Will Rubin

A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS Secretary faces fire for confrontational immigration crackdown and self-promotional style; White House to wind down Minnesota operations.

This is a 3,600-word piece airing every bit of dirt Noem's detractors have aired in the last year, presumably to try to get her (and Corey) ousted.

2 words that don't appear anywhere? "Stephen Miller."

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

pilot could’ve and should’ve told them to walk their asses home

The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. 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. The purchase would be double the cost of each of seven other commercial planes the department is also buying at the pair's direction to carry out deportations. In official documents, the luxury plane is earmarked for "high-profile deportations," the people said. Staff have jokingly started referring to it as the secretary's "big, beautiful jet," after the bill that provided the funding for it.

The DHS spokeswoman said the plane was used for both deportations and cabinet-level travel. She said it was cheaper than military aircraft for deportations and saved American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The department rarely uses military flights for deportations because they are instead using chartered planes.

the scuttlebutt about noem and lewandowski’s relationship is fun, but don’t miss that they used OBBA money to lease/buy an expensive private plane that said was for deportations but are instead using to jet around the country

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Boise State may have the only good athletic director

shouting out an Idaho fan named RackofTits69 for hounding him about bringing back Boise State-Idaho

Will Fox be updating their story on this and giving it the same amount of airtime as they did initial arrest?

Former Washington Post journalist Hank Stuever joins The Times-Picayune and The Advocate Hank Stuever, who twice has been named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing, will start in his new role next month. “He’s one of the best journalists in the country.”

Journalists in New Orleans have no idea how their work lives are about to change for the better. Or maybe they do! Either way, wonderful for everyone involved, @hankstuever.bsky.social especially. www.nola.com/news/veteran...

Incredibly powerful opinion chronicling the awfulness in Whipple and the ways it interfered with the right to counsel.

One key part of the ruling (that ICE will likely appeal ASAP); Judge Brasel bars ICE from transferring anyone out of Minnesota within 72 hours of arrest.

surprising no one, everything and everyone associated with the LA28 scam is a total scumbag

This is just unconscionable man

It would be embarrassing under any circumstances to spend a year on this reactionary horseshit, but to have spent the year in which graduate students were sent to concentration camps for op-eds and the federal govt launched a no hold barred attack on academic freedom is just beyond

I’ve spent years of my life trying to explain to people that anti-trans conservatism naturally flows from their belief that children in the American nuclear family are not individuals with autonomy, but instead property of the parents and state, and this guy just… tweeted it out

After battling an ACL tear and testicular cancer, Nikola Topić — the 12th pick in the 2024 NBA Draft — finally made his debut tonight.

Thunder fans gave him an ovation as he checked into the game 🙌

🎥 AndrewKSchlecht/X

"Deux morts, des milliers de personnes arrêtées, deux villes ébranlées et Donald Trump défait. Ainsi s’achève l’opération anti-immigration « Metro surge », conduite par l’Etat fédéral dans les « twin cities », les villes jumelles de Minneapolis et Saint Paul, depuis début décembre. Tom Homan, le « tsar des frontières » de la Maison Blanche, a annoncé jeudi 12 février le retrait prochain des troupes de l’ICE (Immigration and customs enforcement, la police de l’immigration) et de la CBP (Customs and border protection, l’équivalent des douanes)."

How Trump's withdrawal from Minneapolis is being covered abroad.

In Le Monde, the lead French daily, the homepage article starts with:

"Two people dead, thousands arrested, two cities shaken, and Donald Trump defeated."

www.lemonde.fr/internationa...

Not announcing a graduated scale for multiple offenders at the same time is weak sauce.

Which player was it that asked what the fine would be for skipping required media for every game or something like that and stroked a check to cover the whole season?

BREAKING: Ole Miss QB Trinidad Chambliss gets another year of eligibility, after an injunction ruling by a state court in Mississippi.

Comes after the NCAA denied a waiver three times. Judge said the NCAA acted in bad faith in denying a 2022 tonsil issue with 2025 documentation.

BREAKING: The Trump administraiton has committed a mass violation of ICE detainees' constitutional rights in MN, effectively blocking their acess to attorneys in the Whipple building, a judge ruled tonight.

The judge: Trump appointeee Nancy Brasel

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

As we dig into this scandal, can we revisit the question about why the president's son-in-law, who has no formal role in this administration, keeps showing up at high-level negotiations with actual world leaders?

Lane Kiffin - roasted

For those who don't know, this is a finding from 2009 by the EPA which stated greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are heating the Earth and that warming threatens public health and welfare

Walz: "We've got children that a core memory for them will be their classmate being taken away. That will stick with them the rest of their lives. My hope is what sticks with them is human decency wins out, rule of law matters ... "