 |
Via Tom Williams |
February 13, 2026
Donald Trump
Lie of the day Trump: "We're the only country in the world that has mail in ballots"
In fact lots of country do.
ICE
Rep Jamie Raskin - I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it’s for three days or seven days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We’re demanding immediate answers and action.
Washington Post - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to documents the agency provided to New Hampshire’s governor and published on the state’s website Thursday.
Effects of Trump's attack on climate regs
Independent, UK - Again and again, research has found increasing disease and deaths — thousands every year — in a warming world.
The Environmental Protection Agency finding in 2009, under the Obama administration, has been the legal underpinning of nearly all regulations fighting global warming.
Thousands of scientific studies have looked at climate change and its effects on human health in the past five years and they predominantly show climate change is increasingly dangerous to people.
Many conclude that in the United States, thousands of people have died and even more were sickened because of climate change in the past few decades.
.For example, a study on “Trends in heat-related deaths in the U.S., 1999-2023 ” in the prestigious JAMA journal shows the yearly heat-related death count and rate have more than doubled in the past quarter century from 1,069 in 1999 to a record high 2,325 in 2023.
A 2021 study in Nature Climate Change looked at 732 locations in 43 countries — including 210 in the United States — and determined that more than a third of heat deaths are due to human-caused climate change. That means more than 9,700 global deaths a year attributed to warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
A new study published this week found that 2.2% of summer deaths in Texas from 2010 to 2023 were heat related “as climate change brings more frequent and intense heat to Texas.”
.In the more than 15 years, since the government first determined climate change to be a public health danger, there have been more than 29,000 peer-reviewed studies that looked at the intersection of climate and health, with more than 5,000 looking specifically at the United States, according to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed research database. More than 60% of those studies have been published in the past five years.
Study after study documents that climate change endangers health, for one simple reason: It’s true,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, professor emeritus of public health at the University of Washington and a former director of the National Center for Environmental Health appointed by President George W. Bush.
Axios - The White House's gutting of the legal foundation of climate regs will spill into U.S. elections, global diplomacy, C-suites, and litigation that's on a collision course with the Supreme Court... EPA yesterday repealed the "endangerment finding" — the formal 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten humans.
- The move, if it stands, makes it much tougher for a future president to impose various emissions rules that this White House is already abandoning.
- EPA is also eliminating vehicle CO2 standards, which rest on the finding.
It tests how 2028 hopefuls will approach climate. The response from California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) hit Trump but also looked past him as Newsom preps a 2028 run.
- "This decision betrays the American people and cements the Republican Party's status as the pro-pollution party," he said in a statement....
The legal battle will get underway fast, and early contours are emerging already. Environmental groups and Newsom have vowed to sue.
- EPA boss Lee Zeldin, at the White House, said the Supreme Court established "clear precedent" in 2022 and 2024 rulings that support nixing the finding and vehicle rules.
- Those rulings — in West Virginia v. EPA and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo — together limit federal agencies' power to impose sweeping regulations without clear congressional blessing....
The money battle is already underway, as rising power costs are way above rising temps on the political radar.
- EPA estimates the repeal and related scuttling of tailpipe CO2 rules will create $1.3 trillion in long-term savings for Americans, mostly from the reduced costs for new vehicles.
- But the Environmental Defense Fund projects up to several trillion dollars in long-term costs. Think more fuel needed for less-efficient cars, health effects from soot that's emitted alongside CO2, and damage from climate change...
It might have global ripple effects. Sure, the Trump administration has already backed away from the Paris Agreement. But other nations track other U.S. steps, too.
While the Trump White House has already exited from global climate talks, other nations are still watching U.S. policies as they make decisions — at least to a point, analysts say.
"It does ... undermine the scientific consensus that has been reached by nations through the UN process," said Alice Hill, a senior energy and environment fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
- "I would anticipate that it sends a signal to other nations to do less, and that we will see some — probably quietly, I don't think they would necessarily announce this — display less ambition in cutting their emissions and acting on climate change," said Hill, who was on the National Security Council under President Obama.
Hill doesn't see a "huge impact" on other countries, noting "I don't expect that a lot of foreign ministries will be sweating over the fact that the United States, Trump, is seeking to repeal the endangerment finding."...
"The rest of the world is anxiously watching U.S. climate policy with each week and month, and each new development, to understand whether or not the U.S. is going to meet the commitments that it has pledged," said Kate Guy, a State Department climate diplomat in the Biden era now with Columbia University's energy think tank.
Health
Newsweek - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has classified an almost nationwide peanut butter recall as Class II, affecting products shipped to 40 states, according to agency records. The recall covers multiple peanut butter products produced by Ventura Foods LLC of Los Angeles, California, after the company discovered foreign material—specifically pieces of blue plastic—in a filter during production. The recalled products include several single-serve peanut butter items and peanut butter-and-jelly combinations distributed under multiple brands and pack formats.
Housing
8.4% - The decrease in U.S. home sales in January, the National Association of Realtors said. That’s the biggest monthly decline since February 2022. Sales fell from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million. Snowstorms and low consumer confidence slowed a housing market that was showing signs of recovery.
Polls
Newsweek - 61 percent view the president very or somewhat unfavorable. The poll shows 34 percent view him as very or somewhat favorable, and 4 percent don't know enough to say.
Trump's unconstitutional attempt t block criticism
Washington Post- The case federal prosecutors put before a grand jury Tuesday — seeking to charge Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) and four others over their 90-second video message — marked the first time the department has directly sought to classify critical speech from prominent Trump detractors as a crime.
Grand jurors roundly rejected the effort, The Washington Post reported. But legal observers and the lawmakers at the center of the probe have argued in the days since that the panel’s decision is almost beside the point.
“This is not a good news story,” Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, told reporters during a news conference this week. “This is a story about how Donald Trump and his cronies are trying to break our system to silence anyone who lawfully speaks out against them.”
The attempt to charge the lawmakers represents an evolution of the campaign that began last year with cases against James and Comey, said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College.
“Prosecuting people for speech criticizing the president is in some ways even more dangerous,” Nyhan said, “especially given these are legislators acting in their public role and especially given that they were calling for the military and national security state to follow the law.”
Grand jury shuts down police department
Independence Journal - Hanceville, Alabama (population about 3,000) dissolved its police department after a corruption probe and indictments of the chief and four officers. The case began accelerating after a dispatcher with evidence-room access died of a multi-drug overdose in 2024, triggering deeper scrutiny of evidence handling.
Investigators uncovered allegations including missing drugs, undocumented guns, evidence tampering, and harassment of residents—undermining due process and public trust. Prosecutors dismissed 58 felony cases dating back to 2018 because evidence integrity was compromised, raising fears of both wrongful convictions and guilty people walking.
Federal judge blocks military demotion for criticism
Independence Journal - U.S. District Judge Richard Leon blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from demoting Senator Mark Kelly and slashing his military retirement pay over a video urging troops to refuse illegal orders. The ruling found the Pentagon violated Kelly’s First Amendment rights and threatened constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees
Kelly, a retired Navy captain and Arizona Democrat, faced censure for “reckless misconduct” after posting the November 2025 video during military operations near Venezuela. Judge Leon emphasized no court has ever extended military speech restrictions to retired service members, especially those serving in Congress with oversight duties.
Kelly, a retired Navy captain and Arizona Democrat, faced censure for “reckless misconduct” after posting the November 2025 video during military operations near Venezuela. Judge Leon emphasized no court has ever extended military speech restrictions to retired service members, especially those serving in Congress with oversight duties.
Hegseth announced the ruling would be immediately appealed, while prosecutors may seek a new indictment after a grand jury previously failed to charge Kelly.
These Are Not Your Father’s Democrats
New Republic - Janet Mills, the 78-year-old moderate who has served as Maine’s governor since 2019, is staid and a little boring—which is exactly why, last fall, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pushed her to run against progressive upstart Graham Platner in the state’s Senate primary. Mills was reasonably popular and polled well against Susan Collins, the Trump-enabling “moderate” who had represented Maine since 1997. Most importantly, she had been in politics a long time—she was first elected to Maine’s House of Representatives more than 20 years ago—and therefore had already been vetted.
The same could not be said about Platner, who announced his populist Senate campaign last summer, seemingly out of nowhere. An oyster farmer and a war on terrorism veteran, Platner was gruff and tough—and looked like the answer for a party struggling to reach working-class voters and men. As it turned out, he also carried a ton of baggage. Soon after Mills announced her candidacy, nuclear-grade opposition research began falling.
Let’s get this out of the way: Graham Platner isn’t a Nazi. He had a Nazi tattoo, sure, but he doesn’t anymore. He got it covered up in October, a few days after the world learned about the Totenkopf symbol he got inked on his chest in Croatia while on military leave two decades ago. If one can get a Nazi tattoo innocently, then Platner almost certainly did. He says he didn’t know its true meaning at the time, and there’s little reason to doubt him. There is nothing in any of the statements that Platner has given in town halls, interviews, or other campaign events to suggest that he’s a bigot either, though he did write some bad stuff about Black people and women on the internet a few years ago. (For what it’s worth, he also said white rural voters were stupid and racist.) When those posts were unearthed, Platner apologized, citing his PTSD and political and cultural ignorance. Still, it’s hard to think of any recent Democratic campaign that could survive having to make so many disclosures.
It’s also hard to think of a more lethal, better-orchestrated political hit—or one better designed to showcase the value of Democratic power brokers. There was just one problem: Mills had baggage, too. The DSCC had no idea. Platner knew it the moment she entered the race. “DC’s choice has lost to Susan Collins five times in a row,” Platner posted on social media shortly after the DSCC endorsed Mills. “We can’t afford a sixth.” There were no Reddit posts lurking in Mills’s past, no fascist tattoos hidden on her body. Instead, she had a different problem: She was endorsed by the Democratic elite.
In his first town hall since the oppo started raining down, Platner apologized to a full house of 600 in Ogunquit, population 1,577, and then flipped the script: “The machine is turned on because it is scared,” he said. The attacks against him, he argued, were reflective of a party elite that had lost touch with its voters: “If the party was run by the people that were in it, it would be the party you want it to be.”
Not so long ago, any one of the scandals Graham Platner faced in mid-October would likely have sunk his campaign. The race is now up for grabs—if for a while his lead was over 30 points, it has since shrunk significantly—but Platner is still in the game. Some recent polls suggest that he has at least a small but stubborn advantage, and multiple surveys have indicated that he may be a more formidable challenger to Collins than Maine’s current governor. That is partly a result of Platner’s charisma and populist platform, but it is also a result of the growing frustration and anger many Democratic voters feel toward their leaders.
Nation Magazine Nominates Minneapolis for Nobel Peace Prize
The Nation - The cover of The Nation’s March issue highlights our formal nomination of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize. A story inside explains that we made the nomination as a tribute to the city and its people, who have peacefully resisted the deadly violence that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s ICE and Border Patrol agents have brought to this Minnesota city. With mass demonstrations in below-zero weather, mutual aid programs to support immigrant neighbors, and legal strategies from Attorney General Keith Ellison (who contributes his own piece to this issue), the people of Minneapolis and their elected leaders have earned global recognition for pushing back against the Trump administration’s authoritarian machinations.
Trump regime renews its attack on Harvard
NY Times - The Trump administration sued Harvard University on Friday, accusing the Ivy League school of failing to produce documents sought as part of a Justice Department investigation into whether its admissions process discriminates against white applicants.
The lawsuit is the second government action against Harvard in the two weeks since President Trump abruptly reversed his position on a potential deal to end the administration’s pressure campaign on the university.
Word
Sienna Bellows (running for Maine governor) - I just mailed the White House a pocket Constitution – because it seems like this administration has lost its copy. That’s not an exaggeration: right now, President Trump is urging Republicans to “nationalize” elections in 15 states.
America gets its worse corruption score ever
Dirt Diggers Digest - Among the many reasons why the people of Greenland would be better off sticking with Denmark rather than giving in to Donald Trump’s pressure campaign is the matter of public integrity. Transparency International (TI) has just released the latest edition of its Corruption Perceptions Index, and the country whose public sector once again ranks as the most honest in the world is the Kingdom of Denmark.
On a scale of zero to 100, Denmark gets a score of 89. Only four other countries score above 80: Finland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Norway. The United States, by contrast, drops to its lowest-ever score of 64, with a ranking of 29th place. That puts it behind nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and Estonia.
The Hidden World of an Unaccountable Elite
NY Times - Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged.
In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex.
That story of impunity is all the more outrageous now in the midst of rising populist anger and ever-growing inequality. The Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends occurred over two decades that saw the decline of America’s manufacturing sector and the subprime mortgage crisis, in which millions of Americans lost their homes.
If Mr. Epstein’s goal was to build a wall of protection around his abuse by surrounding himself with the well connected, he failed in the end. But both before and after he was first prosecuted for abusing girls, his correspondence described a network of people whose high-flying lives belied the struggles of ordinary Americans. And at the center of that network was a sexual predator seemingly on top of the world. MORE
February 12, 2026
Immigration
Indpendent, UK - The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to strip some foreign-born Americans of their citizenship, with a target of 200 cases a month, according to a report.
In December 2025, guidance was provided to offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security, requesting that they “supply the Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in 2026.
The plans are now in motion, according to NBC News. Experts with the immigration agency have reportedly been carrying out visits to offices around the country and reassigning staff to review whether some citizens processed there could be denaturalized, people familiar with the plans told the outlet.
It is rare to strip someone of their citizenship. Between 1990 and 2017, there were only 11 denaturalization cases on average each year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Individuals may only be legally stripped of their U.S. citizenship for a few specific reasons, such as if they committed fraud during the citizenship application process.
What Alcohol Does to the Body
NY Times - Dry January has come and gone, but Americans’ relationship with drinking is undergoing a more lasting change. According to one recent poll, just 54 percent of U.S. adults said they consume alcohol, the smallest percentage in nearly 90 years of data collection. That may be because more people are taking alcohol’s negative health consequences seriously.
Drinking alcohol can have profound effects on the brain and body. In the moment, some of those effects can be pleasurable. But in the long term, especially when it’s consumed in large quantities, alcohol can cause serious health harms....
Over the long term, alcohol use is associated with changes in brain structure. Some studies have found that middle-aged and older adults who average even one drink a day tend to have slightly less brain volume than people who don’t drink. And the more alcohol someone consumes, the more the brain shrinks. Experts don’t know exactly why that is, but one theory is that alcohol alters the brain’s immune system, ramping up inflammation, which can damage neurons. MORE
Congress leaving today without without funding Homeland Security
Axios - Lawmakers are leaving Washington today without a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security — all but ensuring a partial government shutdown starting tomorrow night, Axios' Stephen Neukam reports.
- That would mark the third shutdown of President Trump's second term, with Democrats again seizing on government funding as one of their only ways to confront the White House over its immigration crackdown.
Despite two weeks of negotiating, Democrats said today that they were no closer to a deal with Republicans to avert a shutdown.
- Among Democrats' demands: ICE agents should be barred from wearing masks, and must wear body cameras.
Senate Democrats rejected multiple attempts from GOP leaders today to fund DHS — ICE's parent agency — in the short term.
- Republicans included $75 billion for ICE in last year's massive reconciliation package, meaning the agency will still have funding despite the shutdown More
Trump repeals landmark finding that climate change endangers the public
The Hill - The Trump administration on Thursday repealed the landmark 2009 legal finding that climate change poses a threat to the public — and axed climate rules for cars and trucks that were regulated under the finding.
The repeal is an aggressive escalation in the administration’s efforts both to deny climate change’s impacts and to remove environmental regulations that it says will hold back the U.S. economy.
“Under the process just completed by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], we are officially terminating the so-called ‘endangerment finding,’ a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said during White House remarks.
“Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond,” he added.
Trump described the actions as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history.”
While the first Trump administration weakened vehicle emissions standards, Thursday’s action gets rid of them entirely — meaning automakers will be under no federal obligation to reduce their climate impacts.
The first Trump administration also did not go after the now-repealed finding that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. The endangerment finding has legal significance, unpinning the nation’s climate change regulations.
The Clean Air Act requires the EPA administrator to regulate motor vehicle emissions of any pollutant that “in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
ICE
Luis Cornelio, Headline USA - A congressional hearing featuring ICE Director Todd Lyons grew tense after Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., accused him of having “blood” on his hands and asked him what would happen to him on Judgment Day.
Lyons was testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Tuesday when McIver pressed the questions. McIver is the same member of Congress facing a grand jury indictment tied to her protest at an ICE facility in Newark.
McIver’s line of questioning began with: “Do you consider yourself a religious man?” followed by, “How do you think Judgment Day will work for you, with so much blood on your hands?”
Taken aback, Lyons replied, “I’m not gonna entertain that question.”
“Oh. OK, of course not. Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?” McIver countered.
Robert Reich - Trump is lying to you about ICE arrests. He said his deportation machine would go after only the “worst of the worst.” But according to newly leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security, less than 14 percent of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in the past year have either been charged with or convicted of violent crimes.
The vast majority of immigrants jailed by ICE have no criminal record at all. A few have previously been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as overstaying their visas or permission to be in the country.
(In the past, alleged violations of U.S. immigration laws were normally adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil — not criminal — proceedings.)
A large proportion of the people ICE has arrested are now in jail — some 73,000 — and being held without bail. They’re in what the Department of Homeland Security calls “detention facilities.”
Editorial Board, NY Times - The most basic responsibility of an officer of the law is to obey the law. The police and federal agents have enormous powers. They can arrest people, forcibly enter their homes and commit violence in the government’s name. If they violate the rules for using those powers, they can become abusers of the citizens they are entrusted to protect.
The Department of Homeland Security under President Trump has followed this dark path. Too often over the past year, its behavior has been lawless.
In enacting Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, officers from the department have repeatedly defied the Constitution. They have violated the First Amendment by trampling on citizens’ rights to speech and assembly. They have subverted the Second Amendment guarantee of the freedom to bear arms. They have violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches.
The department’s officers have pushed other federal laws to the breaking point and beyond, often ignoring judicial orders in the process. They have moved detainees to skirt a judge’s jurisdiction. They have deported detainees in violation of judges’ rulings. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Judge Patrick Schiltz, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote.
Robert Reich - Apple & Google removed ICE tracking apps in their app stores. TikTok reportedly suppressed videos criticizing ICE & the shooting of Alex Pretti. Meta blocked Facebook groups tracking ICE & links to a database of agents that the government wants to keep secret. Big Tech is enabling Trump's regime.
A different candidate
Sam Smith - I get a bunch of pitches for folks running for Congress but this one stopped me longer than usual. It's from Don Osborn who's running for Senate in Nebraska:
The U.S. Senate is a country club. It’s full of billionaires, former business execs, lawyers with Ivy League degrees, and trust fund kids born with so many silver spoons in their mouths that they have no idea the reality for working-class people like me.
If I defeat my opponent, literal billionaire Republican Pete Ricketts, I will be the least-wealthy member of the U.S. Senate. I don’t come from money, and I’m not rich. I’m a steamfitter and mechanic who’s worked 50 and 60 hour weeks my whole life to give my kids a better life.
I will be the only senator without a college degree. After my wife and I found out we were expecting a baby, I had to drop out and kill my dream of hanging a diploma on the wall because my family needed health insurance, diapers, and food on the table.
I will be the only senator who is a blue-collar, card-carrying, union member. When Kellogg’s tried to cut our benefits and workers’ pay, we risked it all, went on strike, and walked the picket line for 11 weeks through the bitter cold Nebraska winter. We won and saved hundreds of good-paying jobs – before I was fired for being the union president who led the strike.
You can give to his campaign here
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)