Tragic new details emerge about Monday’s deadly shooting at a Rhode Island ice rink, the United States and Iran report progress in their nuclear talks in Geneva, and a critical Republican Senate primary in Texas gains nationwide attention. It’s Wednesday, February 18, 2026, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below: Trans Hockey Shooting Tragic new details have emerged following Monday’s deadly shooting at a Rhode Island ice rink. Friends and family had gathered for a high school hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Shortly after the game started, a lone gunman who identified as transgender descended from the back row of the bleachers and opened fire, killing his ex-wife and his son, and injuring at least three others, including his father and mother-in-law — all three victims are in critical condition. A livestream from the game captured the shooting and showed the players drop their sticks as they realized what was unfolding, as panicked spectators also attempted to flee. Rather than running for safety, one heroic bystander instead rushed the shooter. The video shows him jumping on top of the gunman and bringing an end to the carnage. Police later praised that man, saying his actions “led to a swift end to this tragic event.” During the ensuing scuffle, the gunman ultimately took his own life. Hours later, one of the gunman’s daughters spoke briefly with reporters and said her father had “mental health issues.” Iran Talks The United States and Iran held nuclear talks in Geneva on Tuesday, and both sides are reporting progress. Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joined Morning Wire to analyze the discussions. The American side has been “tight-lipped,” but Tehran has not hesitated to talk to the media after every round of negotiations. According to Taleblu, the Iranians have two main goals with their strategy: dilute Trump’s resolve to strike Iran, and dilute the protesters’ resolve to continue to resist the regime internally. Meanwhile, the regime continues to crack down on internal dissent. Trump’s Nonendorsement-Endorsement In Texas The 2026 midterms are starting to heat up, with a critical Republican Senate primary in Texas getting nationwide attention. President Trump said he backs all three of the Republican candidates in the heated race as early voting kicked off on Tuesday. On Air Force One on Monday night, the president declined to support any one above the others. Attorney General Ken Paxton is backed by Turning Point Action, while incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is backed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The race also includes Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX).

The FBI believed a Virginia state senator accepted money in exchange for using his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to seek pardons for criminals, newly unsealed documents obtained by The Daily Wire said. Joe Morrissey is a disbarred attorney who once successfully ran for office from a jail cell, where he was serving time for having sex with an underage girl who worked as his secretary. He was pardoned by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) just before Northam left office in 2022. The FBI search warrant, which was unsealed last month after two years had passed, alleged that Morrissey was charging money from criminals to seek pardons from Northam as well. “Senator Morrissey offers services to inmates and defendants through his business, Premier Jury Consulting Services, LLC,” the June 2023 search warrant says. “Senator Morrissey has pamphlets for Premier Jury Consulting Services, LLC at numerous jail facilities throughout the greater Richmond area. The pamphlet has a photograph of Senator Morrissey with the caption ‘Senator Joe Morrissey.'” The consulting business listed the same address as his Senate office, and advertised to potential customers that “Joe Morrissey is currently a Virginia State Senator having served in the Virginia General Assembly since 2008 when he was first elected to the House of Delegates. Senator Morrissey currently serves on the prestigious Senate Judiciary Committee.” The pamphlet contained a list of “success stories/testimonials” from people who were “pardoned, paroled, or released early from incarceration.” In February 2023, the Virginia State Police told the FBI it had evidence that Morrissey “accepted a $15,000 payment from the father of a Virginia inmate in exchange for getting the Virginia Governor to pardon the inmate.” The father told the police that he knew Morrissey as an elected official, and that Morrissey told him he would get a pardon for his son from Gov. Northam in exchange for $30,000. “Witness 1 said he was unable to pay that amount and Senator Morrissey agreed to get the Governor to pardon Inmate 1 in exchange for $15,000,” the FBI affidavit said. The father met with Morrissey and an attorney in Morrissey’s office, and the attorney told him the son had no chance of being pardoned because he had stabbed a law enforcement officer. “Senator Morrissey met with Witness 1 privately in his office without Attorney 1. Senator Morrissey reassured Witness 1 he could get the pardon for his son and that they would listen to him because he was a State Senator,” it continued. In October 2020, the father wrote a $15,000 check to Premier Jury Consultants, in addition to $1,500 he had already paid, receiving a receipt for, “Payment of: Jury Consulting/Legal Research.” Morrissey’s senate aides then handled further correspondence with the father, according to emails reviewed by the FBI. The aides used a Gmail account senatorjoemorrissey@gmail.com, but signed the emails using their names and signature blocks with their titles, such as, “Legislative Assistant, Office of Senator Joseph D. Morrissey.” On March 1, 2021, Morrissey wrote to the father, “The good news is that the [General Assembly] Session is officially over today.” The next day, he sent a copy of a Petition for Conditional Pardon that he said he had “hand delivered to Clark Mercer, Chief of Staff to Governor Northam. Further, I spoke with Mr. Mercer today and I am going to personally sit down with him and go over your case with him.” Later that month, Morrissey sent a letter on his Senate stationary to Mercer and Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson that said it was a “follow up to my recent visit to your office wherein I provided you with a Petition for Conditional Pardon.” On May 3, 2021, he sent a letter on Senate stationary to the inmate, letting him know that on April 28, “I met with Clark Mercer, Governor Ralph Northam’s Chief of Staff regarding 12 inmates whom I whole-heartedly support the release of and you were on [sic] of them.” The father asked how to make arrangements for the inmate to come home. In April 2022, the father noted it had been a year since the meeting, and a legislative assistant replied saying “I  spoke to [the inmate] today.” Virginia State Sen. Joe Morrissey (D), left, poses for a photo with a supporter on May 11, 2023.(Photo by Gregory S. Schneider/The Washington Post via Getty Images) The FBI asked the court for permission to obtain data in the Gmail account from Google, saying “It appears Senator Morrissey engaged in bribery when he corruptly solicited $30,000 from Witness 1… Official Senate correspondence refers to official acts Senator Morrisey took regarding the pardon.” The search warrant was granted, but Morrissey was never charged. The allegations have not previously been reported. Morrissey did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire. The affidavit does not say that Northam agreed to grant any pardons sought by Morrissey. Northam pardoned more than 1,200 people–including, in January 2022, Morrissey himself on his conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Prosecutors had accused Morrissey of having sex with a 17-year old receptionist at his law firm in 2013 and of possessing child pornography — a photo of the girl he shared with a friend. Morrissey denied the relationship, but when she turned 18, the girl was pregnant, and Morrisey married her. Morrissey took a plea deal that downgraded the charges to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to six months in jail. The judge allowed him out during the day to run for office for the House of Delegates while returning to his jail cell at night, and in January 2015, he was in jail when he learned that he had won re-election. He was nonetheless disbarred as a lawyer for a “fraud perpetrated on the court” by claiming the photo had been placed on his phone by a hacker. Morrissey later received a promotion to the state Senate, where he occupied an influential role due to his Joe Manchin-like role as a centrist Democrat in a narrowly-divided chamber. In the end, it was that centrism–not his sexual abuse of a minor–that crossed the line for Democrats. He was defeated in the June 2023 primary by a black female who criticized Morrissey’s opposition to abortion. Around that time, his wife filed for divorce, saying he had sex with her while she was a minor and cheated on her repeatedly. In the early 1990s, Morrissey served as Richmond’s prosecutor, during which time he spent five days in jail for punching a defense attorney. He was indicted on bribery charges in 1993, but acquitted. Virginia’s burgeoning reputation for rough-and-tumble politics has been on display as Democrats proposed amending the state’s constitution to gerrymander the state to include 10 Democrat and one Republican districts. They plan to put it on the ballot with biased language that asks: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections?”  

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Nothing can disprove a belief in the interchangeability of the sexes like having children. When I had my first baby, I assumed my husband and I would split things as evenly as we could. I’d be breastfeeding, sure, but when it came to other tasks, the work would be 50-50. How idealistic I was. Our baby was clingy and needy, as babies usually are. But the problem was that what he often wanted was not just to be held and rocked to sleep; it was to be held and rocked to sleep by mom—aka, me. I remember watching other fathers bounce fussy babies at church or on a plane and feeling defensive of my husband. He would like to be doing that too, I thought. But it just doesn’t work. (And here is where I add the disclaimer that he did often bounce our baby to sleep and was as involved as possible. But there are some things only moms can do.) As much as we might like to be, people are not robots. We can’t organize our lives according to a theoretically optimal system without setting ourselves up for failure. Nothing puts that in such stark relief as a baby, who has no interest in holding his poops until dad is around so mom can skip a diaper change, or saving his latest bout of screaming for mom after dad has finally gotten him down to sleep. Babies want what they want, and they couldn’t care less about your so-called equality.  This hasn’t stopped some parents from pursuing the elusive even distribution of work. A recent opinion column in the New York Times offers a solution: “The Secret to Marriage Equality Is Formula.” “It’s time to explicitly tell parents-to-be, before they’re in the trenches, that the two worthwhile enterprises of exclusive breastfeeding and equal parenting are a zero-sum game — and that it can be utterly life-changing to choose the latter,” writer Nona Willis Aronowitz concludes.  She’s correct that the two are mutually exclusive; there is no equality in baby feeding when one parent is literally sustaining a child and the other is just there for moral support and water bottle refills. But she’s wrong in her implication that equality should trump other considerations where children’s wellbeing is concerned. The problem appears to be one of perspective. “The bonding effect” of breastfeeding her first child “was real,” Aronowitz writes, “but it also meant my ability to understand the contours of her needs deepened as Dom [her husband] became more and more sidelined. The resulting resentment nearly broke us as a couple. The unfair burden and sleep deprivation nearly broke me.” I can attest to overwhelming effects of sleep deprivation, having just gotten my second child to sleep through the night in the past month. I chose to exclusively breastfeed him knowing my husband would be able to sleep mostly peacefully while I was waking hour after hour to resettle our baby. Instead of getting up throughout the night, my husband was changing diapers and spending hours walking our neighborhood in desperate attempts to get our baby to take his naps. Was it equal? No. Did I resent my husband for it? Well, only until I’d had my morning coffee. READ MORE FROM UPSTREAM: Weight-Loss Medication May Have Dangerous Side Effects. I Don’t Care. My husband and I have been married for almost six years, and if there’s one piece of advice I feel qualified to pass down, it’s that the pursuit of equality is a path to a miserable marriage. It’s best to think of the workload in your marriage swinging like a pendulum: Sometimes the wife does more while the husband does less and vice versa. Sometimes the duties just look different. When it comes to small children, their mother is biologically wired to take on a larger portion of their childcare. For the kids’ sake, and for the sake of avoiding resentment, that’s worth accepting. Brené Brown, the researcher most well known for her TED Talk on vulnerability, calls the idea of a 50-50 marriage “one of the worst myth[s] in the world.” She and her husband have two kids together and have been married since 1994, so I’m guessing she knows what she’s talking about.  “Strong, lasting relationships are rarely 50-50, because life does not work that way,” she said on her podcast in 2020. “Strong, lasting relationships happen when your partner or friend or whoever you’re in relationship with, can pony up that 80% when you are down to 20, and that your partner also knows that when things fall apart for her, and she only has 10% to give, you can show up with your 90, even if it’s for a limited amount of time.” Equality in marriage sounds nice, but it’s an ideal not rooted in reality. Husbands and wives get sick or sleep-deprived, take high-pressure jobs, have high-needs children, struggle with mental health issues, and more. Sometimes one spouse will be doing more than the other. And holding yourself to an unrealistic ideal will necessarily result in resentment.  This doesn’t mean you can’t communicate your needs to your spouse. Quite the opposite. If there are ways in which the workload seems unfair to you, and your partner is able to do more, then he or she should. What you want is a spouse who is willing to step up when you’re feeling down, not one who is hyperfocused on making sure you each wash the same number of dishes. Marriage is a partnership, but it can’t—and shouldn’t—always be equal. Have an idea for Upstream? We welcome submissions; interested writers can send pitches to upstream@dailywire.com.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned that his preliminary budget would be a tax on working- and middle-class New Yorkers on Tuesday. “Property taxes would be raised by 9.5%. This would effectively be a tax on working- and middle-class New Yorkers who have a median income of $122,000,” the mayor said. Mamdani unveiled his preliminary budget proposal for 2027, outlining a plan to close a projected $5.4 billion deficit. Under state law, New York City must pass a balanced budget. To bridge the gap, Mamdani proposed a 9.5% increase in property taxes and “raiding” the city’s Rainy Day Fund and the Retiree Health Benefits Trust Fund. “The city would also take $980 million from its Rainy Day Fund and take $229 million from the Retiree Health Benefits Trust,” he said. Mamdani’s proposal would increase the city’s overall spending from former Mayor Eric Adams’ $115 billion budget to $127 billion. Mamdani described the property tax hike and reserve raid as a last resort, preferring to instead raise taxes on high-income earners and corporations, which would require approval from New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who has promised New Yorkers she will not raise taxes in 2026. Without Hochul agreeing to raise taxes, Mamdani is left with raising property taxes as his administration’s primary lever. “To rely on a property tax increase and a significant draw-down of reserves to close our gap would have dire consequences,” stated Mamdani’s Comptroller Mark Levine. “Our property tax system is profoundly unfair and inconsistent, and an across-the-board increase in this tax would be regressive. Drawing down reserves during a period of economic growth would leave us vulnerable to economic turbulence next year.” Mamdani would not be the first mayor to draw from the reserves, as the city tapped the funds during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, however, the city would be tapping the funds “despite a strong economy and record revenues from Wall Street.” Mamdani attributed the budget shortfalls to former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration underfunding $7.54 billion in six key areas, including cash assistance, rental assistance, shelter, due process cases, judgement & claims, and the city subsidy structural deficit. Since the 1970s, New York has been legally required to balance its budget when the state legislature passed the Financial Emergency Act for the City of New York in September of 1975, mandating a balanced budget. The legislation was passed to prevent New York City from defaulting on its debt and going bankrupt after a decade of the city covering daily operations with short-term loans. Turning to reserves to meet Mamdani’s mandate could raise red flags with credit rating agencies. Using reserves to plug recurring deficits may signal structural imbalance, increasing the risk of a municipal bond downgrade. A downgrade would force the city to pay higher interest rates to borrow, ultimately driving up debt service costs and putting even more pressure on the budget the law requires to be balanced. Costs may continue to rise for New York City. Watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission reports more than $7 billion of taxpayer money has been spent to house and care for undocumented immigrants in New York City. ABC New York (WABC) reports the yearly budget for asylum seekers is larger than the budget for the city health department, the sanitation department, and the fire department.

The United States has presented new seismic data to substantiate its allegations that China tested a nuclear device in 2020, violating an international agreement against such tests. A seismic monitoring station in Kazakhstan registered a 2.75 magnitude seismic event on June 22, 2020, the date that Washington has said Beijing tested a nuclear device in northwest China. The reading may be minor, but it picked up on an event that happened over 450 miles away, according to Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Yeaw. “There is very little possibility that it is anything other than an explosion, a singular explosion,” Yeaw said on Tuesday, according to NPR. “It is quite consistent with what you would expect from a nuclear explosive test.” Yeaw said that the event that was measured in Kazakhstan originated from Lop Nor, long recognized as one of China’s main nuclear test sites. The revelation of the seismic data comes as the United States is pushing China to join in nuclear talks between Washington and Moscow. Earlier this month, an arms treaty that limited nuclear weapons expired between the United States and Russia. President Donald Trump said last year that China and Russia have conducted secret nuclear weapon tests. Trump said that the United States would begin testing, too. “Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it. You know, we’re an open society. We’re different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are going to report,” the president said during an interview with “60 Minutes.” “We’re going to test, because they test and others test.” Days after the CBS interview, the president announced that he had directed the Department of War to begin conducting nuclear tests. “The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” the president said in a Truth Social post. “This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term. Because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.” In a video message, Trump added, “Because of the tremendous destructive power, I hated to do it, having to do with nuclear weapons, but I really had no choice. Russia is second in line, and China is a distant third, but will be even within five years.”