February 17, 2026
Governance; Media; Potpourri
Governance
Media
Potpourri
Governance
Social Security is directing employees who normally process benefits to answer phones instead
“Why are we being forced away from the backlog of appeals and cases and forced onto the phones to take calls from people wondering what the status of their claim is and where their back benefits are?” one reassigned employee asked. “We are the workers who process the claims they are waiting for.”
Five Basic Truths About America’s Immigration Debate
Lawmakers need to acknowledge these realities if they want to implement policy that is both popular and in the nation’s best interest.
1. Even many of those Americans who say that they want to deport all immigrants who are here illegally would likely not stand by that position in practice.
2. A majority of Americans support some level of immigration enforcement, particularly for unauthorized immigrants who commit violent crimes.
3. Refugee crises will happen––and every response likely to satisfy the public requires prior planning.
4. Even many Americans who argue for a stricter immigration policy find the demonization of immigrants concerning.
5. Every high-immigration country has citizens who fear immigration and immigrants. They are least likely to sow dysfunction when their predispositions are understood and to some degree accommodated.
https://thewatchdogreport.substack.com/p/15-questions-pam-bondi-refused-to
15 Questions Pam Bondi Refused to Answer
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/ice-agents-minnesota-comments.html
A Running List of Horrific Things ICE Agents Have Said to My Neighbors
We may not know their names or see their faces, but we hear what they say.
“Have y’all not learned from the last couple of days? [The agent snatches a woman’s phone and handcuffs her.] You don’t look like you could be more than 18 years old. Is this how you want to die? With a bullet in your skull? [He grabs her shirt collar, then makes her lie on the ground while another agent holds a gun.] We’re gonna let you go. But first, have you learned your lesson?” —Anonymous
“You have three seconds. Three, two, one.” —Anonymous, to a [Somali-American] citizen desperately trying to get her husband to text a photo of her passport. She was subsequently handcuffed, driven around for an hour, and dropped off in a random parking lot.
“We don’t need a warrant.” —Anonymous, while pointing assault rifles at a terrified woman, who asked if they had a warrant and pleaded with them to stop because there were children inside the house they were breaking into.
“You got papers?” —Anonymous, after crashing into a Hispanic citizen’s car. The anonymous agent did not leave any insurance information.
“N—er.” —Anonymous, while arresting a [Somali-American] citizen.
“Boo-hoo.” —Anonymous, mocking the shocked witnesses who saw Alex Pretti shot 10 times. Jan. 24.
“It’s like Call of Duty! So cool, huh?” —Anonymous, while shooting chemical weapons at protesters at the site of Pretti’s death minutes later.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-magically-disappearing-stimulus-checks
[W]e had less job growth all of [2025] than we had in an average month during the Biden administration.
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/02/13/politics/trump-admin-spending-deporting-migrants-report
Trump administration deported some migrants at a cost of $1 million each, Democratic report says
https://www.theenergymix.com/the-u-s-lost-35b-in-clean-energy-projects-last-year/
The U.S. Lost $35B in Clean Energy Projects Last Year
Former ICE Facility Worker ‘saw people laying in feces’ at Baltimore Detention Center
Whistleblower provides internal documents alleging severe overcrowding, mistreatment months before viral video sparked national outrage
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/opinion/free-bus-rides-mamdani.html
Far beyond just saving riders money, free buses deliver a cascade of benefits, from easing traffic to promoting public safety. Just look at Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; and even New York itself, all of which have tried it to excellent effect. And it doesn’t have to be costly — in fact, it can come out just about even.
The Minnesota Star Tribune has identified six federal criminal cases tossed at the request of prosecutors as the U.S. Attorney’s Office grapples with over a dozen resignations and a soaring immigration caseload.
The dismissals, granted over the span of about 10 days, almost exclusively involve defendants charged with drug crimes. …
[Bradford] Colbert said it’s ironic that the Trump administration says it’s going after the so-called worst of the worst in its immigration enforcement “when they’re dismissing the cases against what actually would be the worst of the worst.”
While serious criminal cases are being dismissed and defendants released, ICE is not going after the “worst of the worst.” A study I cited earlier noted that only ~14% of detained immigrants were guilty of violent crimes.
https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
Immigrants accounted for 14 percent of tax revenue and 7 percent of government spending from 1994 to 2023. Even if the government had not spent a dollar on immigrants, while somehow still getting all their tax revenue, the US government at all levels would still have run a $20 trillion deficit. Immigrants are not to blame for government deficits. Indeed, they reduced the deficit by about $14.5 trillion. …
Illegal immigrants likely reduced the deficit by at least $1.7 trillion.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/chaos-kristi-noem-homeland-security-f095ac95
A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS
Secretary, with close adviser Corey Lewandowski, faces fire for confrontational immigration crackdown and self-promotional style; White House to wind down Minnesota operations
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/magazine/trump-kash-patel-fbi-agents.html
A Year Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.
Forty-five current and former employees on the changes they say are undermining the agency and making America less safe.
Patel has fired agents who worked on the Trump investigations and radically changed the bureau’s mission. More than 20 percent of the F.B.I.’s work force has been assigned to immigration enforcement, pulling agents and analysts away from investigating public corruption, cybercrime, white-collar crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. Patel has also been embroiled in controversies over his use of government resources, his temperament and missteps in high-profile investigations.
This Is What Destroying the Vaccine Market Looks Like
A shocking move by RFK Jr.’s team has the industry spooked—for good reason.
In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges ruled since the beginning of October that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding people illegally as it carries out its mass-deportation campaign, Reuters found.
https://lite.cnn.com/2026/02/17/politics/dhs-ice-trump-tricia-mclaughlin
Let’s review some examples of big DHS claims that fell apart.
Media
https://www.mpr.org/stories/2026/02/13/meet-bathrobe-lady-sam-stroozas-mpr-news
Meet Minnesota Bathrobe Lady Sam Stroozas of MPR News
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article228148659.html
She was the victim in Jeffrey Epstein’s secret plea deal. She didn’t even know it
The reporter is Julie Brown, who is widely credited with re-opening the Epstein case.
Potpourri
Despite the financial (and emotional) cost, children bring meaning and purpose to people’s lives. You’ll never regret it. I never have.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/peter_marshall_387115
May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/some-tasty-fare-for-our-long-holiday
1989-2026 Job increases by party:
Democratic: 50,600,000
Republican: 1,469,000
I read elsewhere that more jobs were added per month across 4 years of the Biden administration than in all of 2025.
https://x.com/SenLouiseLucas/status/2019964970470109386
82-year old Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas: You all started it and we fucking finished it.
In reply to Ted Cruz:
A brazen abuse of power & an insult to democracy.
47% of VA voted Trump. They will now get just 9% of the seats.
52% of VA voters voted Harris. Now they get 91% of the seats.
https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/the-sandcastle-presidency
What is unusual about Trump is he has undeniably “gone big” at the cost of a governing majority — but mostly in the service of private goals, and the temporary appearance of personal power, not for any long-term legislative accomplishments. He will soon lose his governing majority, but he has not gotten a Civil Rights Act or Affordable Care Act or anything close out of it. He has flipped the normal gamble on its head.
In the short-term, this has created the appearance of utmost power, which seems to satisfy what Trump wanted out of his second term. In the long-run, it has given him nothing but a bunch of crumbling sandcastles.
https://dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/the-abolition-double-standard-in
When Republicans accuse Democrats of wanting to abolish ICE, the charge is framed as proof of chaos, extremism, and hostility to law enforcement.
But at the same time, Republicans are openly and proudly introducing legislation to abolish federal law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies, education programs, research institutions, and even core governing infrastructure, and Democrats are largely silent about it.
And because of our partisan fragmented media environment, it’s hard for most of us to see these things.
Abolish is an example of how a word can take on political shorthand power in some contexts, and it might be another example of how congressional Republicans tend to be way better at using words strategically. Congressional Republicans successfully used “Defund” to galvanize voters by painting Democrats as extreme for elections, we will see if “Abolish” goes the same way this time with midterms approaching.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/evangelicals-trump-national-prayer-breakfast/685908/
The Evangelicals Who See Trump’s Viciousness as a Virtue
At the National Prayer Breakfast, the president tested his audience’s commitment to Christian ethics.
Much of today’s evangelical world sees Trump’s viciousness not as a vice but as a virtue, so long as it is employed against those they perceive as their enemies, against those whom they resent and for whom they have a seething hatred. …
What i am describing isn’t true of all Christians, thankfully. Some have found the cumulative effect of Trump’s assault on Christian ethics too much. The Catholic Church and its American pope, Leo XIV, are speaking out prudentially but forcefully against the actions of the Trump administration. Mainline denominations, including the United Methodists, are stepping up.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-death-of-book-world
On Amazon, the glorious inconvenience of browsing shelves or combing through piles has been eliminated. There is no occasion to pick up an unfamiliar book out of sheer curiosity. Every book that the site’s algorithm recommends is similar to one that you have purchased already. In this way, you encounter nothing but iterations of yourself forever. It is a world in which the customer is always right. But if you didn’t want to be proved wrong, if you didn’t want to be altered or antagonized in ways that you could never predict, why would you read at all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism