By Christine Coleman
Edited by Elissa D. Hecker
Entertainment
Hollywood Braces for New Round of Labor Talks
The contracts that ended the actors’ and writers’ strikes in 2023 are nearing their expiration dates. Negotiations begin today between SAG-AFTRA and the leaders of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for a new deal, while negotiations between the Writers’ Guild of America and the studios and directors’ alliance will occur later this spring.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/business/media/hollywood-actors-writers-contract-talks.html
Adding “hot takes” to unlicensed music is not fair use, judge confirms in rockumentary copyright case
A U.S. judge has ruled that British filmmaker Robert Carruthers infringed copyrights in music owned by Universal Music and ABKCO Music by making supposed documentaries that were really just greatest hits videos of the featured artists. Carruthers argued that his use of the music fell under fair use, but the music companies argued that fair use did not apply. In her ruling describing why Carruthers’ use of the music was not fair use, Judge Katherine Failla said that while the documentaries did include people commenting on the featured artists and their music, those comments were mere “hot takes”, rather than expert analysis.
https://completemusicupdate.com/adding-hot-takes-to-unlicensed-music-is-not-fair-use-judge-confirms-in-rockumentary-copyright-case/
Chappell Roan Leaves Wasserman Agency After Founder Appears in Epstein Files
Grammy-winning artist Chappell Roan announced that she left Wasserman talent agency, led and founded by Casey Wasserman, who exchanged flirtatious emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion, as the repercussions of the Epstein files seep into the realms of sports and culture.
http://nytimes.com/2026/02/10/arts/music/chappell-roan-casey-wasserman-epstein-agency.html
Britney Spears Sells Her Song Catalog
Britney Spears, the queen of millennial-era bubble-gum pop, sold her music catalog to Primary Wave, a New York-based music and marketing company that specializes in catalog deals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/arts/music/britney-spears-catalog-deal.html
Arts
Can Artists Help Shape American Cities Again?
Artists have played a vital role in defining the American city, only to be forced out when rents rise. A novel approach in San Francisco seeks to break the cycle by having several older artists donate the houses they bought decades ago to community land trusts, legal entities that can break the cycle of displacement by ensuring that properties are handed down from one artist to another at affordable prices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/arts/design/san-francisco-artist-city.html
Texas University Closes Exhibition With Anti-ICE Artwork
An art exhibition by artist Victor Quiñonez criticizing I.C.E. was abruptly shuttered by the University of North Texas. Quiñonez, who was born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and raised in East Dallas, packed political messages into everyday scenes of his childhood in the exhibition, titled “Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá” (“Not From Here, Not From There”).
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/arts/design/university-north-texas-victor-quinonez-ice.html
Sports
Sports stars, ‘sacred spaces,’ and an increasingly bitter battle for privacy
The notion of ‘warts-and-all’ footage of athletes being packaged and presented for worldwide consumption is hardly a new one. However, the ‘warts and all’ trend at the moment may be going too far. Now the question about who gets to decide on the limits of access to footage of athletes is being debated.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7032924/2026/02/11/coco-gauff-tennis-privacy-cameras/
How Hate Groups and Terrorists Use Gaming Platforms to Recruit Young Children
Researchers have found that hate groups and terrorist organizations are exploiting games like Minecraft and Roblox, and other popular online platforms, to recruit a new generation of extremists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/world/europe/online-extremism-gaming-children.html
Milan-Cortina Olympics: Who Leads the Medal Count?
There are two different ways to keep track of the number of Olympic medals per country; either by the number of gold medals or the total amount of medals overall, including silver and bronze. As of Sunday, Norway has both the most gold medals with 12 and the most medals overall with 26.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/02/09/upshot/olympics-medal-table-milan-cortina.html
Italian Reporters to Strike After TV Anchor Mangles Celebrity IDs
Paolo Petrecca, the director of Italy’s state broadcaster Rai’s sports division, made numerous gaffes while giving a running commentary on the Olympic Games’ opening ceremonies in Milan, spurring howls of outrage in Italian media for days. Adding to the outcry, the members of Rai’s union of sports journalists are now protesting Petrecca’s mistakes by withholding their bylines from Olympic coverage, after announcing that they would strike for three days immediately after the Games end on February 22.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/europe/olympics-italy-rai-broadcaster-gaffe-strike.html
Mexico’s mother-son Alpine skiing duo set to make Winter Olympics history
At the Milan Cortina Games, American alpine Sarah Schleper and her 18-year-old son, Lasse Gaxiola, will both race for Mexico. Together, they will be the first mother-and-son duo to compete at the same Winter Olympics.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7036370/2026/02/10/olympics-mexico-mother-son-skiing-duo/
Olympic store sells out of controversial T-shirt promoting Adolf Hitler’s 1936 Games
The Olympics’ official online store has sold out of the t-shirt in its Olympic Heritage Collection that features artwork from the 1936 Berlin Games, which were used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to promote their antisemitic and racist regime. The availability of the T-shirt has attracted widespread criticism, with politicians in Germany and Jewish groups around the world urging the International Olympic Committee to remove it from sale.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7045212/2026/02/13/olympic-games-t-shirt-controversy-sell-out/
Technology/Media
YouTube Argues It Isn’t Social Media in Landmark Tech Addiction Trial
YouTube argued that it was neither social media nor addictive on the second day of opening statements in a landmark social media addiction trial. YouTube’s lawyers said that it is an entertainment platform more like Netflix than a social network like Facebook. In the case, a 20-year-old California woman has accused YouTube and Meta’s Instagram of creating addictive apps that harmed mental health. The trial is the first in a series against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube, testing whether social media use can lead to addiction comparable to slot machines at casinos and cigarettes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/technology/youtube-social-media-addiction-trial.html
Instagram Chief Says Social Media Is Not ‘Clinically Addictive’ in Landmark Trial
Instagram’s chief executive, Adam Mosseri, said that social media was not “clinically addictive,” disputing claims that the platform prioritized making money over the mental health of young users in a landmark tech addiction case. Mosseri was the first executive to testify in the bellwether case against Meta and YouTube. The case is part of a flood of lawsuits filed by teenagers, schools, and state attorneys general that claim social media use can lead to addiction comparable to slot machines at casinos and cigarettes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/technology/adam-mosseri-instagram-addiction-trial.html
Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts
The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose I.C.E. by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html
More Than Ever, Videos Expose the Truth. And Cloud It, Too.
Society is now having a paradoxical movement where video evidence can undermine false statements, trying to be spread by the Trump administration, but the increasing development of hyper-realistic AI videos shows how it will become more difficult to determine what is real and what is not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/politics/minneapolis-videos-killings-artificial-intelligence.html
Ring Ends Deal to Link Neighborhood Cameras After Super Bowl Ad Backlash
The Amazon-owned Ring home security company announced that it would no longer work with Flock Safety, a company that deploys camera systems and license-plate readers for use by law enforcement. The announcement comes after Ring aired a Super Bowl commercial featuring the tale of a lost dog being reunited with his family through information harvested from a web of doorbell cameras, leading to intense backlash regarding privacy concerns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/business/amazon-ring-flock-partnership-super-bowl.html
Spotify eyes AI ‘derivatives’ as new revenue stream for artists – says its tech to let fans make remixes and covers is ready
Spotify Co-CEO Gustav Söderström commented on the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call that Spotify wants to enable listeners to interact with their favorite artists’ music through AI, and that the technology to do so is already built. The barrier? Licensing. The comments land amid an intensifying industry debate over how AI-powered derivatives of existing music should be licensed and monetized, and where fans should be allowed to create them.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-eyes-ai-derivatives-as-new-revenue-stream-for-artists-and-says-its-tech-to-let-fans-make-remixes-covers-is-ready/
Bar Punts on Ethics Complaint Over Application to Search Reporter’s Home
The Virginia State Bar has told a press freedom organization, Freedom of the Press Foundation, that it is up to a judge to decide whether a federal prosecutor mishandled an application for a warrant last month to search the home of a Washington Post reporter as part of a leak investigation. The group had filed a disciplinary complaint with the bar against the prosecutor, Gordon D. Kromberg, citing his failure to alert the magistrate judge, who approved the search warrant, about the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which limits searches for journalistic work product. However, in an unsigned letter, the state bar said the judge, William B. Porter of the Eastern District of Virginia, had to evaluate the omission.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/us/politics/virginia-bar-ethics-prosecutor-reporter.html
Anthropic Puts $20 Million Into a Super PAC Operation to Counter OpenAI
Anthropic, the safety-focused A.I. company formed by former OpenAI executives, said that it was putting $20 million into a new super PAC operation that will be in opposition to super PACs backed by OpenAI’s leaders and investors. The donation effectively kicks off a new conflict between the rivals, with this year’s midterm elections as the battleground. At the heart of the disagreement between the companies is whether to regulate the artificial intelligence industry with more safety guardrails around the powerful technology.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/technology/anthropic-super-pac-openai.html
Don Lemon Pleads Not Guilty in Minnesota Church Protest Case and Hires Federal Prosecutor Who Quit Over Immigration Crackdown
Veteran broadcast journalist Don Lemon entered a not guilty plea in federal court in St. Paul, Minnesota, two weeks after he was charged with two crimes for attending a protest against immigration agents at a Minnesota church. Lemon has said he was reporting on the protest at Cities Church in St. Paul on January 18. He hired Joseph H. Thompson as one of his defense lawyers, a former senior federal prosecutor who, until just weeks ago, was helping lead the prosecutor’s office that has charged Lemon with felonies. Thompson resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota in mid-January over the Justice Department’s handling of the immigration operation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/us/joseph-thompson-don-lemon-minneapolis-protest.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/don-lemon-plea-minnesota-church-protest-case.html
Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses
Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its smart glasses as soon as this year. The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would let wearers of smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant. According to an internal memo, Meta stated that the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html
Russia Further Restricts Telegram, Escalating Internet Clampdown
Russia tightened its throttling of the communication app Telegram, escalating a crackdown on what remains of the free Russian internet amid President Vladimir V. Putin’s war against Ukraine. New disruptions to the app’s service in multiple regions of the country rattled many of the more than 100 million Russians who turn to Telegram each month as a source of news, commentary, and entertainment, as well as use it as a tool for making calls and sending messages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/world/europe/telegram-throttled-internet-russia.html
General News
Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change
President Trump announced that he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane, and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather. This sets up a legal battle that is all but certain to hinge on the Supreme Court, which is far more conservative today than it was when the measure was established.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/trump-epa-greenhouse-gases-climate-change.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/climate/endangerment-finding-legal-court-lawsuits.html
Climate Change Is Erased From a Manual for Federal Judges
In a new attack on the science of climate change, a federal agency has stripped a chapter on global warming from a manual written to help judges understand important scientific questions they may face in their courtrooms. The chapter was deleted after a group of Republican state attorneys general complained about it to the Federal Judicial Center, a government agency that provides resources to judges.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/climate/judge-manual-climate-change-chapter.html
A homeland security shutdown draws nearer as Democrats block funding
Members of Congress departed Washington without funding the Department of Homeland Security, putting it on a near-certain path to a shutdown amid a deep partisan divide over Democrats’ demands to place new restrictions on federal immigration agents. Senate Democrats blocked a spending bill that would have funded the department past a Friday night shutdown deadline without adding any new curbs on immigration enforcement, an expected outcome after bipartisan talks on limiting Trump’s crackdown deadlocked.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/12/us/trump-news#section-156291943
Trump Administration to Cut $600 Million in Health Funding From Four States
The Trump administration plans to rescind $600 million in public health funds from four states led by Democrats because it finds the grants “inconsistent with agency priorities.” The programs slated to be cut are in California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota. They include grants to state and local public health departments as well as to some nongovernmental organizations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/health/trump-public-health-cuts-california.html
Judge Temporarily Blocks Hegseth from Punishing Kelly for Video
Judge Richard J. Leon of the District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from punishing Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, for participating in a video that warned active-duty service members not to follow illegal orders. The ruling barred Hegseth and the Pentagon from taking any steps to reduce the senator’s retirement rank and pay, or using the findings against Kelly in a criminal proceeding.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/12/us/trump-news#judge-blocks-kelly-punishment-hegseth
Grand Jury Rebuffs Justice Dept. Attempt to Indict 6 Democrats in Congress
Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video in the fall that enraged Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders. It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington authorized prosecutors to go before a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies. Yet it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury forcefully rejected Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/us/politics/trump-democrats-illegal-orders-pirro.html
Judge Says U.S. Must Help Return Venezuelans Detained in El Salvador
A federal judge in Washington ordered the Trump administration to help bring back any of the nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants who want to return to the United States from the international limbo they have been living in since March, when officials deported them to El Salvador. The ruling by Judge James E. Boasberg was one of the most robust steps taken so far to force the administration to give due process to the Venezuelan immigrants deported under the authority of an 18th century wartime law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/us/politics/venezuela-immigrants-el-salvador-return-ruling.html
Gail Slater Leaves Role as Justice Dept.’s Antitrust Chief
Gail Slater said that she was leaving the top antitrust post at the Justice Department, ending a short tenure for the veteran tech and media lawyer who had faced tensions over her handling of corporate mergers. Slater, who was the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, said in a social media post that she was leaving her role with “great sadness and abiding hope.” She was in the job for roughly a year after her confirmation in March.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/technology/gail-slater-antittrust-justice-department.html
U.S. Attorney Chosen to Replace Trump Pick Is Quickly Fired by White House
Donald T. Kinsella was appointed as U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York in a private ceremony. Yet just hours later, Kinsella said, he received an email from a White House official telling him that he was being removed from the post. The Trump administration had previously suggested it would fire any prosecutor chosen by district judges. It is unclear whether the Northern District judges will have any recourse.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/nyregion/donald-kinsella-ndny-sarcone-trump.html
Michigan Judge Rebukes Justice Department’s Effort to Obtain Voter Data
Judge Hala Y. Jarbou, a Trump-appointed federal judge, ruled that the state government of Michigan was within its rights to refuse a request from the Trump administration to hand over personal information from state voter rolls. The ruling is the third in recent weeks to reject the administration’s demand for voters’ personal data from nearly every state.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/us/politics/michigan-judge-voter-data.html
Immigration Officials Defend Crackdown and Deflect Questions on Citizens’ Deaths
Top immigration officials defended the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign during a congressional hearing, and they repeatedly declined to answer questions about the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Pressed by Democrats at the hearing to apologize to the families of the two Americans killed in Minneapolis by federal agents, Todd Lyons, the acting director of I.C.E., said he welcomed the opportunity to speak with their families in private. However, he said he would not apologize or comment on the shootings.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/10/us/trump-news
F.D.A. Refuses to Review Moderna Flu Vaccine
The vaccine maker Moderna said that the F.D.A. had notified the company that the agency would not review its mRNA flu vaccine, the latest sign of federal health policy that has become hostile to vaccine development. Dr. Vinay Prasad, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, rejected the company’s application for approval over a concern that Moderna’s clinical trial had compared its experimental vaccine against a product the agency did not consider the best on the market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/health/fda-moderna-mrna-flu-vaccine.html
Trump’s Oil Grab in Venezuela Shatters an American Taboo
American presidents have long been accused of plotting to control foreign oil. Yet while the United States has built relationships and even intervened abroad for oil, it has never simply seized control of another country’s oil reserves. However, Trump is now asserting a U.S. right to take it from Venezuela.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/us/politics/trump-oil-venezuela.html
Federal Debt to Hit Record Levels, Budget Office Warns
In its annual benchmark forecast for the federal budget, the Congressional Budget Office said that the amount of debt held by the public is expected to become much larger than the annual output of the economy, reaching 120% of gross domestic product in 2036. That would surpass levels reached in the aftermath of World War II and put the world’s most important economy at risk of a destabilizing debt crisis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/business/federal-debt-record-levels-budget-office.html
NATO Remains Vital to U.S. Security, Ex-Ambassadors and Generals Say
Eight former U.S. ambassadors to NATO and eight former American supreme commanders in Europe issued a joint letter arguing for continuing Washington’s commitment to the NATO alliance, calling the alliance “the cornerstone of United States national security” and “vital” to preserving American global interests. The letter came as a Trump administration official told NATO’s defense ministers that Europe must take primary responsibility for its own security.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/world/europe/nato-us.html
Homeland Security Hires Labor Dept. Aide Whose Posts Raised Alarms
The Department of Homeland Security has hired a social media manager from the Department of Labor for a key communications job, despite posts he made on Labor Department media accounts that raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging. Peyton Rollins was hired this month to help run Homeland Security’s social media accounts, which have become public bullhorns for Trump’s mass-deportation efforts and come under scrutiny of their own for appealing to right-wing extremists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/us/politics/trump-administration-social-media-homeland-security.html
Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren
Longtime allies of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have launched a new effort to repeal laws that for decades have required children to be vaccinated against measles, polio, and other diseases before they enter day care or kindergarten. A newly formed coalition of vaccine activists is targeting laws that are considered the linchpin of protection from deadly diseases. States have long mandated childhood immunizations before children can start day care or school, though some exemptions are available.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/health/rfk-school-vaccine-mandates.html
Bessent Pushes Senate on Fed Confirmation Amid Backlash Over Criminal Inquiry
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged Senate Republicans to move forward with confirmation hearings for Kevin M. Warsh, Trump’s pick to be the next Federal Reserve chair, and suggested that Jerome H. Powell, the current chair, might not face criminal charges related to his handling of the renovations of the central bank’s headquarters. The comments, made on CNBC, underscored the urgency the Trump administration is feeling as it looks to replace Powell, whose term expires this year, with Warsh.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/politics/bessent-powell-warsh-fed-chair-confirmation.html
Gun Part Maker Agrees to Pay $1.75 Million in Buffalo Massacre Lawsuits
MeanArms, the maker of a gun part used in a mass shooting in 2022, agreed to pay $1.75 million to settle lawsuits that said the design of the accessory made it easier for a gunman to kill 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. The settlement, announced by the New York attorney general’s office and lawyers for victims’ families, is one of the biggest in lawsuits against gun manufacturers and part makers, which typically follow mass shootings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/nyregion/buffalo-shooting-gun-settlement.html
Trump Orders the Pentagon to Buy More Coal-Fired Electricity
Trump directed the Pentagon to start buying more electricity from coal-burning power plants as part of his efforts to revive the declining coal industry. The move is a part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to increase America’s use of coal. Trump likes to refer to the fuel as “clean, beautiful coal” to goad environmentalists who point out that coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels and the single biggest driver of global warming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/climate/trump-coal-pentagon-electricity.html
Lawmakers Review Unredacted Epstein Files
A small group of lawmakers reviewed unredacted versions of the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, questioned redactions made by the Justice Department, including what he said was a mention of Trump. Separately, Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Epstein, who is serving a federal sex-trafficking sentence, refused to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee unless Trump grants her clemency.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/09/us/president-trump-news#section-894544897
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/ghislaine-maxwell-pleads-fifth-says-speak-fully-honestly-trump-grants-rcna258227
Bondi clashes with Judiciary Committee members over her handling of the Epstein files
Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to apologize to survivors of the convicted sex offender Epstein, who were seated in the House Judiciary Committee room, and instead demanded that Democrats apologize to Trump. Bondi, imitating Trump’s tactic of going on the attack when facing tough questions, offered few detailed answers, no admissions of fault, but many expressions of fealty and admiration for a president who has exercised direct control over the Justice Department’s actions.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/11/us/trump-news#section-1388830
Former Police Chief Said Trump Told Him ‘Everyone’ Knew of Epstein’s Actions
In a newly released document from the Epstein files, Michael Reiter, a former Palm Beach police chief, described a 2006 conversation with Trump in which Trump reportedly told him that everyone knew what Epstein was doing. The account highlights the shifting explanations Trump has given about what he knew and didn’t know about Epstein and Maxwell.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/us/politics/trump-epstein.html
Lutnick Acknowledges Traveling to Epstein’s Island
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick acknowledged in a Senate hearing that he had traveled to Epstein’s private island and had another encounter with Epstein, years after Lutnick claimed to have cut ties with him. Even before Lutnick gave his testimony, there had been calls for his resignation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/us/politics/howard-lutnick-jeffrey-epstein-island.html
Goldman’s Top Lawyer Departs Amid Revelations About Her Ties to Epstein
Goldman Sachs’s top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of emails and other material that revealed her extensive relationship with Epstein. Ruemmler and representatives for Goldman said for years that she had a strictly professional relationship with Epstein, but emails, text messages, and photographs released late last month upended that narrative, leading to her sudden resignation, which surprised many at the firm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/business/goldman-lawyer-kathryn-ruemmler-resigns.html
The Minnesota surge led to thousands of arrests, tense protests and three shootings
The Trump administration said that it was ending its deployment of immigration agents to Minnesota, unwinding an aggressive operation that has stretched for more than two months despite loud opposition from residents and local officials. For many Minnesotans who had watched the federal government exert its will on their state, the announcement signaled a welcome shift. Still, some expressed skepticism about whether the administration would follow through.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/12/us/trump-news#minnesota-immigration-crackdown
Georgia Ballot Inquiry Originated With Election Denier in Trump White House
An F.B.I. search warrant affidavit unsealed showed that a criminal investigation into the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Georgia, was set off by a leading election denier in the Trump administration and relied heavily on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked. The unsealing of the affidavit is likely to raise more questions about the Trump administration’s use of the F.B.I. and Justice Department to revive old, largely disproved claims about the 2020 election in the state, which Trump narrowly lost.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/us/politics/fulton-county-kurt-olsen-fbi-search-2020-ballots.html
A Raid in a Small Town Brings Trump’s Deportations to Deep-Red Idaho
When federal agents swarmed a racetrack on October 19 in the small town of Wilder, Idaho, they shattered the community’s innocent belief that its out-of-the-way location and deep-red politics could isolate the town from the I.C.E. raids overtaking other parts of the country.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/us/politics/trump-deportation-idaho.html
Republican State Legislators Rush to Limit Their Own Regulators
Legislation in South Carolina and at least 16 other states aim to shift power away from state agencies by subjecting to legislative scrutiny any regulation that would cost at least $1 million to implement. Regulations that do survive scrutiny would automatically expire after a fixed term unless specifically reauthorized.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/politics/states-deregulation.html
Trump administration tells judge it will release Gateway Tunnel funding.
Federal funding for the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel between New York City and New Jersey, which had been suspended for more than four months, began to flow again after lawyers for the Trump administration told a federal judge that it would comply with her orders. The suspension had left the government owing about $205 million to the tunnel’s planners, the Gateway Development Commission, and forced a halt to work on the project last week, as well as the layoff of about 1,000 union workers.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02/13/us/trump-news#gateway-tunnel-funding-ny-nj-trump
Mejia Declares Victory in New Jersey Race After Her Main Rival Concedes
Analilia Mejia, a progressive Democratic organizer, declared victory in a primary to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey in the House, hours after her main opponent, Tom Malinowski, conceded. Malinowski, who was battered by negative advertising, congratulated Mejia for a “hard-won victory” four days after polls closed. Fewer than 900 votes separated the two top candidates.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/nyregion/new-jersey-special-election-winner.html
California Investigates Why Most of the Eaton Fire Victims Were Black
California’s attorney general announced that he would open a rare civil rights investigation into Los Angeles County’s emergency response to the Eaton fire, which killed 19 people last year and decimated West Altadena, a historically Black middle-class neighborhood. The investigation will look into whether emergency responders failed to adequately warn West Altadena residents about the fire.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/us/los-angeles-eaton-fire-california-investigation.html
N.Y.C. Officials Reinstate Pride Flag at Stonewall After Federal Removal
A group of New York elected officials gathered to replace the Pride flag that was removed from the Stonewall National Monument after a directive from the Trump administration, mounting a defiant response to the government’s assault on diversity initiatives at a federal site honoring the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The plan to re-raise the flag in the center of the small park outside the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village had been widely publicized on social media, and hundreds of spectators cheered as its rainbow colors made their way back up the flagpole under a cloudy winter sky.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/nyregion/stonewall-flag-protest-nyc.html
Mamdani Reverses Campaign Promise to Expand Rental Assistance
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani staked his insurgent candidacy last year on making life more affordable in the five boroughs. Now, confronting a grim fiscal picture in his second month as mayor, Mamdani no longer intends to back the growth of the $1 billion-plus initiative known as CityFHEPS, despite a plan passed by the City Council and upheld in court. The reversal marks the clearest example yet of the clash between the ideology of his democratic socialist campaign and the tough realities of managing a sprawling, costly bureaucracy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/nyregion/mamdani-rental-vouchers.html
N.Y.C. Nurses Reach Deal to End Strike at Two Hospital Systems
Nurses in New York City reached a tentative agreement to end a strike at two of three major health systems that has lasted a month and involved nearly 15,000 workers, according to their union. The nurses will receive a raise of about 12% over three years. The tentative agreements will be put to a vote of the nurses over the next few days. If the deal is approved, the striking nurses will return to work within 72 hours of the vote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/nyregion/nyc-nurses-strike-ends.html
El Paso Incident Highlights Gaps in America’s Drone Defense Industry
After an attempt by the Customs and Border Protection agency to use a laser to take out a foreign object in the sky set off chaos at the El Paso airport, it appears that America’s counter-drone technology, and the ability to deploy it, is still at an early stage, despite billions of dollars invested in recent years. Turns out that it wasn’t a drone after all, anyway, it was just a balloon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/business/el-paso-drone-technology.html
Gallup Will No Longer Track Presidential Approval Ratings
After nearly 90 years, the Gallup Organization will no longer track presidential approval ratings, which served as a steady way to measure Americans’ views of their elected leaders. The polling firm said that the decision was based on a shift in corporate strategy, which is intended to focus more on issues and policy polling.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/us/politics/gallup-poll-presidential-approval-ratings-trump.html