In an early show of his leftist bona fides, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered police and sanitation workers to stop dismantling the city’s homeless encampments. Now that 18 people have died on the streets amid record cold temperatures, Mamdani is reversing course. The mayor is expected to reinstate homeless encampment sweeps — which were standard under his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams — as early as Wednesday, according to the New York Post. It’s a major reversal for Mamdani, who claimed that the city’s primary responsibility was “connecting [homeless] New Yorkers to housing.” New York’s Department of Homeless Services will lead encampment sweeps by issuing notices to homeless individuals to clear their encampments within one week. During that period, homeless outreach workers will make repeated visits to connect individuals with shelters and supportive services. Curtis Sliwa, the leader of New York’s Guardian Angels, a volunteer organization that conducts homeless outreach, told The Daily Wire that homeless individuals are reluctant to enter shelters for a number of reasons.  “First off, they’re not in control of their mental faculties,” Sliwa said. “Number two, they fear going into a shelter where they’re going to be preyed upon, where what few, few items that they may have will be stolen from them, where they can be sexually abused and physically harassed, and just again turned into a human piñata.” Sliwa also said many individuals who are struggling with addiction resist shelter rules, including a 10 p.m. curfew. Some, he said, believe they are better off in a jail cell than in a shelter.  Before reversing his stance on encampment sweeps, Mamdani converted city buses into temporary warming centers during the cold streak. However, the initiative drew criticism after reports surfaced that the warming buses were difficult to locate. Mamdani took responsibility for the communication failures. “I think at the end of the day, that is the responsibility that I have as a mayor,” Mamdani said. “It’s never a moment to pass the buck to anyone else.”  Some of the buses, which had 40 seats, were reportedly not operating at full capacity. Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney who leads a volunteer group called the Street Homeless Advocacy Project, blamed inadequate signage. “As the cliché goes,” he said, “Sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” In an attempt to address the problem, Mamdani’s team committed to additional signage in more than ten languages.  With the homeless on the streets and not in shelters or warming buses, New York City has received more than 3,300 complaints about encampments, according to 311 data. Mamdani’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the encampment sweeps are a winter-only effort or a lasting policy change.

A Manhattan hospital that has performed countless procedures on gender-confused children in recent years announced on Tuesday that it officially ended its youth gender clinic following the Trump administration’s move to pull federal funding. Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone Health, which has offered gender procedures for children since at least 2020, cited the “current regulatory environment,” along with the “recent departure” of its medical director, for its “difficult decision to discontinue our Transgender Youth Health Program,” The New York Times reported. NYU Langone previously stated on its website that it prescribes “gender-affirming medical interventions, including puberty suppression, gender-affirming hormone treatments, and gender-affirming surgery” for gender-confused children. The hospital’s website no longer mentions gender surgery for children and focuses on “mental health services.” Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to protect children from irreversible gender procedures by threatening to strip federal funding from hospitals that perform the procedures. Following Trump’s order last year, NYU Langone began winding down its “Transgender Youth Health Program,” canceling appointments for children, including two 12-year-olds who were supposed to start puberty blockers, The Daily Wire reported at the time. However, some parents told the Times that the hospital kept appointments for children who were already on puberty blockers or hormone therapy. Last June, the FBI set up a tip line for Americans to report “any hospitals, clinics, or practitioners” that “mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care.” The Trump administration reportedly served subpoenas to multiple hospitals last year, including NYU Langone, seeking more information on their youth gender clinics. In December, the Trump administration began implementing the president’s executive order to protect children by proposing rules to strip federal funding from hospitals that continue to perform gender procedures on children. Democrats have pushed back against Trump’s effort to go after hospitals and doctors that promote gender procedures for children. In response to Trump’s crackdown on hospitals performing gender procedures on children, New York joined a coalition of Democrat-led states that sued the Trump administration in an effort to stop the federal government’s investigation into hospitals and doctors that perform the life-altering procedures on children. President Trump’s executive action to protect children from the harmful procedures followed numerous Republican-led states banning the so-called gender-affirming treatments and procedures for minors. Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and many other states took action to protect children beginning in 2023, shortly after Daily Wire host Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a Woman?” exposed the dangers of gender procedures. After “What is a Woman?” became one of the most-watched documentaries of the year, Walsh held a rally in Nashville and met with state leaders in multiple states to advocate for ending “child mutilation.” Thanks to recent laws passed by Republican-led states and the efforts of President Trump, the tide has turned in the debate on gender procedures for children. The Trump administration and advocates for protecting children from gender procedures celebrated another major win earlier this month when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons acknowledged that “evidence did not support genital procedures or removing the breasts of young girls who identify as boys.”

It is perhaps inevitable that a major global event such as the Olympic Games will become politicized. From the Nazi appropriation of the 1936 Berlin Games to the long Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, competition has always taken on what Al Michaels once called a “nationalistic sense.” But at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games happening now, the media have pushed things to a whole new level. Journalists seem intent on turning Olympians into politicians. The real flashpoint was an interview with Team USA skier Hunter Hess. During a press conference, he was goaded into expressing his personal disagreements with certain Trump administration policies. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.,” he said. President Donald Trump himself shot back, calling Hess a “real loser.” The whole thing has turned into a media circus, distracting from the excellence all Team USA athletes have been pursuing. To some extent, the media’s agenda here is pretty straightforward; politicization and incendiary headlines drive clicks and social media views. But there is also a real double standard that ought to outrage all Olympics fans and American citizens. Eileen Gu, a freestyle skier born and educated in the United States but competing for the People’s Republic of China, has mostly escaped questions about the Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian atrocities. NBC, which broadcasts the Olympics in the United States, has even tried making Gu into a star. The Today show did not ask her about the persecution of Jimmy Lai or the genocide of the Uyghur people, even while NBC has covered statements American athletes have made about U.S. immigration policy or social issues. Unlike China, the U.S. government does not pay our athletes. The United States Olympic Committee is a federally chartered nonprofit and funded entirely by private sources. American Olympians may receive corporate sponsorships, but putting on the red, white, and blue and competing for our people is a sacrifice in a way that is not the case for other countries. These athletes are not hirelings; they find a way to turn the pursuit of personal excellence into an act of genuine patriotism. Authoritarian regimes can try buying themselves medals by recruiting mercenaries such as Gu, but they will never be able to purchase that genuine Olympic spirit. There have been plenty of inspiring stories about American athletes at these games, but none provides a starker contrast with Gu than Team USA figure skater Alysa Liu. She was a star as a teenager, but she retired at the age of 16 to focus on living a normal life. Liu made a triumphant return to the world of figure skating in 2024, and she often explains that her sport has become a kind of art. Already a gold medalist in the team event, Liu is currently positioned to medal again in the individual competition. Her skating is remarkably beautiful, a true wonder to behold. Equally fascinating, though, is the political backdrop of Liu’s young career. Like Gu, she is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant to the United States. But unlike the skier, her family holds no illusions about the CCP’s tyranny. Liu’s father Arthur was deeply involved with the Chinese Democracy Movement in the 1980s, joining the protests at Tiananmen Square and witnessing the subsequent massacre firsthand. He has always been a vocal critic of the communist regime and is, in no uncertain terms, a political refugee. The CCP initially tried recruiting Liu to skate for it under the same “naturalization program” that sponsored Gu’s defection. Given her family’s firsthand experience of communist oppression, though, she understandably rebuffed the effort. The CCP, however, would not take no for an answer. In 2022, the Department of Justice charged Chinese agents with conducting an intimidation campaign against the Liu family and other Chinese Americans critical of the regime. Apparently, one spy even pretended to be a USOC official to steal information from the Lius. The State Department even had to take special precautions to protect Alysa Liu when she competed in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Perhaps the most American part of the story, though, is that Liu has used her massive platform as a figure skating star to shine the light on her father’s sacrifices and the fight for human rights. “Honestly I would just have the main focus be my dad’s story because his story is so cool and also everything … happened because of what he did,” she said at a media summit in 2025. “So, like I feel like we got to start with the roots.”  “We represent the people,” she said in another interview when asked about patriotism at the games. Liu is only 20 years old, but already she understands that the flag she competes under means something more than nationalistic pride; it symbolizes the hope of freedom for millions worldwide.  Authoritarian regimes in places such as China, Iran, and Russia have always sought to use the Olympic Games to promote their ideologies, and the commercial media are all too willing to turn a blind eye or even become complicit. But stories such as Liu’s, and those of other patriotic American athletes, demonstrate in no uncertain terms how incompatible that goal is with the true Olympic spirit. The freedom American athletes enjoy — even to criticize their own country — is in fact the reason why we consistently embody such excellence at the games. And that’s nothing to apologize for. *** Michael Lucchese is the founder of Pipe Creek Consulting, an associate editor of Law & Liberty, and a contributing editor to Providence. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, speaking at the United Nations Geneva Summit, excoriated European politicians whom she said have looked the other way while thousands of her countrymen and women have been killed, tortured, and mutilated by the despotic Islamic regime. “I am supposed to talk only in three minutes,” the woman who has been targeted in three alleged assassination plots linked to the regime. “But in my country, in 24 hours, they killed 40,000 people in Iran. And I am here at the United Nations while the killers are walking here. I saw them with expensive Gucci bags. I saw them with expensive brands walking here at the United Nations. … I am going to talk the truth.” “The Secretary General of United Nations stands with dictators,” she alleged. “The Secretary General of United Nations sends a congratulation letter to Islamic Republic for the anniversary of this murderous regime. You tell me, do they stand with dictators or the victims? The victims are here, these two women. One of them lost her eye because the Revolutionary Guard shot her in her eye. One of them carried a bullet in her arm. Do they stand with them?” “Right now, after killing 40,000 people, they storm into hospitals; they’re finishing off the injured ones; they’re arresting doctors and nurses; they put the political prisoners on death row; they’re executing them,” she continued. “I want to ask Geneva to host a peace conference, invite the opposition from Iran, invite the leaders of Europe, invite the leaders from European countries and free world here to talk about an Iran without an Islamic Republic.” Tearing a photo of Ayatollah Khomeini into pieces, she declared, “The West waited too long,” adding that it would not be “Islamophobic” to “treat ISIS the way they deserve to be treated.” “The West waited too long, too long,” she said. “When I was fighting against compulsory hijab, they were like, ‘Oh, this is Islamophobic. Oh no, we have to respect others’ culture.’ All the female politicians from West, they went to my country, they borrowed compulsory hijab from Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, France, from everywhere, high representative of Europe. … Suddenly, they realized, ‘Oh, this is not their culture.’ They started to cut their hair to show their solidarity with us.” “Stop cutting your hair,” she demanded. “Cut your ties with our killers.” “And now 40,000 people have been killed,” she noted. “Now the time has come to understand. Don’t wait that long. … You call them reformists. We call them killers.” “When I see my sister standing here, my sister, with bullets in their body, being blinded, standing here, I feel ashamed that I am alive that I don’t carry the bullet,” she said. “I’m going to leave Geneva forever,” she said. “You can kick me out forever. But I couldn’t keep silent because I feel the guilt on my shoulder. I don’t know how to save my people with empty hands. I cannot sometimes sleep; I cannot breathe; I cannot even eat because I feel guilty. I cannot believe how come the leaders of European countries do not feel guilty by shaking the hand of those Islamic Republic officials full of blood. Shame on you.” “I need you to promise me that we’re going to stand together, all of us, with my brother in Venezuela, my sister from Belarus. I need you all to stand with us and help my people in Iran. We have to stop the massacre and kick these f***ing killers from Europe, from everywhere,” she concluded. Rare Moment of Truth at UN: Iranian women's rights activist @AlinejadMasih takes the floor at United Nations @GenevaSummit to blast European politicians who for years failed to call out the regime's terrorism and gender apartheid, points to victims in the room shot by the regime. pic.twitter.com/zvgdS2J8Ld — Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 18, 2026

The most explosive development in Texas’s high-stakes Senate race isn’t polling — it’s a late-night television appearance that never aired. Democratic candidate James Talarico claimed that the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “refused to air” his interview with “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” dramatically declaring on social media, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.” This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas. pic.twitter.com/BCev5jZbKc — James Talarico (@jamestalarico) February 17, 2026 At a campaign rally on Tuesday, Talarico escalated further, alleging the FCC “colluded with corporate media executives at CBS … But I think it’s safe to say that their plan backfired.” At a packed campaign rally, @jamestalarico says the FCC “colluded with corporate media executives at CBS” to keep his interview with Stephen Colbert off the air. “But I think it's safe to say that their plan backfired,” Talarico says. #txsen pic.twitter.com/NABVRJZf4O — Kayla Guo (@kaylaguo_) February 18, 2026 That narrative quickly unraveled. CBS issued a blunt statement contradicting both Talarico and host Stephen Colbert. The network said Colbert “was NOT prohibited” from airing the interview. Rather, lawyers advised the show that broadcasting it could trigger the FCC’s equal-time rule, potentially requiring comparable airtime for other Democratic candidates — including Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). CBS explained that the show opted to run the interview on YouTube with on-air promotion instead of navigating equal-time obligations on the broadcast. This just in from CBS: "THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico. The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and… — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 17, 2026 In other words: no federal ban, no White House directive — just legal guidance and a programming decision. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that the FCC had recently sent a “letter of inquiry” to ABC regarding possible equal-time violations on “The View,” creating caution among network executives. The regulatory environment, executives believed, was uncertain. But limited FCC enforcement power and corporate risk management hardly amount to “collusion.” …But the scrutiny of ABC (which was first reported by Reuters on Feb. 7) weighed on CBS execs. There was a sense, I'm told, that the regulatory environment is uncertain, and that caution is warranted… and that's why network lawyers called Colbert's show. pic.twitter.com/pnkHIluHi9 — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 18, 2026 Yet Talarico not only doubled down — he has also praised Colbert in glowing terms, telling him, “You have really shown people in this country what Christianity should be.” Texas Democrat James Talarico says Stephen Colbert embodies Christianity. Colbert has… – Compared ICE agents to Nazis– Defended pro-Hamas protesters– Called abortion a "funny word"– Likened Trump supporters to the Taliban. We can't let Talarico become a Senator. pic.twitter.com/nEe8dlp6MK — Christian Collins (@CollinsforTX) February 17, 2026 That assertion is striking given Colbert’s own record. Colbert has compared ICE agents to Nazis, saying, “Yes, do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis. That’s an unfair comparison. The Nazis were willing to show their faces.” Speaking of the word “abortion,” Colbert has said, “It’s a funny word. It’s like guacamole.” He has compared Trump supporters to the Taliban, saying in reference to January 6, “Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a Civil War in Afghanistan? We’ve got our own on Capitol Hill.” All of this unfolds as the Texas Senate race intensifies. On the Republican side, Sen. John Cornyn battles Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a bruising primary that could head to a runoff. On the Democratic side, Rep. Jasmine Crockett leads Talarico in several polls, with demographic splits revealing a competitive contest. General election surveys show razor-thin margins against any top Republican. But the defining controversy so far isn’t ideological positioning or fundraising totals. It’s a candidate alleging federal suppression — contradicted by the very network involved — while elevating a sharply partisan late-night comedian as a model of Christian witness. In a state like Texas, that combination may prove politically combustible.