Hard-left Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) spoke about dismantling the Department of Homeland Security at a town hall on Wednesday night, escalating her criticism of federal immigration enforcement. An audience member asked, “How do we get ICE out of America?” “What I will say is that there is a [sic] easier conversation happening today than six, seven years ago, when I got to Congress, about what we need to do with ICE, which is to abolish it,” Omar replied. “There is a lot of conversation about what the dismantlement [sic] of the Department of Homeland Security should look like, because right now, the agencies that are put together — do not have accountability in the way that that formation exists. And it’s very important for us — if we’re not going to go back, to pre-2002, in looking at how these agencies used to operate, without this level of brutality that we are seeing — then we need to figure out a different system, and that can work for people where little children are not afraid of federal agents trying to carry out the duties they were designated to carry out but instead ended up terrorizing whole communities.” Ilhan Omar says Democrats don’t just want to abolish ICE, they’re already planning how they will dismantle DHS entirely. OMAR: “There is a lot of conversation about what the dismantlement of the Department of Homeland Security should look like.” pic.twitter.com/XxPXUUuSPq — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 19, 2026 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, marking the most significant federal reorganization since 1947. The coordinated attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000. The Islamic extremist attack on America was orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network. The attacks involved 19 hijackers — primarily Saudi nationals — seizing four commercial aircraft. Two planes struck the World Trade Center in New York City, and a third hit the Pentagon. A fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to retake control from the hijackers. The attacks exposed critical vulnerabilities in domestic intelligence and aviation security, prompting President George W. Bush to establish the Office of Homeland Security just one month later. In 2002, the Homeland Security Act formally authorized the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which began operations on March 1, 2003. The new department consolidated 22 federal agencies and roughly 180,000 employees under a single umbrella to centralize: Counterterrorism: Addressing the specific threat of radicalized extremism. Border Security: Unifying the CBP and ICE to monitor points of entry. Intelligence Sharing: Bridging the gaps that allowed the 9/11 plot to go undetected. Emergency Response: Integrating FEMA for disaster resilience. Today, DHS employs about 260,000 people. While it was created in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, its mission has expanded to include cybersecurity as well as responsibilities related to election integrity. Despite ongoing political debates over immigration and asylum policies, the DHS remains the federal government’s central agency for integrated homeland defense, ensuring the United States is better prepared for both foreign and domestic threats.

A coalition of more than a dozen Republican attorneys general is demanding that a taxpayer-funded scientific organization scrub a politically biased climate change chapter from its official manual, according to a letter obtained by The Daily Wire.  Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen sent a letter to the National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt on Thursday demanding that she “take action” to remove a section on “climate science” from the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Fourth Edition.” Knudsen notes that the chapter was authored by two leftist activists who have advocated ending the use of fossil fuels.  “This partisanship is especially troubling since taxpayer money provided by the federal government is the largest source—more than $200 million—of the National Academies’ budget,” the attorneys general wrote. “Taxpayer money should not be used for political causes, particularly by an entity that Congress created to provide independent and objective scientific reports.” The letter was also sent to the incoming president of the National Academy of Sciences, Neil Shubin. McNutt chairs the governing board of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which co-produced the manual with the Federal Judicial Center as a handbook for federal judges. Earlier this month, the judicial center removed the climate chapter from its version of the book after more than two dozen Republican attorneys general warned it could improperly influence their decisions.   “Like the Federal Judicial Center, the National Academies should immediately remove the climate science chapter from all available versions of the Fourth Edition to stop any continued claims of ‘political pamphleteering,’” they wrote.  The chapter in question was co-authored in part by Jessica Wentz, a fellow at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. In an amicus brief opposing the development of an oil drilling project in Alaska, Wentz wrote that “the world needs to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible in order to avert potentially catastrophic levels of global warming and climate change.” The other co-author of the chapter is Radley Horton, a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School. Horton, who has previously trained judges on climate litigation, has said that “it’s absolutely critical that there be a global effort to do everything we can to dramatically draw down emissions.” Those acknowledged in the chapter included Michael Burger, who is representing Honolulu in litigation against energy companies, and Michael Gerrard, who has advocated for “decarbonization” through climate-related lawsuits.  In 2020, Gerrard wrote that “litigation” was needed to advance climate action.  “Until and unless elections bring to power a president, a Congress, and local officials who will take the necessary measures, litigation is needed to inhibit those who will try to move backwards, spur on those with good intentions, help implement the policies set by wise Congresses past, and continue the quest for redress for victims,” he wrote.  Both Gerrard and Burger are part of Columbia’s climate change law center.  The Republican attorneys general argued that the views of the authors and reviewers skewed the chapter in one direction.  “Not surprisingly given the strong biases of its authors, reviewers, and sources, the climate science chapter presents as settled the very methodologies that plaintiffs rely on to impose liability on fossil-fuel defendants. The chapter presents this science as authoritative without acknowledging contrary views or disclosing the many conflicts of the authors, reviewers, and sources. Ethics experts have noted that these issues raise serious ethics concerns,” they wrote.   The National Academy of Sciences was allocated $133 million in federal funding for fiscal year 2025 and has been awarded $13.9 million so far this fiscal year. It frequently receives grants from the Department of Transportation, the Pentagon, and the National Science Foundation. Other states that signed onto the letter included Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The effort was also backed by American Energy CEO Jason Isaacs and Will Hild of Consumers’ Research.  “Judicial education must explain scientific method, not normalize litigation strategies or launder contested theories as settled fact,” Isaacs told The Daily Wire. “When taxpayer-funded institutions elevate one side of active lawsuits without disclosing conflicts, that undermines confidence in the courts and the rule of law.” Hild said the academy should “pull this biased climate chapter and stop using taxpayer resources to push a radical political agenda.”

In a major shift in European foreign policy, the Council of the European Union formally announced on Thursday that it has added the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the EU terrorist list. The decision follows a preliminary political agreement reached by the Foreign Affairs Council in late January and marks a definitive end to months of internal diplomatic friction. The designation triggers an immediate suite of restrictive measures under the EU’s counterterrorism sanctions regime. Effective Friday, all funds, financial assets, and economic resources belonging to the IRGC within EU member states will be frozen. Furthermore, EU operators are now strictly prohibited from making any funds or economic resources available to the group. This move expands the EU terrorist list to include 13 individuals and 23 groups and entities. It’s official: the EU has finally designated #Iran‘s regime’s IRGC as a terrorist organization. #IRGCterroristshttps://t.co/G7Y3ERj75z pic.twitter.com/49eNrOVbXs — Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) February 19, 2026 The path to this decision was fraught with contention. As recently as late January, reports indicated that France, Spain, and Italy had voiced legal reservations, effectively stalling the designation, which requires unanimous consent from all 27 member states. Critics, including Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis, had publicly blasted the holdouts, citing the IRGC’s role in crushing internal dissent and its involvement in extraterritorial operations, such as the targeting of synagogues in Germany. The IRGC, which serves as the “praetorian guard” for Iran’s Supreme Leader, has been accused by international observers of extreme brutality. Reports from earlier this year suggested that IRGC and Basij forces used live ammunition against peaceful demonstrators, with some estimates citing over 15,000 deaths in January alone. Beyond Iran’s borders, the IRGC’s Quds Force has long been viewed by Western intelligence as a primary driver of state-sponsored terrorism. The EU’s legal framework for this designation, rooted in Common Position 2001/931/CFSP, is distinct from UN-led sanctions against Al-Qaeda or ISIL. By utilizing its autonomous sanctions regime, the EU has now aligned its policy with the United States, Canada, Israel, and several Gulf nations that had previously designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization. In a statement accompanying the regulation, the Council noted that “competent authorities” had provided the necessary legal basis for the listing, satisfied that the entity was involved in terrorist acts. The regulation was signed in Brussels by Council President Marilena Raouna and is set to be binding across all member states upon publication in the Official Journal.

The Dublin-based rock band U2 just released a tribute song dedicated to Renee Good, the anti-ICE activist who was killed during an altercation with ICE officers in Minneapolis last month. The song “American Obituary,” part of the six-track EP “U2 Days of Ash,” debuted on Wednesday, according to The New York Post.  “Renee Good born to die free/American mother of three/ Seventh day January/ A bullet for еach child, you see,” the lyrics say in part. “The color of her eyе/ 930 Minneapolis/ To desecrate domestic bliss/ Three bullets blast, three babies kissed/ Renee the domestic terrorist???” The refrain says: “What you can’t kill can’t die/ America will rise/ Against the people of the lie/ I love you more/ Than hate loves war.” U2 lead singer Bono described the new release as a “song of fury… but more than that a song of grief” in a statement published on the band’s digital fanzine, which is called “Propaganda.” “Not just for Renee but for the death of an America that at the very least would have had an inquiry into her killing… for her family as well as the credibility of law enforcement and the critical role they play in keeping the peace, keeping the citizenry safe,” the singer said.  He also tried to explain why he, an Irishman, is involving himself in American politics. “U2’s been banging on about America most of our artistic life… this is a country we love and has loved us back. Amazingly,” Bono said. “Americans for the most part have given U2 and me in particular permission to mouth off… And on this stuff I think people know that I’ve been an equal opportunity pest on the left as well as the right.” Despite these attempts to justify the song, the Irish recording artist got blasted on social media. “It appears Ireland has stronger illegal immigration laws than the U.S. Maybe U2 could sing a song about that,” an X user replied. “As an American, I can comfortably say, I don’t give a sh** what any band thinks…especially a foreign band,” another commenter agreed. “No songs dedicated to all the victims killed by illegal aliens …. Hmmm,” another observed. This is the second recently released mainstream “protest song” dedicated to anti-ICE sentiment. Far-left activist singer Bruce Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis” in January after spending one day writing it. That song was also mocked online. 

The Trump administration arrested an illegal immigrant who pretended to be a United States citizen to become a corrections officer in Minnesota. The alleged “serial immigration fraudster,” 45-year-old Morris Brown of Liberia, was captured on January 15 after going AWOL from the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Federal authorities said the “serial fraudster was identified as part of the major enforcement operation that targeted suspected immigration fraud in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last fall,” and had “multiple violations of U.S. immigration law, including overstaying his student visa and making false claims to U.S. citizenship.” While the Trump administration recently ended its massive immigration sweeps in Minnesota, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” officials have made clear that they will not pull federal officers investigating fraud from the North Star State. “Operation Twin Shield continues to deliver results as the Department of Homeland Security relentlessly pursues those who seek to cheat our immigration system,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a statement Wednesday. “This alien tried every trick in the book to remain in the United States after losing legal status. We will use every tool at our disposal to ensure he faces justice for his many violations of the law,” Edlow added. Brown came into the country in 2014 on a student visa that was “terminated” in 2015 after he failed to enroll “in a full course of study,” USCIS said. He also joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in 2014, despite having no legal immigration status, and went AWOL the next year. He was later apprehended and discharged under other than honorable conditions in 2022. He applied for a green card under the Liberian Refugee Fairness program in 2020, but was ultimately denied “due to misrepresentations, including his failure to disclose prior military service and his false claim to U.S. citizenship,” according to USCIS. Brown then applied for citizenship “based on prior military service” in 2024. Federal investigators probing allegations of fraud in the Twin Cities looked into Brown’s citizenship application, finding “evidence of marriage fraud and prior instances where he falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen in official documents,” USCIS said. It was also discovered that he was employed as a corrections officer with the state. The Minnesota Department of Corrections confirmed that Brown was employed from May 2023 to October 2025, saying that they’ve provided his employment documents to USCIS, according to local news outlet KSTP. The department claimed to have adhered to federal document verification requirements when it hired Brown, the outlet reported. “If these federal allegations are accurate, this individual engaged in sophisticated efforts to misrepresent their identity, extending well beyond Minnesota. We are grateful to USCIS and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] for their work in investigating and addressing immigration fraud,” Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said. “We will continue to comply with federal law and work professionally with our federal partners.” USCIS notified ICE of its findings, resulting in Brown being placed into removal proceedings and facing possible prosecution for his alleged fraud offenses. Since the Trump administration commenced its mass deportation campaign, federal authorities have discovered several other instances of illegal immigrants working as law enforcement officers. In early February, ICE revealed that officers had arrested an illegal immigrant from Cameroon who was just one week away from graduating from the New Orleans Police Department academy. In October, federal authorities nabbed Radule Bojovic, an illegal immigrant from Montenegro, who was employed as a police officer with the Hanover Police Department in Illinois. A judge later granted Bojovic a $2,500 immigration bond, and the police department has since allowed him to return to work.