☕️ MAKING BANK ☙ Monday, February 2, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Historic detrans verdict sinks bad doctors; Alcaraz wins, Djokovic endures; US-Iran tensions cool; Epstein files claim more scalps; Fulton County fumes and stalls; culture’s terrific inflection; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! Welcome to February. In today’s week-opening roundup: detransitioner makes history with first successful jury trial against her malpracticing doctors; Carlos Alvarez wins, but pure-blooded Novak Djokovic stands triumphant; looming US-Iran conflict de-escalates as the mad mullahs back down and agree to talks with Trump’s team; naval buildup in the Mediterranean; media panic falls flat, again; history of Tehran conflict; Epstein files claim more scalps; “Lord” Mandelson resigns from Britain’s ruling party over underpants photo; damage cascades worldwide; victims compensated — thanks to President Trump; Fulton County muses lawsuit over raided ballot boxes, but does nothing; and a trio of history-making showbiz news shows major cultural moment.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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The nation has now crossed —transitioned, if you like— into a new and better era. Yesterday, the New York Post ran a story headlined, “Detransitioner wins $2 million against New York docs who pushed double mastectomy.” We rely on the Post’s article since progressive media has blotted the terrific story out, even though it is a historic development in one of the most contentious political topics going.

I’m rather fond of the unassuming federal courthouse in White Plains, New York. The last time I was there, a federal marshal working security recognized my case and pulled me aside to show me their Telegram skills, which they use to keep up with conservative news. Anyway, a White Plains jury made history this weekend.

It is the first time a detransitioner’s medical‑malpractice case over gender‑affirming care has gone all the way to trial and won.

The background is nauseatingly familiar. A young woman with a difficult childhood, suffering from multiple (but fully treatable) mental health issues, was convinced by her psychologist and her surgeon that the path to happiness led through the surgeon’s stainless steel garden, and through adopting a worldview completely inconsistent with reality. Needless to say, the doctors didn’t consider any other options for treating the young lady’s depression.

When Fox Varian, 16, heard the doctor tell her mother that the teen would self-delete if not surgically mutilated, the game was afoot. She began to have suicidal ideations. The rest was medical history, along with Fox’s breast tissues.

Post-surgery, Fox —originally Isabella— began living as a boy. But when her problems persisted, she began to wonder whether she’d done the right thing. Now, 22, she has detransitioned. In May, 2023, Fox and her lawyers sued psychologist Kenneth “Mengele” Einhorn and surgeon Simon “The Chopper” Chin for malpractice. On Friday, following a three-week trial, the jury slipped Fox $1.6 million for pain and suffering, and $400,000 for future medical expenses, courtesy of the two docs.

Since 2021, at least half the states have banned or significantly restricted so-called “gender affirming” care for minors. The treatments are “gender affirming” in the same way that arson is “fire safety consulting.” Last year, President Trump signed an executive order pulling funding from all “gender affirming interventions” and directed federal agencies to do everything they could to limit access to that type of “care.”

Blue states are resisting. Like the rest, New York sprinted in the opposite direction of the banning states. Gender-affirming care for minors is still legal in New York under state law, and the state has even added “safe haven” and “liability shield” protections. But Fox Varian and her mom just proved that the battle is far from over. Just because it’s legal in New York doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

The State of New York, in its infinite wisdom, has passed one immunity law after another trying to protect doctors from these types of lawsuits and from any professional discipline. But Fox’s lawyers were creative. They didn’t go after the two doctors for providing gender-mutilating care per se. They sued the doctors for misdiagnosing Fox. In other words, for malpractice.

The Post reported that at least 28 other detransitioner lawsuits are enthusiastically underway across the country. Fox’s multi-million dollar verdict will encourage even more people to sue their doctors for malpractice, and will encourage more lawyers to take the cases. If there’s one thing that doctors really hate, that thing is malpractice lawsuits. Not only do they nick the pocketbook and consume time that could otherwise be spent in the operating room or on the golf course, but they also leave a black mark on the permanent record.

Brave heroes like Fox Varian (and her lawyers) are battling on the front lines of the culture war. Kudos to them for the win.

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It was the king versus the kid. In sports news, yesterday the New York Times ran a dynamic story headlined, “Australian Open final: Carlos Alcaraz beats Novak Djokovic for career Grand Slam.” Spanish tennis sensation Carlos Alcaraz now has seven Grand Slam titles at age 22. That’s one more than previous record-holder John McEnroe, and approximately seven more than anyone reading today’s post. Including me. At 22, I was wondering whether Ramen Noodles were the right choice for a staple food; Alvarez is winning Grand Slams.

It was another historic first. Yesterday, Spanish superstar Carlos Alcaraz, 22, defeated C&C favorite Novak Djokovic, 38, in Sunday’s Australian Open final to become the youngest man in history to complete the career Grand Slam.

You may recall that back in the difficult days of 2022, Australia summarily deported Djokovic for declining the jab. Four years later, he strode back into Melbourne —unvaccinated and unbowed— and nearly won the whole thing anyway. The 38-year-old fought his way to the final and even took the first set before Father Time finally caught up.

Djokovic arrived for the match with Alcarez having just staged an epic five-set comeback against world #1 Jannik Sinner in the semifinals— a match many are calling one of the greatest ever in Open history. At 38, more than twice Acaraz’s age, and right after four hours of brutal play against the top-ranked player on Earth, Novak turned around and nearly beat the second-best player too. As the oldest finalist in Open history, Novak crushed 93% of his first-serve points in the opening set, before he began to tire.

The point is, Djokovic didn’t need to be there. He showed up in the country that tried to humiliate him and gave everything he had— and nearly won the whole enchilada. That’s not losing. He won a bigger championship than the Open.

Final score: Alcaraz 2-6, 6-2, 6-3, 7-5.

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Yesterday, NBC reported, “Trump says if Iran doesn’t agree to nuclear deal, ‘we’ll find out’ whether U.S. attack would spark a regional war.” The sub-headline explained, “The escalating rhetoric from both leaders comes as the U.S. has sent a carrier strike group and air defense systems to the Middle East.” In short: We’re not messing around.

An Iranian propaganda poster in Tehran showing hypothetical attack on US carrier

In a development that will surprise absolutely no one who’s been paying attention, Iran went from threatening “regional war” to negotiating a framework with the US in roughly 48 hours. It was the diplomatic equivalent of that scene in every action movie, where the henchman pulls a knife on the hero, the hero pulls out a gun, and the henchman slowly puts the knife away.

It is, after all, the Annus Operum, the Year of Action. January began with Army Rangers collecting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his palace and relocating him to more confining quarters in New York. In the following weeks, the U.S. repeated the same lead-up as to the Venezuelan action, except this time aimed at Iran (and without sinking cartel boats). A small navy of American warships and the supercarrier group USS Abraham Lincoln have quietly collected near Iran.

The Iranians have had a busy few weeks. During that period, Iran’s economy began to buckle, its currency imploded, protests erupted, and the regime slew over 3,000 protesters in a brutal crackdown, a fact that did not trouble Democrats, who were mono-focused on two police shootings in Minneapolis. Last week, the Iranians threatened to hold a massive naval exercise of their own in the critical Straits of Hormuz— a narrow channel through which one-fifth of the world’s oil travels. Over the weekend, two Iranian oil refineries mysteriously exploded, a development the regime stubbornly attributed to gas leaks.

Then this weekend, the Iranians suddenly and unexpectedly cancelled their planned naval exercise.

🚀 Publicly, the troublesome country’s Glorious Leader, 86, remained defiant. “The Americans should know if they start a war, this time it will be a regional war,” the Iranian supreme leader warned. When asked about Khamenei’s comment yesterday, Trump shrugged and told reporters, “of course he is going to say that.” He added that the U.S. has “the biggest, most powerful ships in the world over there.”

The Iranians blinked. This morning’s Jerusalem Post brought the happy report, “Iran says framework for negotiations with US to be finalized in coming days.” Just like magic. A coalition of Middle Eastern countries is now coordinating de-escalation talks, and Iran has agreed to participate. In other words, Iran ran back to the table after learning the hard way that you can’t bluff a carrier group.

Though buried in last week’s news noise, corporate media’s relentless drumbeat of gloomy news about Iran opined that Trump was starting World War III, getting the US into more forever wars, fretting over Trump’s “obsession with Iran” (he’d killed murderous Iranian General Soleimani during Trump 1.0), and generally predicting absolute disaster of the finest caliber. Like usual.

But this morning, it appears the Iranians will give in to Trump’s demands after all. Peace through strength.

President Trump has publicly said he wants Iran to stop enriching uranium and building underground nuclear sites. Until yesterday, Iran doggedly ruled it out. But their frozen position seems to be thawing. Yesterday afternoon, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told CNN that, “I see the possibility of another talk if the U.S. negotiations team follows what President Trump said: to come to a fair and equitable deal to ensure there are no nuclear weapons.”

🚀 Despite media’s attempts to frame this as some kind of Trump-fueled Middle East adventurism, the US-Iran trouble didn’t start last week. It started all the way back in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter fumbled the Shah’s overthrow, and Iranian radicals seized the U.S. embassy— infamously holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 humiliating days, and helping clip Carter to one and only term.

Iran’s new theocratic regime was basically a more polished version of the Taliban with a better media team.

Ever since 1979, the Iranians have trained terrorists, called America “the Great Satan,” and given every signal of being busy little nuclear beavers. And every subsequent administration has tried something different to solve it, but they all failed. Reagan traded arms for hostages. Clinton tried quiet diplomacy. Bush called them the “Axis of Evil” but got bogged down in Iraq. Obama shipped them leaky pallets of cash and got a nuclear deal so bad the Iranians kept enriching uranium anyway.

Pres. Carter naps in the Oval Office during Iranian hostage crisis. Seriously. He was so bad at optics.

Decades of alternating appeasement and saber-rattling produced nothing but a richer, bolder, more dangerous Tehran. Now, Trump is trying something new, something that every prior president was too chicken to attempt: ending the problem once and for all with credible military pressure combined with an open door to negotiate. Carrier groups don’t lie. And for the first time in forty-five years, the Ayatollah seems to have blinked first. Whether it holds remains to be seen, but at least someone is finally calling their bluff.

Iran might not care about tariffs, but they saw what happened in Venezuela. President Trump isn’t fooling around. He didn’t start this problem, but he aims to end it.

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As people wade through millions of new Epstein files disclosures, pieces are beginning to fall off the board. This morning, the BBC reported, “Lord Mandelson resigns from Labour Party over Epstein links.” In his letter to Labour’s general secretary yesterday (Sunday!), Lord Mandelson wrote, “I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and I feel regretful and sorry about this.”

“Lord” Mandelson, 72, and his ‘husband,’ Reinaldo da Silva, 53

“I do not want to cause further embarrassment to the Party by my continued membership,” Lord Mandelson continued. Mandelson isn’t embarrassed, mind you. He just doesn’t want to embarrass the Labour Party. This is an earthquake in British politics, even allowing for Mandelson’s previous Epstein problems.

Labour isn’t just any political party— it’s the majority governing party in Great Britain. Lord Peter “Parker” Mandelson isn’t just any British politician — he’s the architect of modern Labour. As Tony Blair’s closest strategist, Mandelson masterminded “New Labour” in the 1990s, transforming the party from an unelectable socialist relic into a three-term governing machine.

The British press lovingly —and ironically— labeled him the “Prince of Darkness” for his ruthless media manipulation and backroom dealing. He served in Tony Blair’s cabinet twice, resigned in scandal twice, and still bounced back— eventually becoming Business Secretary under Gordon Brown and earning a seat in the House of Lords. His sticky fingerprints are on every major Labour decision for the last thirty years.

That’s what makes the Epstein connection so explosive. Last September, Mandelson was sacked as UK Ambassador to the United States after evidence emerged of supportive messages he’d sent Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. Now, fresh documents show three payments from Epstein to Mandelson’s husband totaling $75,000. Thus, Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party entirely to avoid any “further embarrassment.”

Or to avoid prosecution.

For Britain, this is kind of like how it would go if we discovered Karl Rove laundered money from a convicted pedophile, assuming Rove were still the brains of the Republican party.

Also released in the latest tranche of Epstein files were highly inconvenient images of Mandelson in his tighty whities standing next to a woman wearing a hotel bathrobe.

Sorry. But it’s only fair, since I had to see it. You have to see it, too.

Worse for Peter, it looks like the old quid pro quo. Other emails reveal Mandelson sent Epstein a confidential government memo to give the convicted pedophile a heads-up over a proposed tax policy that would affect Epstein’s income. Presumably, it was so Epstein could do something to stop it.

🔥 Publicly, Mandelson has repeatedly claimed he “barely knew” Jeffrey Epstein. The files say otherwise.

MANDELSON: “I barely knew Epstein.”

THE FILES: “Here’s $75,000 and photos of you in your underpants.”

As I’ve wondered before, what baffles me more than these powerful men thinking with the little Lord and dipping their Peters in Epstein’s staff pool is that they let themselves be photographed. These aren’t pictures taken by secret cameras. Someone was standing right there. My goodness. They must have felt untouchable.

Confronted with the picture, Mandelson told reporters he “cannot place the location or the woman, and I cannot think what the circumstances were.” Uh huh. We can think what the circumstances were, Peter.

Beyond the big names, a great unspooling is also beginning for less well-known figures. The crash is broad and wide, and we’ll probably never know its full extent. For example, in faraway Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico announced this weekend that he had accepted the resignation of his national security adviser, Miroslav Lajcak, after the release of 2018 messages between Mr. Lajcak and Mr. Epstein in which they discussed women. There were more like that.

In conclusion, I would just add that, since Trump’s DOJ arrested Epstein in 2019, over $500 million has been paid to victims. The media doesn’t seem very interested in that, but I am. Absent Trump putting a stop to Operation Epstein, he’d still be out there, and the victims would still be uncompensated and gaslighted. Just saying. Now the lights are on, and the cockroaches are scattering.

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Yesterday, CBS ran a story headlined, “Fulton County to sue after FBI seizes 2020 election ballots.” They didn’t file a lawsuit. The ‘news’ was: Fulton County “plans to file a federal lawsuit challenging what local leaders call an unprecedented and improper seizure of 2020 election records, following an FBI search of the county’s elections office last week.” Plans!

“I have asked the county attorney to take any and all steps available to fight this criminal search warrant,” Fulton Commissioner Marvin Arrington said. “The search warrant, I believe, is not proper,” he added. Get that? He believes it was not proper. He’s not saying it wasn’t proper. He’s not even saying it was illegal.

For five years, we’ve been told that questioning the 2020 election results was a threat to democracy itself. “There is no evidence,” they repeatedly assured us, while actively fighting every attempt to look at the evidence. It was like a magician saying “there’s nothing up my sleeve” while his sleeve is visibly bulging with rabbits, doves, and what appears to be a small Honda Civic. Now the FBI has raided an election office to seize those very ballots.

Somewhere, a fact-checker is experiencing what doctors call “catastrophic cognitive dissonance.”

It’s Raiders of the Lost Ballots! Remember when Trump said the 2020 election was stolen and the entire establishment called him a conspiracy theorist, banned him from social media, impeached him, and prosecuted him for “election interference?” Haha, good times. Now, his FBI is literally seizing the ballots to investigate election interference. Will Georgia officials go with “I was just following orders?” Or the more creative “the ballots ate my homework?” Let me know in the comments.

If Fulton does follow through with their silly plan and file a lawsuit, I’ll let you know.

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How about a little showbiz news? It does, after all, reflect our nation’s cultural trajectory. We’ve all suffered through 25 years of anemic, hyperwoke Hollywood pabulum consisting of successively worse, franchise-destroying remakes and Part 17’s— with mandatory transgender love scenes. Could it be turning around? First up, yesterday the New York Times sneeringly reported, “‘Melania’ Arrives With Strong Box Office Showing for a Documentary.” Haha, Times, good one. “For a documentary.” The First Lady’s bopic shot up the charts to third place overall.

Melania brought in $7 million this weekend, improving significantly over last week’s debut haul of $5 million— which is usually considered a strong sign of audience approval. The Times grudgingly admitted the film is now the best-performing documentary since 2012. So.

📈 Coming in second place —less prominent but arguably more significant— was The Iron Lung, a low-budget horror film that Hollywood didn’t make, didn’t distribute, and didn’t want. The New York Post reported, “‘Iron Lung’ smokes its competition on its opener.” The sci-fi horror flick is based on a video game, and set in a post-apocalyptic future after a worldwide event dubbed “The Quiet Rapture” causes sudden darkness.

That’s not what makes the film unique.

Independent YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach wrote, directed, starred in, and self-distributed the movie, booking 2,000 theaters one-by-one, by himself, against all conventional wisdom— without any studio. Opening weekend hauled in an eye-watering $18 million. It was a historic media development; nothing like this has ever happened before. The shocked trade mags are wringing their hands and calling it a “proof of concept case” that threatens the entire industry. Hopefully.

In other words, an indie creator with a camera and an internet following just outperformed most of Hollywood’s franchise vending machine. The suits in Burbank must be thrilled. (Meaning, not thrilled.)

To give you an idea, and for comparison, Lionsgate blockbuster Shelter, starring popular but aging action regular Jason Statham, came in fourth, earning only $1.9 million. Shelter’s reported budget was a ‘modest’ $50 million. Iron Lung was self-financed for only $3 million —barely enough to pay for LGBT coordinators— and completely funded by Fischback’s YouTube earnings. Zero producers, investors, advisors, or Message Enforcers.

📈 Meanwhile, at the Grammys, country star Jelly Roll won Best Country Album and delivered an acceptance speech that sent the usual suspects into conniptions. USA Today reported, “Jelly Roll says ‘Jesus is not owned by one political party’ in Grammys speech.”

“Jesus is for everybody,” the colorful country singer told shocked celebrities (they were all wearing “ICE OUT” buttons)— admittedly, and encouragingly, to some applause. “Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by any label. Jesus is Jesus, and anybody can have a relationship with him.”

CLIP: colorful Jelly Roll thanks his Creator at Grammy Awards (1:13).

Cue the social media meltdown. It’s not clear whether they were more offended by the religious reference or the fact that the singer failed to criticize immigration enforcement like most of the other winners. Online critics accused Jelly of “religious psychosis” and —inevitably— of being “MAGA.” For thanking God. At an awards show. In America.

But take them together. Can you sense it? Something is shifting. Melania’s First Lady documentary places third at the box office. A YouTuber handily beats Hollywood at its own game. A face-tattooed country singer thanks Jesus, refuses to apologize, and gets applauded at the Grammys. None of this would have happened five years ago.

The woke left’s cultural stranglehold is slipping, one box office receipt and Grammy speech at a time. Stay tuned.

Have a marvelous Monday! Then trickle back tomorrow for even more optimistic essential news and C&C commentary.

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