Music: Marcin Wasilewski Trio — ‘Riders On The Storm’
ICE operations increasingly resemble Israeli occupation. That’s no coincidence
Sophia Goodfriend writes: As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have swarmed cities across the United States, American politics has appeared to enter a new phase, one in which armed federal forces turn civilian neighborhoods into active conflict zones. Part of what is driving this political shift is a potent technical infrastructure: ICE operations are now expedited by mobile surveillance and targeting systems, where agents’ most powerful weapon can fit in the palm of their hands. Recent reporting has…
ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into concentration camps
The Washington Post reports: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to documents the agency provided to New Hampshire’s governor and published on the state’s website Thursday. ICE plans to buy and convert 16 buildings across the country to serve as regional processing centers, each holding 1,000 to 1,500 immigrant detainees at…
DHS sending hundreds of administrative subpoenas to social media companies to suppress political dissent
The New York Times reports: The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency. In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials…
Funds appropriated to feed starving children now being spent on Russell Vought’s security detail
Reuters reports: The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s budget chief and an architect of the government overhaul that has cut thousands of federal jobs, according to three documents seen by Reuters. The White House Office of Management and Budget, which Vought leads, is allocating $15 million of what remains of USAID operating expenses to cover the costs…
In the Kristi & Corey Show, she gets to become president and he gets a gun — or at least a badge
The Wall Street Journal reports: Kristi Noem knew she needed a reset. It was two days after federal agents had shot and killed Alex Pretti, and Noem was facing fire from all sides. Even some inside the administration were pushing President Trump to remove her from her position for her handling of the chaotic immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis and comments she’d made saying Pretti committed an act of domestic terrorism. So Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, messaged Trump’s pollster…
UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule
The Guardian reports: The co-founder of Palestine Action has won a legal challenge to the home secretary’s decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws. The proscription of Palestine Action, which categorised it alongside the likes of Islamic State, was the first of a direct action protest group and attracted widespread condemnation as well as a civil disobedience campaign defying the ban, during which more than 2,000 people have been arrested. From 5 July last year, being a member of…
Are the mysteries of quantum mechanics beginning to dissolve?
Philip Ball writes: None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird, my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics. It’s no wonder experts are…
Music: Bugge Wesseltoft & Dhafer Youssef — ‘Hope’
China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it’s turned this ‘biological void’ into a carbon sink
Live Science reports: Mass tree planting in China is turning one of the world’s largest and driest deserts into a carbon sink, meaning it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits, new research reveals. The Taklamakan Desert (also spelled Taklimakan or Takla Makan) is slightly larger than Montana, stretching across about 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers). It is encircled by high mountains, which block moist air from reaching the desert for most of the year, creating extremely…
Trump regime erases the government’s power to fight climate change
The New York Times reports: President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather. Led by a president who refers to climate…
The Epstein files and the hidden world of an unaccountable elite
The New York Times reports: Journalists and researchers will spend the next months ferreting through the Epstein files in search of further criminal conduct or a new conspiratorial wrinkle. But one truth has already emerged. In unsparing detail, the documents lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business. The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling…
‘Outright fascist’: How ICE defies judges’ orders to release detainees
Politico reports: Courts across the country have overwhelmingly rejected the Trump administration’s effort to round up thousands of immigrants and lock them up without a chance for bond — even if they have no criminal records and have lived in the United States for years. But the Trump administration has slow-walked or outright defied judges’ orders demanding the release of people scooped up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at an increasingly rapid clip. Sometimes, ICE has raced detainees across state…
Tallying the damage of ICE’s assault on Minneapolis
Rolling Stone reports: The federal government is retreating from Minneapolis, Minnesota. White House border czar Tom Homan announced on Thursday that the Trump administration will end the immigration enforcement surge it launched in January after a right-wing YouTuber highlighted allegations of fraud at Minneapolis-based child care centers. Leaders in Minnesota were sober in their response. Speaking to reporters after Homan’s announcement on Thursday, Gov. Tim Walz cataloged the damage. “This surge of untrained, aggressive federal agents are going to leave…
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…
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…