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| Via Just saying |
February 16, 2026
The phony war on voting
This Will Hold - For more than a decade amid Republican bluster about widespread noncitizen voting, the Heritage Foundation has been investigating and documenting such cases. And according to its own dataset, from 1982 to 2025 there have been only 99 documented cases of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections....
That’s an average of roughly 2.3 cases per year since 1982.
In 2024 there was just one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2023, there was also only one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2022, there were two. That’s it.
Which is why both left-leaning and conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, have consistently found rates of noncitizen voting to be near zero. It is virtually nonexistent—and a manufactured nonissue.
Over the last decade, Donald Trump and Republican leaders have doubled down on the conspiracy theory that large numbers of noncitizens are voting. They have used this fabricated threat to justify increasingly harsh voting restrictions...
Enter the SAVE America Act: a nationwide voter suppression system disguised as “election security.” It introduces new documentation requirements for a law that has existed for decades. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
On its surface, the bill claims to protect election integrity. In reality, it would fundamentally restructure how Americans register and vote, creating one of the most restrictive federal voting regimes in modern history.
....The consequences are easy to predict. Millions of Americans lack immediate access to certified birth certificates, valid passports, or updated records. Elderly citizens born at home, Native Americans born on reservations, women and trans people who changed their names, naturalized citizens awaiting replacement papers, low-income families unable to afford document fees, and disaster survivors who lost records would all face new obstacles.
This Will Hold - For more than a decade amid Republican bluster about widespread noncitizen voting, the Heritage Foundation has been investigating and documenting such cases. And according to its own dataset, from 1982 to 2025 there have been only 99 documented cases of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections....
That’s an average of roughly 2.3 cases per year since 1982.
In 2024 there was just one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2023, there was also only one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2022, there were two. That’s it.
Which is why both left-leaning and conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, have consistently found rates of noncitizen voting to be near zero. It is virtually nonexistent—and a manufactured nonissue.
Over the last decade, Donald Trump and Republican leaders have doubled down on the conspiracy theory that large numbers of noncitizens are voting. They have used this fabricated threat to justify increasingly harsh voting restrictions...
Enter the SAVE America Act: a nationwide voter suppression system disguised as “election security.” It introduces new documentation requirements for a law that has existed for decades. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
On its surface, the bill claims to protect election integrity. In reality, it would fundamentally restructure how Americans register and vote, creating one of the most restrictive federal voting regimes in modern history.
....The consequences are easy to predict. Millions of Americans lack immediate access to certified birth certificates, valid passports, or updated records. Elderly citizens born at home, Native Americans born on reservations, women and trans people who changed their names, naturalized citizens awaiting replacement papers, low-income families unable to afford document fees, and disaster survivors who lost records would all face new obstacles.
.ationalization and surveillance.
Jeffrey Epstein
Independent, UK - In January 2011, Jeffrey Epstein received an email inviting him to join a freshman congressman for breakfast at a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan.
The billionaire pedophile was promised the chance to rub shoulders with Rep. Allen West, a “rising star” Florida Republican, whose district encompassed Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion.
“You will have the opportunity to explore his views on a variety of issues including spending, the national debt, taxes, education, the economy, Islam, Israel, among others,” the letter read.
An hour after it landed in his inbox, Epstein replied that he was “unfortunately” in the Caribbean.
For Epstein, this type of offer was far from unusual. After he pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008 and served a 13-month stint in jail, the convicted sex offender received offers to meet with over a dozen current or former members of Congress, according to The Independent’s analysis of documents released by the Department of Justice..
The Trump regime war on consistutional demcracy
Independent, UK - Kristi Noem appeared to suggest the Department of Homeland Security was responsible for election security and said she would ensure the “right people” were voting to elect “the right leaders.”
“Elections is another one of those critical infrastructure responsibilities that I have as well, and I would say that many people believe that it may be one of the most important things that we need,” the DHS Secretary said at a press conference Friday.
“To make sure we trust is reliable, and that when it gets to election day that we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country through the days that we have – knowing that people can trust it.”
During the conference in Arizona, which has been one of the hotspots of national election fraud conspiracies, Noem said she had the authority to identify “vulnerabilities” in the election system and implement “mitigation measures” to ensure elections are “run correctly” at both a state and national level.
The comments sparked outrage online, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added: “This is Trump’s idea of democracy: leaders get to select their voters instead of the other way around.”
Homeland Dems added: “DHS talking about the ‘right people’ voting should alarm every American.After the President threatened to nationalize elections, the threat is unmistakable.”
... It comes after the House passed the SAVE America Act Wednesday, a bill that would require Americans to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections through showing a photo ID.
If signed into law, the legislation would also force states to remove non-citizens from electoral rolls, though it must still pass the Senate, where some Republicans have indicated they may not support its passage.
On Friday Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he would sign an Executive Order forcing photo ID to be shown at elections, even if it was not congressionally approved. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president’s words have led to critics' concerns over potential for tampering with the midterm elections in Novembers, and the potential for legal voters to be dismissed over technicalities with their documentation.
“Elections is another one of those critical infrastructure responsibilities that I have as well, and I would say that many people believe that it may be one of the most important things that we need,” the DHS Secretary said at a press conference Friday.
“To make sure we trust is reliable, and that when it gets to election day that we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country through the days that we have – knowing that people can trust it.”
During the conference in Arizona, which has been one of the hotspots of national election fraud conspiracies, Noem said she had the authority to identify “vulnerabilities” in the election system and implement “mitigation measures” to ensure elections are “run correctly” at both a state and national level.
The comments sparked outrage online, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added: “This is Trump’s idea of democracy: leaders get to select their voters instead of the other way around.”
Homeland Dems added: “DHS talking about the ‘right people’ voting should alarm every American.After the President threatened to nationalize elections, the threat is unmistakable.”
... It comes after the House passed the SAVE America Act Wednesday, a bill that would require Americans to provide proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections through showing a photo ID.
If signed into law, the legislation would also force states to remove non-citizens from electoral rolls, though it must still pass the Senate, where some Republicans have indicated they may not support its passage.
On Friday Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he would sign an Executive Order forcing photo ID to be shown at elections, even if it was not congressionally approved. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president’s words have led to critics' concerns over potential for tampering with the midterm elections in Novembers, and the potential for legal voters to be dismissed over technicalities with their documentation.
Trump Fosters an American Cult of Personality
Peter Baker, NY Times - While Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime promoting his personal brand, slapping his name on hotels, casinos, airplanes, even steaks, neckties and bottled water, what he is doing in his second term as president comes closer to building a cult of personality the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Other presidents sought to cultivate their reputations, but none went as far as Mr. Trump has to create a mythologized, superhuman and omnipresent persona leading to idolatry...
This spree of self-aggrandizement goes beyond mere vanity, although Mr. Trump suffers from no particular shortage in that department. “I really have a big ego,” he noted at the National Prayer Breakfast this month, an assessment that drew no disagreement. What Mr. Trump is actually doing, though, is making himself the inescapable force in American life.
“This is not just egotistical self-satisfaction, it’s a way of expanding presidential power,” said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian. “A president is more powerful, I assume he believes, if he is ever-present than if he keeps his head down.”
Cults of personality are traditionally associated with dictators and demagogues, not democrats. They are figures like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini and more recently the shirtless, horseback-riding Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. But Mr. Trump does not seem concerned that he might be heading down a dangerous path...
Personality-driven politics serve to bind followers of a movement to their leader more than to any particular policy prescription, making his success or failure their own. Veneration and loyalty are central and ideology secondary. The leader is presented as infallible, uniquely qualified, even divinely delivered for this moment in history.
The Epstein class
Robert Reich - Here’s how Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie responded on Sunday, during ABC’s “This Week,” to a question about the Trump regime’s handling of the Epstein files:
“This is about the Epstein class …. They’re billionaires who were friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people, in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He's still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration. And they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
The Epstein Class. Not just the people who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein or the subset who abused young girls. It’s an interconnected world of hugely rich, prominent, entitled, smug, powerful, self-important (mostly) men. Trump is honorary chairman.
Trump appears 1,433 times in the Epstein files so far. His billionaire backers are also members. Elon Musk appears 1,122 times. Howard Lutnick is a member. So is Trump-backer Peter Thiel (2,710 times), and Leslie Wexner (565 times). As is Steven Witkoff, now Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s consigliere (1,855 times).
The Epstein Class isn’t limited to Trump donors. Bill Clinton is a member (1,192 times), as is Larry Summers (5,621 times). So are LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (3,769 times), Prince Andrew (1,821 times), Bill Gates (6,385 times), and Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants (429 times).
If not politics, what connects the members of the Epstein Class? It’s not just riches. Some members are not particularly wealthy, but they’re richly connected. They trade on their prominence, on whom they know and who will return their phone calls.
They exchange inside tips on stocks, on the movements of currencies, on IPOs, on new tax-avoidance mechanisms. On getting into exclusive clubs, reservations at chic restaurants, lush hotels, exotic travel.
They entertain one another, stay at each other’s guest houses and villas. Some exchange tips on how to procure certain drugs or kinky sex or valuable works of art. And, of course, how to accumulate more wealth.
Most members of the Epstein Class have seceded into their own small, self-contained, squalid world. They are disconnected from the rest of society. Most don’t particularly believe in democracy; Peter Thiel (recall, he appears 2,710 times in the Epstein files) has said he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Many are putting their fortunes into electing people who will do their bidding. Hence, they are politically dangerous.
The Epstein Class is the by-product of an economy that emerged over the last two decades, from which this new elite has siphoned off vast amounts of wealth.
It’s an economy that bears almost no resemblance to that of mid-20th-century America. The most valuable companies in this new economy have few workers because they don’t make stuff. They design it. They create ideas. They sell concepts. They move money.
The value of businesses in this new economy isn’t in factories, buildings, or machines. It’s in algorithms, operating systems, standards, brands, and vast, self-reinforcing user networks.
I remember when IBM was the nation’s most valuable company and among its largest employers, with a payroll in the 1980s of nearly 400,000. Today, Nvidia is nearly 20 times as valuable as IBM was then and five times as profitable (adjusted for inflation), but it employs just over 40,000. Nvidia, unlike the old IBM, designs but doesn’t make its products.
Over the past three years, Google parent Alphabet’s revenue has grown 43 percent while its payroll has remained flat. Amazon’s revenue has soared, but it’s eliminating jobs. MORE
Members of the
ICE
Luis Cornelio, Headline USA - Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison said Thursday that officers purportedly collaborating with federal immigration agents will be held “accountable,” as the city defends its so-called “welcoming” status.
Bettison made the comments during a hearing with the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners regarding two incidents, one on Dec. 16 and another on Feb. 9, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“Of our officers, 98-99 percent do it the right way each and every day,” Bettison claimed. “But I do have one or two percent that decide to violate our rules, our policies and our procedures, and to those officers, I will hold them accountable.”
A “welcoming city” refers to jurisdictions that do not require officers to investigate a person’s immigration status during routine investigations. By contrast, sanctuary cities refuse to honor ICE detainers and actively decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
NBC News - Agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement have increased by 950% in the first year of Trump’s second term, according to a new analysis of ICE data.
As of Jan. 26, there were 1,168 agencies with officers trained to help ICE, up from 135 during the Biden administration and 150 at the end of the president’s first term, according to the analysis. Florida had the most participating agencies, followed by Texas.
The Trump administration has revived a controversial “task force” model that allows local police officers to be deputized by ICE to stop people and make arrests based on suspicion that someone is in the country illegally.
Meanwhile. . .
Immigration
Labour Party Leader Ivana Bacik argued last week in the Irish parliament that its government must take action on the imprisonment of Irish citizen Seamus Culleton. Culleton has been “detained” in ICE facilities for five months.
The conditions Bacik describes could be scenes from Schindler’s List: “72 men packed into a single tent, filth everywhere, lack of sanitation, violent guards, alleged strangling, three men dead already, and conditions so brutal that detainees are gambling on who will be the next person to take their own life.”
“He calls it a hell, a concentration camp, and he fears for his own life.”
The Hill - A growing number of Olympic athletes competing for the U.S. in this month’s Winter Games are expressing discomfort with representing the U.S. under President Trump’s administration, sparking intense pushback from the president’s supporters and Trump himself.
Trump attacked U.S. athlete Hunter Hess directly after Hess said he was conflicted about competing for Team USA given the country’s political climate. “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. I think it’s a little hard,” Hess, a freestyle skier, told reporters during a recent press conference. “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
The president in a Truth Social post hours later called Hess a “real loser” and said it is “very hard to root for someone like this” when watching the games.
Hess’s comments came days after Amber Glenn, an American figure skater, decried the administration’s policies toward people in the LGBTQ community.
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Older Americans powering the economy
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| Data: Moody's Analytics analysis of Fed, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau data. (Consumer spending is the sum of personal consumption expenditures, non-mortgage interest expense and charitable donations.) Chart: Axios Visuals Axios - Older Americans are powering the economy: The changing demographics in the U.S. — more old people, fewer young ones — are reshaping jobs and spending in all kinds of ways, Axios' Emily Peck reports.
"As the population ages, you need more doctors and nurses, but you also need more health aides," says Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor. "You need more nursing home staff."
The twist: The senior population is getting bigger as a share of the overall population. They're also getting richer. More than 70% of all wealth in the country is held by those over 55. Share this story. |
Ukraine
The Guardian - Civilian casualties in Ukraine caused by Russian strikes surged by 26% in 2025, reflecting increased Russian targeting of cities and infrastructure in the country, according to a global conflict monitoring group.
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said 2,248 civilians were reported killed and 12,493 injured by explosives violence in Ukraine, according to English-language reports – with the number of casualties per attack rising significantly.
An average of 4.8 civilians were reported killed or injured in each strike, 33% more than in 2024, with the worst attack taking place in Dnipro on 24 June. Russian missiles hit a passenger train, apartments and schools, killing 21 and injuring 314, including 38 children.
Things to know about the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security
NPR - During two congressional hearings this week, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection told lawmakers their agencies would likely not see significant impact on their enforcement operations since both agencies received more than $70 billion from Congress last summer as part of the GOP's massive tax and spending bill.
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said the shutdown could affect DHS's work on transnational crime, but he did not note any impact to immigration operations. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott didn't detail how the shutdown would affect personnel, just saying: "I agree America becomes less safe."
Another agency unlikely to see much interruption is U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow reminded House lawmakers that his agency is funded primarily by the fees people pay when they submit various forms and applications, so his employees would still get paid...
Most of the Transportation Security Administration's roughly 64,000 employees are considered "essential" workers and have to stay on the job.
Still, travelers across the U.S. could feel the impact of the shutdown — particularly if it lasts more than a few weeks. In past shutdowns, airport security workers stayed home from work in greater numbers when they started missing paychecks, citing "financial limitations."
And TSA leaders say many are still feeling the effects of the lengthy funding lapse in October and November.
"We saw a lot of folks have to take on second jobs, making for extremely long work days," said Ha Nguyen McNeill, the acting administrator of the TSA, at a House hearing on Wednesday. "Some are just recovering from the financial impact of the 43-day shutdown. Many are still reeling from it. We cannot put them through another such experience."
The number of unscheduled absences among TSA workers doubled or even tripled at some airports during the last shutdown, according to McNeill. The threat of repeated shutdowns also makes it harder to attract and retain workers, she said....
The U.S. Coast Guard is a branch of the military, but is housed inside DHS. Admiral Thomas Allan told the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday that during a shutdown the Coast Guard would have to suspend all non-essential missions, and defer training and maintenance, along with commercial safety inspections and other services.
Coast Guard teams are deployed around the country and around the world and perform a wide range of missions that are considered essential, from search and rescue to interdicting drug vessels. Many of the 55,000 personnel would have to continue working, while risking not being paid during a shutdown. Though during the last shutdown, DHS used money from the Republican tax and spending bill to pay their salaries.
February 15, 2026
Weather
Newsweek - A storm is set to bring snow and a wet wintry mix to parts of the Northeast from Sunday night into Monday, according to AccuWeather forecasts. The storm comes despite temperatures being significantly higher than recent weeks after extreme Arctic cold extended all the way into Florida, with six states expected to see winter weather impacts: West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.
Trump regime
NY Times - Jeremy Carl, President Trump’s nominee for a senior State Department post, struggled at his confirmation hearing on Thursday to answer what should have been an easy question, since he wrote an entire book about it: What is white identity and why is it under threat?
After nervously rambling about white food and Black food, white music and Black music and white worship styles, Mr. Carl told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that a loss of a dominant white culture is weakening the country. That notion has become an intellectual framework animating much of what has been described as the New Right, and Mr. Carl, who would if confirmed be the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, is one of its most prominent proponents.
But Mr. Carl’s halting defense of his theory on “white erasure,” along with previous statements about race and Jews, has put his nomination in danger.
First Amendment under attack
MS Now - When immigration agents arrested Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk last year over an op-ed she wrote for the campus newspaper, they weren’t just targeting her; they were sending a signal to student journalists everywhere that their First Amendment rights are under attack, writes student journalist Eli Thompson. Öztürk’s lawyers say a judge ended her deportation proceedings this week, but the threat to student journalism remains, as the Trump administration has targeted campus magazines and other college-aged reporters. Read more.
NY Times - The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.
In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said. In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents.
ICE
CNN - Former President Barack Obama criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ conduct in Minnesota as dangerous, saying “the rogue behavior” is akin to what “we’ve seen in authoritarian countries” and “in dictatorships.”...
Obama, who has previously criticized President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal agents to US cities, called the actions of immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota “deeply concerning and dangerous.”
The Democratic governors in question are JB Pritzker of Illinois and Gavin Newsom of California. This role was thrust upon them as stewards of the biggest, most densely populated, immigrant-heavy urban areas in the country—Chicago and Los Angeles—which are in the crosshairs of Trump’s immigration crackdown. This has created an opening to experiment with new kinds of opposition politics well suited to the information wars of the Trump years—the wars of spectacle. It’s no accident that both Pritzker and Newsom are plainly considering presidential runs in 2028. That’s incentivizing them to break through to national liberals and Democrats with novel forms of confrontation with Trump.
In short, intentionally or not, Pritzker and Newsom are engaged in a kind of shadow war over who will be perceived—by national liberals and Democrats—as the most prominent obstacle to Trump’s goal of purging the nation of as many immigrants as possible. And in a surprise, this dynamic has been a salutary thing: It’s pushing both men to create modes of pro-immigration politics that carry lessons for political battles to come. MORE
Immigration
MS Now - Trump won re-election by promising to deport the worst of the worst, but that’s not what he has done in office. Of those rounded up in his sweeping deportation efforts so far, close to 40% have no criminal record at all, according to reports. Their methods — involving masked, heavily armed agents “ripping Americans out of their cars, firing pepper spray and plastic bullets at peaceful protesters” — have only made things worse, argues Michael A. Cohen. In the process, Trump has turned one of his election-year strengths into “his greatest political albatross,” he argues. Read more. .
Robert Reich's father was a Republican but would have hated Trump
Robert Reich - My father died 10 years ago today. I still miss him.
Ed Reich was a good man. He was a loving husband and father. He was loyal and kind to his friends. He worked hard, six days a week. He contributed to his community.
Ed Reich would have loathed Donald Trump.
That’s not because my father was a liberal Democrat. In fact, for most of his life he was a Republican. He began voting Republican in 1936. The first time he cast a vote for someone who became president was in 1952 when he voted for Dwight Eisenhower. He didn’t give up on the Republican Party until it nominated Richard Nixon in 1968.
But my father hated bullies. He fought in World War II against Hitler.
When I was a boy, whenever my father saw the image of Senator Joseph McCarthy on our tiny television screen, he yelled “son-of-a-BITCH!” so loudly that I hid under the couch. (It took me years before I learned that “son-of-a-BITCH” was not a Yiddish word.)
He thought anyone who had to bully someone else to feel good about himself was despicable. If they did their bullying through politics, they were doubly despicable. In my father’s mind, political bullying had led to the Holocaust.
My father admired people who stood up to bullies, such as Maine’s Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith, whose Declaration of Conscience speech on June 1, 1950, condemned McCarthy’s tactics and defended the right to criticize, protest, and hold unpopular views and beliefs.
My father also admired CBS News’s Edward R. Murrow, who exposed McCarthy, and Army counsel Joseph Welch, who during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 asked McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”. More
Every generation has its bullies, some worse than others. And every generation has its heroes who stand up against the bullies.
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It
Harvard Business Review - Right now, many companies are worried about how to get more employees to use AI. After all, the promise of AI reducing the burden of some work—drafting routine documents, summarizing information, and debugging code—and allowing workers more time for high-value tasks is tantalizing.
But are they ready for what might happen if they succeed? While leaders are focused on promised productivity gains, they may find themselves surprised by the complex reality, and may not see what these gains are costing them until it’s too late.
In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative workers did more because AI made “doing more” feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding.
While this may sound like a dream come true for leaders, the changes brought about by enthusiastic AI adoption can be unsustainable, causing problems down the line. Once the excitement of experimenting fades, workers can find that their workload has quietly grown and feel stretched from juggling everything that’s suddenly on their plate. That workload creep can in turn lead to cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems.
Gobal birthrates still dropping
Kate Andrews, Washington Post - The French government is sending letters to every 29-year-old in the country to encourage them to have children younger....
It’s not going to work because in Western countries with flagging birth rates, nothing, so far, has worked. For all the governmental attempts with housing strategies, tax incentives or egg-freezing subsidies, nothing has reversed the trajectory of birth rates in a lasting way....
In Britain, marriage of young men is in “total collapse.” ...Individualism, smart phones, progressive politics, girl bosses and modernity are the usual culprits in a long list of explanations for why the U.S. marriage rate has fallen by 32 percentage points since its peak in 1949, or why the birth rate per woman hovers 0.5 percentage points below the 2.1 replacement rate. More
February 14, 2026
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