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The Pentagon Just Sent a Terrifying Message to AI Companies
New Republic • Feb 16, 2026

The Pentagon Just Sent a Terrifying Message to AI Companies

Donald Trump’s so-called Department of War is threatening to cut ties with Anthropic because it won’t help the Pentagon conduct mass surveillance on Americans or make fully autonomous weapons that the administration can use however it likes.A senior Trump administration official told Axios Monday that the Pentagon was fed up after Anthropic refused unfettered use of its AI systems. “Everything’s on the table,” including cutting ties altogether, the official said.An “orderly replacement” would have to be found, if they ended the relationship, the official added.Last summer, Anthropic signed a contract with the Pentagon valued up to $200 million—but the company set hard boundaries against its systems being used to develop weapons, conduct surveillance, or facilitate violence. For months, the Pentagon has sought to negotiate with Anthropic to let the military use its tools for “all lawful purposes,” including weapons development and intelligence gathering, without being forced to argue individual use cases.In January, tensions came to a head after an executive at Anthropic reportedly reached out to an executive at Palantir to ask whether it had used the company’s Claude AI assistant as part of the U.S. military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. (Spoiler alert: It did.)“It was raised in such a way to imply that they might disapprove of their software being used, because obviously there was kinetic fire during that raid, people were shot,” the senior official told Axios.A spokesperson for Anthropic denied that such a conversation had taken place in a statement to Axios, saying the company had “not discussed the use of Claude for specific operations with the Department of War. We have also not discussed this with any industry partners, outside of routine discussions on strictly technical matters.”“Anthropic’s conversations with the DoW to date have focused on a specific set of Usage Policy questions—namely, our hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance—none of which relate to current operations,” the spokesperson added.Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell suggested to The Wall Street Journal that the Department of War’s relationship with Anthropic was under review. “Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight,” Parnell said.Meanwhile, Anthropic appears to only be wading further into politics. Last week, the company announced that it would pledge $20 million toward Public First, a super PAC that will oppose groups funded by the company’s rival OpenAI.

IHIP News: Hakeem Jeffries FACEPLANTS When GRILLED On ICE and AIPAC! New Leadership Now!
16:02
I've Had It Podcast • Feb 16, 2026

IHIP News: Hakeem Jeffries FACEPLANTS When GRILLED On ICE and AIPAC! New Leadership Now!

George W. Bush Torches Trump in Presidents’ Day Message
New Republic • Feb 16, 2026

George W. Bush Torches Trump in Presidents’ Day Message

Former President George W. Bush won’t defy the “code of silence” that prevents ex-U.S. leaders from publicly chastising their successors, but he’s apparently not opposed to throwing shade.In a Presidents’ Day essay published Monday by the pro-democracy institution More Perfect, Bush’s adoring gaze toward the qualities of America’s first president only served to underscore just how unpresidential the current administration has become.Bush waxed poetic on several of George Washington’s qualities, but paid particular attention to ones that are currently in short supply. Those included “humility,” a deep appreciation for history, a reverence for knowledge superior to his own, and an unwillingness to retain power “for power’s sake.”“Our first president could have remained all-powerful, but twice he chose not to,” Bush wrote. “In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents to live up to.”Bush also dissected Washington’s commitment to a code of conduct that was considered, at the time, to be the “gentlemanly arts.” Washington, according to Bush’s research, “schooled himself” by copying “the 110 maxims from Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” a text authored by French Jesuits in the late sixteenth century.“Many of the qualities that came to be associated with Washington’s leadership, from self-control and courteousness to modesty and diplomacy, can be traced to that short book on manners,” Bush wrote.Washington’s repeated decisions to step down from power were critical lessons for the nation, according to Bush, who argued that Washington’s decision to step down as commander of the U.S. Army after the Revolution, and his later decision to end his presidency after two terms,  “ensured America wouldn’t become a monarchy, or worse.”The message carried particular weight considering that Donald Trump has continually contested election results in fruitless grasps at power, including an attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and threats to run for president a third time, against the constraints of the law.But Washington’s performance—and his commitment to building a lasting governmental foundation—was paramount not just to his success but to the future of the Oval Office and the country, according to the forty-third president.“Our first leader helped define not only the character of the presidency but the character of the country,” Bush wrote. “Washington modeled what it means to put the good of the nation over self-interest and selfish ambition. He embodied integrity and modeled why it’s worth aspiring to. And he carried himself with dignity and self-restraint, honoring the office without allowing it to become invested with near-mythical powers.”

Kansas Mayor Who Voted for Trump as Noncitizen Faces Felony Charges
New Republic • Feb 16, 2026

Kansas Mayor Who Voted for Trump as Noncitizen Faces Felony Charges

A small-town Kansas mayor is in trouble for voting illegally as a noncitizen—but he has the support of his town.Joe Ceballos was recently reelected mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, by a comfortable 101-20 margin. But just hours before the results came in, Ceballos, a legal permanent U.S. resident, was charged in state court with three counts of election perjury and three counts of voting without being qualified.The Trump administration gleefully highlighted the case as it reinforced right-wing claims of widespread voter fraud. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin included Ceballos’s picture and a copy of his signature on a voter registration form on a press release, saying, “This alien committed a felony by voting in American elections.” But the town of Coldwater, almost entirely Republican, is rallying around their mayor, who voted for Donald Trump in the last three elections and has lived in the town since he was a teenager. Ceballos, 55, came to the United States at the age of 4 from Mexico, moving around a lot with his family before settling in Coldwater, close to Kansas’s border with Oklahoma. He received his green card in 1990.Ceballos told The New York Times that he has never been back to Mexico since he left. While he used to help police as a Spanish interpreter, he doesn’t speak the language very well these days. According to the Times, by all appearances he is a Kansan—he drives a Ram truck, has a slight Southern Plains accent, and wears cowboy boots.“I still strongly believe in Trump’s immigration laws about, ‘Let’s get the bad guys out of here.’ You know, they’re murderers, they killed people, they molested people, let’s get them out of here,” Ceballos said to the publication. “But I feel like I don’t fit that category. And I feel like that’s how they’re treating me.”Ceballos has a misdemeanor battery conviction from 1994 for a fight involving multiple people, which he said was related to his first marriage. He doesn’t seem to have had any brushes with the law since then. After he was charged with voting illegally, he resigned. But the people of Coldwater have come to his defense, with ads being placed in the local newspaper to support Ceballos at his court hearing, which was so well attended that it was standing-room only.Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has railed against voter fraud for more than a decade, is trying to make an example out of Ceballos. At a news conference announcing the charges against Ceballos, he said, “Noncitizen voting is a real problem. It is not something that happens once in a decade. It is something that happens fairly frequently.”In reality, noncitizen voting occurs very rarely in the U.S., with very few cases. Ceballos freely admits that he voted illegally, but he said he didn’t know that he couldn’t vote as a permanent resident and that he had never been told that he couldn’t. Last year, he applied to become a citizen, and he answered “yes” to a federal official in an interview who asked if he had ever voted. That, Ceballos says, is when everything went downhill.Now Ceballos fears he will be found guilty and deported to Mexico, away from his family, or picked up by ICE before he even returns to court. Will the president he voted for take an interest, or use him as a poster child for voter fraud and justify his deportation?

Epstein PLOTTED With Trump About Victim LONG AFTER Two “Cut Ties”?
12:48
Status Coup • Feb 16, 2026

Epstein PLOTTED With Trump About Victim LONG AFTER Two “Cut Ties”?

Obama: 'ALIENS ARE REAL'
7:34
Breaking Points • Feb 16, 2026

Obama: 'ALIENS ARE REAL'

Judge Quotes George Orwell’s 1984 in Order to Restore Slavery Exhibits
New Republic • Feb 16, 2026

Judge Quotes George Orwell’s 1984 in Order to Restore Slavery Exhibits

A judge ordered Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Monday to restore a slavery-related exhibit at the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Burgum ordered the National Park Service last month to remove the Philadelphia exhibit at the former residence of President George Washington, which still contains remains of the quarters in which he held enslaved Black people. Now, Judge Cynthia Rufe has ordered Bergum to put the exhibit back up, after a lawsuit from the city of Philadelphia. Rufe began her ruling with a quote from George Orwell’s 1984: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”She then turned her attention to the matter of enslaved Africans at the President’s House.“At the turn of this century, historians identified the location of the first official residence of the President of the United States, where Presidents Washington and Adams lived during their terms,” she wrote in her order. “This historical research also identified information about nine enslaved Africans whom President Washington owned, brought to the official presidential residence, and rotated in and out of Pennsylvania, a practice which prevented enslaved individuals from petitioning for their freedom under Pennsylvania law.” “It is not disputed that President Washington owned slaves,” Rufe continued. “And yet, in its argument, the government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control. Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother’s domain in Orwell’s 1984.”This is one of the first blows to President Trump’s culture war on national parks. His “ Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order was an ahistorical attack on virtually any mention of Black, LGBTQ, or women’s history. Burgum has yet to respond. This story has been updated.

Anthropic CEO: Claude Might Be CONSCIOUS. Pentagon Already Using for WAR
15:20
Breaking Points • Feb 16, 2026

Anthropic CEO: Claude Might Be CONSCIOUS. Pentagon Already Using for WAR

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