. The UK arrested former Prince Andrew and held him for 11 hours. Norway charged its former prime minister with corruption and forced its ambassador to resign. American politicians haven’t gone near this rabbit hole. Call your representatives and demand every Epstein file be released. You can stay current at our special Epstein Sex Crimes pages.
#GovBriefToday #Resist
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Trump reversed support for UK's Chagos Islands deal after Britain refused to allow U.S. forces to use RAF bases for strikes against Iran.
Today’s GovBrief News
Trump approves FEMA emergency disaster relief for Washington after a Potomac River sewage line collapse that the city estimates will cost $20 million to repair and remediate.
Source: WUSA Washington
February 21, 2026
Trump announces he is sending a Navy hospital ship to Greenland to treat people "not being taken care of," though Greenland provides free health care and both Navy hospital ships are in an Alabama shipyard until at least April.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
February 21, 2026
New Mexico orders investigation into forced sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service, which a 1976 federal audit found sterilized 3,406 women without informed consent before the government stopped counting.
Source: The Association Press
February 21, 2026
Maxwell challenges Epstein transparency law as unconstitutional to block 90,000 pages of depositions and private records from Giuffre's civil defamation lawsuit against her.
Source: The Associated Press
February 21, 2026
NASA's Artemis II moon rocket requires rollback to its assembly building after a helium pressurization failure, pushing the first crewed lunar mission since 1972 from March into April.
Source: CBS News
February 21, 2026
NIST restricts foreign scientists' lab access and cancels hiring plans, threatening the agency that sets U.S. standards for cybersecurity, semiconductors and AI with roughly 800 international researchers annually.
Source: Ars Technica
February 21, 2026
Trump raises global tariffs to 15%, the maximum allowed under a separate trade law, one day after the Supreme Court struck down his emergency tariff powers 6-3.
Source: Axios
February 21, 2026
JPMorgan admits for the first time that it closed Trump's bank accounts after the Jan. 6 attack, as his $5 billion lawsuit alleges the bank also placed him on a reputational blacklist shared across the industry.
Source: CNBC
February 21, 2026
DHS suspends TSA PreCheck and Global Entry starting Sunday as 61,000 TSA employees work without pay in the second week of a shutdown while ICE operates uninterrupted on $75 billion in pre-secured funding.
Source: The Hill
February 21, 2026
Trump demands Netflix fire board member Susan Rice after she warned corporations will face accountability when Democrats return to power, as the Justice Department reviews Netflix's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros.
Source: Deadline
February 21, 2026
Federal judge seizes control of Arizona's entire prison health care system after 14 years of litigation, two contempt findings and 131 of 154 court-ordered health standards violated, covering at least 25,000 incarcerated people.
Source: The Arizona Mirror
February 21, 2026