“North Carolina’s elections board came to an agreement with the Republican and Democratic parties on Monday to give 73,000 voters more time to update their voter registrations before they are removed from voter rolls. The settlement concludes an extended legal battle that rose after the Republican National Committee and North Carolina GOP sued state election officials in 2024, claiming that roughly 250,000 voters had been improperly registered. The voters in question did not provide the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers or an attestation that they had neither on their registrations. Republicans had requested that the voters be removed from rolls and their votes in the 2024 elections be thrown out. The Democratic National Committee hailed the settlement as a win on Monday, accusing the GOP of voter suppression.” (02/17/26)
“In a recent article I argued that the world is now crossing a threshold from decades of growth and increasing integration to decades of economic shrinkage and political breakdown. This shift will create stresses that extend in scale from ecosystems and international relations down to households and individuals. Everyone will be personally (and likely profoundly) impacted by the polycrisis. There are three components to this tectonic shift: environmental, economic, and political. It’s useful to think of this in terms of disasters, e.g. natural disasters, economic calamities, and government repression or civil war. Every disaster is unique, but some general observations apply. When a disaster happens, our normal sense of time is interrupted and our priorities get scrambled. Suddenly, nothing matters but the immediate necessities of escaping harm and helping others to safety. People’s attitudes tend to be sober, purposeful, and helpful; hysteria is rare.” (02/17/26)
“An air of defiance marked Kosovo’s independence celebrations on Tuesday as thousands of people joined a march in support of former fighters who are facing trial at a Netherlands-based court for alleged war crimes during a 1998-1999 separatist war from Serbia. Protesters, many wrapped in red and black Albanian flags, braved cold and snowy weather in the capital, Pristina, to voice their opposition to the proceedings in The Hague against former president and rebel leader Hashim Thaci and three others accused of atrocities during and after the conflict that killed some 13,000 people. Earlier on Tuesday, Kosovo’s security forces paraded in Pristina as part of the independence ceremonies, and Parliament held a special session. The war started in 1998 when the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army launched its struggle for independence and Serbia responded with a brutal crackdown. The war ended after NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999, eventually forcing it to pull out its troops from the territory.” (02/17/26)
“President Joe Biden not only allowed 6 million to 10 million illegal [sic] aliens to walk across the border during his term, he also granted a ‘quiet amnesty’ to nearly 1 million. We’re only learning this now, as the Department of Justice revealed Biden officials improperly ‘terminated,’ ‘dismissed’ or ‘closed’ that many cases before the nation’s immigration tribunals. The tool for this deception was the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (‘EOIR’, pronounced like Winnie the Pooh’s sad donkey friend), which oversees deportation cases. Under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration used EOIR to manipulate removal hearings, tanking pending cases in the name of ‘prosecutorial discretion.'” (02/16/26)
“Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has ordered Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col. Dave Butler from his current job serving as chief of Army public affairs and chief advisor to Driscoll, who currently is in Geneva serving on the negotiating team to end the Ukraine war, Fox News has learned. Butler served as the head of public affairs for the Joint Chiefs when Gen. Mark Milley was chairman, and was slated to receive his first star. His name appeared for two years in a row on an Army list of 34 officers selected for promotion. That list has been held up by Hegseth for nearly four months because he reportedly has concerns about four to five officers selected by the Army board, but by law he cannot remove them from the list. Butler volunteered to take his name off the promotion list if it would help unlock the other promotions, according to an Army official.” (02/17/26)
“French authorities said Tuesday they released a tanker intercepted last month in the Mediterranean Sea which is suspected of being part of Russia’s sanctioned shadow fleet shipping oil in violation of international sanctions. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a post on X that the tanker Grinch is to leave French waters after having paid a penalty of ‘several million euros’ and ‘three weeks of costly immobilization.’ ‘Circumventing European sanctions comes at a price. Russia will no longer be able to finance its war with impunity through a ghost fleet off our coasts,’ Barrot said. The French military diverted the ship last month and anchored it in the port of Fos-sur-Mer as part of an investigation into a charge of failure to fly a valid flag.” (02/17/26)
“On June 5, 2015, Kathy Ruemmler, then a corporate lawyer for Latham & Watkins but just one year removed from her stint as White House counsel for Barack Obama, emailed her good friend Jeffrey Epstein. Ruemmler, who was once under consideration to become Obama’s attorney general, wrote, ‘I am working on a PR strategy for MJ White v. Elizabeth Warren.’ Epstein responded, ‘Good[.] mj is good.’ And Ruemmler followed on in a response, ‘Yes, and EW is the worst.’ This is the perfect Jeffrey Epstein email, with as much explanatory power about this man, and more important the world he associated with and cultivated, than anything to do with child sex abuse. It shows that there is in fact an Epstein class, which not only believes in their own personal impunity, but seeks to protect their fellow travelers as well.” (02/17/26)
“Decades ago, the Democratic Party had leaders like Presidents Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy who were proud of our country and our citizens. These leaders would have never embarked on a foreign ‘apology tour’ like Former President Barack Obama or allowed our country to be invaded by millions of illegal immigrants like Former President Joe Biden. In the 1980’s, a coalition of moderate congressional Democrats known as the ‘Blue Dogs’ assisted President Ronald Reagan to pass historic tax cuts, which unleashed tremendous economic growth and enabled our country to exorcise the ‘malaise’ that another Democrat President, Jimmy Carter, had infamously described. The ‘Blue Dogs’ were essential for the Reagan agenda to succeed. Additionally, then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA) and Reagan were friends and enjoyed occasional evening cocktails together. This relationship helped Reagan and Republicans pass their legislation in a Democrat controlled Congress.” (02/16/26)
“In the 1990s, America watched tobacco executives raise their right hands before Congress and swear nicotine was not addictive. We now know they were lying through their teeth. Internal documents later proved cigarettes were chemically engineered to maximize dependency and deliberately marketed to children to create ‘replacement smokers’ for a dying customer base. Today, we are watching the same lie unfold in real time. Only now, the product is not Marlboro. It is the algorithm. A new class of titans – Meta, TikTok, Snap and Google – have built digital machines designed to addict our kids. The damage is not in their lungs. It is in the wiring of their developing brains. On Feb. 9, a landmark jury trial began in California Superior Court that could fundamentally reshape how social media is regulated.” (02/16/26)
“Garbage has begun to pile up on street corners in the Cuban capital of Havana, attracting hordes of flies and reeking of rotten food, in one of the most visible impacts of the U.S. bid to prevent oil from reaching the Caribbean’s largest island. State-run news outlet Cubadebate reported this month that Havana only 44 of 106 of its rubbish trucks were able to keep operating due to fuel shortages, slowing garbage collection.” (02/16/26)
