curated news excerpts & citations
Heather Delaney Reese: The continued disappearances of Donald J. Trump
The President of the United States went missing again. …
This is a man who lives for the camera, who has never willingly stepped away from attention, who builds his days around being seen and praised. And yet, on a day with three scheduled events, there was silence. And then, this evening, almost as if someone realized people would start asking questions, a cryptic video appeared on Truth Social. …
Which leads to the next question: when was this video actually filmed? It could have been recorded earlier today. It could have been recorded days ago. But the timing of its release tells us what matters. Three scheduled events where cameras would normally document his presence, followed by a single controlled recording distributed on his own platform, offered just enough visibility to quiet concern without actually answering the questions those concerns raise.
What we are witnessing follows a pattern that should not be dismissed. …
This is eerily familiar to what happened in the final years of the Soviet Union, when Leonid Brezhnev, followed by Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, were all visibly declining while the state continued to function as if nothing was wrong. …
In Francisco Franco’s final years, Spain followed a similar pattern. Franco was kept alive through extraordinary medical intervention while loyalists governed in his name, preserving the illusion of continuity because the regime depended on it. …
(Heather Delaney Reese more…)
Jason Easley: Mentally Gone Trump Shows Up At Black History Month Event To Rant About Joe Biden
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – February 18, 2026
Today Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker delivered the State of the State address. …
Pritzker anchored his speech by reaching back to the days of John Peter Altgeld, a German-born American who helped to lead the Progressive movement and served as governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897. ,,,
… Altgeld talked about “the need to ensure that science would govern the practice of medicine in Illinois; the high cost of insurance; the condition of Illinois prisons; the funding of state universities; a needed revision of election laws; the concentration of wealth in large businesses.” Altgeld expressed pride for appointing women to office and his statement that “[j]ustice requires that the same rewards and honors that encourage and incite men should be equally in reach of women in every field and activity.”
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Pritzker then turned to the year that has passed since President Donald J. Trump took office. “To be perfectly candid,” Pritzker said, “as Illinois is one of the states whose taxpayers send more dollars to the federal government than we receive back in services, I was hoping that his threats to gut programs that support working families [were] the kind of unrealistic hyperbole that fuels a presidential campaign but then is abandoned when cooler heads prevail.” But, he said, “Unfortunately, there are no cooler heads at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days.”
The Trump administration has cost Illinois $8.4 billion, Pritzker said, “illegally confiscating money that has already been promised and appropriated by the Congress to the people of Illinois.” Pritzker was clear that this money is not handouts but “dollars that real Illinoisans paid in federal taxes and that have been constitutionally approved by our elected Democratic and Republican representatives in Washington.”
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Allison Gill: ICE Confiscates Children’s Letters at Dilley Concentration Camp.
ProPublica recently published heart-wrenching letters from children at Dilley. ICE then raided the dormitories to confiscate and destroy those letters.
(Allison Gill more…)ProPublica: “I Have Been Here Too Long”: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility
Chris Geidner: Senior DHS officials double down on arresting and detaining refugees in new memo
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Mary Geddry: A Regime at War With Arithmetic
As the Fed warns inflation may prove stubborn, Trump’s team calls for punishment of economists who say tariffs raise prices.
(Mary Geddry more…)
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Marisa Kabas: We won our FOIA lawsuit for body cam footage of DOGE raid on US Institute of Peace
The judge ruled DC Metropolitan Police must share all un-redacted footage from the March 2025 raid.
(Marisa Kabas more…)![A cholera patient is treated with an IV solution administered by a Cuban doctor at a hospital in L'Estere, Haiti, on October 26, 2010 [File: Sophia Paris/Minustah via Getty Images]](https://kewus.net/yesterday/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/getty_6995a1cda0-1771413965.webp "A cholera patient is treated with an IV solution administered by a Cuban doctor at a hospital in L'Estere, Haiti, on October 26, 2010 [File: Sophia Paris/Minustah via Getty Images]")
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Al Jazeera: Why is the US targeting Cuba’s global medical missions?
Amid Cuba’s deepening fuel crisis, countries are bowing to US pressure and winding down their Cuban medical programmes.
(Al Jazeera more…)
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Bulwark: We’re All Minnesotans Now
Let the North Star State give us direction.
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The Trumpists, like the Southern segregationists and the Soviet-bloc communists before them, have been pretty effective in mobilizing the executive branch and associated organizations behind their deplorable actions, their crude propaganda, and their efforts at intimidation. And so we need an all-of-society resistance to defeat the all-of-government conspiracy against our liberties and democracy.That’s why it’s important that Minnesota be not just a shining example of what can be done. It needs to be a harbinger of what’s going to be done. It needs to be a model not just admired but emulated. We should all be Minnesotans now.
(Bulwark more…)
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United Nations: Epstein files: ‘No one is too wealthy or too powerful to be above the law’; rights experts demand accountability
The large-scale disclosure of materials known as the “Epstein Files” has revealed “disturbing and credible evidence” of what independent human rights experts describe as a possible global criminal enterprise involving systematic sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation of women and girls.
(United Nations more…)Sarah Jones: International Law Demands Epstein Files Crimes Be Prosecuted
PRInforma: where did the money actually come from?
Jay Kuo: Theres’s Credible Evidence of Trump’s Sex Crimes
Internation Business Times: What Is JeffTube? Epstein Files Get Their Own YouTube – Creator ‘Leaks’ 2,000+ Videos Including Disturbing Clips
Fast Company: ‘Jwiki’ is Wikipedia for all things Epstein files
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NPR: Lawyers begin tracker to monitor abnormal DOJ criminal charges
Some of the nation’s leading defense lawyers have been trying to wrap their heads around what they consider abnormal behavior by the U.S. Department of Justice over the past year.
Now, they’re debuting a tool to help track criminal cases that appear to involve irregular charging practices, including aggressive legal theories and possible political retribution against President Trump’s foes.
“We created the Case Tracker because you cannot defend against an enemy you cannot see,” said Steven Salky, a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area who oversees the project. “The Tracker is intended to spotlight for the next several years the unusual cases being prosecuted by the Department of Justice.”
(NPR more…)TNR: Angry Trump Humiliated as Effort to Prosecute Dems Backfires Again
A grand jury laughed Trump’s prosecutors out of court—but new details about these nakedly political prosecutions reveal serious abuses of power that are no laughing matter.
Daily Kos: Trump judge says the quiet part out loud
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Adam Kinzinger: The Cult of Physical Superiority
Why the new masculinity movement is setting kids up for lifelong damage
I read a story this morning HERE that I haven’t been able to shake. Not because it was shocking — we’ve almost lost the ability to be shocked — but because it felt familiar, like noticing a warning light that’s been blinking for a long time and finally realizing what it means.
It described a young internet figure who built a following around something called “looksmaxxing.” Most adults over 35 have never heard the term, but millions of teenagers instantly recognize it. …
(Adam Kinzinger more…)
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Your Local Epidemiologist: Halting vaccine innovation, younger colorectal cancer deaths, lingering flu, and good news
News Nation: Moderna says the FDA will consider its new flu shot after resolving a public dispute
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404 Media: Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs
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Bloomberg: Ethiopia’s unexpected EV boom
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Decoding Fox News: Fox News: Child Rapists Need Penicillin Too!
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 2/15/26
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.- January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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