Erin O’Brien

This week's cover @thelancet.com

NEW: Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has formally requested Trump Administration refund $13.5 billion to New Yorkers from Trump's rejected tariffs

Trump’s ICE Is Quietly Stockpiling Weaponry—and It Should Alarm Us All In addition to staffing up at a furious rate, ICE and CPB are acquiring a vast cache of weapons from private contractors, new data reveals. This will not end well—or anytime soon.

Appalling: ICE and CBP contracted for $144 million in weaponry and accessories in Trump's first year, per data obtained by Sen Adam Schiff.

For ICE it's a fourfold increase, much of it for military-style weapons. A heavily armed secret police force. 1/

(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/2069...

Sure paying taxes sucks, but at least we got to pay for another bucket list trip for Kash this week.

Trump plans to send $10 billion in funds that Congress hasn’t appropriated from the US Treasury to an organization that he will continue to chair personally even after he is out of office.

This is looting.

Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they're leaning on this Dept. of War program WEXMAC TITUS helps contractors bypass the traditionally lengthy government contract bidding process

NEW — An obscure Navy contractor program is making Trump’s plans to quickly build out and supply immigrant concentration camps around the country a reality.

Here I explain WEXMAC TITUS, an acronym you need to understand:

The drunk uncle theory.

You don’t argue with the casually homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner to change his mind; you argue so that the closeted cousin at the kids table knows there’s safe people and better possibilities out there

My theory of the moment: The extraordinary courage of ordinary people in places like Minneapolis is reawakening us to our social and economic ties to immigrants. It's making "love thy neighbor" cool again. That's the ultimate antidote to MAGA hate.

Thoughts on this:

newrepublic.com/article/2059...

The WHITE HOUSE The White House * @WhiteHouse Send to your Valentine X.com MAGA LOVE DADDY'S HOME 12:38 PM • 2/14/26 • 106K Views

“Aides said [Trump] talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that prompted Chief of Staff John Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter.” —Miles Taylor, who worked for the first Trump Administration.

The commander in chief telling troops who they have to vote for is itself a presidency ending impeachable scandal.

Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social

Which line of the poem is you?

By the power invested in me, I hearby proclaim this woman, "White Woman of Next Month!"

(sorry, you cant have February.)

Not all heroes wear blue jeans

Woman sought after setting fire to Kansas City, MO, warehouse once considered for use as ICE detention center The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is looking for a woman who allegedly set fire to a south KCMO warehouse that had been considered for use as an ICE detention center.

solutions-oriented thinking

www.kshb.com/news/crime/w...

You don't say 🤔

It will very much be worth your time to read this.

AOC on DHS Warehouses: I think every American should be alarmed. They are building—and have built—a black box system that disappears people, both immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.

Good morning. The President of the United States was in the middle of the most serious child sex trafficking ring of the last quarter century.

He is referenced not a dozen times in the case files. Not 100 times. Not 1,000 times. He’s referenced 38,000 times.

"Ubreu had been detained after federal agents rammed into his car and broke his car window...he had been delivering groceries for mutual aid work through his church when he was detained. She said he’s a legal immigrant."

AND they won't give him meds that he'd likely die without. Heinous & cruel.

Every American needs to watch this:

Trump’s New “Prison Camp” Threat Unleashes Fury Even in MAGA Country The next phase of ICE’s big ramp-up: a nationwide network of vast detention facilities. But guess what? Even parts of Red America are saying no.

Remarkable: Trump's planned migrant prison camps are hitting deep resistance in red areas. In Virginia's partly rural Hanover (+26 Trump) opposition is intense. GOP leaders in other states are opposed.

Voters are rejecting mass deportations big time. 1/

(new piece)
newrepublic.com/article/2060...

To be fair, World's Economy Held Hostage by Child Sex Trafficking Ring is much less important than Plan to Save Elephants Turns Deadly.

Huh. This entire administration is an Epstein Island afterparty.

The very well-accepted term for "stripping the legal protections of a minority group and then sending a paramilitary force to carry them away" is "ethnic cleansing."

They are planning to ethnically cleanse Springfield, Ohio.

The constitutional prohibition on using federal law to abridge the freedom of the press is unusually explicit and really does mean what it says.

Free Ebooks: Abolish ICE, Abolish the Border In solidarity with all those standing up for our communities against the brutality of immigrant detention and ICE occupation, we're offering free ebooks of three crucial books about migrant justice an...

In solidarity with all those standing up for our communities against the brutality of immigrant detention and ICE occupation, we're offering free ebooks of three crucial books about migrant justice and border abolition.

If it is fascism now it was fascism then but if you were wrong no need to pause to make a special effort to admit your error -- we don't have that much time now, please act right away, get organized, and then tell your followers what you are doing to stop fascism and what they too can do.

The majority of organizing happening in Minnesota isn’t just peaceful, it’s INVISIBLE. Moms showing up who won’t be interviewed on TV, people whose ICE patrols don’t turn into viral video. The grocery runs, the donations, the people filming bc they happen to be there. Please remember this.

I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc...

Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.