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In what one sage deemed "amateur-hour, clown-fucker, reality-show dictatorship shit," this week's House hearings on ICE abuses, Epstein cover-ups and other GOP atrocities showcased a parade of rancid, lying, stonewalling MAGA lickspittles and deplorables - loudest among them sneering "bad acid trip come to life" Pam Bondi - facing off against a for-once united cohort of smart, angry, truth-telling Democrats with righteous history on their side and, finally, no fucks left to give. We are here for it.
Deep in his delusional bubble, the mad child-king ostensibly in charge of these evil cretins told Fox News Wednesday that Americans are living in "the greatest period of anything we’ve ever seen." Maybe he meant how he's been bravely standing up for a bridge he thinks Canada ripped us off for while forgetting he praised it when it was built, and paid for, by Canada. Or maybe it's 'cause in exchange for idiotically spending our money trying to prop up dirty, pricey, inefficient coal - "the 19th century called and it wants its fuel source back" - and glitching out en route, the "simplest mark of all time" got another shiny participation trophy as the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal." "Lookit his happy face!" the Internet chortled. "The big special boy is so big and so special!" Also, "Marvel is running out of Superheroes" and "This is the saddest thing I've ever seen."
Possibly sadder is MAGA Reps. Andy Ogles and Mark Alford still melting down about Bad Bunny's "pure smut" half-time show wherein "children were forced to endure explicit displays of gay sexual acts" that are "illegal to be displayed on public airways" which is why he wants a Congressional inquiry into said "unspeakable depravities," though they might be confusing them with Epstein's, which they've notably ignored. Also sad is another bigly fail by US Attorney Jeanine Boxwine to get a grand jury indictment for fake crimes, in this case against Dem Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and four Reps, all veterans, for their video reading the law out loud to remind military they have the right not to obey illegal orders. The kicker: Her attempt was so ludicrous that reportedly zero grand jurors thought she hit the famously low ham-sandwich bar for probable cause.
In this week's House hearings, it was clear Dem lawmakers, like the rest of us, had reached the famed point in 1954's McCarthy hearings when an appalled Joseph Welch, at the limit of his tolerance for McCarthy's lies and cruelty, exclaimed, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" That fierce moral outrage, and the strength and clarity needed to vent it, has been evident in besieged Minnesota for weeks - In grand jurors' refusal to indict so-called "rioters,” in protesters' profane, hilarious anthem pillorying ICE Barbie, in neighbors seething at the masked, armed rabble that just caused a multi-vehicle crash in St.Paul, the latest in endless ICE crimes and transgressions. "Oh my God, you guys are so....evil. I can feel it, " railed one resident. "Jesus. Fucking incels, racists, murderers, thugs. What are you doing?!"
So it was that, in Tuesday's House Homeland Security Committee hearing, when acting ICE director Todd Lyons whined in his opening statement that "to say the men and women of ICE are Gestapo (is) wrong" and hurts their alleged feelings, Rep. Dan Goldman wasn't having it. "People are simply making valid observations about your tactics, which are un-American and outright fascist," he said. Goldman cited their racial profiling, asking people for their papers, use of excessive force and other forms of intimidation, likening them to Nazi/ Soviet regimes and shutting down Lyons' protestations as "unnecessary speaking." "I have a simple suggestion," Goldman said calmly. "If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or a secret police, then stop acting like one." Tell it to power-mad, I-want-my-blankey ICE Barbie, reportedly fascisting it up big time over her goons. Jesus.
Other Dems minced no words. Rep. LaMonica McIver: "Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?" "Yes, Ma'am." "Well, how do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?" "I'm not gonna entertain that question." "Oh, ok, of course not. Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?" "I’m not gonna entertain that question." When the Chair chides her about "standards of decorum," she blithely notes, "Well, you guys are always talking about religion, so it's OK for me to just ask a question, right? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you." (Comment: "We need more Black women in Congress.") She goes on, "How many government agencies, Mr. Lyons, are you aware of that routinely kill American citizens and still get funding?” "Ma'am, I'm not gonna entertain that." "Of course you're not. This is exactly why we should not be funding this agency...The people are watching you."
And so it went. Quoting Lyons' earlier testimony he "wanted to see a deportation process like Amazon Prime, but with human beings," Eric Swalwell asked, "How many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom 3 times in the face?" "None," said Lyons, lamely noting he meant it "needs to be more efficient" and he'd added, "we deal with humans so we can't be like them." Swalwell, coolly, "Speaking of humans, how many times has Amazon Prime shot a nurse 10 times in the back?” Online, commenters clarified, "Obviously, Amazon Prime doesn't shoot you in the face. You have to pay for Amazon Prime Plus to get that level of service," though, "you'll still get ads unless you step up to Premium, and you'll have to pay for the ammo." From another, "Is this the first time Amazon has been used as the good guy in a comparison? Fuck him up."
Rep.Delia Ramirez ripped Lyons: "My mother, a Guatemalan immigrant and (finger in air) an American taught me I have a responsibility to look evil in the eye and you have used your power to perpetrate great evil, and it's time you answer to this committee for the lawlessness you have empowered." She named Good, Pretti, Marimar Martinez - "Do something bitch" - and myriad other crimes: 100 court orders violated, dozens of tear-gas attacks despite a court order, banned chokeholds, warrantless arrests, 3,800 children in detention, roving patrols, plate switching, observer intimidation. On ICE demands to "respect the mission": "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color... the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Their activities were immoral and criminal, and so are yours."
Wednesday, A.G. Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in a rabid attempt to make them forget her months of covering up the Epstein files, missing deadlines, redacting perps, releasing survivors' names and otherwise ignoring them by "shouting, lying and being a cold bitch." Over five hours, in "an astonishingly contemptuous performance," she failed to answer a single question. Acting out "a sociopathic tween," she shrieked, veered, lied, argued, sniped, stonewalled, deflected, rolled her eyes and mean-girled through a book of scripted smears at Dems daring to seek accountability: "Insolent, Shouty Brat Brings Burn Book To Congress." She was "a nasty piece of work," a "demented skank," a "Nazi redneck bleach blond Barbie," a "historic villain" who once vowed to "put human trafficking monsters (behind) bars" and will now be shunned "in every room she ever walks into for the rest of her life," to die "as a disbarred lawyer and a national disgrace...Her cheese has slid off her cracker."
She was snippy queen of the frantic non-sequiturs, with "an unmistakable stench of desperation" in her tantrums. When Jerry Nadler asked how many Epstein perps she's indicted - zero, duh - she raved, "You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the President, and I am not going to have it." Then she wildly pivoted - what child rape? - yelling, "The Dow is over 50,000, the S&P at almost 7,000, the NASDAQ is smashing records, Americans’ 401(k)s are booming. That’s what we should be talking about." WTF. When Zoe Lofgren asked her about redacting traffickers' names, she sneered, "I find it interesting she keeps going after President Trump, the greatest president in American history. She didn't say how much money she took from Reid Hoffman, did she?" Asked about Ludnick's ties to Epstein, she bickered, "what is ties?", scowled "shame on you," scoffed, "I'm stunned you want to keep talking."
Jamie Raskin, the Committee's Ranking Member, repeatedly called bullshit: "You can filibuster all you want, but not on our time. The way it works is, we ask you a question, you answer it. I warned you at the outset of this hearing." Bondi exploded. "You don't TELL ME anything,” she shrieked. “You’re a washed-up, loser lawyer." Then, mad-Lady-Macbeth-like, she muttered, "You’re not even a lawyer." (Raskin, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former editor of Harvard Law Review, is a longtime professor of Constitutional law at American University, and has written several books.) Unflappable, Raskin coolly accused her of running an Epstein cover-up of "staggering incompetence." "You've turned the people's Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” he charged. “Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time."
Bondi blocked questions from Becca Balint with smears against Merrick Garland - Balint: "Weak sauce" - then with charges of anti-Semitism. Balint, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust: "You want to go there?! Really?!" Ted Lieu asked if Trump attended parties with underage girls; Bondi rolled her eyes. "This is so ridiculous," she said. "They are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done. There is no evidence he has committed a crime. Everyone knows that." Lieu: "I believe you just lied under oath, which is a crime." Bondi, screaming, "Don't you ever accuse me of committing a crime!" Jared Moskowitz noted Trump's name appears over a million times in the Epstein files, "more than God's name in the book about God." Grinning, he mused about her Burn Book zingers: "I'm curious. Just flip to Moskowitz. Because we’re in the Olympics, I’m going to give it a grade. Give me your best one. Whaddya got?"
With almost a dozen Epstein survivors sitting behind Bondi in the hearing room, Pramila Jayapal asked them to stand and raise their hands if they'd tried and failed to meet with DOJ officials. They all did. She asked Bondi to turn around and apologize; Bondi stood her ground: "I'm not going to get in the gutter with this woman and her theatrics." Noting an earlier claim that any victim who wants to talk to the DOJ has done so, Dan Goldman took up her quest. He asked how many had met with the DOJ: None. How many had reached out asking to: All. Of those who reached out, how many were ignored: All. And despite "their shameful, despicable efforts to intimidate," how many are still willing to talk to them? All. Bondi, still sitting, still hating, still steadfastly unperturbed, breezily flips her fake blond hair back, gazing into space.
Jasmine Crockett declined to "ask any questions of this witness because (she) has no intention of answering them." She turned to Ballint. "Right or wrong? Raping children." Ballint: "Wrong." "Killing random citizens." "Wrong." Etc. Crockett: "OK, thank you. I never woulda got that from our witness, who is somehow a lawyer but doesn't understand how it works with witnesses. I'm not sure what law school you went to (Stetson)... but you don’t seem very good at your job...Americans are looking for answers (not) protecting pedophiles and creeps. You will be remembered as one of the worst Attorney Generals in history." Bondi cuts in to rave about immigrants convicted of crimes in Texas. Crocket cuts her off: "CONVICTED! So what we talkin’ about? Convict some of these perpetrators who raped these women sitting behind you that you won’t even acknowledge are here!” She stalks out. Bondi is still babbling about Hakeem Jeffries and some money.
Observers were aghast at the wretched Bondi spectacle. Online, one older woman conceded "I'm sure this will get taken down" but spoke her mind for all of us: "Bondi is an absolute cunt, and needs to rot in prison for the rest of her life. What an evil evil woman. My God." Trump loved it: Bondi was "fantastic." John Pavlovitz, pastor and father, looked on at her "masterclass in gaslighting," and wondered, "How does someone become Pam Bondi?" He muses about "the meandering road to losing one's soul...so completely bereft of empathy, so seemingly unencumbered by other people’s suffering, and so strident in the face of simple accountability." As someone's daughter, he writes, "I'm sure there’s a story you have to tell yourself to keep the self-loathing at bay and let you sleep at night...I hope whatever you got for your soul was worth it to you. It sure as hell isn’t for the rest of us."
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Friday, the day after Amazon revealed record 2025 profits, 10 members of Prime Members for a Cleaner Amazon staged a pedicab protest in front of its Seattle headquarters, calling on the company to raise its climate ambition to the level of its earnings.
In its fourth quarter report, released Thursday, the tech giant announced that its 2025 income had soared to $77.7 billion, up from $59.2 billion in 2024.
“Amazon has an extraordinary opportunity and an obligation to act more swiftly on climate change,” participant Michael Lazarus told Common Dreams. “It’s a leading provider of consumer goods to consumers who want climate action. It has made broad pledges to take action on climate change, it has made some small steps, but it needs to deliver on immediate action.”
Concerned customers are demanding the company put some of those profits toward speeding up the electrification of its delivery fleet, powering its data centers with renewable energy, and improving working conditions for its employees while respecting their collective bargaining rights. A Morning Consult poll found that 80% of Prime members surveyed wanted the company to reduce its transport and delivery emissions, and 75% would accept slower delivery times in exchange for less climate pollution.
“Profits are up. So is pollution. Prime members say: Deliver more climate action.”
“Amazon’s success is built on us, its customers. Now, we’re asking the company to stop celebrating profits and start delivering climate action,” said Dr. Chris Covert-Bowlds, a Seattle-based member of Prime Members for a Cleaner Amazon and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.
The protest took place outside Amazon’s Day 1 building, where CEO Andy Jassy has his office, from around 8:00 am to 10:30 am Pacific time. Participants rode four pedicabs as a subtle suggestion to the company of how to move goods without fossil fuels. The cabs were decorated with billboards with messages such as, “Deliver packages. Not pollution,” and “Profits are up. So is pollution. Prime members say: Deliver more climate action.”
Participants also handed out hundreds of stickers and flyers to Seattle residents and Amazon employees.
Amazon has a history of making sustainability promises it does not keep and retaliating against employees who call it to account. While it has pledged to reach carbon neutrality across its operations by 2040, it is increasingly unclear how it will achieve this given its buildout of energy-intensive data centers and artificial intelligence.
“We’ve been calling attention to Amazon’s failure to align its emissions reductions with the latest climate science for years,” Stand.earth campaigner Joshua Archer told Common Dreams.
However, he said what “makes this moment really unique” is that Amazon is now failing three distinct groups of people: consumers like those at the protest who want it to do better on climate, investors who are concerned about returns from the AI buildout, and the 30,000 employees it laid off since October despite its record profits.
“The company is not respecting the employees on whose backs the company has built its success” just as it’s “not respecting the latest climate science,” Archer said.
Lazarus said that many employees expressed interest in the protesters’ demands. While some zipped past in headphones, others “lit up and were clearly engaged and simpatico.”
He noted that Amazon employees have been organizing for years to pressure the company to increase its climate ambitions through Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, and hoped the addition of consumer advocacy would help “Amazon realize that there’s a groundswell of support for taking more aggressive measures to reduce their climate impact... which is becoming quite monumental given the growth in data cents and the influence that they carry.”
Lazarus told Common Dreams it was also important to him that Amazon ramp up its climate ambitions given President Donald Trump’s determination to double down on fossil fuels and inhibit renewable energy.
“We know that we’re not going to see much climate action at the federal level,” he said. “It becomes all the more important for corporate actors like Amazon to demonstrate that it remains committed to and acts upon its need to reduce emissions.”
US Sen. Bernie Sanders responded incredulously on Tuesday to President Donald Trump's claim that the nation's economy under his stewardship is "the greatest... actually ever in history," despite surging personal and business bankruptcies, plunging consumer sentiment, rising costs, and anemic job and wage growth.
In an appearance on MS NOW, Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "you wonder whether Trump is completely crazy and delusional or just a pathological liar, but the idea that anybody would believe that this is a great economy when 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, when the cost of healthcare is going up, people can't afford housing, people can't afford their basic groceries, the childcare system is dysfunctional, people can't afford to go to college."
"If this is the greatest economy in the history of the world," the senator added, "God help us."
Watch:
Sanders' remarks came in response to Trump's interview Tuesday with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, during which the president falsely claimed he has ushered in "the greatest period of anything that we've ever seen," including "the greatest economy actually ever in history."
While Trump and members of his class have seen their wealth surge to record levels during his second White House term, working-class Americans are struggling to make ends meet as the president's tariffs and assault on the social safety net drive up costs. One recent analysis estimated that the average US family paid $1,625 in higher costs last year as prices for groceries, housing, and other necessities continued to rise.
Trump's claim of an economic "golden age" in the US was also undermined by a new House Budget Committee report report showing that personal bankruptcy filings increased 11% last year, reaching levels not seen since 2019—during the president's first term in the White House. Those figures came on top of earlier data showing that business bankruptcies are at a 15-year high.
“Donald Trump’s reckless tariff taxes are driving up prices, hurting the economy, and leaving families to pay the price," Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement. "The only people benefiting in Donald Trump’s economy are his billionaire donors—everyone else is falling further behind.”
Sanders echoed that message during his MS NOW appearance late Tuesday, saying, "The billionaires who sat behind Trump at his inauguration: Yeah, the economy is the best ever for them."
"But for the average working person," Sanders said, "not quite the case."
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?"
US Department of Homeland Security agents are increasingly infiltrating social media platforms to monitor users, collect intelligence, and target people, according to new reporting based on leaked documents.
Ken Klippenstein exposed the open source monitoring program, which DHS calls "masked engagement," with new reporting Thursday that details how agents "assume false identities and interact with users—friending them, joining closed groups, and gaining access to otherwise private postings, photographs, friend lists, and more."
"A senior [DHS] official tells me that over 6,500 field agents and intelligence operatives can use the new tool, a significant increase explicitly linked to more intense monitoring of American citizens," Klippenstein wrote.
The so-called "masked engagement" by DHS operatives online comes as actual masked federal agents are engaged in the Trump administration's deadly deployments in communities nationwide.
Important to note that "Authorized" here means that DHS/ICE have given *Themselves* permission to do this "masked engagement" bullshit, not that either congress or the courts say it's okay.Challenge this everywhere & every way possible, & in the meantime, keep ourselves & each other safe as we can
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— Dr. Damien P. Williams can't think of a fun display name right n (@wolvendamien.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 4:46 PM
Masked engagement adds a new level to DHS' open source intelligence (OSINT) collection regime, which previously consisted of overt engagement, overt research, overt monitoring, masked monitoring, and undercover engagement. Masked engagement, in which agents conceal their government affiliation without assuming a false identity while interacting with a target, is a step below undercover engagement, in which DHS operatives use false identities and cover stories.
According to Klippenstein:
Masked monitoring allows officers at agencies like [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol to use alias accounts to passively observe public online activity. Crucially, this level of monitoring bars DHS representatives from interacting with other users directly. Under masked monitoring, officers are not allowed to ask an admin for entry into a private group or to “friend” a target to see non-public posts.
But with masked engagement (separate from masked monitoring), that firewall has now been dismantled. The only restriction imposed on masked engagement is that DHS officers [note] the threshold of “substantive engagement”—a term the rules leave conveniently ill-defined.
"By labeling this a 'middle ground' between monitoring and full-blown undercover work, the DHS allows agents to infiltrate private digital spaces without the rigorous internal approvals and legal checks required for a formal undercover 'sting,'" Klippenstein explained.
Sources told Klippenstein that DHS has been using masked engagement tactics to infiltrate pro-Palestine groups in the United States and to compile databases of suspected Mexican and Mexican American transnational criminals.
“Open source monitoring has become so ubiquitous that we even have databases of identities used by the department to track our own online engagements,” the senior DHS official said.
“Yes, we have safeguards against violating people’s privacy, but masked engagement is just the first step in breaching people’s privacy settings in ways that they are not even aware of," they added.
Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, told Klippenstein that “CBP’s expansion into what they’re calling ‘masked engagement’ is cause for real concern."
“This new capability is being shoehorned in one step below undercover engagement (which already allows for a lot of overreach), it appears CBP believes that friending someone, following them, or joining a group is not as invasive as directly engaging or interacting with individuals," she continued.
“In addition, doing so through an alias account—an account that doesn’t reveal the user’s CBP affiliation, and pretends to be someone else—will weaken trust in government and weaken the trust that is critical to building community both online and off,” Levinson-Waldman added.
A DHS spokesperson told Klippenstein that the agency "has utilized its congressionally directed undercover authorities to root out child molesters and predators for years."
“We will continue using every tool at our disposal to protect the American people as our agents and officers Make America Safe Again," they added.
Those tools include an error-plagued mobile facial recognition application, mass phone surveillance technology, data broker platforms that allow operatives to circumvent warrant requirements, forensic extraction to bypass phone locks, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, and more.
Civil liberties groups, digital rights advocates, and some Democratic lawmakers are pushing back.
Last week, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) introduced the ICE Out of Our Faces Act, legislation that would ban ICE and Customs and Border Protection "from acquiring and using facial recognition technology and other biometric identification systems."
The bill would "also require the deletion of all data collected for use in or by biometric identification systems and allow individuals and state attorneys general to seek civil penalties for violations."
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."
"Federal incentives to target and profile will harm immigrant communities and have spillover effects on other communities already targeted by local law enforcement impacting immigrants and citizens alike."
The US Department of Homeland Security is partially shut down due to a congressional funding fight, but armed with an extra $75 billion from last year's Republican budget package, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not only expanding its concentration camp network but also working to deputize thousands of police officers across the country.
Two decades ago, Congress authorized the US attorney general to enter into agreements allowing local and state law enforcement officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement actions under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. A brief published Monday by the policy group FWD.us details how ICE is pumping money into "an old, and once rejected, idea—the 287(g) Task Force Model."
As NBC News—which first reported on the brief—noted Monday, the model "was discontinued by the Obama administration in 2012 in part over accusations of racial profiling by local officers in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Alamance County, North Carolina."
Pointing to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as an example, FWD.us president Todd Schulte said in a statement that "over a decade ago, we saw how deputizing local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement could result in disaster."
"Federal incentives to target and profile will harm immigrant communities and have spillover effects on other communities already targeted by local law enforcement impacting immigrants and citizens alike," Schulte warned.
Despite such warnings, the model has been embraced by both of President Donald Trump's administrations. During the Republican's first term—partly defined by his widely denounced forced separation of immigrant families at the southern border—there were approximately 150 total 287(g) agreements across the United States, according to FWD.us.
Trump lost reelection in 2020, and as he returned to power early last year, there were only about 135 agreements still in effect. The president had campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and he's since tried to deliver on it by dispatching thousands of DHS agents to various US communities. Some recently targeted cities, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, officially prohibit local police from collaborating with ICE on civil enforcement, but FWD.us found 1,372 agreements across 1,169 agencies as of late January.
BREAKING: "Agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement that allow officers to make federal immigration arrests have increased by 950% in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new analysis of ICE data."
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— Attorney Kathleen Martinez (@attorneymartinez.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 11:06 AM
The publication explains that "Task Force Model sign-ups began to climb sharply" after the second Trump administration announced a new funding model for such agreements last September. ICE previously paid for training and information technology infrastructure, but now, it will "pay for the full salary and benefits of any trained and certified officer, one-time start-up costs to the agency, overtime, and bonuses based on 'performance,' i.e. how many immigration arrests officers make."
"This comes despite the Immigration and Nationality Act that lays out 287(g) powers stating that any designated officer 'may carry out such function at the expense of the state or political subdivision,'" the document points out.
According to the brief:
When announcing the new funding model in September 2025, ICE reported that 8,501 local law enforcement officers had already been trained under the Task Force Model—or approximately 18 per agency—and that 2,000 more were being trained. Since then, an additional 296 agencies have signed up for the Task Force Model. If they send similar numbers of officers for training, this would mean that between 13,800 and 15,800 police officers and deputies across the country are now deputized by ICE and trained to target immigrants, or anyone who they think looks like an immigrant. This is an even larger increase in force than the 12,000 new officers and agents hired directly by ICE since Trump's second inauguration.
"Based on current participation," the document warns, "we estimate ICE could distribute between $1.4 billion and $2 billion to local and state law enforcement agencies in 2026, adding thousands of additional law enforcement officers with immigration enforcement powers and putting communities throughout the country at increased risk of criminalization and incarceration."
It adds that "if the current pace of sign-ups continues for an additional year, 2027 funding could grow to a total of $3.6 billion in 2027, funding 31,000 law enforcement officers deputized by ICE across the country."
Felicity Rose, vice president of criminal justice research and policy at FWD.us, said that "this would be by far the largest infusion of federal funding into local law enforcement since the 1990s COPS grants, which increased low-level arrests while having no significant impact on crime."
"Research on the 287(g) Task Force Model showed it too caused massive harm to communities while failing to reduce crime," she stressed. "This program is a confluence of two bad ideas that should be left in the past where they belong."
"ICE is attempting to infiltrate the Social Security Administration too—using field offices to further round up and detain people, and scaring people out of getting the benefits they need."
Leaders at the Social Security Administration are reportedly instructing agency employees to provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with information about in-person beneficiary appointments.
Wired reported Friday that the instructions were "recently communicated verbally to workers at certain SSA offices." The outlet quoted an unnamed employee with direct knowledge of the orders who said that "if ICE comes in and asks if someone has an upcoming appointment, we will let them know the date and time."
Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Social Security benefits, though they do contribute tens of billions of dollars per year to the program through payroll taxes. Noncitizens can qualify for Social Security, but Wired noted that they are "required to appear in person to review continued eligibility of benefits."
"Social Security numbers are issued to US citizens but also to foreign students and people legally allowed to live and work in the country," the outlet observed. "In some cases, when a child or dependent is a citizen and the family member responsible for them is not, that person might need to accompany the child or dependent to an office visit."
The revelation that SSA workers are being told to hand over appointment details to ICE came amid an ongoing congressional fight over proposed reforms to the immigration agency that has resulted in a funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security, which has a data-sharing agreement with the Social Security Administration.
“You're seeing SSA becoming an extension of Homeland Security,” Leland Dudek, the former acting commissioner for the Social Security Administration, told Wired.
SSA is currently led by Frank Bisignano, a former financial services CEO who backed the Elon Musk-led assault on government agencies via the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Indications that ICE has Social Security field offices in its crosshairs as part of the Trump administration's large-scale, lawless mass deportation campaign sparked outrage. In a joint statement, Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said that "under this administration, ICE has been transformed into Donald Trump’s secret police force—accountable to nobody."
"They are killing Americans in our streets, sending masked agents to snatch mothers from their children, and illegally blocking members of Congress from even visiting their facilities," Larson and Neal said Friday. "Today, we were informed that ICE is attempting to infiltrate the Social Security Administration too—using field offices to further round up and detain people, and scaring people out of getting the benefits they need."
"It was bad enough that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem have already used Social Security as a means to get immigrants to ‘self-deport.’ We led the effort to stop them and passed legislation to prevent them from continuing that policy," the Democrats added. "Now, Congress needs to act to end ICE’s reign of terror in our communities and block this cruel and inhumane plan.”
"The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President Trump’s largest donors,” the lawmakers wrote.
A group of 31 Democratic senators has launched an investigation into a new Trump administration policy that they say allows the Environmental Protection Agency to "disregard" the health impacts of air pollution when passing regulations.
Plans for the policy were first reported on last month by the New York Times, which revealed that the EPA was planning to stop tallying the financial value of health benefits caused by limiting fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone when regulating polluting industries and instead focus exclusively on the costs these regulations pose to industry.
On December 11, the Times reported that the policy change was being justified based on the claim that the exact benefits of curbing these emissions were “uncertain."
"Historically, the EPA’s analytical practices often provided the public with false precision and confidence regarding the monetized impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone," said an email written by an EPA supervisor to his employees on December 11. “To rectify this error, the EPA is no longer monetizing benefits from PM2.5 and ozone.”
The group of senators, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), rebuked this idea in a letter sent Thursday to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
"EPA’s new policy is irrational. Even where health benefits are 'uncertain,' what is certain is that they are not zero," they said. "It will lead to perverse outcomes in which EPA will reject actions that would impose relatively minor costs on polluting industries while resulting in massive benefits to public health—including in saved lives."
"It is contrary to Congress’s intent and directive as spelled out in the Clean Air Act. It is legally flawed," they continued. "The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President [Donald] Trump’s largest donors."
Research published in 2023 in the journal Science found that between 1999 and 2020, PM2.5 pollution from coal-fired power plants killed roughly 460,000 people in the United States, making it more than twice as deadly as other kinds of fine particulate emissions.
While this is a staggering loss of life, the senators pointed out that the EPA has also been able to put a dollar value on the loss by noting quantifiable results of increased illness and death—heightened healthcare costs, missed school days, and lost labor productivity, among others.
Pointing to EPA estimates from 2024, they said that by disregarding human health effects, the agency risks costing Americans “between $22 and $46 billion in avoided morbidities and premature deaths in the year 2032."
Comparatively, they said, “the total compliance cost to industry, meanwhile, [would] be $590 million—between one and two one-hundredths of the estimated health benefit value."
They said the plan ran counter to the Clean Air Act's directive to “protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources so as to promote the public health and welfare,” and to statements made by Zeldin during his confirmation hearing, where he said "the end state of all the conversations that we might have, any regulations that might get passed, any laws that might get passed by Congress” is to “have the cleanest, healthiest air, [and] drinking water.”
The senators requested all documents related to the decision, including any information about cost-benefit modeling and communications with industry representatives.
"That EPA may no longer monetize health benefits when setting new clean air standards does not mean that those health benefits don’t exist," the senators said. "It just means that [EPA] will ignore them and reject safer standards, in favor of protecting corporate interests."