Posts on Thursday, February 12, 2026

A U.S. Attorney who was appointed by federal judges in New York was quickly fired by the White House. On Wednesday, Donald T. Kinsella, 79, was appointed as U.S. Attorney or the Northern District of New York in a private ceremony, the New York Times reported. Then, Kinsella said, he received an email from a White House official hours later, telling him he was being removed from the post. Kinsella told The Times that he did not yet know whether the White House email carried the force of law (snip.) It is unclear whether there is any recourse for the Northern District judges.

An Associated Press article deleted a statement on Wednesday from climate scientist Michael Mann, famous for pursuing a libel suit against National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Associated Press released an article Monday concerning the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revoking a scientific finding that has been the backbone for US regulation on greenhouse gas emissions and quoted Mann saying the EPA would be cementing Republican climate denial with this measure. Associated Press later removed Mann’s statement from the article the same day it was published without stating why they did so.

In a blistering House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the Department of Justice on Wednesday, Rep. Ted Lieu launched a desperate attack on Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of lying under oath about President Donald Trump's alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, only to be utterly dismantled when Bondi flipped the script, unleashing damning statistics on California's sanctuary-fueled crime wave. (snip) The state has released 4,561 criminal illegal aliens onto its streets (snip) [including] 234 sexual predator[s] (snip.)

As the FBI scrambles to find Nancy Guthrie’s abductors, Democrats in Congress are preparing their own kind of kidnapping. Except, instead of one victim, they want to hold the entire country hostage. After shutting the government down for a record 43 days last fall in the vain hope of keeping “temporary” Obamacare subsidies in place, the once respectable political party has now decided on an even more bizarre and disturbing kidnapping scheme. It plans to hold funding for the Department of Homeland Security hostage if it can’t convince Republicans to agree to ICE “reforms.”

The Trump administration finalized a major safety reform on Wednesday that blocks unvetted foreign nationals from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, ending a system that allowed tens of thousands of drivers with unknown or dangerous histories to legally operate heavy trucks and buses in the United States. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said the rule “ends a safety loophole that has wreaked havoc on our roadways.” Secretary Duffy unveiled a sweeping new federal rule aimed at shutting down a long‑standing safety loophole that allowed unqualified foreign nationals to obtain commercial driver’s licenses in the United States. The rule, issued under President Donald Trump’s direction, bars states from licensing

Illegal immigrants are slipping behind the wheel of 80,000-pound killing machines thanks to a glaring loophole — yet that’s only the latest symptom of a trucking industry gutted by loose training, rock-bottom wages and federal neglect, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. Under California law, private trucking programs charging $2,500 or less in tuition are exempt from licensing and regulation by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE). This has created a gray area where nearly 200 such schools issue non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) with little accountability.

A horrible tragedy occurred yesterday in Canada when a killer, later identified as a “trans identifying woman,” shot nine people to death and injured 27 others, before turning the gun on himself. The Canadian establishment has been desperate to hide the truth about the shooter, but this was not a secret the establishment could sit on. The shooting took place at the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in tiny Tumbler Ridge, a remote rural community in British Columbia. The killer began by murdering two people at a home, then headed for the secondary school (grades 7-12), where he opened fire. Six people died on school grounds, and one died en route

Fraud is not just a Minnesota problem or a California problem; it’s proving itself to be a problem across the country. The latest saw two Korean men in Queens, New York, allegedly defraud Medicaid for $120 million through a senior care facility in Flushing. According to the New York Post, the two men involved, Daniel Lee and Inwoo Kim, ran Happy Life Adult Day Care, where they allegedly encouraged seniors to enroll in their social adult day care program by bribing them. Seniors were handed a $500 kickback to enroll. If they actually used the services at one of two locations, that total was reduced to $300. Seniors would also allegedly use

More than a million dollars will soon be doled out to black residents of Evanston, Illinois, under the city’s reparations program. Evanston’s Reparations Committee announced last week that 44 people will be getting $25,000 each, for a total of $1.1 million, according to the Chicago Tribune. All 44 are descendants of individuals who qualify under the city’s program that pays out reparations to black residents who claimed they experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969. The payments are intended to be used for housing expenses, Cynthia Vargas, Evanston’s communications and community engagement manager, said.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) tapped as his health czar the founder of a left-wing nonprofit that registered patients in mental hospitals to vote. Mamdani selected Alister Martin on Jan. 31 to lead the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Martin, a former emergency room doctor, launched Vot-ER in 2019, a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic. The group creates materials for doctors to register their patients to vote in clinical settings. One of its earlier partners, the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, is an inpatient clinic for people with psychotic disorders. Citing the "therapeutic" benefits of voting, the institute has used Vot-ER’s tools since at least 2021 to register

If it's wrong to spend a week celebrating the misery of your opponents, like that of the scores of just-fired Washington Post hacks who are crying like teenage girls learning there are no more "Twilight" movies coming, then I'm incredibly, totally, enthusiastically wrong. The former journos/current drive-thru operators still have not shut up about the WaPo's mass layoffs, and I am taking unmitigated delight in their pain. Their suffering energizes me. Their tears nourish me. Their humiliation fuels my joy. Hey, maybe democracy dies in darkness, but as long as the WaPo dies, I'm good. I would tell them to learn the code, but that's old and cliché.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading a large U.S. delegation this week to the Munich Security Conference where increasingly nervous European leaders are hoping for at least a brief reprieve from President Donald Trump’s often inconsistent policies and threats that have roiled transatlantic relations and the post-World War II international order. A year after Vice President JD Vance stunned assembled dignitaries at the same venue with a verbal assault on many of America’s closest allies in Europe, accusing them of imperiling Western civilization with left-leaning domestic —

Kirill Dmitriev, the Special Envoy of the President of Russia for investment and economic cooperation, posted some spicy tweets on X this week defending President Trump against the globalist left’s satanic cabal. Kirill correctly noted that Trump contacted police on Epstein back in 2006! The documents were released this week. Kirill also noted that Russian President Putin predicted that this satanic cabal is coming to an end. Kirill says President Trump has been “fighting the satanic wing of the liberal West.”

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. (It's the final two weeks of preparation for the whirlwind book tour, and the Sine Qua Non Sequitur is fancifying an illustrated book of Croatian meatloaf recipes.) It is always a good day when I can kick things off with a headline that I know will trigger any lefties who happen upon it. Trust me, there is a lot of happening upon that's happening, or something. As someone who grew up during the Cold War, the island toilet nation Cuba has always been a commie thorn in the side of the United States of America.

I think all of us have those people in our lives who talk a good game about how they'll always support us in our time of need, but when that time of need actually materializes, they realize there's actual work or stakes involved and don't show up. At worst, they ignore your calls and texts or tell you they have a "scratchy throat" and wouldn't want to get you sick. At best, they send good vibes and pump you up, but then they go on about their lives. That's sort of where Cuba finds itself at the moment, which was exactly Donald Trump and Marco Rubio's—

As ICE agents continue to enforce immigration law in America, the radical Left continues to organise and inspire anti-ICE protestors who block streets, vandalize property, and harass law enforcement agents. The problem is that these protestors don’t see themselves obstructing justice and undermining democratic rule. To the contrary, they’ve been led to believe that they are heroes, good empathetic people bringing justice back to our world, standing up to Trump administration -- evil “revolting monsters” -- and ICE agents -- “thugs who terrorise” illegal immigrants.

So, if you are an unpopular regime desperately clinging to power, what do you do? In supposed democracies, this latest "benefit " to your people - cracking down on dissent "democratically" -- means using technology rather than firepower to crush freedom of speech. "⚠️Danger: Governments will dictate what you see, burying opposing views and creating echo chambers controlled by the state. Free exploration of ideas? Gone—replaced by curated propaganda." — Pavel Durov, Founder and CEO of Telegram, X, February 4, 2026. "⚠️Danger: Vague definitions of 'hate' could label criticism of the government as divisive, leading to shutdowns or fines. This can be a tool for suppressing opposition.

The Trump-Noem Department of Homeland Security chalked up an important court victory this week revoking a label used to hide how many illegal aliens entered America under the Biden administration.The Trump administration terminated temporary protected status (TPS) for Honduran, Nepalese, and Nicaraguan aliens, and the court was to decide whether this was the right thing to do. The United States has been giving nationals of these three countries TPS based on excuses that are more than a decade old and no longer apply. It was simply another way to import huge numbers of foreigners while pretending they were semi-legal immigrants.

My brilliant colleague Athena Thorne wrote about the Big Left's big tears over lower public school enrollment numbers; if you haven't read it, you should check it out. Everyone in the education space knows that public funding is tied to butts in seats and, with President Trump's administration enforcing laws regarding immigration, illegal alien students are dropping out or not attending school. Additionally, thanks to the border finally being closed, the waves of illegal immigrants coming into America are plummeting.

Federal employment dropped to 2,686,000 in January 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number has not appeared in federal labor data since Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House.The Bureau’s “All Employees, Federal” series confirms it. We have not seen staffing levels this low since May 1966.For a long time, the working assumption in Washington was that the federal government only grows. Agencies expand. Programs multiply. Headcount inches upward year after year. Rarely does it move the other way. This time, it did. The change took shape during President Donald Trump’s second term, when he signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) on Wednesday announced a slew of new anti-ICE actions in the state, including an online portal encouraging state residents to upload cellphone videos and photos of ICE activity. “ICE is making everyone less safe,” Sherrill posted on X, adding that the measures are necessary “to protect New Jerseyans.” The governor said her first action was to sign an Executive Order banning ICE from conducting immigration enforcement on state property. Other blue states and cities have attempted to implement similar laws or policies, including California, Illinois, Minnesota, and New Mexico, limiting ICE access to government-owned property, particularly locations like schools, healthcare facilities, and courthouses. Cities including Chicago, Richmond,

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics releases the employment figures for January today [BLS DATA HERE]. Overall, in the establishment survey, 130,000 jobs were added and the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%. This is much stronger than anticipated and there are indications of significant movement back to work as the exfiltration of illegal alien workers continues.What I find interesting in the Household ‘Employment’ Survey is the number of people going back into the workforce. I am left to wonder if the ICE removals are starting to create employer driven incentives, increased wages etc. that seem to be pulling sidelined workers back to the labor market.

Iraq expects the US transfer of ISIS detainees from Syria to Iraq to end on February 12, Iraq’s Justice Minister Khaled Shwani told Kurdish channel Rudaw. This is an important accomplishment. In two weeks, around 7,000 ISIS detainees were expected to be moved from Syria to Iraq in a mission that US Central Command undertook in January. The move was due to changes on the ground in Syria. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces gave up control of most of eastern Syria, including around 30 ISIS detention facilities, to the Syrian government in January. Iraq says it will investigate the detainees and charge those who are criminals, and try to repatriate