Saturday, February 14, 2026
■ The Week in Review
"Noem and Lewandowski are like the most toxic couple you have ever met given full rein of a government agency."
By Brad Reed • Feb 13, 2026
An explosive report published by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday shed fresh light on what critics have described as “outrageous corruption” by US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Among other things, the Journal report highlighted Noem’s relationship with top adviser Corey Lewandowski, whom sources said is romantically involved with the Trump Cabinet official despite both of them being married.
Of particular note, the Journal wrote, is the way Lewandowski has taken over the contracting process at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) despite being classified as a special government employee whose service is supposed to be capped at a maximum of 130 days per year.
“Given Lewandowski’s continuing business interests in the private sector, his role in awarding contracts has raised alarm bells inside the White House and DHS,” reported the Journal. “Several officials inside the department said contracts and grants are being awarded in an opaque and arbitrary manner, and some are being held up without explanation.”
The report also claimed that Noem and Lewandowski have been flying around the country together on a luxury 737 MAX jet, complete with a private cabin.
DHS has been leasing the plane, although the Journal’s sources said it is in the process of buying it for $70 million, which “would be double the cost of each of seven other commercial planes the department is also buying at the pair’s direction to carry out deportations.”
Additionally, the report outlined allegedly abusive behavior by Noem and Lewandowski toward DHS staff members, as sources said they “frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust, and have fired employees,” including one incident where “Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane.”
The report generated fierce reaction from critics on social media.
“Noem and Lewandowski are like the most toxic couple you have ever met,” wrote New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, “given full rein of a government agency.”
Veteran foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen described Noem and Lewandowski as “the most vile scumbags on Earth” after reading the report, highlighting the details about the pair flying on the luxury jet as particularly egregious.
Investigative journalist Sarah Posner found herself floored by the conduct outlined in the Journal’s report.
“There is so much crazy shit, outrageous corruption, and naked, ham-fisted ambition in this WSJ piece about Noem, Lewandowski, and DHS,” she wrote. “Read and take note of the of eye-popping number of sources who have knives out for Kristi and Corey.”
Former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) argued the report showed Noem and Lewandowski “are wholly unqualified and a disaster at DHS,” and have been “been very effective in driving [President Donald] Trump’s ratings into the ditch.”
Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, expressed disbelief at how much power Lewandowski had accumulated despite only being a special government employee.
“How the fuck is Corey Lewandowski in any position to fire a Coast Guard pilot?” he asked. “What is his title? What is his job? What is his official position in the US government? If you are Kristi Noem’s boyfriend you get to fire Coast Guard officers?”
One expert expressed fear that "something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been."
By Brad Reed • Feb 12, 2026
A pair of experts warned this week that President Donald Trump is clearly telegraphing his intention to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections.
Stephen Richer, former recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, said during an interview with The Atlantic published Wednesday that he’s grown worried that “something truly spectacular is going to happen in which our 2026 midterm elections are not administered like past elections have been.”
When asked to flesh out how Trump could potentially rig the upcoming elections, Richer said it was unlikely that he would deploy US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to polling places across the country, if for no other reason than he lacks the manpower to accomplish such an operation.
However, Richer did express concern about the president’s ability to muddy waters in tight races and put pressure on his Republican allies to refuse to seat Democratic winners when he is claiming there are disputes about the results.
“Where I think President Trump is most potent is still in the post-election procedures,” he explained, “still in sowing doubt in the minds of enough Americans that they don’t think the elections are legitimate and, therefore... the Congress doesn’t have to seat its new members. That’s certainly a popular theory that’s floating about: that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the outgoing speaker, will choose not to seat the new members, because they’re in allegedly disputed elections.”
Richer argued that California could be particularly vulnerable to this, since the state infamously takes so long to finish tallying its votes.
In a New York Times editorial published Thursday, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s voting rights and elections program, argued that Trump’s “campaign to rig our elections is well underway,” and he pointed to the president’s mass pardon last year of rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 as the beginning of his election subversion campaign.
“We have every reason to expect more actions like these in the coming months,” wrote Morales-Doyle. “A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump reiterated his threats to prosecute election officials who ran the 2020 election. Just days later, FBI agents seized ballots and election records from 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia.”
However, Morales-Doyle also said there was reason to believe that the American system can withstand the president’s assault on its election integrity, and he gave a nod toward several efforts across the country to fight back, including states resisting Trump’s demands to hand over their voter rolls and Democrats refusing to let new voter suppression legislation pass through Congress.
“We are already seeing how effective people can be in pushing back,” he concluded, “whether on the streets of Minneapolis or at town halls hosted by their representatives in Congress. It will be incumbent on all of us—election officials, advocates, state law enforcement, and voters—to see the administration’s efforts for what they are and to fight back.”
"The campaign to rig our elections is well underway," warned one expert.
By Jake Johnson • Feb 12, 2026
Doing President Donald Trump’s bidding, the Republican-controlled US House on Wednesday approved legislation that would potentially prevent millions of Americans from participating in federal elections by instituting draconian voter ID requirements, mandating documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, and requiring states to share voter information with the Department of Homeland Security.
The White House-backed legislation, an updated version of the so-called SAVE Act that the House approved in 2024, passed with the support of every Republican who took part in the vote and one Democrat, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas—notably the recipient of a pardon from the president.
Election experts and watchdog groups said the bill represents a massive assault on the right to vote, with many of its provisions directly in line with what Trump has demanded ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“Congressional Republicans are attempting to commandeer the midterm election cycle and increase voting margins in President Trump’s favor by putting a finger on the scale of our elections and pushing nonsensical, anti-democratic laws to stop voters from casting a ballot,” said Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert. “This overreaching, un-American bill tacks on unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to vote, all of which would harm voters across the political spectrum.”
The bill is likely dead on arrival in the narrowly divided Senate, with every Democrat and at least one Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, expected to oppose it.
But its passage through the House with unanimous support from the Republican caucus—whose members claim to be driven by a desire to prevent noncitizens from voting, which is already unlawful, and combat voter fraud, which is virtually nonexistent—alarmed rights advocates.
“This obvious attack on our voting rights is based on completely unfounded claims,” said Alison Gill, director of nominations and democracy at the National Women’s Law Center. “The lawmakers supporting this measure clearly aim to suppress the votes of women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people in order to rig elections and remain in power.”
“It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, which means that the SAVE Act 2.0 creates a convoluted and dystopian solution to a problem that does not actually exist,” Gill added. “Americans strongly opposed legislation when Congress considered this issue last year, and yet the congressional Republicans are trying to double down on this deceptive policy.”
“The forces that are driving the Trump administration’s anti-voter agenda are also pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would silence millions of Americans.”
Analysts estimate that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to the documents the Republican legislation would require people to furnish in order to register to vote, such as a passport and a birth certificate. The Brennan Center for Justice notes that the measure “would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.”
In addition to strict documentary requirements for registration and voting, the bill would force states to conduct frequent purges of their voter rolls and share information with the Department of Homeland Security in a purported effort to verify voters’ citizenship—changes that could disenfranchise many eligible voters. The legislation would also establish criminal penalties for election workers who register voters without the required documentary proof of citizenship.
Bruce Spiva, senior vice president at Campaign Legal Center, noted that the GOP’s renewed voter suppression push “comes as the FBI is seizing ballots from the 2020 election, President Trump is calling for our elections to be ‘nationalized,’ and the US Department of Justice is suing more than 20 states to get access to voters’ private data.”
“This is not a coincidence,” said Spiva. “The forces that are driving the Trump administration’s anti-voter agenda are also pressuring Congress to pass legislation that would silence millions of Americans by making it harder to participate in our elections.”
In an op-ed for the New York Times on Thursday, the Brennan Center’s Sean Morales-Doyle warned that “the campaign to rig our elections is well underway.”
“It will be incumbent on all of us—election officials, advocates, state law enforcement, and voters—to see the administration’s efforts for what they are and to fight back,” wrote Morales-Doyle.
"The incident today at Selby and Western underscores the fact that ICE is still present, causing chaos, and putting residents at risk in Saint Paul," said Mayor Kaohly Her.
By Jessica Corbett • Feb 11, 2026
A day after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signaled a possible imminent end to Operation Metro Surge, Saint Paul Mayor Kaohly Her renewed her call for the immediate conclusion of President Donald Trump’s immigration operation in the state following a car crash involving federal agents in her city that left at least one person injured.
“The incident today at Selby and Western underscores the fact that ICE is still present, causing chaos, and putting residents at risk in Saint Paul,” Her said in a statement, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I want to thank those who continue to show up and keep watch over their neighbors,” she continued. “I also want to thank the Saint Paul Police for staying on the scene to clean up and ensure those impacted received assistance.”
“Because of the reckless way that ICE is running their operation, one person ended up in the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, and several bystanders had their cars damaged,” the mayor added. “This is just another incident that tells us loud and clear: Operation Metro Surge needs to end immediately.”
The Saint Paul Police said in a statement that at around 9:39 am local time, its officers were called to the intersection, where “a large crowd had formed,” and received a preliminary report that “federal agents were pursuing a person in a vehicle when the vehicle crashed.”
Police confirmed that “the person that was being pursued sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was transported to a local hospital by Saint Paul Fire medics,” and directed further questions to ICE and its parent agency, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“On February 11, ICE officers attempted to conduct a targeted vehicle stop of Alexander Romero-Avila, an illegal alien from Honduras RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration in 2022,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News Digital. “In a dangerous attempt to resist arrest, this illegal alien tried to evade law enforcement and began driving recklessly and ran red lights, endangering public safety and law enforcement.”
“Romero-Avila crashed his vehicle into multiple vehicles and a ICE law enforcement vehicle. Law enforcement immediately called 911 to get medical assistance. No members of the public or ICE officers were injured in the crash. The illegal alien was taken to Regents Hospital for evaluation of injuries,” McLaughlin added.
According to the Minnesota Reformer:
The man was transported to a hospital in an ambulance covered by a sheet. A Saint Paul Fire medic said the man asked to be covered for privacy. The injuries were “not serious, that’s all I can say,” the medic said. A woman whose airbag went off also went to the hospital; it was unclear whether she was injured.
Three cars were damaged. A crowd of people gathered at the scene, yelling “F*ck ICE” at over a dozen federal agents who had shown up after the crash.
Demands for DHS agents to leave the Twin Cities have ramped up in response to immigration officials’ violence against locals, which resulted in two deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis. After ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good on January 7, Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez similarly killed Alex Pretti on January 24.
After taking over the operation, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, announced last week that 700 immigration agents would leave Minnesota. However, with around 2,000 set to remain there, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, argued that the drawdown was “not enough” and “the terror campaign must stop.”
At least three inmates have died in the facility in just two months, including one who witnesses say was choked to death by guards.
By Stephen Prager • Feb 11, 2026
A group of Texas legislators have delivered an urgent warning about the treatment of detainees in the country’s largest immigration detention camp, which sits on an Army base in El Paso.
“We have received numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment of detained individuals at the Camp East Montana migrant detention facility, located within Fort Bliss,” said Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos (D-102), who joined 35 other Democrats in the Texas state House on Tuesday to demand an investigation into the facility.
Camp East Montana was constructed in August as part of the Trump administration’s effort to ramp up Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “mass deportation” of immigrants. The selection of Fort Bliss has historical precedent, having previously been used as a site for the internment of Japanese people during World War II.
Using a secretive contract undisclosed to the public, the Pentagon awarded roughly $1.2 billion to a private contractor in July to construct a sprawling tent city to hold around 5,000 people rounded up by ICE.
“Almost immediately upon its opening, detainees, their families, and legal watchdog organizations began bringing attention to conditions that were deemed unsuitable for detainees, even by internal standards set by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the legislators wrote in a letter to state Rep. Cole Hefner (R-5), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Veterans Affairs.
During the camp’s first 50 days of operation, ICE inspections revealed that it had violated more than 60 federal detention standards. The report, compiled in September, was not released to the public, but was reported on by the Washington Post, which spoke with dozens of detainees.
“On ICE’s webpage titled ‘Detention Management,’ it states that ‘detention is non-punitive,’” the legislators wrote Tuesday. “Yet, according to reporting by the Washington Post based on sworn statements from dozens of detainees, the facility, for months, was being run like a prison in a country without standards for oversight, health, or safety for the inmates.”
“There were complaints that the toilets and sinks didn’t work for the first few weeks after the facility’s opening last August. There were complaints logged that, for the first few weeks, the facility didn’t adequately feed detainees. They also complained about another violation of ICE standards: the lack of access to telephones for detainees to communicate with family and legal representation,” they continued.
Earlier this week, US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who visited the facility unannounced on Friday, disclosed that at least two cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of Covid-19 had been identified at the facility.
“While the private corporation continues to pocket our tax dollars, it’s clear the conditions are only getting worse,” she said.
The state lawmakers also cited a letter sent by the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and several other civil rights groups in December addressing “cases of illegal, extrajudicial attempts to deport detainees to Mexico.”
One inmate, a Cuban immigrant identified as “Benjamin,” said he was threatened by guards who attempted to make him sign a letter agreeing to be deported to Mexico.
“The guards told him that if he did not, they would handcuff him, put a bag over his head, and send him to Mexico. Benjamin refused to sign the document, stating that he was scared to go to Mexico, because he had heard that migrants are often kidnapped, robbed, or killed there,” the ACLU letter said.
The letter also provided several examples of inmates being subject to physical and sexual assault at the hands of officers.
“People detained at Fort Bliss report that officers have crushed detainees’ testicles with their fingers, slammed detained people to the ground, stomped on detained people and punched their faces, and beaten detained people even after they are cuffed and restrained,” it said.
The legislators also noted that three detainees have died in the facility in just two months.
On December 3, 48-year-old Guatemalan inmate Francisco Gaspar-Andrés was reported to have died of natural causes, namely liver and kidney failure, according to an ICE press release.
Since then, two other inmates have died. On January 14, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz was found dead of an apparent suicide, though the cause of death remains under investigation.
Prior to that, the Department of Homeland Security reported that the death of another inmate, 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos from Cuba, on January 3, was also a suicide.
However, witnesses have said they saw guards choking Lunas Campos and that he was heard saying, “I can’t breathe.” His death has since been ruled a homicide after an autopsy revealed the cause of death to have been “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.”
The letter notes that while Lunas Campos was “convicted of heinous crimes,” including sexual contact with an 11-year-old, “he was not sentenced to death by a judge or jury—he was killed by someone responsible for his care, for unknown reasons or circumstances.”
“It is our responsibility as Texas legislators to ensure that we can trust that jails, prisons, and detention facilities in Texas operate to our high standards and expectations,” the lawmakers said. “We must learn more, investigate, and provide answers to the millions of Americans demanding the truth. We must also ensure this does not happen again in any federal detention facility.”
The call for an investigation comes as DHS plans to rapidly convert at least around two dozen warehouses into massive new detention centers across the country. At least three of these locations are planned for Texas. One of them, planned for the town of Hutchins outside Dallas, is expected to hold around 9,500 inmates.
The legislators said: “Human rights abuses, ignoring due process requirements, repeated violation of federal regulations, clear disrespect for the United States Constitution, and murder are unconscionable on any inch of American soil—but these crimes against real people are happening in Texas, and require proud Texans to stand up in defense of our Constitution and use our power to end this widespread abuse.”
"Americans have never tolerated political demagogues who use the government to punish people on an enemies list," said one congresswoman.
By Julia Conley • Feb 11, 2026
Along with refusing to acknowledge the harm her Department of Justice has done to victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and yelling personal insults at Democratic members of Congress, US Attorney General Pam Bondi stonewalled at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing when Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon asked her direct questions about the Trump administration’s attempts to label dissenters “domestic terrorists.”
At the hearing focusing on oversight of the DOJ, Scanlon (D-Pa.) asked about National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which President Donald Trump signed in September, weeks after claiming the “radical left” was “directly responsible” for the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The memo directs federal agencies to develop a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” with an exclusive focus on anti-fascist or left-wing groups.
It classifies anti-capitalism; “extremism” on migration, race, and gender; and “hostility” toward “traditional American views on family” as some of the viewpoints that are held by groups that the Trump administration aims to disrupt, and the memo was expanded on by another memo in which Bondi directed the DOJ to compile a list of possible “domestic terrorism” groups that hold the views identified in NSPM-7.
The memos were signed months after Bondi said under oath that there would “never be an enemies list” compiled by the DOJ.
Scanlon noted in the hearing Wednesday that “Americans across the political spectrum were immediately alarmed by the memo’s blurring of the line between unlawful conduct and constitutionally protected speech and activity, as well as its call to investigate, prosecute, and dismantle groups” with which the administration disagrees.
When the congresswoman asked Bondi to confirm whether the list she called for in her December memo has been compiled, the attorney general said she was “not going to answer yes or no” before saying that “an antifa member” was arrested earlier this month in Minneapolis for “cyberstalking.”
The exchange was typical of the proceedings; members of the committee were continually frustrated during the hearing as Bondi refused to respond to straightforward questions about the Epstein files and other issues. Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) at one point implored the attorney general not to “go off on a wild goose chase, another tangent,” when asked a question.
Scanlon later asked Bondi if she would commit to providing the committee with the list of entities that the DOJ believes should be “designated as domestic terrorist organizations.”
“I’m not going to commit to anything to you because you won’t let me answer questions,” the attorney general replied.
Scanlon responded, “We understand your current position is that you have a secret list of people or groups who you are accusing of domestic terrorism, but you won’t share it with Congress.”
The exchange came two weeks after independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported that he had learned from senior administration officials that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have already compiled over a dozen “secret and obscure” watchlists of pro-Palestinian and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protesters and other people who have been labeled “domestic terrorists.”
An ICE agent deployed in Maine also sparked alarm last month when he told a woman who was filming him that doing so would land her in a “nice little database” the department has, where she would be labeled a domestic terrorist. Filming ICE agents is protected under the First Amendment.
And CNN reported that DHS sent a memo to ICE agents deployed in Minneapolis directing them to fill out forms with personal data about protesters and people the department labeled “agitators.”
Despite the mounting evidence that the administration is compiling data about dissenters, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said late last month that “there is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”
While Bondi similarly refused to confirm that DOJ has compiled a list of what it claims are domestic terrorist groups, Scanlon issued a warning that “Americans have never tolerated political demagogues who use the government to punish people on an enemies list.”
Doing so “brought down” former Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare, she said, as well as former President Richard Nixon.
“And it will bring down this administration as well,” said Scanlon.
"Today’s numbers show that the economy spent 2025 treading water while costs surged and families fell further behind."
By Jake Johnson • Feb 11, 2026
Revised federal data released Wednesday shows that the US economy under the stewardship of President Donald Trump added hundreds of thousands fewer jobs in 2025 than previously reported, further undercutting the president’s claim to have ushered in the “greatest” economy in history.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday that US employers added just 181,000 jobs last year, an average of roughly 15,000 per month. That’s roughly 69% fewer than the previous estimate of 584,000 jobs created in 2025.
Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive advocacy group, said the updated figures paint “a grim picture” of the job market under Trump, who has repeatedly promised—and taken credit for bringing about—an economic boom.
“Today’s numbers show that the economy spent 2025 treading water while costs surged and families fell further behind,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork. “Job growth was dramatically weaker than advertised and concentrated nearly entirely in healthcare, leaving the rest of the labor market to stall. Opportunities are drying up outside a handful of sectors, and more and more workers are settling for part-time hours or have stopped looking for work entirely. 2025 was a lost year for American workers.”
Daniel Zhao, chief economist at the employment site Glassdoor, told the New York Times in response to the revised numbers that “we’ve been hearing from workers that the job market is not working for them for some time.”
“The anecdotes are starting to align with the data,” Zhao added.
A separate analysis released Wednesday by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) found that the US lost 108,000 manufacturing jobs during the first year of Trump’s second term in the White House, despite the president’s pledge to revive American industry through his tariff regime.
“While President Trump promised us a manufacturing boom, the reality of his first year has been a bust,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC’s ranking member. “It is critical for both our national security and our economic future that we grow our manufacturing sector. The president has instead spent his first year burdening manufacturers with reckless tariffs, and this loss of jobs is the result.”
"This is brazen genocide denial," said the policy director for the Armenian National Committee of America.
By Stephen Prager • Feb 11, 2026
The office of Vice President JD Vance made multiple posts commemorating the Armenian genocide on Tuesday, but was forced to take them down because the Trump administration doesn’t formally recognize that the genocide happened.
Vance’s X account posted a photo of the vice president and his wife, Usha, attending a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial in the Armenian city of Yerevan. The post said the Vances were there “to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.”
But the post was swiftly taken down, with a Vance spokesperson blaming it on a staff member.
“This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the vice president’s activities,” they said. “For the vice president’s views on the substance of the question, I refer you to the comments he made earlier on the tarmac in response to the pool’s question.”
This was referring to Vance’s comments to reporters about visiting the memorial, which were posted by an official White House account. “I’m the first vice president to ever visit Armenia. They asked us to visit the site... I wanted to go and pay my respects.”
That post has since been deleted as well.
Alex Galitsky, the policy director for the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) reacted: “This is brazen genocide denial. An insult to the memory of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide—and an affront to a community that fought tirelessly for decades to ensure recognition of that crime.”
Historians widely agree that the Ottoman Empire’s systemic killing and deportation of mostly Christian Armenians during the First World War constitutes one of the 20th century’s worst genocides. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.
But the government of Turkey continues to adamantly deny the genocide committed by its predecessor state to this day. And due to Turkey’s status as a NATO ally, US presidents dating back more than half a century have likewise refused to describe the historic crime as a “genocide.”
This began to change in 2019, when Congress passed a historic resolution finally recognizing the genocide more than a century after it began. In 2021, then-President Joe Biden became the first US president to formally acknowledge the genocide without ambiguity.
But in April 2025, after President Donald Trump returned to office, he rolled this acknowledgment back, referring to the mass killing as a “great catastrophe” and “one of the worst disasters of the 20th century” while evading the term “genocide.”
Julien Zarifian, a professor of US history at the University of Poitiers in France, wrote that “Trump’s reversal seemed to make genocide recognition taboo not only in the White House, but in the whole executive branch.”
The return to a denialist stance put the US back into line not only with Turkey, but with Azerbaijan, with which Armenia has been locked in conflict over the disputed Nagorno‑Karabakh region for decades.
In 2023, more than 100,000 Armenians—virtually the whole population—were forced to flee the territory in what has been described as an ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan, which occupied large parts of the area.
While the US has remained formally neutral in the conflict, it has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of security assistance to Azerbaijan under presidents of both parties, which critics say has emboldened Azerbaijan to act more aggressively. Azerbaijan notably has the steadfast backing of Turkey in the conflict, as well as key US ally Israel.
Vance’s visit to Armenia was the first leg of a trip that continued to Azerbaijan, where he met with its leaders to discuss ending the conflict and to shore up an agreement that would give the US greater access to the region’s natural resources.
Last August, Trump boasted of brokering a “peace deal” between the two nations, but Azerbaijan had not signed anything—only agreed to further talks.
One of the provisions of the deal pushed by the Trump administration is that Armenia would drop any legal claims against Azerbaijan over its human rights abuses, which Just Security analysts David J. Simon and Kathryn Hemmer said would be “thereby depriving Nagorno-Karabakh’s 150,000 victims of justice.”
During a summit with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Vance laid on the flattery: “Other than President Trump, the only leader in the world that has really good relations with both the Turks and the Israelis is President Aliyev,” he said. “That means one, the food must be really good here, or two, he must be really charming. I can confirm that he’s very charming.”
Gev Iskajyan, the advocacy director of ANCA, responded: “Vance thinks Aliyev is really charming. Especially when he’s committing war crimes, rigging his own elections, or ethnically cleansing an entire people.”
"They tried to have me charged with a crime—all because of something I said that they didn’t like," said Sen. Mark Kelly. "That’s not the way things work in America."
By Jake Johnson • Feb 11, 2026
A federal grand jury on Tuesday declined to go along with an effort by the Trump Justice Department to indict Democratic lawmakers involved in a November video reminding members of the US military of their duty to refuse illegal orders, a message that came as President Donald Trump deployed troops to major American cities.
The failed attempt to indict the six Democratic lawmakers was led by Trump loyalist Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host who is now serving as US attorney for the District of Columbia. The New York Times reported that federal prosecutors “sought to persuade the grand jurors that the lawmakers had violated a statute that forbids interfering with the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the US armed forces.”
Trump, who has repeatedly weaponized the Justice Department against his political opponents, erupted in response to the 90-second video, accusing the Democratic lawmakers behind it of “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”
The lawmakers who appeared in the video were Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan as well as Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire. The Democrats learned they were under investigation last month when they received inquiries from Pirro’s office.
Lawmakers and legal observers said it was deeply alarming that the DOJ even tried to secure the indictment.
“What an ugly assault on the First Amendment and on Congress,” said legal scholar Ryan Goodman. “Thankfully, thwarted.”
Kelly, a retired Navy captain who is facing Pentagon attempts to censure him and cut his military benefits, said the effort to indict him and his fellow Democratic lawmakers was “an outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies.”
“It wasn’t enough for Pete Hegseth to censure me and threaten to demote me, now it appears they tried to have me charged with a crime—all because of something I said that they didn’t like,” Kelly wrote on social media. “That’s not the way things work in America.”
Slotkin, a former CIA officer who organized the November video, said Pirro pursued the indictment “at the direction of President Trump, who said repeatedly that I should be investigated, arrested, and hanged for sedition.”
“Today, it was a grand jury of anonymous American citizens who upheld the rule of law and determined this case should not proceed. Hopefully, this ends this politicized investigation for good,” the senator said. “But today wasn’t just an embarrassing day for the administration. It was another sad day for our country.”
“Because whether or not Pirro succeeded is not the point. It’s that President Trump continues to weaponize our justice system against his perceived enemies,” Slotkin added. “No matter what President Trump and Pirro continue to do with this case, tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law.”
Sen. Ron Wyden called the tax giveaway "indefensible at a time when so many Americans are getting battered by inflation and barely staying afloat."
By Jessica Corbett • Feb 10, 2026
Nearly all US Senate Republicans on Tuesday voted to block a resolution that would have reversed a Trump administration regulatory change set to give some of the country’s richest companies a $10.3 billion tax break.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution was spearheaded by Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Angus King (I-Maine). The vote on whether to advance it was 47-51. The only Republican to vote in favor was the other Mainer, Susan Collins, who just confirmed she is running for another term, despite two strong Democratic challengers.
In a statement after the vote, Wyden tied the target of his resolution—an Internal Revenue Service guidance undermining the corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT)—to the sweeping budget package that GOP lawmakers passed and President Donald Trump signed last summer, which also featured significant tax breaks for the rich.
“The ink is barely dry on the megabill Trump and Republicans passed to give $1 trillion in new tax breaks to giant corporations, and now his Treasury Department is throwing another $10 billion handout to the most profitable corporations in America,” Wyden said.
“The pattern we’re seeing is that the Trump administration gives big corporations and ultrawealthy donors whatever tax benefits they want the second they walk through the door at the Treasury Department, but that doesn’t mean the Senate has to allow this giveaway to happen,” he stressed. “Stuffing $10 billion into the coffers of corporations that are already raking in enormous profits is indefensible at a time when so many Americans are getting battered by inflation and barely staying afloat.”
King similarly declared that “it’s downright unfair to give billions in tax relief to America’s most successful corporations when Maine people are struggling to afford their prescription drugs, childcare, and groceries.” He described their resolution as “a commonsense step toward a fairer tax policy that prioritizes people over profits and levels the playing field.”
Although the defeat was predictable, economic justice advocates lambasted Senate Republicans for killing the resolution.
Americans for Tax Fairness executive director David Kass said in a statement that “after passing historic tax giveaways for billionaires and big business through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA), blowing up the deficit, and cutting billions from critical healthcare and nutrition programs to pay for it, Trump and his GOP allies in the Senate are taking every opportunity to ensure economic elites can avoid paying their fair share.”
“This guidance would effectively circumvent Congress and create numerous opportunities for corporate tax evasion while increasing the deficit and national debt, thus creating more imbalance in a tax code that already favors the wealthy and large corporations,” Kass said. “Sen. Wyden is right to lead the charge to stop this guidance—average Americans should not be forced to subsidize some of the most profitable companies on Earth.”
Like the Senate, the House of Representatives is also narrowly controlled by the GOP. Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted in a Tuesday blog post that “even if lawmakers of both parties had sufficient backbone to retake the legislative power that the executive branch has usurped, President Trump would veto such a bill.”
“But as a matter of educating lawmakers and the public, the recently rejected measure was a success given that tax legislation (such as this resolution) up for a vote in Congress usually gets an official budget score from Congress’ revenue estimators at the Joint Committee on Taxation,” he wrote. “And in this case, that reveals that this unilateral corporate tax cut from the Trump administration will cost $10 billion over a decade unless it is reversed.”
“The Senate’s failure to ratify Wyden’s resolution may be only the opening salvo for members of Congress who want to retake the power given them under the Constitution to make tax law,” Gardner suggested. “The regulation in question is not the first, and surely not the last, attempt by President Trump to unilaterally cut corporate taxes.”
Many new facilities will be located near schools, hospitals, and places of worship such as churches and mosques.
By Brad Reed • Feb 10, 2026
Leaked documents obtained by Wired show that federal immigration enforcement operations in the US appear set to expand even more significantly in the coming years.
Overall, Wired reported on Tuesday, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—has been aggressively expanding its footprint across the country, with “more than 150 leases and office expansions” that “have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas.”
Many of these new facilities are near sensitive locations that ICE has targeted in its immigrant abduction campaigns, including schools, hospitals, and places of worship such as churches and mosques.
For example, records show ICE is planning to occupy an office building just blocks away from a preschool in Houston, Texas, and to move into offices in Irvine, California located near a childcare facility.
To speed up this rapid expansion, DHS has been leaning on the Government Services Administration to write off standard lease procurement procedures and to even conceal lease listings in the name of “national security concerns.”
Taken as a whole, Wired found that “ICE agents and officers will share buildings with doctors, restaurants, and businesses,” and will “expand existing offices and move in with unrelated government agencies,” such as in Philadelphia, where they are set to share space with the local Division of Motor Vehicles.
“The leasing plans give a clear picture of where ICE is going next in the US: Everywhere,” the report concluded.
The leaked plans about ICE’s aggressive expansion come as immigrants being held in ICE detention centers give disturbing accounts of conditions at facilities.
Seamus Culleton, an Irish citizen who has been held at a Texas ICE detention center for five months despite having a valid US work permit and no criminal record, told Ireland’s RTÉ that the facility is akin to a “modern-day concentration camp.”
“It’s a bunch of temporary tents,” he explained. “There’s a room for, probably, a thousand detainees in each tent... I’ve been locked in the same room now for four-and-a-half months. I’ve had barely any outside time, no fresh air, no sunshine. I can probably count on both hands the number of times I’ve been outside. So I’m just locked inside this room all day, every day.”
Culleton also said that the facilities were “filthy,” with toilets and showers being “completely nasty.”
On Monday, ProPublica published letters that children detained at an immigration center in Dilley, Texas had written while they were being held with their parents.
Ender, a 12-year-old from Venezuela who has been detained in Dilley for over two months, complained about people getting inadequate medical care at the facility.
“Going to the doctor and... the only thing they tell you is to drink more water,” Ender wrote in his letter. “And the worst thing is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here.”
Ariana, a 14-year-old from Honduras who has been at the facility for a month-and-a-half, used her letter to explain the mental toll the detention has taken.
“Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression,” explained Ariana, who added that children being held at the facility are “being damage (sic) mentally, they witness how the’ve been treated.”
According to Drop Site News, said one organizer, "Marco Rubio is personally overseeing the starvation of an entire nation."
By Julia Conley • Feb 10, 2026
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long sought regime change in Cuba, and new reporting from Drop Site News on Monday suggested he may be intentionally misrepresenting the Trump administration’s current policy in the communist country to achieve his goal.
The outlet reported that, based on the accounts of five Cuban and US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the “deal” that President Donald Trump has said is likely to be finalized soon is not being pursued in any high-level, official diplomatic discussions.
Soon after issuing an executive order that labeled Cuba an extraordinary threat, accused it of harboring terrorists, and threatened other countries with sanctions if they provide oil to the Cuban government, Trump said his administration is “talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens.”
But one senior White House official explained to Drop Site that “he’s saying that because that’s what Marco is telling him.”
If the public and the president himself believe that high-level negotiations are taking place, “in a few weeks or months, Rubio will be able to claim that the talks were futile because of Cuban intransigence,” Drop Site reported, asserting that Rubio is “deliberately” blocking Trump from the talks and misleading him.
A lie like the one Drop Site‘s sources alleged, said reporter Ryan Grim, “would be a defining scandal in any other administration.”
The idea that talks are taking place has been “accepted as fact” in Washington, DC, reported the outlet, which pointed to Politico‘s recent reporting that said the son of former Cuban President Raúl Castro traveled to Mexico for talks with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Politico‘s article was sourced to a Cuban dissident blogger and a “single, fantastical Facebook post made by a Spain-based Cuban journalist.”
Drop Site noted that while Trump is currently threatening Cuba’s economy and the lives and livelihoods of millions of people with an oil blockade, having cut off the Venezuelan oil supply to the island after ordering an invasion of the South American country over a month ago, he doesn’t appear to be driven by an “ideological confrontation with Cuba” and in fact holds potential financial interests in normalizing relations with the country because he holds a registered trademark for a Trump property in Havana.
Rubio, whose family immigrated to the US from Cuba before the Cuban Revolution—but didn’t flee Fidel Castro’s takeover as he claimed early in his political career—has long called for regime change in the country.
The US State Department refuted the accounts of Drop Site‘s five sources and told the outlet that diplomatic talks—which Cuban leaders have said they are entirely open to holding—are taking place, but did not provide evidence or details.
“As the president stated, we are talking to Cuba, whose leaders should make a deal. Cuba is a failing nation whose rulers have had a major setback with the loss of support from Venezuela and with Mexico ceasing to send them oil,” the State Department press office said.
That claim contradicted a comment from Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, who told CNN last week that the government has had “some exchanges of messages” with the White House.
“We cannot say we have set a bilateral dialogue at this moment,” he said.
Drop Site News’ reporting indicates, said Cuban-American organizer and New York City Council candidate Danny Valdes, that “Marco Rubio is personally overseeing the starvation of an entire nation,” while Cuban leaders “want dialogue and a way forward, without surrendering their sovereignty.”
“Initially my reaction to all this was, I don’t care, I don’t know what the big deal is," the Trump-supporting Sen. Cynthia Lummis said. "But now I see what the big deal is."
By Stephen Prager • Feb 10, 2026
Members of Congress were given a chance to scour unredacted versions of the Department of Justice’s files on Jeffrey Epstein for the first time on Monday.
There are more than 3 million pages available for lawmakers to comb through following their release to the public with heavy redactions. Meanwhile, despite a law requiring all the files to be released in December, the DOJ is still sitting on another 3 million pages that have yet to be published.
Lawmakers have so far only scratched the surface of the information available. But what they’ve seen after just one day has even some of President Donald Trump’s biggest defenders reevaluating their dismissal of the Epstein scandal.
“Initially, my reaction to all this was, I don’t care, I don’t know what the big deal is,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told independent journalist Pablo Manríquez on Monday. “But now I see what the big deal is and it was worth investigating. The members of Congress who were pushing this were not wrong!”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who have led the charge in Congress for the files to be released, said on Monday that six individuals who were “likely incriminated” in Epstein’s crimes had their identities blacked out by the DOJ in the files that were released publicly.
“In a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted, who are implicated in the way that the files are presented,” Massie told reporters outside the DOJ office where lawmakers viewed the files.
They did not initially specify the individuals’ names, but Massie said at least one was a US citizen and some were “high‑up” foreign officials.
Massie later revealed that one of the men on this list was Les Wexner, the ex-CEO of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret. Wexner appears in the files thousands of times and was infamously one of Epstein’s most intimate financial clients.
After Massie questioned why Wexner’s name was blacked out, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced it had been unredacted and said the DOJ was “hiding nothing.” The other five names remained redacted as of Tuesday morning.
The FBI closed its investigation into Epstein in July, concluding that while the financier himself abused several underage girls, along with his partner Ghislane Maxwell—who is currently serving 20 years in prison—he was not running a sex-trafficking ring that included other powerful figures.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said the files he and other lawmakers reviewed yesterday told a much different story.
“It’s disgusting,” he said. “There are lots of names, lots of co-conspirators, and they’re trafficking girls all across the world.”
Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) put it more succinctly when a Drop Site News reporter caught her on the way back from the DOJ office and asked what she learned from viewing the files.
“There’s a bunch of sick fucks,” she said.
Lawmakers also said the documents contradicted Trump’s claims that he booted Epstein from membership at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, and disassociated from him in the early 2000s because the predator was poaching young female workers from the resort. Trump has said that one of them was the late Virginia Giuffre, then a 17-year-old locker room employee, who’d go on to become one of Epstein’s victims and most prominent accusers.
According to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), “for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason,” the DOJ concealed a summary of statements allegedly made by Trump, provided by Epstein’s lawyers, in which the president said he never asked Epstein to leave the club.
Balint confirmed she saw the same document.
“One [document] was related to whether or not Trump had ever kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, as he claimed,” she said. “It’s not true. It’s a lie.”
The law passed in November requiring the files’ release mandates that victims of Epstein’s abuse have their privacy protected, but forbids the DOJ from redacting information to protect prominent individuals, including government officials, from embarrassment.
“The broader issue is why so many of the files they’re getting are redacted in the first place,” Khanna said. “What Americans want to know is who the rich and powerful people are who went to [Epstein’s] island? Did they rape underage girls? Did they know that underage girls were being paraded around?”
Massie and Khanna said they were disappointed to find that many of the files that were supposed to be available were still heavily redacted. Massie lamented that the DOJ had not yet provided access to the FBI’s 302 forms, which contain official summaries of interviews with witnesses and victims.
Raskin said viewing the files affirmed many of the concerns about the DOJ “over-redacting” files.
“We didn’t want there to be a cover-up, and yet, what I saw today was that there were lots of examples of people’s names being redacted when they were not victims,” Raskin told CNN. “There are thousands and thousands of pages replete with redactions. There are entire pages in memos where you can’t see anything.”
Lawmakers were given permission to view the files in a letter sent by the DOJ on Friday, following mounting criticism about the extensive number of redactions in the public release. They are required to sift through the files in a tightly-secured DOJ office and are barred from making copies available to the public, though they are allowed to take notes.
Raskin said that the office contains only four computers, making the process of sorting through more than 3 million files agonizingly slow.
“Working 40 hours a week on nothing else but this, it would take more than seven years for the 217 members who signed the House discharge petition to read just the documents they’ve decided to release,” he wrote in a post on social media.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee about the handling of the files on Wednesday. Massie said he plans to grill her about why so many potential co-conspirators had their names redacted in the public release.
“I would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and over‑redacted and let them unredact those men’s names,” he said. That would probably be the best way to do it.“
Blanche has responded to the criticism on social media, saying, “The DOJ is committed to transparency.”
Khanna, who appeared on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday morning, said that based on what he saw in the public release, the opposite is true.
“ Donald Trump had the FBI scrub those files in March,” he said. “And the documents we saw already had the redactions of the FBI from March. So we still have not seen the vast majority of documents unredacted that have the survivor statements of the rich and powerful men who committed these crimes.”
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