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Author: digby

Paging Stephen Miller

Published by digby on February 14, 2026

Guess what? Your ethnic cleansing plan is killing your own allies:

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

[…]

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week. He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work.

The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s mass deportation agenda continues to clash with his economic goals of bringing down prices and political aims of keeping control of Congress. Even the president’s allies fear disruptions to labor-heavy industries will undermine the gains with Latino voters Republicans have made in recent years, in large part because of Trump’s economic agenda.

These concerns were the central focus of a White House meeting this week between chief of staff Susie Wiles, Speaker Mike Johnson, and a group of Republican lawmakers, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, granted anonymity to discuss it. The group talked about growing concerns that Hispanic voters are abandoning the Republican Party in droves, as well as the policies driving these losses — immigration and affordability concerns.

I guess nobody mentioned the economic effects of Miller’s draconian deportation plans. And Trump is too distracted by his hideous ballroom and quest for the Nobel Peace Prize to care. (Not to mention he’s too dumb and addled to think beyond the last phone call he got from some bootlicker.)

They may very well begin to ease up on the industries that Trump values like farming and building. It is the Democrats job to keep this albatross tied around their necks and then set it a fire for the next three years. They must be relentless in their condemnation with endless visual reminders of what these people have done to the immigrant population in this country, whether they pull back from their most extreme policies or not.

Never forget. This is the ugliest policy the U.S. government has undertaken since Jim Crow and the Republican Party cannot be allowed to run from what they’ve done.

A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Published by digby on February 14, 2026

The wildest story you will read this week and that’s saying something. I know you’ve probably heard about the Pentagon shooting down a party balloon with an experimental drone laser weapon which caused the FAA to shut down the El Paso airport last week. It’s way crazier than we knew (gift link) and I can’t believe it isn’t a bigger story.

Last spring, in the early months of Steve Feinberg’s tenure as deputy defense secretary, Pentagon staff members briefed him on plans to employ new high-energy laser weapons to take out drones being used by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs across the southern U.S. border.

But their use was conditioned on getting a green light from aviation safety officials.

[…]

Now the question of whether the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security followed proper procedures and the law in deploying the laser weapon has become a flashpoint within the Trump administration. Working alongside military personnel, agents from Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, used the weapon this week not far from El Paso International Airport, prompting fury inside the F.A.A. and a brief shutdown of the airport and airspace in that region.

Late Tuesday night, the F.A.A. administrator, Bryan Bedford, caught off guard that the system was being used without authorization and concerned for public safety, believed he had little choice but to close the airspace for 10 days, according to more than a half-dozen people. It was an extraordinary decision that surprised the flying public and local officials.

Under pressure from the White House, Mr. Bedford rescinded the order on Wednesday, setting off a bout of finger-pointing within the administration that continued throughout the week. Administration officials told reporters that the F.A.A. did not warn the White House or the Pentagon that it was about to severely limit flights over a city of nearly 700,000 residents.

But internal government communications reviewed by The New York Times tell a very different story. In one email, dated Feb. 6, the F.A.A.’s top lawyer warned a Pentagon official that deploying the laser system without restricting flights created “a grave risk of fatalities or permanent injuries” to Americans traveling through that airspace.

[…]

White House officials declined to comment on Friday, and referred to a social media post from Mr. Duffy, published on Wednesday, that said the administration “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion.”

But that narrative was disputed by multiple people familiar with the situation who said the border protection unit ended up shooting down a party balloon, rather than a drone. Military service members were present during the incident, the people said.

And yes, this was a Hegseth AND a Noem special. Both the Pentagon and CBP were involved. God help us:

Then in the dark morning hours of Feb. 9, members of a C.B.P. tactical unit, who had been trained how to use the counter-drone lasers by the Army, decided to deploy one, while members of the military looked on. They aimed the laser at what they thought was a drone flying near the Army’s Fort Bliss, though it turned out to be a metallic balloon.

It was the first known domestic use of the weapon by federal officials outside of a controlled environment, according to two people with knowledge of the technology, and it was done without the F.A.A.’s approval, in a possible violation of the law

Read the whole thing. You won’t believe it. We have clowns, jokers and Buck Turgidsons in charge of aviation safety and the military and more innocent people are going to be killed before this is all over.

We’re always talking about Trump having “the nuclear codes” as if it’s some kind of remote possibility, or even a joke, that something could happen. But these people really are nuts and I genuinely think anything could happen.

L’il Marco puts a little band-aid on the rupture

Published by digby on February 14, 2026

There was a whole lot of “blood and soil” bullshit in that speech that most people are just glossing over. Not Tom mention the fact that, mlike Trump, he is determined to kill massive numbers of people by ignoring climate change. (Of course he already did that with the destruction of USAID, which he gleefully carried out at Elon’s direction.)

I thought this analysis was spot on:

A change of tone. Rubio brought a lot of white paint to Munich to cover the cracks caused by the great rupture. From the Beatles and Michelangelo to German beer and the common victory in the Cold War, he invoked all the symbols of culture that are meant to unite us into a single Western civilisation. Europe and the US are connected. That much was clear.

But what about the values that once held the transatlantic community together? According to Marco Rubio, international law is no longer working. That was supposed to be holding us together. Other fundamental principles – like democracy or true freedom of speech were simply not mentioned.

So is it now clear that this is all about interests, not common values. And do we actually have common interests? I am not sure that Europeans see the announced civilisational decline, supposedly caused mainly by migration and deindustrialisation, as a core uniting interest. For most Europeans, the common interest is security. And according to the Secretary, Europe has to defend itself on its own, otherwise NATO looks weak.

This was not a departure from the general position of the US administration. It was simply delivered in more polite terms. I am not sure the white paint will hold.

There’s also the fact that any country that would elect Donald Trump a second time after everything he did the first time simply cannot be trusted. Something is so haywire in American society that it’s terrifying that we have the money and military might that we have. The rest of the world would be idiotic not to look elsewhere for security.

I mean, come on…

Friday Night Soother

Published by digby on February 13, 2026

Some good news for a change:

It is a very sad thing to realise that a species is no more, that the last member of its kind has now gone. Once a species has become extinct there is no bringing it back. However, sometimes, just sometimes, they can surprise us.

There are a number of species that were once thought to be long gone that have popped up again to astonish us, revealing that they were never really gone at all.

Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna:

This curious little mammal is one of only three species in its genus. Like all echidnas (of which there are not many), long-beaked echidnas are monotremes and lay eggs. In fact, aside from platypus’ they are the only mammals on earth to do so. And that’s not the only strange thing about them.

They are also covered in protective keratinous spines and have a long protuberant snout with which they forage for insects. Although all echidnas are rare, this particular species has proved more elusive than most.

It was first described and collected in 1961 and had not been seen since, leading many to think it had died out. Until last year that is… In November 2023 footage of this incredible mammal was captured in its home, the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia, more than 60 years after it was last seen.

Read the full story of its rediscovery here.

Victorian grassland earless dragon

Another 2023 rediscovery, this Australian lizard was unseen by scientists for more than 50 years. Once common in the state of Victoria, the species became critically endangered in the 1960s due to extensive habitat destruction, with the last confirmed sighting before now happening in 1969.

Based on this a study published in 2019 suggested it may have sadly become extinct. Nevertheless, hope remained for its survival due to various unconfirmed sightings, and in the end, these hopes were borne out, with an ecological survey rediscovering the first individual just last year. Subsequent fieldwork has resulted in the collection of 16 individuals who are now in a breeding programme at Melbourne Zoo.

Australia’s earless dragon is so rare it was thought extinct, until two ecologists came across one in the wild

Coelacanth  

(I wrote a report on this one when I was in the 4th grade. 🙂

The next on our list is perhaps the archetypical Lazarus animal, and unlike the echidna, it was not “lost” for decades but millennia! Known from fossil records since the 19th Century, these ancient fish were thought to have become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, some 66 million years ago.

However, much to everyone’s surprise, a live specimen was brought up from the depths by a local fisherman off the coast of South Africa in 1938.

The fisherman himself had no idea of the great significance of his catch, but luckily a museum employee, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, happened to examine the fish and knew she was looking at something special. This serendipitous discovery is now considered to be one of the most important zoological findings of the twentieth century.

Chacoan peccary

Like the coelacanth, for a long time this pig-like ungulate was known from fossil records alone. Again, it was thought to be long extinct, existing as paleontological evidence only, and was declared as such.

In 1971 however, a team of biologists decided to follow up on rumoured sightings by locals and “discovered” the species living in the hot and dry Chaco region of Argentina. It should probably be noted that this local knowledge of existence is probably common to many of the animals on this list and when we speak of a species being lost, that could well just mean “lost to Western science”!

Cuban solenodon

New Guinea big-eared bat

Lost for over a century, this bat was first collected in 1890, named (after its massive ears) in 1914, and then… wasn’t seen again. That is until 2012, when two very lucky University of Queensland PhD students collecting bats of many species found one they couldn’t easily identify. They then commenced some rigorous detective work.

After careful examination and comparison with museum specimens it was found to be a female of the long thought extinct big-eared species. This came as a very pleasant surprise to conservationists who had thought it wiped out by habitat loss and human encroachment.

Bring On Bill And Hill

Published by digby on February 13, 2026
The Streisand effect describes a situation where an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information

I just love the idea that the MAGA weirdos in the Congress think that bringing Bill and Hillary Clinton in to testify on Epstein will somehow help their cause. In fact, it will create the biggest sideshow since Trump’s fraud trial or the January 6th Committee. The entire media world will be focused on Epstein for days leading up to it, people will talk of nothing else. Bring it on. Every day brings something more, especially with the sloppiness of the release of the documents. The cover up is laughably obvious.

Meanwhile, grand jurors aren’t buying what they’re selling in other cases either:

In Washington, a grand jury refused to return a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer during a crackdown ordered by President Trump. In Chicago, grand jurors have declined to indict in several felony cases stemming from a similar operation; prosecutors seemed to get the message and dismissed additional cases. In Minnesota, federal prosecutors have charged some demonstrators with misdemeanors in cases involving encounters with federal agents — and it is very likely that they did so in some cases because the prosecutors expected grand juries would reject felony charges.

Federal grand juries in Virginia twice decided not to indict Letitia James, the New York attorney general, after a judge dismissed an initial case against her. Another federal grand jury in Virginia declined at least one charge against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director; the prosecutor later improperly filed a version of the indictment the full grand jury never saw.

This week, a grand jury rejected an effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to indict the six members of Congress who appeared last year in a video underscoring the obligation of service members to refuse illegal orders.

The incompetence may be the only thing that will save us. They don’t seem to realize that just because Donald Trump orders his enemies to be punished, it doesn’t make it so. Average Americans aren’t having it and they still have something to say about all this.

The Resistance Is Rising

Published by digby on February 13, 2026

Even Axios notices:

  • ⚖️ Retribution: A federal grand jury unanimously rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video they made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. It’s at least the fifth time that charges against Trump’s adversaries or protesters have been turned away by a grand jury — virtually unheard of in modern federal prosecutions. A federal judge also shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to punish Navy veteran Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over his role in the video, accusing the Pentagon of unconstitutional retaliation.
  • 🚨 ICE raids: Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced an end to the 10-week ICE surge in Minneapolis following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, which drew mass protests and rare rebukes from corporate America. The president acknowledged his mass deportation campaign could use a “softer touch,” as private and public polls point to a sharp decline in support for his immigration policies.
  • 🪖 National Guard: Trump also withdrew all federalized National Guard troops from L.A., Chicago and Portland after repeated legal defeats and opposition from state and local leaders, dealing a blow to his efforts to crack down on crime in Democratic-run cities.
  • 📦 Tariffs: Six House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution rescinding Trump’s tariffs on Canada. The vote became possible only after a smaller group of Republicans staged a floor rebellion against GOP leadership, opening the door for Democrats to force more politically painful votes on Trump’s trade agenda.
  • 🗂️ Epstein files: Trump’s push to shut down MAGA’s Jeffrey Epstein obsession backfired in spectacular fashion. The Justice Department is still grappling with daily backlash after releasing more than 3 million documents, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voicing rare criticism over revelations that DOJ tracked what lawmakers searched while reviewing the unredacted files.
  • 📽️ Racism: A chorus of Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), condemned Trump’s reposting of a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the post before deleting it and claiming an aide shared the clip.
  • 🇩🇰 Greenland: Trump dominated Davos last month with his threats to seize Greenland by any means necessary — only to retreat amid market turmoil, European fury, warnings from congressional Republicans, and a vague “deal” promising the U.S. greater access to the Arctic territory.
  • 🏦 Fed: The DOJ’s criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has drawn deep skepticism from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has vowed to block confirmation of Powell’s successor, Kevin Warsh, unless the probe is dropped. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately proposed shifting the investigation to the Senate to placate Tillis, who swiftly threw cold water on the idea.

Trump doesn’t like this but he knows that he can always just self-soothe by saying that the news is fake, the polls are rigged and the elections have been stolen — and tens of millions of Americans will go along with him. I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t actually prefer to lie about his failures so that he can see people bowing and scraping, pretending that they believe him. Knowing that people are licking your boots, pretending that they agree with you when it’s patently obvious that you are lying is a very real form of power.

On another level, he’s convinced himself that he is the world’s greatest victim and it’s only because of his very, stable genius that he’s ascended to the presidency twice. And frankly, you can’t blame him. He has never been held accountable for any of his failures, crimes and grotesque behaviors and he’s done it all out in public right in everyone’s faces. You can see why so many people think he is a magic man. Who else could get away with all that?

But that’s a subject that historians, psychologists and political scientists will wrestle with for centuries (if we last that long.) How on God’s green earth did this very sick, inept, stupid man manage to do what he has done?

Calling Hannah Arendt’s ghost…

Update: Krugman weighs in with Pam Bondi’s bizarre performance before the Judiciary Committee, particularly when she objected to any questioning about the Justice Department when the stock market is up:

This plumbed new depths of moral bankruptcy, effectively saying: “How dare you complain about child rape when the stock market is up?”

There was an unmistakable stench of desperation in Bondi’s tantrum. And it fooled no one. The cracks are showing, as some congressional Republicans have now voted against Trump’s tariffs, Justice Department lawyers are quitting en masse or just plain cracking up, and attempts to weaponize prosecutions keep failing.

Now Tom Homan says that the ICE surge in Minnesota will be wound down — an ignominious retreat if true — while Democrats are standing firm on refusing further DHS funding without significant reforms. And Bondi’s yelling isn’t making Epstein go away.

But let’s examine Bondi’s demand that Americans ignore the omnishambles because stocks are up. It’s morally depraved, but what about the economics? Yes, stock prices are up. As any economist can tell you, however, the stock market is a poor indicator of the economy’s overall health. Paul Samuelson famously quipped that the market had predicted nine of the last five recessions.

Furthermore, stock prices are up almost everywhere — and up more in other countries than they are in the United States. The chart at the top compares stock prices in the U.S. and in the euro area; since the latter is measured in euros, and the euro has risen against the dollar, Europe has substantially outperformed America.

And if we go beyond the stock market and look at what really matters to most Americans — affordability and jobs — the Trump economy isn’t delivering. Inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Despite one good month, employment growth has shriveled. And it keeps getting more difficult to find a job.

Here’s one measure I find useful, the Conference Board’s “labor market differential” — the difference between the percentage of Americans saying that jobs are plentiful and the percentage saying that jobs are hard to find:

This is certainly not a great economy. It’s not even a healthy economy. And Americans are not buying the administration’s lies.

Old School Antisemitism

Published by digby on February 13, 2026

Remember how all the big conservative Christians and the MAGA right have been screaming about antisemitism, even going so far as to strong arm all of America’s major universities into crushing free speech on campus in order to stop it? Yeah, I thought you would.

Apparently, a little antisemitic banter is just fine on Fox News, though. All in good fun. When sprinkled in with a dash of misogyny and pedophilia it’s comedy gold:

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): But if you read the Epstein files — the Journal has done a great job at this — Epstein got his money from two Jewish billionaires, [Les Wexner] and Leon Black, and a little bit of money from the Jewish banking dynasty, the Rothschilds in Europe. And it looks like he’s mostly just a fixer, a guy who advises. He helps people with their problems, sometimes those problems are you need a girl, and —

LISA KENNEDY MONTGOMERY (CO-HOST): Or some penicillin.

WATTERS: Or some — If you need it, he’s got it.

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): He’s a sex rabbi.

WATTERS: He should perform at the halftime show next year.

Doing the old Jewish banker, Protocols of the Elders of Zion thing is fine. That’s just reality, amirite? It’s only when you say that Palestinians have rights that you are being antisemitic.

Inflation Better Than Expected In January

Published by digby on February 13, 2026

It’s all about gas prices

Meanwhile:

Americans are shouldering almost all of President Donald Trump’s import tax surge, a report,from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Thursday.

The bank said 90% of the tariffs imposed by the president on imported goods are borne by American consumers and companies. The report pushes back against the Trump administration’s argument that the levies are paid by foreigners.

Oops.

There’s lots more like that. Which is one big reason why Trump’s latest approval rating in the AP-NORC poll is down to 36%

It is a failure. But then we knew it would be, however you measure it, simply by virtue of the fact that it’s headed by a very psychologically damaged malignant narcissist. How could it be anything else?

The Big Liars Make Their Move

Published by digby on February 12, 2026

Everyone wondered what the government had uncovered that would have justified the warrant to seize the ballots in Fulton County. Well, they released the affidavit the FBI submitted to the judge and it’s as outrageous as we might have imagined. Philip Bump reports:

By the bureau’s own admission, the recent FBI search of the Fulton County, Georgia, elections office did not center on uncovering evidence that the 2020 presidential election results there were tainted by fraud. The release of the affidavit submitted in support of the warrant makes that clear. The document argues that the potential illegality requiring federal intervention involved “many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting” in the county. It also claims that if failures on the part of election officials were “the result of intentional action,” a crime might have occurred.

The affidavit offers no evidence of intentionality, though. Instead, it centers primarily on rehashing existing, broadly debunked claims about purportedly dubious activity in the county at the time of the election. There is no evidence in the affidavit that the election was dishonest; there’s not even any evidence of significant, suspicious activity.So why does the affidavit exist? The direct answer to that question is offered by the affidavit itself. 

“The FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity,” FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans writes.

Olsen is not an objective party here. At the time of the 2020 election, he worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, leading efforts to overturn the results of a contest that Trump lost. He’s identified in the final report of the House select committee that probed Trump’s efforts as having “authored a memo urging Vice President [Mike] Pence to adjourn the joint session of Congress without counting electoral votes.” Trump tapped Olsen last year essentially to resume his work.

Of course it was at the hands of the coup plotters. How could it not be?

Bump points out that this about “proving” Donald Trump was right about everything but it’s also about rigging elections going forward. I’m very worried about this as I’m sure you are too. I know the blue states will hold the line. But states like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina, which are at least partially run by Republicans, are going to be under tremendous pressure to go along.

There is a lot of talk about the nightmare scenario in which Mike Johnson refuses to give up control and won’t seat enough “contested” Democratic victors to give them the majority, but that isn’t the problem. Mike Johnson is not the speaker on January 3rd, when the new Congress convenes. The Congress is not a continuing body. Nothing happens until the new Congress elects a new speaker.

However, that doe not mean that there isn’t a potential problem. Ned Foley at electionlawblog explains here:

On January 3, 2027, the House will have to organize itself by first having the Members-elect vote in a new Speaker. If there is contestation over enough seats to determine which party has a majority of Members-elect for the purpose of holding the vote on who is the new Speaker, that contestation can stymie and delay the Speakership vote and prevent the organization of the House.

It’s a situation very much to worry about, but not in the way Graham describes. It wouldn’t be the Republicans giving themselves the majority by seating two more Republican members instead of the two Democrats who were certified by the state to have won the election. It would be much messier and more complicated than that. (As a general rule, the Clerk of the House is supposed to identify as a Member-elect a candidate who presents a prima facie valid certificate of election from the state, history shows that it is not always that simple.)

They’re going to do something. We just have to hope that the Democrats are prepared for anything.