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How the 9/11 terrorist attacks shaped ICE’s immigration strategy

How the 9/11 terrorist attacks shaped ICE’s immigration strategy

Tear gas fills the air in south Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026, after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti. Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune By Pawan Dhingra, Amherst College Stephen Miller’s January 2026 announcement to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – telling them that they have “immunity to perform your duties” and that no “illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist” can stop them – may seem like an extreme statement outside the political mainstream. And when ICE agents…

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Anthropic puts $20 million into a super PAC operation to counter OpenAI

Anthropic puts $20 million into a super PAC operation to counter OpenAI

The New York Times reports: Silicon Valley’s dueling artificial intelligence start-ups now have dueling super PACs. Anthropic, the safety-focused A.I. company formed by former OpenAI executives, said on Thursday that it was putting $20 million into a new super PAC operation that will be in opposition to super PACs backed by OpenAI’s leaders and investors. The donation effectively kicks off a new conflict between the rivals, with this year’s midterm elections as the battleground. At the heart of the disagreement…

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Affordability and the ‘Epstein class’ will define American politics

Affordability and the ‘Epstein class’ will define American politics

David Wallace-Wells writes: The San Francisco Bay Area is home to at least one-third of the value of the entire U.S. stock market. Late last year, you couldn’t escape a chilling billboard campaign, meant to be cheeky, from an artificial intelligence start-up: “Stop Hiring Humans.” And on Saturday, somebody tried to AstroTurf a trollish Billionaires March through the city in defense of Silicon Valley’s 21st-century robber barons. Only a few dozen people showed up, heckled along the way by passers-by….

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Point of no return: Hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say

Point of no return: Hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say

The Guardian reports: The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very…

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Trump to direct Pentagon to buy coal in bid to revive industry

Trump to direct Pentagon to buy coal in bid to revive industry

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump will unveil plans to use government funding and Pentagon contracts to sustain US coal-fired power plants as he seeks to drive domestic reliance on the fossil fuel. The marquee initiative, set to be announced Wednesday, will come through an executive order, as Trump directs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to enter into agreements to purchase electricity from coal plants to power military operations, according to a White House official. The move is expected to tap special…

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ICE is crashing the U.S. court system in Minnesota

ICE is crashing the U.S. court system in Minnesota

Wired reports: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota is pushing the United States court system to its breaking point. Since Operation Metro Surge began in December, federal immigration agents have arrested some 4,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The result is an avalanche of cases filed in the US district court in Minnesota on behalf of people challenging their imprisonment by federal immigration enforcement agents. According to WIRED’s review of court records and…

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Trump official allies with Europe’s far right in attacks on migration and hate speech policies

Trump official allies with Europe’s far right in attacks on migration and hate speech policies

The Guardian reports: As Donald Trump redoubled his war of words on the European Union and Nato in recent weeks, a senior state department official, Sarah B Rogers, was publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies, and promoting far-right parties abroad. Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies. Since assuming office in October, she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate…

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DHS hires social media propagandist who promotes white supremacism

DHS hires social media propagandist who promotes white supremacism

The New York Times reports: The Department of Homeland Security has hired a social media manager from the Department of Labor for a key communications job, despite posts he made on Labor Department media accounts that raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging. Peyton Rollins, 21, was hired this month to help run Homeland Security’s social media accounts, which have become public bullhorns for President Trump’s mass-deportation efforts and come under scrutiny of their own for appealing to right-wing extremists….

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El Paso airspace shut down after Pentagon deployed high-energy laser to shoot down a party balloon

El Paso airspace shut down after Pentagon deployed high-energy laser to shoot down a party balloon

CBS News reports: The unexpected but brief airspace closure in the Texas border city of El Paso stemmed from disagreements between the Federal Aviation Administration and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests, multiple sources close to the matter told CBS News. The Pentagon had undertaken extensive planning on the use of military technology near Fort Bliss, a military base that abuts the El Paso International Airport, to practice taking down drones. Two sources identified the technology as a high-energy laser. Meetings…

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Nature’s ‘engine is grinding to a halt’ as climate change gains pace, says study

Nature’s ‘engine is grinding to a halt’ as climate change gains pace, says study

Phys.org reports: Many ecologists hypothesize that, as global warming accelerates, change in nature must speed up. They assume that as temperatures rise and climatic zones shift, species will face local extinction and colonize new habitats at an ever-increasing rate, leading to a rapid reshuffling of ecological communities. A new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and published in Nature Communications shows this is emphatically not the case. The researchers analyzed a massive database of biodiversity surveys,…

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Trump allies near ‘total victory’ in wiping out U.S. climate regulation

Trump allies near ‘total victory’ in wiping out U.S. climate regulation

The New York Times reports: In the summer of 2022, Democrats in Congress were racing to pass the biggest climate law in the country’s history and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declaring that global warming posed a “clear and present danger” to the United States. But behind the scenes, four Trump administration veterans were plotting to obliterate federal climate efforts once Republicans regained control in Washington, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with more…

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Working for ICE is actually less dangerous than being an elementary school student in America

Working for ICE is actually less dangerous than being an elementary school student in America

Garrett Graff writes: This week, Congress is debating what reform might be acceptable for the masked fascist secret police currently occupying major American cities in Democratic-run states — a supposedly civilian law enforcement agency that, in any other country, US journalists wouldn’t hesitate to label breezily “a right-wing paramilitary militia loyal to the regime that is staging a terror campaign against separatist regions led by key figures of the political opposition.” Today, the leaders of ICE and CBP will be…

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Immigrants who say their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 cases. It’s a historic high

Immigrants who say their detention is illegal have filed more than 18,000 cases. It’s a historic high

By Pratheek Rebala and Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica, and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune This story was originally published by ProPublica The Trump administration’s push for mass deportations has resulted in more than 18,000 challenges in federal court from immigrants claiming their detention is illegal, more than were filed under the last three administrations combined — including President Donald Trump’s first term. So far this year, immigrants are filing on average more than 200 of these cases, known as…

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ICE plans to lease offices throughout the U.S. as part of a secret, monthslong expansion campaign

ICE plans to lease offices throughout the U.S. as part of a secret, monthslong expansion campaign

Wired reports: Federal records obtained by WIRED show that over the past several months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have carried out a secret campaign to expand ICE’s physical presence across the US. Documents show that more than 150 leases and office expansions have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas. In many cases, these facilities, which are…

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