The morning after President Donald Trump declared a “war on fraud” during his State of the Union address, senior Justice Department prosecutor Colin McDonald told the Senate Judiciary Committee and said he would steadfastly follow the department’s tradition to focus only on the evidence. “You are now placed in a highly politicized division,” one of the Democratic senators on the committee, Mazie Hirono, warned. “We already know that the president considers the Department of Justice to be his law firm, Pam Bondi to be his lawyer. The Justice Department already has multiple offices that investigate criminal and civil fraud cases, leading some lawmakers and legal experts to question whether creating the new division is necessary. Vance, who Trump said in his speech would lead the “war on fraud,” said Wednesday that the effort would be a “whole government approach” that included other federal departments, including the Treasury Department.

The above YouTube video from CNN via Scripps News shows FBI Director Kashyap Patel partying and guzzling beer in the locker room at the Olympics with the U.S. Hockey team, which had just won a gold medal. Patel used an FBI jet to get to Milan and claimed he was on a business trip. Members of the House Judiciary Committee have said Patel has misused the FBI Gulfstream G550 jet for other personal trips, including to travel to Scotland for a golf vacation, fly to Pennsylvania to watch his girlfriend sing at a wrestling match, to fly to a hunting ranch in Texas and to visit his elderly parents in Florida. Dick Durbin, Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, says (pdf) Patel’s misuse of FBI jets is interfering with the FBI’s ability to respond to high-profile crimes, like the shooting at Brown University. Durbin has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate Patel’s misuse of FBI resources for personal reasons.

She made the statement in response to a question about the presence of ICE at the polls as an intimidating factor, per Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Adrien Fontes. Advertisement“She came out with a very strong statement and she acknowledged, flat out, that anybody saying that ICE would be at the polling places was spreading disinformation,” Fontes told HuffPost. “You’re damn right we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” former Trump advisor Steve Bannon said on his podcast on Feb. 4. “She’s the absolute wrong messenger to guarantee to us that ICE is not going to be at polling places,” Fontes said. “I was encouraged by the pledge that ICE agents would not be in and around polling places,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, told HuffPost.

And for all of these reasons, I say tonight, members of Congress, the state of our Union is strong. The women’s team, which also won an overtime thriller against Canada, declined the invitation to the State of the Union. Trump had already delivered a longer speech in 2025, but that was not technically a State of the Union address. Trump has a flair for placing these touching moments in his State of the Union speeches. We wired the globe with our ingenuity, we captivated the planet with American culture, and now we are pioneering the next great American breakthroughs that will change the entire world.

LOADING ERROR LOADINGFormer Harvard President Larry Summers will resign from his teaching appointments at the end of the academic year over the fallout from his ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Summers, who was the former U.S. treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, will also relinquish his university professorship, Harvard’s highest distinction. Summers has faced intense scrutiny since revelations in November showed him in contact with Epstein over the course of years. “DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”Rosie Couture, a Harvard student and organizer with the activist group Feminist Generation, had previously called for Summers’ resignation last year. “Harvard students showed the nation that survivors and feminists have the power to win justice,” she added.

A woman signs a banner in honor of Nancy Guthrie, US television journalist Savannah Guthrie's abducted elderly mother on February 12, 2026. - Rebecca Noble/ReutersAs the search for Nancy Guthrie stretches into its fourth, desperate week, her family has offered up to a million dollars for information leading to her return. She may already be gone,” Guthrie said in her video Tuesday announcing the reward. An appeal to the inner circleIn the weeks since Guthrie’s disappearance, thousands of tips have poured into the investigation’s hotline. Then, the Guthrie family offered their million-dollar reward.

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Estimated read time: 1-2 minutesBOSTON — Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign ​from teaching at Harvard University at the end of the academic year, the New York ‌Times reported on Wednesday, amid the continuing fallout from his ties ⁠to the late convicted ​sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers ⁠has been under fire since the U.S. House ‌Oversight Committee released ‌documents detailing an ongoing personal correspondence between Summers ⁠and Epstein. No evidence ⁠of wrongdoing by Summers has surfaced. Summers, also a former president of Harvard University, has been on leave from the university since November and will not return to teaching, the New York ‌Times reported, citing a spokesperson for ​Harvard. Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters on Wednesday.

LOADING ERROR LOADINGSeveral Republican lawmakers at the State of the Union address were caught on camera trying to physically remove Democratic Rep. Al Green’s protest sign from his hands. Advertisement“Black people aren’t apes!” Green’s sign read. When Green held up the sign as Trump entered the chamber, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) “Otherwise, you don’t believe in free speech.”AdvertisementExperts say it reveals a lot that GOP lawmakers thought it was appropriate to grab Green’s sign. Winter emphasized that anyone “grounded in basic morality” would know that there’s “nothing remotely objectionable” about what Green’s sign said.

The Cuban government said it exchanged gunfire with a Florida-based speedboat that had entered its territorial waters Wednesday, killing at least four people and wounding six others. Other WRAL Top StoriesCuban border-guard troops on a government boat approached the speedboat seeking identification when the people aboard the boat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, wounding the Cuban vessel’s commander, the statement said. “As a result of the confrontation, at the time of this report, four foreign attackers were killed and six were wounded,” the government said. The government’s statement included what it said was the boat’s Florida registration number. The Cuban government is in the throes of a critical energy crisis, largely because of Trump administration moves to block foreign oil shipments.

Given his position as FBI director, Patel is required to travel via private jet for security and communications reasons. But as videos of the men's team celebrating their victory began appearing online, many people noticed they featured an unexpected guest — FBI Director Kash Patel. Advertisement AdvertisementAdvertisement AdvertisementMS NOW estimated Patel's Milan trip cost "as much as $75,000," under the assumption that the jet cost taxpayers about $5,000 per flight hour to operate. "Shot/Chaser: Kash Patel Criticizes Government Funded Trips Then Charges Taxpayers ~$100,000 For Private Jet to Milan." FBI Director Kash Patel Takes Agency Jet to Italy, Plans to Attend Olympic Hockey Games, Sources Say - CBS News.

President Donald Trump applauds as U.S. veteran Captain E. Royce Williams receives the Medal of Honor during the State of the Union address. At the State of the Union speech, a venue that in recent years has been understood as preaching to the converted, Trump leaned into the friendly audience. Chip Somodevilla via Getty ImagesThis version of Trumpian rhetoric is coming out at a time when Trump is struggling. This was also one of just three legislative proposals that Trump put forward to Congress in his State of the Union. But it’s an open question whether the American people, beyond those who already support Trump, are going to buy any of this.

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It was the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club’s potluck party for President Trump’s State of the Union address, but there was a problem:Not many Hispanics showed up. The Hispanic Republican Club opened chapters in Ventura and Orange counties. His father came to the United States from Mexico illegally then became a pioneering Mexican restaurateur in Los Angeles. Obama deported more people.”Various political flyers for various republican candidates sit on a table at the offices of L.A. Hispanic Republican Club on Tuesday in Woodland Hills. When I and a Times photographer thanked the group and left, the number of Latinos at the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club State of the Union potluck, already small, dropped by a quarter.

Fortunately we are still blessed with Daniel Dale, the phenom lie detector who CNN still retains to fact check Trump. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”Source: PBS (includes a link to video of this moment)POTUS’ first job — and only job — is not playacting at protecting American citizens. The GOP caucus went along with the spectacle, providing Trump’s narcissistic supply with their standing to applaud his bullshit statement. The heightened partisan schism Trump intended to portray was intended to create headlines to prop up Trump and his party of minions. Unsurprisingly it is Fox News, Fox affiliates, and other Murdoch-owned outlets which either pushed Trump’s spectacle or focused on Trump’s policies still popular with MAGA voters.