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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Americans are pissed at the state of Trump's union

Exposure to chemical irritants can cause chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. For kids, there’s more potential for serious side effects. By Barbara Rodriguez for The 19th   From the roof of the ​​Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in Portland, Oregon, federal agents late last month watched as thousands of people marched past the processing center in protest. Families and children were among the daytime crowd, which had gathered for an event advertised as family friendly. When some protesters reportedly crossed the facility’s property line and approached the security gate, agents began deploying tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Smoke quickly filled the air. Video of the ensuing chaos showed a young girl — wearing a pink sweater with butterflies — in visible distress as a volunteer medic sprays water on her face. At one point the ponytailed girl said, “Owie, it burns.” “She was confused, stunned, upset, crying,” a witness said. “It shattered me.” Weeks earlier in Minneapolis — where federal agents have injured and killed civilians as part of a massive immigration enforcement operation — an agent threw a flash-bang that rolled under an SUV stopped in traffic. It set off smoke inside the vehicle, forcing a family with children in the passenger seats to run into a nearby home. A 6-month-old in the car stopped breathing briefly. A person holds a Minnesota state flag as federal immigration officers deploy tear gas on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis. “I stopped and I looked at my baby and I was just like, ‘Wake up, you have to,’” the mother told CNN. She administered CPR before taking her infant to the hospital. As the Trump administration expands militarized operations ensnaring U.S. citizens, legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, agents’ use of tear gas and other chemical irritants as crowd control measures is worrying medical professionals and public health experts, who say such exposure could disproportionately impact children and other vulnerable populations. “People have to realize these chemicals are not safe,” said Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and member of the American Lung Association’s board of directors. “We don’t know the long-term effects. We don’t understand their effects on children. Assume that children should have zero exposure to these chemicals.” Tear gas — a catch-all term to describe chemical compounds that cause irritation to people’s eyes, lungs, mouth, nose and skin within seconds of exposure — has been deployed around residential streets and public spaces in at least four major American cities since last fall. While at least one entity is tracking immigration-related demonstrations in the United States, there is no substantive monitoring on the exact number of times tear gas is deployed, who is deploying it and why, and what chemicals are being released into the air. Critical details like proximity of impact, length of exposure and whether an incident involved a vulnerable group is also unknown. “This gap makes it difficult for the public, for researchers and for policymakers to quantify the impact or identity of these toxic air pollutants across states,” said Julie A. González, a demographer and environmental justice scholar. Several types of chemical irritants are often lumped into a broad definition of tear gas, including those found in devices that disperse smoke when launched and pepper spray. Exposure to these “riot control agents” can cause chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. For people with diseases that impact their heart or lungs, the side effects can be more serious, said El-Hasan. They can be worse for children. “Children’s bodies are different than adult bodies,” he said. “They’re growing. They take more breaths per minute than adults.” Dr. Sarita Chung, a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital, noted how children’s height can add potency to exposure. “Children are usually closer to the ground, where there is greater gas vapors,” she said. “Or it’s more dense, and so they’re going to breathe in more.” Related | ICE violence is up over 290% under Trump The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has repeatedly defended its use of tear gas and other chemical irritants during its recent immigration operations. Law enforcement — not just federal but state and local — have used these chemicals legally for decades to disperse crowds. But citizens are challenging in court whether the federal government’s recent use of force, including tear gas deployment, has been excessive and unconstitutional. Representatives for DHS, ICE and CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment about its use of riot control agents. But an agency spokesperson specifically claimed the incident in Portland last month involved an unruly crowd. The same spokesperson also said the Minneapolis family was not targeted — though she initially blamed the family in a since-deleted post on X. “It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots,” the post read. “PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN.” But some of these incidents involving children occurred outside of organized protest. The family in Minneapolis told news outlets that they were headed home after a child’s basketball game at the time that their vehicle was damaged. In early November, a masked federal agent pepper sprayed into a vehicle near a Sam’s Club in Chicago. The car was being driven by a man who had been attempting to go grocery shopping with his 1-year-old daughter. The chemicals spread into the child’s eyes. “My daughter was trying to open her eyes,” the man told reporters. “She was struggling to breathe.” The Oregonian reported on a 3-year-old who lives across the street from the ICE facility in Portland whose mom routinely rushes her inside from an apartment balcony when chemicals are deployed. Tear gas has been released on busy commercial streets in Minneapolis, with video showing a parent holding a toddler and running away from the smoke. Federal agents lobbed tear gas and flash bangs at protesters in front of the ICE building on Jan. 31, 2026, in Portland, Ore “You can’t just say, oh, avoid the tear gas,” El-Hasan said. “You’re basically talking about random incidents or incidents where very innocent people are just being exposed to these toxic substances.” El-Hasan said if an adult or child has asthma and is exposed to tear gas, it should be assumed that the irritant will get into the body. He recommended anyone who is asthmatic to have an inhaler and take preventative medication if possible. He also suggested they see a medical profession within 24 hours. “We have no great understanding, at least none that has been published, on what the long term effects of these chemicals are on children,” El-Hasan said. “The only thing that we can do is just have people understand what to do if their children or they themselves have been exposed to tear gas, and to do that very quickly afterwards.” But the public’s perception of tear gas use could get reshaped by the emerging imagery and videos of children being exposed to these chemicals. In Chicago last fall, the repeated deployment of tear gas on residential streets during a weekslong immigration enforcement operation led a federal judge to admonish federal government officials as a temporary restraining order restricting tear gas use was in place. “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told then-Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino during an October court hearing, according to Reuters. “They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.” Protesters try to avoid tear gas dispersed by federal agents on Jan. 12 in Minneapolis. Weeks later, Ellis ordered federal agents to give at least two separate warnings before using tear gas and other chemicals on crowds, and to only use them if there was an immediate threat of physical harm. The use of tear gas dates back a century, when soldiers deployed it during World War I. Its use is now prohibited in international warfare. The Army and police used it in 1932 in Washington, D.C., in response to a gathered group of World War I veterans and their families who for weeks protested in support of wartime payments from the federal government amid the Great Depression. That protest, known as the Forgotten March, was linked within weeks to the death of a 3-month-old baby, Bernard Myers. Bernard’s parents claimed exposure to tear gas — the family said they were in a private home that was filled with smoke — contributed to their child’s death. Newspapers at the time reported that while hospital officials said the child died from an intestinal disorder, doctors also reportedly said: “the gas certainly didn’t do any good.” There was public distrust after military personnel visited the hospital to view the boy’s body. Anna Feigenbaum is a professor at the University of Glasgow and author of the 2017 book “Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today.” She highlights Bernard’s case in her book as well as the use of tear gas in residential areas that often results in children being in close range and exposed to the chemicals. “There’s a long history of children being tear gassed, once tear gas started being used domestically,” she said. The disproportionate impact of tear gas extends beyond children. In 2023, scientist Asha Hassan was part of a team that published a survey-based study on the adverse health effects of tear gas on reproductive health following the 2020 protests against police brutality that followed the death of George Floyd. They found people reporting uterine cramping, early menstrual bleeding, breast tenderness and delayed menstrual bleeding. Federal immigration officers deploy tear gas at protesters on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis. Hassan, a professor at the University of Minnesota and an expert on reproductive health, police violence and disability-related research noted that the public’s baseline for understanding the safety of tear gas is limited because it has mostly involved studying the impact of tear gas on young healthy men in a training environment in the 1960s. “Applying or understanding what we know from that long ago, about some of these gasses to populations that all have different bodies — including people who have uteri, people who have chronic conditions, and children — we actually don’t know,” Hassan said. “We actually don’t have the data to say how this might impact their bodies disproportionately or differently than what this original research shows.” People who have been impacted by tear gas exposure have sought legal justice in recent years. In December, residents of an affordable housing complex just 300 feet from the ICE building in Portland filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government’s repeated use of tear gas, smoke grenades and other chemical munitions has seeped into their homes and poses environmental and health risks. “You have a government that regulates everything from serving sizes to what can go into your soda to what can be in your water,” said Jennifer Brown, who was part of a team that published research in 2021 on the use of tear gas and its unknown long-term health impacts. “How is it, then, that it’s OK to use unregulated chemicals on a broad range of civilian populations, especially when these chemicals are banned in war?” Brown’s research concluded that tear gas has been poorly studied, and guidelines on its use do not properly account for variables like duration of exposure. Under the federal government’s own definition of tear gas, “long lasting exposure or exposure to a large dose” may cause blindness, glaucoma and respiratory failure. Related | ‘Abolish ICE’ hits record-high support Separately, the decontamination process after tear gas exposure is already challenging for adults: The federal government recommends that people not only throw away their clothing after exposure, they’re told to cut it off instead of pulling it over their heads. Anything that touches the clothing should be sealed into a bag that’s then placed into another bag. And yet, there is no universal protocol for how law enforcement should discard tear gas canisters and other related residue. In Minneapolis, the chemicals have been left on piles of snow, which can then melt into sewer drains. It’s all hazardous waste, Brown said. “They shouldn’t get anywhere near your skin, your clothes, your house — but both the physical detritus of the canisters themselves and anything that the gas itself touches — it gets into your house, it’s now on your floors. It’s on your linens. It’s on your clothes. Are you washing your clothes in your washer? You really shouldn’t. You should dispose of them as hazardous waste,” she said. This month, congressional Democrats asked for an investigation of ICE agents’ use of force, including their deployment of tear gas and flash-bang grenades at close range. A federal judge has extended a temporary order restricting immigration agents outside the Portland ICE facility from releasing tear gas and other munitions at people unless someone poses an imminent threat. In Illinois, a state lawmaker has filed a bill that would ban tear gas. It’s unclear for now if there will be more accountability over the use of tear gas near children. In Portland, the city’s mayor highlighted the January 31 incident in demanding that ICE agents resign. “To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children,” he wrote in a statement. Chung helps oversee a council on the health effects on children after disasters for the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said the council is monitoring additional instances of tear gas deployment around children, in case it shapes future communication with health care professionals about treatment guidelines. “Tear gas is harmful for the health of children,” she said. “The decontamination process can be challenging, and especially if it’s done in a crowd, and if children are separated from their families, then we need to be diligent about reunification processes to make sure that the children get quickly reunited with their families.”

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  «Putin is the aggressor,” then-President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation that night. “Putin chose this war.» x x YouTube Video Two days before the assault began, former and future President Donald Trump delighted in telling radio show “Clay & Buck” how the Russian dictator’s aggression showed his “savvy” and "genius.” Trump’s remarks came on the same day that Biden announced new sanctions against Russia following Putin’s declaration that he would recognize two regions of Ukraine as independent states and deploy Russian troops there. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump frequently claimed that his special relationship with Putin would allow him to end the war “in 24 hours.” And yet, even before he was inaugurated for a second term, Trump began retreating from that promise. In the year since returning to office, Trump has embarrassed the United States on the world stage, attempting to bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a White House visit, straining the U.S.'s standing with our NATO partners, and making little, if any, progress toward a peaceful resolution. Estimates say that Putin’s war has killed up to 1.8 million people, with no clear end in sight.

The Supreme Court’s decision to block President Donald Trump’s tariffs is a hefty 170 pages long—but only a dozen or so pages constitute the actual opinion of the court, thanks to a fractured majority opinion.  Huge chunks of this monstrosity are mostly just the conservative justices hammering away at their colleagues. It’s just grievances all the way down.  The less said about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 62-page (!!) dissent, the better. You can tell that he’s the sort of guy who thinks his every thought is perfectly formed and divinely inspired, which is why his dissenting opinion is longer than anything else in the decision.  Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2018. But Kavanaugh didn’t even need all of those words. His real job is to just flatter Trump and make sure he gets his way. Since he couldn’t land a majority opinion in this case, he used his dissent to draw Trump a roadmap on how to just keep on tariffin’ even after this ruling.  Honestly, you probably could have done that in, like, five pages, Brett.  Somehow, even though Justice Neil Gorsuch was in the majority, his concurrence is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages. So when it comes to the major questions doctrine, everyone on the Supreme Court except Gorsuch is doing it wrong, you fools. And when it comes to Congress? Well, everyone is also stupid and bad because they won’t understand that legislating is hard and takes time, and they should get off their butts.  It’s some awfully weird sentiment coming from a dude who’s spent the last year by and large joining his conservative colleagues in ignoring the executive branch's unconstitutional encroachment on Congress’ powers.  Sure, we’ve told you multiple times that what you do doesn’t matter, and we will let Trump do what he wants, but how dare you not legislate anyway! Gorsuch didn’t spare Justice Clarence Thomas, framing his view as “Congress may hand over to the President most of its powers, including the tariff power, without limit." Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 Surprisingly, Gorsuch is not wrong here.  Thomas did exactly that. His dissent tried to punch an enormous hole in the nondelegation doctrine, one big enough to drive a Trump-shaped tariff through, and it was so out of pocket that even the reliably craven Justice Samuel Alito didn’t join it. Broadly, the nondelegation doctrine says that Congress can’t delegate its power to legislate. It delegates other power all of the time, such as giving government agencies authority to develop regulations. But turning over legislative power is a no-no.  But wait! What if Thomas could just decide, single-handedly, that the nondelegation doctrine bars Congress only from delegating legislative power related to deprivation of life, liberty, or property? That would basically allow Congress to give away much of its constitutional power to legislate, allowing Trump full tariff power.  That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito. But, hey, at least Thomas kept it to 18 pages. Small blessings. 

The U.S. women's Olympic hockey team declined President Donald Trump's invitation to attend his State of the Union address on Tuesday, with a spokesperson for the team telling NBC News that they couldn’t attend «due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.» An athlete skis past Olympic rings during a cross country training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 5. «We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal–winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,» the spokesperson wrote on X. «They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.» The announcement came after House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that he expected both the women's and men's hockey teams—which both took home the gold in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games—to attend Trump's speech. Trump invited the men to attend his speech during a phone call Sunday as they celebrated an overtime victory against Canada—the first gold medal win in the event since 1980. A video of Trump surfaced, showing him speaking to the team on FBI Director Kash Patel's cellphone as Patel was inexplicably drinking beer and partying with the players on taxpayers’ dime. xDisgusting. Team USA laughing with President Trump as he complains about having to invite the women’s team to the White House too.Yes, the men’s hockey team winning gold is a much bigger deal.But show some fucking respect for your fellow Team USA athletes. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 https://t.co/nn6Y3oWiK0 pic.twitter.com/AUflRNyhjg— All Rice (@thats_bb_suzyn) February 23, 2026 In that same phone call, Trump disparaged the women's team, lamenting that he would also have to extend an invitation to the female players. «I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team, you do know that,» Trump said, as the players laughed. «I do believe I probably would be impeached.» A number of the players on the men's team are Trump supporters, including Matthew Tkachuk, who visited the White House last month with his Stanley Cup-winning NHL team. U.S. men's hockey team celebrates winning gold in the 2026 Winter Olympics. «The two Cups was pretty good, but that walk with you might've trumped it all there. That was pretty amazing,” Tkachuk said at the event, which was held amid backlash to Trump's immigration goons killing Americans. »I'm so proud to be an American and so proud to be here with you and everybody else.« Politics have seeped into this year’s Olympics, with multiple players saying that they were proud to represent the United States but did not support what the Trump administration is doing back home. For example, freestyle skier Hunter Hess said that »it brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now.” “There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren't,” he added. “Just because I'm wearing the flag doesn't mean I represent everything that's going on in the U.S.«  And a member of the U.S. curling team, Rich Ruohonen, criticized Trump’s violent and deadly immigration operation in Minnesota. “We'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention what's going on in Minnesota,” he said. “What's happening in Minnesota is wrong. There's no shades of gray. It's clear.” x x YouTube Video Skier Gus Kenworthy was even more blunt, posting on Instagram an AI image with the words “fuck ICE,” which appears to be written in urine in the snow.   x View this post on Instagram A post shared by gus kenworthy (@guskenworthy) “You can call your Senator at (202) 224-3121 to speak up against ICE and put pressure on them during the current DHS funding negotiations,” he captioned the post. Meanwhile, gold-winning U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn said that, »Politics affect us all. It is something that I will not just be quiet about.« Of course, being the malignant narcissist that he is, Trump lost it when he was rightfully criticized by the athletes, disparaging those who spoke out against him on Truth Social. Figure skater Amber Glenn performs at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 21. “Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,» he wrote. And Trump’s comments led MAGA trolls and GOP lawmakers to pile on Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told Hess to “shut up and go play in the snow,” while And Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida simply told him to go home. "YOU chose to wear our flag. YOU chose to represent our country. YOU chose to compete at the Olympics. If that’s too hard for you, then GO HOME. Some things are bigger than politics. You just don’t get it,” Donalds wrote on X. Of course, being able to criticize the government is an essential part of being American. Forcing Olympic athletes to stay quiet or to praise the government, however, is something you’d expect from countries like North Korea or Russia.  But Republicans only want free speech for themselves—not for me, not for you, and not even for Olympians.

Leading Republican voices like Donald Trump Jr. are promoting a new “investigation” by conservative activist Nick Shirley which purports to prove voter fraud in California, but the core premise of the video was quickly debunked. The false allegation adds to the ever-growing pattern of behavior by Shirley and other right-wing serial misinformers like James O’Keefe, who promise bombshells that fizzle at the slightest bit of examination. Shirley posted a video on Saturday alleging that domicile addresses registered at a San Diego UPS store were “illegal.” Shirley claims that “you can receive a ballot at a PO Box, but it cannot be the domicile address—which over 30 of them are, errors and suspected fraudulent activity is everywhere in California voter rolls.” Related | GOP ignores reality to boost MAGA YouTuber's racist attacks The self-proclaimed journalist claimed that despite his purported evidence, “California seems to not care about their voter rolls meanwhile you do not even need an ID to vote,” and further insisted that this was just one example of "voter fraud” in the heavily Democratic state. In his post pushing the Shirley video, Trump Jr. wrote, “It never ends. Imagine if the mainstream media actually spent even a few minutes looking into any of these things?” But the claim was false. As X readers pointed out in a community note later added to Shirley’s post, the UPS store in question is part of a mixed-use residential development with apartments above it. The 30 listed residences in question are in fact perfectly legal residential addresses for voters. Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona called out Shirley’s bogus bombshell. Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable meeting with President Donald Trump on antifa in the State Dining Room at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025, as Savanah Hernandez listens. “PO Box is an acronym for Post Office Box. A UPS Store is not a PO Box and likely serves as the community mail box for the development,” Gallego wrote. “The fact that we are making public policy based on this inexperienced boy is an indictment of the Republican Party.” Shirley’s video is part of an attempt to recreate the fog of disinformation he created a few months ago with a series of videos alleging that Somali immigrants in Minnesota were operating fraudulent daycare centers, and that the practice was being ignored by Democrats leading the state government. But Democrats had addressed those issues previously, with investigations and even resulting convictions.  President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers nonetheless used Shirley’s video as an excuse to send federal troops into Minnesota as part of his mass deportation policy, a deployment that led to the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Shirley is an influencer who pivoted into the world of MAGA politics and tailored his content to support bigoted right-wing policy ideas, bringing him millions of followers and support from prominent Republicans like the Trump family and members of Congress.  Related | MAGA influencer's face-plant shows pitfall in creator culture His dishonest work echoes the behavior of serial misinformer James O’Keefe, himself a protégé of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. O’Keefe has produced several series of videos targeting progressive activists and Democrats, most of which were debunked soon after their release. Continually seeking new controversy to stir up, O’Keefe was eventually exposed for trying to entrap a CNN reporter on a boat stocked with sex toys, as well as an incident where he was arrested while trying to sneak into the office of a Democratic senator.  With support from the Republican establishment and his work’s underlying dishonesty, Shirley is now following in O’Keefe’s slimy footsteps.

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | High-profile resignations and replacements as Epstein case fallout spreads

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Americans are pissed at the state of Trump's union He’s just as popular as he was after Jan. 6. Despite crises in US, FBI director chugs a beer in Italy U.S.A.! U.S. … ugh. All the ways Trump will illegally impose more tariffs He’s nothing if not a petulant jerk. Cartoon: Stocks & Bondis The attorney general’s fawning over Trump won’t save her. Lawyer who took down tariffs trolls Trump Children of immigrants: They get the job done. Nicki Minaj trades 'Barbz' for bots amid MAGA transformation Looks like there are some “super freaky” shenanigans going on. How Democrats can leverage Trump’s economic disaster It’s still the economy, stupid. Trump tells grieving families all about his own suffering It’s the “Let’s not make this about me” challenge, level: impossible. Click here to see more cartoons.

After a Winter Olympic Games of athletes celebrating each other as much as they did winning, the response from the Trump administration is equal parts disheartening and gross.  These are people who are functionally incapable of seeing the Olympics as anything but an opportunity to display their xenophobic loathing of other countries and to celebrate victory as a sort of violent domination.  In short, the Trump team simply didn’t understand anything about these Olympics.  Amber Glenn takes a selfie with ice dance team Madison Chock and Evan Bates after winning gold on Feb. 8. Perhaps the highest-profile example of this was the diminutive FBI Director Kash Patel partying with the U.S. men’s hockey team on your dime.  Or maybe it’s that, after the men’s hockey team beat Canada for the gold, the official White House X account posted a picture—which we can all safely assume is AI slop—of a bald eagle attacking a Canadian goose on a frozen lake. Beating Canada in a hockey game apparently means we have subjugated the entire country? Terrific.  Or perhaps it’s the AI slop video of President Donald Trump—the biggest, most pathetic starfucker there ever was—inserting himself into the game so he could punch a Canadian hockey player.  This behavior would be disgusting at any time, but it’s especially jarring after an Olympics where the athletes themselves made conscious decisions to show care for each other—including their rivals. Nowhere was this clearer than in figure skating, where U.S. skaters banded together to cheer other countries’ skaters on, with Ilia Malinin taking time to congratulate Mikhail Shaidorov for his gold medal—even after Malinin’s didn’t place at all for his free skate performance.  And after Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto was inundated with reporters forcing cameras in her face, she learned that she lost the gold to U.S. skater Alysa Liu. Liu’s teammate, Amber Glenn, rushed to comfort Sakamoto, telling one reporter to stop trying to film her crying.  But it wasn’t just figure skaters.  After Australian snowboarder Valentino Guseli unexpectedly made it into the finals of the big air competition, Swiss snowboarder Jonas Hasler carried Guseli around on his shoulders in celebration. Australia's Valentino Guseli competes during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals on Feb. 13. And we also were treated to the adorableness of “Dads Podium,” where all three dual moguls winners were joined by their partners and young children.  It also wasn’t just athletes.  The closing ceremony highlighted how important togetherness was to the games, with International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry  telling athletes in her final remarks, “You showed us that the Olympic Games are a place for everyone. A place where sport brings us together.” She also thanked the Italian people for their graciousness toward the athletes. “You celebrated your champions and you cheered for athletes of every nation, showing that passion and respect can live side by side,” Coventry  said. The notion that people can care for each other—even as sports rivals—and that connection matters more than jingoism and xenophobia is utterly foreign to people like Trump. The only thing he knows how to celebrate is the subjugation of others.  Related | Why the Olympics turn Republicans into sore losers Sadly, it looks like the U.S. men’s hockey team is totally down for this sort of thing, eagerly accepting Trump’s invitation to his State of the Union address on Tuesday.  The plans for it already sound gross, with House Speaker Mike Johnson trying to break the House rule that says that no special guests are allowed on the floor. He says he’s “trying to work out logistics to see if there’s some way to perhaps get them into the gallery and the doors, wave and receive the applause they’re due.” Proposing to break legislative rules to do some xenophobic screaming about AMERICA is so on brand for this administration that it feels like the writers’ room for this season is getting lazy.  But unfortunately, it’s real. At least the rest of us can fall back on our memories of what it looks like when athletes come together and care for each other.

More than 600 have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza despite a US backed ceasefire, Palestinian health officials have said Read Full Article at RT.com

Vladimir Zelensky has ordered a purge at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Read Full Article at RT.com

The US leadership will fail in its effort to destroy Iran, just like its predecessors, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Read Full Article at RT.com

It will take years for Ukraine to join the EU, Austrian Finance Minister Markus Marterbauer has said, dismissing Zelensky’s 2027 goal Read Full Article at RT.com

UK National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell has been spotted at the venue hosting Russia-Ukraine-US negotiations in Geneva Read Full Article at RT.com

State-level Charlie Kirk celebrations stand in for an actual GOP agenda, critics say — and no one gets the day off

Bud Cort's death is a reminder to live the best you can, while you can

You may already have forgotten that MyPillow CEO and all-around weirdo Mike Lindell has mounted a vanity campaign for governor of Minnesota. He’s got little chance of making it through even the Republican primary, but nonetheless, some suckers out there have donated money to Lindell. However, out of the roughly $350,000 in contributions he’s netted so far, he has spent over $187,000 on buying his own book—and you betcha he is going to keep doing it. x x YouTube Video When NewsNation pressed Lindell on the book purchases, he claimed that he was handing out the books in lieu of campaign literature, like pamphlets.  “What you can do instead of paying money for flyers and stuff, we had to go around do debates for about a month and a half, these debates, and we gave out the books instead of giving them a little flyer about me,” he said. Also, he said he got the books at a “very good price.” This is an especially odd move given Lindell is not hawking a new book. Rather, “What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO” is Lindell’s self-published memoir from 2019. Back then, he printed 3 million copies at his own expense.  The thing is, conservatives regularly rely on bulk-buying schemes to juice their books’ sales numbers. Typically, that has involved external groups, like the Republican National Committee, snapping them up and then giving them away. That’s what you have to do when you can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas.  However, Lindell’s grift isn’t without precedent. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, shown in 2024. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas allegedly tried a similar trick back in 2020, spending over $153,000 to buy his book “One Vote Away” from third-party retailers. This illegal move triggered complaints from the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal organization. However, that alleged scheme was just a drop in a bucket for Cruz. Between 2015 and 2020, a political action committee affiliated with him raked in over $54 million, according to Open Secrets.  That stands in stark contrast with Lindell, who has spent over half of his meager total haul—a move that may be illegal but is also unsustainable. Lindell is not exactly raking in money, so he doesn’t have a lot of money to waste on propping up his book sales.  There’s also the problem of Lindell owing millions of dollars while claiming he is just too broke to pay up. He owes millions of dollars after losing a lawsuit and millions more to his attorneys, who tried to quit back in 2023 over his failure to pay them. (Note: Those are not the same lawyers of Lindells who were recently slapped with sanctions for filing a brief that included AI-hallucinated fake cases.) One should never feel sorry for Lindell, but it is notable that he remains one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest soldiers still promoting the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. However, Lindell, unlike countless others, has not been rewarded with a place in the administration. Sure, Trump shouted out Lindell at a conservative conference in 2025, but that’s about it. Imagine being too weird or too inept for this administration.  Nevertheless, potential Lindell donors, beware! You’re better off lighting that cash on fire.

President Donald Trump wants to hurt Democratic-controlled states by withholding infrastructure funds, but ironically, his moves could sink Republicans in key races in this year’s midterm elections. On Monday, Trump went on yet another diatribe against the critical Gateway project, which will  expand the rail systems between New Jersey and New York, reducing delays that have plagued the nation’s busiest rail corridor.  Trump had been withholding the project’s funding for months, leading to a work stoppage as well as the need to lay off more than 1,000 construction workers. Withholding those funds already hurt Republicans last November in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election, which Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill won easily after making the project a top issue in the race.  A tunnel is under construction in Manhattan that will connect New York and New Jersey. Last week, a federal judge forced Trump to finally release some of the funds. Yet the president still raged against the project, writing on Truth Social on Monday, “I am opposed to the future boondoggle known as ‘Gateway,’ in New York/New Jersey, because it will cost many BILLIONS OF DOLLARS more than projected or anticipated.” Those comments raise questions about whether Trump will try again to delay Gateway funds. However, ending train delays under the Hudson River are important to millions of voters in the New York and New Jersey suburbs, which are home to vulnerable GOP lawmakers. New Jersey GOP Rep. Tom Kean's district has thousands of commuters who are desperate to see the end of tunnel-related New Jersey transit delays. If the Gateway project is delayed further due to Trump's «unhinged» behavior—as Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey described it—it could sink Kean's already tough odds in November. In January, Kean, who claims to support the tunnel, refused to sign on to a letter from New Jersey’s congressional delegation that urged Trump to release the funds Congress had appropriated for the project. Here’s how the New Jersey Globe described Kean’s political peril over Trump’s tunnel drama: Kean’s many Democratic opponents, hoping to take him down in this year’s competitive election for the 7th congressional district, see an opening. Rebecca Bennett called Kean’s response “lots of words, and zero spine,” Brian Varela said he’s “Trump’s puppet,” and Tina Shah said the district needs “someone in Congress who will actually stand up for what we need here in the district. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who represents a toss-up district with many commuters, also faces electoral risk if the project stalls due to Trump. When reports emerged that Trump was withholding the funds in an attempt to get Penn Station, as well as Virginia’s Dulles Airport, named after himself, Lawler refused to condemn Trump, leading to attacks from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. x x YouTube Video “Mike Lawler is once again choosing blind loyalty to Trump, even when it means screwing over New York commuters and tanking the regional economy,” the DCCC said in a statement. “If Lawler actually cared about getting Gateway done, he’d be calling out Trump’s reckless obstruction instead of defending it on national television.” It's not just New York and New Jersey being targeted by Trump's revenge tour. Michigan is also in Trump's crosshairs. He said he would refuse to allow a nearly complete bridge that connects the state to Canada to open unless Canada met some arbitrary demand to treat «the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.» Michigan is a swing state where Republicans are seeking to pick up a U.S. Senate seat and the state's governor's mansion, and defend a handful of House seats. If he vindictively stops the bridge from opening, it could hamper the GOP's chances in those races. Former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, shown in 2016. Even the state's Republican former governor slammed Trump over his latest extortionist threat. «The threat to block the bridge’s opening as 'leverage' for broader trade disputes—whether over dairy, liquor, or Canada’s engagement with China—is not a course of action that I believe is appropriate,» former Gov. Rick Snyder wrote in an op-ed in the Toronto Star. «Every day that the Gordie Howe bridge isn’t open raises costs for both businesses and consumers on both sides of the border. Connecting infrastructure of this scale and importance needs to be protected and prioritized, not put at risk.» And in July, Trump pulled funding for a high-speed rail project in California, a state where the GOP is already nearly extinct but could go the way of the Dodo even faster thanks to Trump's actions. Ultimately, Democrats need to net just three seats to win control of the House in November.  By targeting infrastructure projects that impact some of the most competitive House contests on the map, he could help ensure Democrats take control of the chamber and functionally make him a lame duck for the last two years of his presidency.

A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Bezos guts the Washington Post—just like Trump wanted

CBS prevented late night host Stephen Colbert from airing an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday night, the latest act of censorship from the increasingly right-wing network in coordination with the Trump administration’s regime at the Federal Communications Commission. x x YouTube Video Colbert revealed the details of the plot on the Monday edition of his program, “The Late Show.” “We were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have [Talarico] on the broadcast,” Colbert explained. “I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this” Colbert said that CBS’ reasoning for blocking his interview with Talarico was sourced to a recent directive from FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee. Carr argued that late-night comedy shows and daytime talk shows are no longer exempt from equal time regulations for broadcasts that require news programs to provide “equal opportunities” for rebuttals during candidate interviews. Related | Does James Talarico know how to flip Texas? FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, the only remaining commissioner appointed by a Democratic president, slammed Carr’s argument at the time. “[Carr’s] announcement therefore does not change the law, but it does represent an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech,” she said in a statement. Colbert further noted, “Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV. He’s like a toddler with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diapers.” x x YouTube Video Colbert also announced that he was nonetheless going ahead with the interview and posted it in full to his YouTube page where it racked up over 719,000 views in the first nine hours of availability. Talarico posted the interview on his social media account, noting, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.” In the interview, Colbert and Talarico discussed Carr’s decision to launch a probe of ABC’s “The View” after he was interviewed on that program and Talarico said the federal action reflected fear of a Democrat winning the Texas Senate race. While Republicans have held both Texas Senate seats since 1997, both Talarico and fellow Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Jasmine Crockett have polled within striking distance of the three current Republican frontrunners. Talarico is within the margin of error in polling against Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, and Wesley Hunt. Related | Jasmine Crockett on blazing her own trail in Texas politics Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and Democrats would need to flip four seats to take control. CBS’ decision to censor Colbert echoes the network’s ongoing move to the right. At CBS News, conservative editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has been withholding news stories critical of the Trump administration, while CBS parent Paramount paid out a settlement to Trump while the Republican donors who own the company are given a green light for mergers by the administration. Trump is waging war against free speech and corporations like CBS are there to help.