The Illinois Department of Public Health sidestepped the federal government this week by independently joining the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN). It is the second state to do so, after California joined the network last month. trib.al/0ecIsxF

So flourishing is a crime now

A mother in Minneapolis was abducted by ICE and sent to a detention center in Texas, leaving behind a 16 year old and a 3-month old baby. The baby was breastfed and hadn't eaten in a over day. Then a superhero arrived with 350 oz of breastmilk, bottles & extra clothes. 19thnews.org/2026/02/minn...

If you don't like the weak arguments for "popularism" or "moderation" or "centrism," you will love this very sharp and smart piece

"I find casting one of the most beautiful women on Earth to play the most beautiful woman on Earth deeply offensive." It's such clown shit.

NEWS—The Maryland House has passed the proposed 8-0 congressional map by a vote of 99-37. It now heads to the Maryland Senate.

Right at the top, Judge Reyes lays out her official findings, after reviewing the evidence. She says it is "substantially likely" that Secretary Noem's decision to end Haitian TPS was "preordained" and based on Secretary Noem's general "hostility to nonwhite immigrants."

“.. Weiss insists she does not want to cut ties with Attia over his links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and sees it as giving in to the mob.” @calderone.bsky.social #$PSKY www.thewrap.com/creative-con...

Love this Grammy commentary from the @fuggirls.bsky.social Substack:

I'm ready to vote for any Democrat who promises to destroy everything Trump builds, fire everyone he hired, and subject everyone who works for him (who wasn't a career civil servant already in place) to criminal investigation.

Chotiner shot that man right in the face with his own gun and he never heard the *click*.

JUST IN: Democrats flip a red seat in the Texas Senate. Taylor Rehmet wins against Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist who helped lead right-wing efforts to take over TX school boards. With all early vote, and 95% of precincts, in, Dem up 57/43. Trump won this seat by 17% in Tarrant County.

A huge political earthquake in Texas tonight as Democrats flipped a State Senate seat from red to blue in a district Trump won by 17 points. Trump personally waded in — endorsing the Republican and personally urging base turnout — and was dealt a massive loss.

/3

For Liam.

NC "now trying to implement a plan that would let them challenge any voter flagged in any database as a “presumptive noncitizen” and remove them, then put the onus on the voter to appear at a hearing with proof of citizenship to get their right to vote back." From @wonkettemedia.bsky.social

New survey from Pew 🧵 Trump's approval is down to 37. He's 24 points underwater. Only 27% of Americans support most/all of Trump's policies. By two-to-one margins, Americans say the Trump administration has made their life worse, not better.

now this is fucking thinking like an appropriator. speaking as a federal bureaucrat, do you know how many completely fucking absurd rules there are making it next to impossible to do our jobs? how many forms I have to file to hire anyone? put a few dozen of those restrictions on ICE...

"Whoops sorry guys, we've upped your training requirements to 30 months. You'll have to pay your recruits full salary during that time too. We're not going to budget any money for that but you can draw from the already allocated money in the BBB."

The job right now isn't to advocate for more training, or body cams or QR codes or whatever because those things will be effective in their own right. It's to advocate for those things because it will bleed ICE's slush-fund white.

President Trump has filed a lawsuit against the IRS, in which he demands that the IRS, which he as president controls, pay him $10 billion. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Trump: "I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own homes."

1. The most extreme anti-trans bill ever proposed is currently rocketing through the Kansas legislature. It would empower bounty hunters to search for trans people in bathrooms, even in private businesses, and sue them for large sums of money. The House is voting on it today.

one of the agents said “okay we know” when we were whistling so i leaned in and whistled louder and he threatened to pepper spray me. i then said “are you scared of a fucking whistle dawg” and he very meekly said “no i’m not scared of a whistle”

The bottom line, which is obscured by political rhetoric and messaging around this issue: (a) a weak IRS =/= lower taxes (b) a weak IRS = easier for wealthy interests to shirk (c) convincing non-wealthy folks to believe (a) makes it easier for wealthy interests to weaken the IRS

They must be searching for 11,780 votes.

English translation of statement from Ecuadorian Consulate regarding ICE’s attempt to enter their building in Minneapolis today:

That’s nice Kristi- but repeating lies from Stephen Miller,who has no idea what the facts were, does not absolve you- it proves your incompetence and disregard for truth and justice.

New: DHS now says that two weeks of missing surveillance footage from ICE's Broadview Detention center isn't "missing," it was never recorded in the first place and thus can't be produced in an abuse lawsuit. An utter shitshow: www.404media.co/dhs-says-cri...

Being a journalist is sick: I just contacted a pre-eminent jaguar conservationist in Argentine with a question that has been weighing on me for ages and he wrote back right away with an informed answer.

Congressional Republicans gave Trump a slush fund for ICE and CBP in the "Big Beautiful Bill." Tens of billions of dollars that is still usable even during a shutdown. Democrats must make rescinding that money the price of any future govt funding, as Republicans did with IRS money from the IRA.

Things are so bad that the Minnesota prison system has had to launch a website specifically to combat DHS lies. The first major release from DOC officials suggests Gregory Bovino outright lied about the target of the Border Patrol operation during which agents shot and killed Alex Pretti.

I don't want to hear another word about "reforming" ICE. I want you to run in the midterms on removing every dollar of funding for ICE and impeaching every fucking administration official you can get your hands on.

Some might wonder whether Walz’s deployment of National Guard members means that President Trump would have reason to deploy troops under the Insurrection Act. The answer is no, and here’s why. 2/20

Absolutely reprehensible that AG Bondi is offering ICE stand down in exchange for access to voting rolls. Outrageous and disgusting. It shows ICE is in Minneapolis is not for law enforcement purposes. Instead it’s a way to stir up shit in blue states and extort them.

I have spent my entire adult life being lectured by Republican politicians and conservative legal movement types about how important it is to preserve the sacred constitutional right to self-defense of *specifically this person* and then secret police murdered him in the street

14/ We eliminated polio by treating vaccination as a collective responsibility grounded in evidence and solidarity not as a consumer preference. Suggesting that polio vaccination should be optional ignores history, ignores biology, ignores ethics, and ignores the children who will pay the price. FIN

"On the contrary: 'If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing so, you will heap burning coals on their heads.' Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Romans 12:20-21

THEY TRIED TO GET A WARRANT TO CRIMINALLY INVESTIGATE THE WOMAN THEY SHOT DEAD

"...from a civil rights probe to an investigation into a suspected assault on an officer, the people said. A federal magistrate judge rejected that warrant, noting that Good was already dead and could not be considered a suspect for a warrant."

And that’s what happened. Hunt returned, tying the vote. A tie vote fails, so Republicans defeat the Venezuela war powers resolution. Bacon and Massie were the only dissenters

#BREAKING: Federal jury finds Chicago man NOT GUILTY of offering $10K for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino. The trial of Juan Espinoza Martinez was the first to result from “Operation Midway Blitz”: chicago.suntimes.com/live/closing...

Church led by ICE goon says frightening children at church is intimidating and threatening and shameful, and I wonder if these people have any self-awareness at all. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Defense attorney Dena Singer is now delivering her closing argument on behalf of her client, Juan Espinoza Martinez. Espinoza Martinez is accused of offering $10K for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.

"What's being negotiated now is what we already had. And all it cost us was our global position and decades of alliances"

“DOJ’s ‘Notice of Corrections’ ought to give the justices real pause … about substituting their judgment for that of district courts at least where preliminary relief has been based upon an impoverished (or non-existant) record.” Today’s “One First” on developments in the DOGE/Social Security case:

"The genesis of bitch diagnosis started last June when I called US Border Czar Tom Homan one on Bluesky in response to some awful thing he’d said [...] then it occurred to me this could be a great vehicle for fundraising to help the people hurt most by Bovino and his soldiers."