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Today in Politics, Bulletin 307. 2/13/26
… ICE Director Todd Lyons admitted in a statement today that ICE officers lied under oath in an investigation that led to criminal charges against two innocent men: “Today, a joint review by ICE and DOJ of video evidence revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements.”
… “Both officers have been placed on administrative leave. The US Attorney’s Office is investigating these false statements. Upon conclusion of the investigation, the officers may face termination of employment, as well as potential criminal prosecution.”
… This was the Fox headline on Jan 15: “ATTEMPTED MURDER: An ICE officer is fighting for his life after he was allegedly ambushed with a shovel and a broom handle by 3 illegal immigrants during a traffic stop that quickly spiraled into a foot chase, a violent struggle, and gunfire.”
… This is what Kristi Noem said right after the incident: “What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement.”
… But now DOJ has just filed a motion to dismiss all the charges. Prosecutors said this in their motion to dismiss: “Newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations in the Complaint Affidavit.”
… In other words, ICE lied. And DHS tried to quickly deport all the other witnesses to the incident but failed before their statements were obtained. Don’t expect Fox to cover the update on this story with wall-to-wall sensational coverage like they did when Noem announced the arrest.
… Attorney Brian Clark, who represents one of the men falsely charged: “The charges against them were based on lies by an ICE agent who recklessly shot into their home through a closed door. The identify of the ICE agent should be made public and he should be charged for his crime.”
… Stunning new reporting on how Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski have used DHS as a taxpayer-funded vehicle for their ongoing adulterous affair and to promote their fantasy that she is a viable future presidential candidate. WSJ: “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. So Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, messaged Trump’s pollster with a request: They needed to cut an ad to help her.”
… “Throughout her tenure as secretary of DHS, Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom at every turn. Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a US Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane.”
… “Lewandowski and Noem, who are both married, have publicly denied the reports of the affair, but people said they do little to hide their relationship inside the department. The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million. DHS has previously used other planes through the Coast Guard or other agencies for the secretary’s use.”
… “In the blanket incident, Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn’t moved to the second plane. The Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination. They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home.”
… “In an incident last year that rankled some senior staff at the agency, Lewandowski made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued a law-enforcement badge and a federally issued gun. Officials are typically only issued a badge and a gun after undergoing law-enforcement training. The admin was preparing to bring on Tom Feeley, a former top ICE official in NY, as its new director when Lewandowski asked Feeley if he would be willing to issue him and several other political officials badges and guns. Feeley declined, and he was subsequently passed over for the top job at ICE.”
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… Meanwhile, Noem gave a ridiculous press conference today in AZ about “election integrity” and how DHS was going to play a role in elections if the SAVE Act is passed: Reporter: Why choose to do this press conference this way? Your agency is about to run out of funding. You were just in Arizona last week. And you bussed all of us to a secure facility. This doesn't seem top secret. Noem: Oh my goodness - this is our critical infrastructure.”
… Q: “Can you offer us any examples of voter fraud in Arizona? Noem: Oh, I'm sure there's many of them.”
… Q: “Can you confirm that CBP actually hit a party balloon it thought was a drone with a laser? And why wasn't that coordinated with the FAA? Noem: You know, this was a joint agency task force, um, mission that was undertaken. And um, we're continuing to work on the communication.”
… ProPublica: “A federal tool meant to find noncitizens on voter rolls is consistently marking citizens as noncitizens, especially if they were born outside the US, causing chaos as election clerks try not to disenfranchise voters.”
… Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree: This DHS tool that's mistakenly accusing US citizens of being non-citizens is the same system that states would be required to use under the GOP's 'SAVE America Act' that was passed this week in the House.
… Jessica Riedl with Brookings Institute: “When Kansas did a version of the SAVE Act, it purged around 40 ineligible voters - and stopped 31,000 legal citizens from registering to vote (12% of all applicants). That's 775 legal voters lost for every 1 ineligible voter.”
… Trump then issued a deranged post threatening to take over elections from the states by executive order if the SAVE Act isn’t passed: “We cannot let the Democrats get away with no voter ID any longer. These are horrible disingenuous CHEATERS. This is an issue that must be fought, and must be fought NOW! If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly., in the form of an Executive Order.”
MORE ICE GESTAPO LIES:
… Reporter Kyle Clark: “ICE Director Todd Lyons told Congress that local law enforcement in Colorado leaked word of a raid, allowing gang members to clear out of apartments. Those apartments were being cleared out weeks earlier. Tonight, ICE deleted social media posts with the claim. Lyons made the claim about local law enforcement at a hearing this morning. His claims did not mesh with our real-time reporting in 2024 on when the apartments were cleared. We asked ICE which agency leaked their raid. Then the posts disappeared.”
… Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD): “I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities.”
… “They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it’s for 3 days or 7 days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We’re demanding immediate answers and action.”
… Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) on his trip to an ICE detention facility: “I sat with the kids for an hour. They were alive on the outside, they were dead on the inside. They just stared straight ahead. They saw things in these prisons they’ll never forget. The bottom line is we have a constitutional obligation to only fund an admin that’s operating lawfully. We cannot, we should not fund DHS if it’s committing these crimes.”
… The Appeal: “CoreCivic’s revenue from contracts with ICE skyrocketed in 2025, but some participants on today’s quarterly earnings call expressed concerns that ICE had not detained as many immigrants as investors hoped. One caller: ‘One of the big question has been the pace of detention by ICE, that it’s been below what investors thought it was going to be. I think people thought we’d be at that 100,000 level. We’re at a little over 70,000.’”
… “ICE’s detained population is at its highest level since the agency’s creation in 2003. The majority are incarcerated in for-profit prisons, which has meant millions of dollars in revenue for the private prison industry. During the last 3 months of 2025, CoreCivic’s revenue from ICE more than doubled from the previous year, from $244.7 million compared to $120.3 million.
… “CoreCivic’s profits spiked to $116.5 million in 2025, an almost 70% increase from the previous year. CoreCivic expects 2026 to be even more lucrative. The company projects its net revenue to increase to between $147.5 million and $157.5 million.”
… Immigration lawyer Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: “Last year Congress gave ICE $45 billion to be spent on ICE detention over 4 years. The overwhelming majority of that money is going to go to private prison companies, and they’re not happy the money spigot isn’t flowing fast enough.”
… Punchbowl: “DHS is set to shut down at midnight. On the last day before funding runs out, there will be no eleventh-hour votes on the House or Senate floor, no lawmakers seeking to make deals and no hope of a last-minute reprieve for DHS’ 260,000 employees. Instead, both the House and Senate left town, a reflection of how far off a DHS funding deal remains.”
… “Senators departed for pre-planned travel, including a big trip to the Munich Security Conference, and they aren’t scheduled to return for 10 days. It’s telling that Senate Dems have been incredibly united behind their ICE demands, more so than the fall fight over health-care.
REPLACE SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN!
Only one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman, joined Republicans to support a failed procedural vote on a DHS funding bill.”
… Sen. Chuck Schumer: “Our caucus is passionate about this. If you sat in on our caucus meetings, you’d see how strongly people feel. And you know who are among the strongest? Some of the very people who didn’t vote with us last time.”
… Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on her ongoing review of the unredacted Epstein files: “I appreciate the urgency of those telling me to name names or STFU, and believe me, I share it. But I’m doing this the responsible way by thoroughly vetting every individual before naming them publicly. Not everyone on my list is an alleged predator. Some are witnesses. Some are survivors whose names I need to ensure are protected, not exposed. I’m just one person with a very small staff.”
… “But I promise you, very soon. Here’s where things stand: Letter sent to the DOJ yesterday about missing documents pulled down from their website. SDNY Monday since their documents are still redacted particularly for the names of co-conspirators. CIA Tuesday. The CIA is in possession of information I believe the public has every right to see. I also want to be clear: I love life.”
… Rep. Thomas Massie posted a similar comment to let people know if anything happened to him it is because he got Epsteined: “I am not suicidal. I eat healthy food. The brakes on my car and truck are in good shape. I practice good trigger discipline and never point a gun at anyone, including myself. There are no deep pools of water on my farm and I’m a pretty good swimmer.”
… Joe Rogan: “Why is the sultan who sent Epstein the torture video’s name redacted?What is this? This is not good. None of this is good for this admin. It looks fucking terrible. It looks terrible for Trump when he was saying that none of this was real that this was all a hoax. This is not a hoax. Like, did you not know? And if you got redacted people’s names, and these people aren’t victims, you’re not protecting the victim. So what are you doing? And how come all this shit is not released?”
… MAGA influencer Catturd to his 4 million X followers: “I was always been neutral on Steve Bannon. Didn’t really care or follow his war room. But now I’ve read the emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein, My God, it’s so disgustingly bad. And save your breath acting like it was a documentary, I’ve been reading the emails between them, they’re best friends, trying to take down Trump together. It’s so bad. Anyone from the War Room who’s trying to justify this, is full of shit. It’s so bad, and there’s no coming back from this.”
… Turd’s post was hit with this fact-check Community Note: “Catturd has not always been neutral on Steve Bannon. Per Catturd: ‘I stand with Steve Bannon.’ Source: Catturd.”
… New AP-NORC poll:
Trump approval-36%, Disapprove-62%.
Economy is Poor-65%, Economy is Good-34%
Country moving in right direction-29%, Wrong direction-69%.
Vance approval - 32%.
… CNBC: “High home prices, faltering supply and weaker consumer confidence in the economy all continue to weigh on the US housing market. The chief economist for the National Assn of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, is calling it ‘a new housing crisis.’ Sales of previously owned homes in Jan dropped a much wider-than-expected 8.4% from Dec to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.91 million. Sales were 4.4% lower than Jan 2025. That is the slowest pace since Dec 2023 and the biggest monthly drop since Feb 2022.”
End of another long week as I am off tomorrow with the Weekend Bulletin out next on Sunday night. We are headed up the coast of Maine where they just held the International Tobogganing Championship because they open the chute to the public the following two weekends before taking it down. There is at least a 50% I will chicken out and end up on the snow tubing hill though.
If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can find it here.
… NBC: “Inside a suburban Philadelphia strip mall, between the Hair Cuttery and a Citizens Bank, a dozen people lay on black ergonomic beds a few feet apart, hooked up through a needle in the crook of their arms to machines pumping blood out of their veins. They were there to sell their plasma in exchange for $65 on a prepaid debit card.”
… “It’s a scene repeated by an estimated 200,000 people a day across the country as part of a multibillion-dollar business fueled by a growing number of Americans willing to trade their blood for money in an economy where many have seen their job prospects weaken, costs rise and savings dwindle. Middle-class Americans say they
have had to start selling their plasma over the past year to cover basic expenses, from medical bills to a winter coat for their child.”
… Jill Chamberlain, in Phoenix, who has gone from making $87,000 a year to $16.11 an hour after being laid off from her job overseeing the finances of a local business in 2024: “I’m angry that I’m working this much, that I’m educated, that I’m articulate, that I have marketable skills, and that I’m reduced to selling my plasma. I was ashamed at first, but now I’m angry. This is not how things are supposed to be.”
… WSJ: “As more Americans fall behind on their mortgage and credit-card payments, a new report sheds light on how financial stress is spreading beyond the lowest-income borrowers. While credit-counseling agencies typically help low-income people restructure their debt and avoid bankruptcy, now people who earn higher incomes have been walking through their doors.”
… “The average client seeking help from credit-counseling agencies across the country now makes about $70,000 a year, with unsecured debt levels approaching $35,000, or half their annual income. Before the pandemic, the typical client enrolled in counseling made about $40,000 a year and carried $10,000 in unsecured debt, or roughly 25% of their annual income.”
… Reuters: “Trump plans to scale back some tariffs on steel and aluminum goods. Officials in the Commerce Dept and US trade rep’s office believe the tariffs are hurting consumers by raising prices for goods including pie tins and food-and-drink cans. Trump hit steel and aluminum imports with tariffs of up to 50% last year and has repeatedly used levies as a negotiating tool with a range of trading partners.”
… “The Commerce Dept last year hiked steel and aluminum tariffs on more than 400 products including wind turbines, mobile cranes, appliances, bulldozers and other heavy equipment, along with railcars, motorcycles, marine engines, furniture and hundreds of other products.”
… WaPo: “Apple News, the popular newsreader app that comes installed on every iPhone, is the latest media property to be warned by a regulator appointed by Trump over charges of liberal bias. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook expressing concern about ‘reports that Apple News has systematically promoted news articles from left-wing news outlets and suppressed news articles from more conservative publications.’”
… “Ferguson warned that the iPhone maker could be violating laws against deceptive business practices if its choice of news articles is found to be inconsistent with either its terms of service or ‘the reasonable expectations of consumers.’ The letter did not threaten an investigation or legal action but placed pressure on Apple to feature more conservative outlets in its app, which offers articles from more than 500 different publications and has been billed by the company as the No. 1 news app in the US.”
… Daily Mail: “Richard Grenell worked years to climb through MAGA’s cut-throat ranks, remarkably scrapping his way into leading the nation’s premiere intelligence apparatus in 2020. 6 years later, at the peak of Trump‘s power, he finds himself running a theater - and now even that job is being put on ice.”
… “Grenell’s career trajectory took another sharp turn this month when Trump announced plans to shutter the Kennedy Center. The move follows a year of internal chaos and high-profile cancellations that have plagued the venue under Grenell’s watch. Now, the ‘total overhaul’ leaves the former intelligence boss’s prestige in literal and metaphorical rubble.”
… “Branded ‘a ruthlessly ambitious’ asshole,’ by two former colleagues, Grenell’s described sharp-elbows and short-tempered personality have finally caught up with him, as he’s been pushed out of the admin’s most high-level and sensitive foreign policy decisions. Grenell was caught floating himself to campaign aides at Mar-a-Lago to be Trump’s VP nominee. Then came a defining incident at the RNC, where a heated argument with Susie Wiles over his speaking time on the dais boiled over.”
… WH source: “He screamed at Susie, and he told her, ‘You’re the reason why we’re going to lose this fuckking election!’ The confrontation was so intense that Wiles was reportedly left on the verge of tears. That single outburst sealed Grenell’s fate, freezing him out of any serious cabinet-level roles in Trump 2.0. Source: “He berated Wiles because he didn’t get a primetime speaking spot at the convention. That’s why he doesn’t have a big job. It’s why he was never considered for Secretary of State.”
… WSJ: “The highly classified whistleblower complaint against DNI Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner. It couldn’t be determined which country the foreign nationals are from or what they discussed about Kushner. But the connection to Kushner sheds further light on the top-secret whistleblower complaint that bureaucratically stalled within Gabbard’s agency for 8 months and was kept locked in a safe until it reached Congress in heavily redacted form last week.”
… “US intel officials are treating the material in the complaint with the utmost secrecy, contending that disclosure of the underlying intelligence report at issue could severely damage national security. A heavily redacted version of the complaint was seen by select lawmakers in Congress last week after WSJ first reported on its existence and that it had stalled within Gabbard’s office. Democrats have questioned why the complaint was held up for 8 months and indicated it raises national-security concerns that deserve more investigation.”
… AP: “Trump pardoned 5 former NFL for various crimes ranging from perjury to drug trafficking. Ex-NFL players Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry and the late Billy Cannon were granted the clemency. Klecko pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a federal grand jury that was investigating insurance fraud. Newton pleaded guilty to a federal drug trafficking charge.”
… “Lewis pleaded guilty in a drug case in which he used a cellphone to try to set up a drug deal. Henry pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic cocaine for financing a drug ring that moved the drug between Colorado and Montana. Cannon admitted to counterfeiting in the mid-1980s.”
… Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) talked about DOJ’s attempt to indict her on Adam Mockler’s podcast: “I don’t have any strong feeling that this is over. This is just one chapter. We’ve written to DOJ saying, ‘Okay, can we now call this done? Can you end this investigation? Can we have your word that this is done?’ But we’re under no illusions that if Trump sees our press conference or sees this video, that he won’t just start the same exact cycle. So we’ve sort of won this chapter, but the book is not over.”
… NBC: “The head of DOJ's antitrust unit said she is leaving the role, effective immediately, at a critical moment for corporate mergers in America. Gail Slater is leaving just as media giants Netflix and Paramount Skydance battle for control of Warner Bros. Discovery. DOJ will also head to court in weeks in a bid to challenge concert venue manager Live Nation’s ownership of Ticketmaster. Shares of Live Nation jumped as much as 5.8% after Slater announced her departure.”
… Anti-trust attorney Lee Hepner on MAGA lawyer Mike Davis celebrating with an X post: “To be clear, Mike Davis is leading efforts with KellyAnne Conway to get DOJ to drop its case against Live Nation, less than a month from trial. Here he is celebrating the ouster of the head of the DOJ’s antitrust division, two days after the division lost its head of litigation.”
… Trump endorsed Viktor Orban today in his re-election bid this April 12, where he is trailing badly in the polls. No surprise that the most corrupt, pro-Putin president in US history endorses the most corrupt, pro-Putin leader in Europe.
… German Chancellor Merz at the Munich Security Conference: “Russia's GDP currently amounts to about $2 trillion euros. The EU is almost 10 times as high. And yet today, Europe is not 10 times stronger than Russia. Our military, political, economic and technological potential is enormous. But we are still far from exploiting it to the extent necessary. The most important thing now is that we need to flip the switch in our minds. We have understood that in the era of great powers, our freedom is no longer simply a given. It is under threat.”
… French President Macron: “Europe has to become a geopolitical power. We have to reduce our dependencies through policies of European preference. This must be the case from AI and cloud computing, critical minerals, clean tech, as well as defense industries and design of armament. Everywhere we have over-dependencies, we have to derisk our model and endorse a European preference.”
… Marco Rubio was supposed to attend and speak but backed out with only this explanation. FT: “Rubio was set to attend the meeting with leaders from countries including Germany, Poland, Finland and the European Commission in Munich on Friday afternoon, but cancelled at the last minute because of scheduling conflicts.”
… AOC spoke at the conference in Munich in what some see as a trip to strengthen her foreign policy credentials for a future presidential run. Her remarks were thoughtful and interesting, and they were all made while speaking in a panel discussion off-the-cuff with no notes. She continues to impress more and more.
… AOC: “What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies - when too often in the West, we’ve looked the other way for inconvenient populations, whether it is kidnapping a foreign head of state, threatening our allies by talking about colonizing Greenland or looking the other way during a genocide.”
… “So I think many of us are here to say: We are here, and we are ready for the next chapter - not to have the world turn toward isolation, but to deepen our partnerships with a greater commitment to integrity and to our values.”
… “We’re seeing economies around the world - including in the US - where extreme levels of income inequality lead to social instability and, in a sense, drive authoritarianism. That is a direct outcome not just of income inequality, but of the failure of democracies over decades to deliver - the failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations.”
… “Antitrust in the US is such a foundational bedrock value - not just because the ascent of monopolies creates abuses of corporate and market power, but because there is a level of market concentration and corporate consolidation where a massive company can become so large that its consolidated power rivals that of nation-states.”
… “In democracies, we have elected leaders. But when massive corporations begin to consume the public sector and gobble up public spending, they start to call the shots. And we’re starting to see this with some members of the billionaire class throwing their weight around in domestic and global politics.”
… “So it is of the utmost urgency that we get our economic houses in order and deliver material gains for the working class. Otherwise, we will fall into a more isolated world governed by authoritarians who also do not deliver for working people.”
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… Real Clear Politics interviewed many current and former Trump WH officials to ask them which news sources Trump consumes on daily basis: “He begins his morning by channel surfing in the WH residence. ‘Fox & Friends’ remains the favorite, but before the day officially begins, Trump flips through CNBC, CNN, and MS NOW.”
… “A stack of newspapers awaits when Trump arrives in the private study outside the Oval Office. He reads the NYT, NY Post, WaPo, and WSJ. The president is also known to peruse USA Today and the Financial Times.”
… CBS announced another MAGA infomercial hosted by Bari Weiss: “JD Vance will sit down with CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil to talk about the economy, foreign policy, the state of the Republican Party, and the 2028 race for the WH in a March edition of CBS NEWS THINGS THAT MATTER: A TOWN HALL WITH VP JD VANCE. The one-hour special will air Sat., March 14 at 8:00 PM ET.”
… Marc Elias on the VA redistricting that should add 4 new House seats for Dems: “In a big win for Virginia Democrats’ efforts to counter Trump’s GOP gerrymanders in other states, the Virginia Supreme Court said the state can hold its special election on the redistricting plan.”
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