Governor Wes Moore (D-MD), who has been frequently floated as a potential presidential candidate, signed legislation on Tuesday that would effectively ban all state and local participation in federal immigration enforcement agreements. Maryland Democrat Governor Wes Moore signs legislation into law to prevent state and local cooperation with ICE. Moore is choosing to make it harder for ICE officers to deport criminal illegals. pic.twitter.com/DXwIOtbqdn — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 18, 2026 Senate Bill 245 and House Bill 444, functioning as companion “cross-filed” bills, prohibit the State of Maryland, its counties, municipalities, and local sheriffs from entering into or maintaining contracts, intergovernmental service agreements, or memoranda of understanding with the federal government to enforce civil immigration law. Most notably, the legislation targets the controversial 287(g) partnerships, which previously allowed local law enforcement officers to perform the functions of federal immigration agents. Classified as emergency legislation, the law requires any jurisdiction currently operating under such an agreement to exercise its termination provision within 90 days. Governor Moore, who had previously signaled his support for the measures, framed the signing as a step toward ensuring that all Marylanders feel protected by their local government. Supporters of the bills argued that entangling local police with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) eroded trust within immigrant communities, making residents less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigations for fear of deportation. “By removing local involvement in federal civil immigration enforcement, we are building a stronger bridge of trust between our law enforcement officers and the communities they serve,” proponents stated during the legislative session. However, the move has not been without intense scrutiny. Opponents, including several county sheriffs and Republican lawmakers, raised significant concerns regarding public safety. They argued that programs like the Criminal Alien Program (CAP) are vital for identifying and removing incarcerated undocumented immigrants who may pose a threat to the community. Critics expressed fears that the loss of these federal partnerships would limit the ability of local authorities to keep “at-large” criminal offenders off the streets. The legislation builds upon a foundation laid during a 2021 special session, which previously restricted the use of private detention facilities and limited when police could inquire about an individual’s immigration status during routine stops. While the new law restricts active enforcement partnerships, it does not override federal mandates regarding the exchange of information. Under federal law, state and local entities are still prohibited from restricting the sharing of information regarding an individual’s citizenship or immigration status with ICE. But the total ban on operational “immigration enforcement agreements” signals that Maryland has officially withdrawn its personnel and resources from the front lines of federal immigration control.

A mistrial was declared in the federal case against alleged Antifa terrorists who ambushed federal immigration agents in Alvarado, Texas, last year. During jury selection on Tuesday, a United States attorney raised concerns about defense attorney Marquetta Clayton, who was wearing a t-shirt under her blazer plastered with civil rights figures, according to Fox 4. United States District Judge Mark Pittman declared a mistrial before the jury was seated. “I don’t know why in the world you would think that’s appropriate,” Pittman told Clayton, according to KERA News. Pittman, who said he admired the civil rights figures, likened the shirt to a prosecutor sporting an ICE pin or “a shirt with Donald Trump riding an eagle” and waving an ICE flag, the outlet reported. “Politics — as prevalent as they are, as divided as they are — don’t have any business here,” he said. The Trump administration’s first terrorism case against Antifa centered around the cell. (Mark David Smith/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) The mask-wearing anarchists allegedly lured Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents out of the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, by setting off fireworks outside on July 4. One of the alleged Antifa militants then yelled “Get to the rifles” seconds before they “opened fire on the officers, striking the Alvarado officer in the neck area as the unarmed correctional officers ducked and ran for cover,” according to court documents. A local police officer was shot in the melee, but survived their injuries. “The wounded officer fell to the ground but was able to return a few shots. Coconspirator-1 continued to fire additional rounds until his rifle jammed. The attackers then left the scene,” it added. Authorities initially arrested ten suspects. Former Marine Corps Reservist Benjamin Hanil Song, who allegedly fired shots during the ambush, was on the run for a week before they could hunt him down. Five other people arrested in connection with the attack accepted plea deals and are expected to testify in the upcoming trial. Nine defendants are at the center of the latest case. A new jury selection will begin Monday, according to KERA News. The outlet reported that Clayton was seen leaving the courthouse with her shirt turned inside out. The judge said the attorney would need to return at some point in the future, when it would be determined whether or not she’d face sanctions.

His death was ruled accidental

'An Olympic level con artist.'

Former CNN host Don Lemon has pleaded not guilty to federal charges for his role in the invasion of a Minnesota church last month, claiming he was merely covering the “protest” as a journalist, but the church’s pastor says Lemon was “in on the terror.” Jonathan Parnell, the pastor of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, had been attempting to read aloud from the Bible when agitators opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement disrupted the Jan. 18 service. He wrote about the event for WORLD magazine Tuesday. Parnell recalled that “several individuals scattered throughout the sanctuary rose together and, like a flash mob, converged with chants and clenched fists.” When the mob shouted, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” that led worshippers to flee, “fearing it was an active shooter situation.” The agitators “had stormed into the house of God, a place of peace and refuge, and they defiled it with rage.” “In that instant, I interpreted what was going on: this was about provocation, intimidation, and spectacle,” the pastor wrote. “They were here to incite violence. The spiritual dimension of it all came into focus. A malevolent darkness was behind this—the same darkness behind the murder of pre-born children, and the mutilation of children’s bodies, and the manipulation of children’s minds. Those were all evils our children had escaped, so now the weapon was terror.” “The agitators screamed in our faces and said we weren’t a real church,” he recalled. “They harassed individuals for their ethnicity and ‘uttered all kinds of evil’ against us falsely. They spewed lies upon lies, and our refusal to retaliate seemed only to frustrate them.” Charges Against Church Invaders A federal grand jury indicted nine people, including Lemon, on two charges: violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which also protects access to churches; and violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, which criminalizes efforts to deprive Americans of their fundamental rights—in this case the right to the free exercise of religion. According to the indictment, between 20 and 40 agitators, who claimed to be opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement because one of the church’s pastors worked for ICE, refused to leave when asked and shouted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!” The indictment also mentions that agitators screamed at crying children, blocked parents from getting to their children in Sunday School, and that one agitator told a child that his parents were Nazis and going to hell. The indictment states that Lemon strategized with the group’s leaders Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen before the invasion, and notes that Lemon said the group planned to “disrupt business as usual” at the church. Lemon appeared to hide the target location on his livestream, before the disruption. Once inside, Lemon allegedly confronted Parnell, while other agitators blocked the pastor in, and asked him questions to further the agitators’ narrative. When people finally exited the church, Lemon observed that they were “frightened,” “scared,” and “crying.” He said that was understandable because the experience was “traumatic and uncomfortable,” which he added was the purpose of the incident. ?WHY LEMON WAS CHARGEDCan we please stop lying around here? Here's the grand jury indictment laying out why Don Lemon was charged.At the pre-op briefing Chauntyll Louisa Allen briefed Lemon and the other conspirators about where and what they were doing.On camera, Nekima… pic.twitter.com/gHuN6Q4ZM9— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) January 31, 2026 Parnell’s View of Lemon Parnell did not mention Lemon by name, but he did recall the interaction, noting, “The man questioning me certainly seemed disappointed” by his cool response. “I told him, plainly, that we had gathered to worship Jesus and that he should leave. He did not leave. He was in on the terror,” Parnell recalled. “He continued to accost members of our congregation, eventually moving outdoors, but still on our property.” Many—including elected Democrats—have defended Lemon, claiming that President Donald Trump’s administration brought charges to intimidate him and prevent him from acting as a journalist, covering ICE. Yet Lemon hadn’t been covering ICE actions, nor was he covering a protest on public property. Renee Carlson, who represents Cities Church as general counsel for True North Counsel, noted that being a journalist does not give someone license to invade a church building or disrupt services. “The First Amendment does not allow premeditated plots or coordinated actions to violate the sanctity of a sanctuary, disrupt worship, and intimidate small children,” Carlson said in a statement shortly after the invasion. “There is no ‘press pass’ to invade a sanctuary or to conspire to interrupt religious services.” Returning to the Gospel The pastor cited Matthew 16, when Jesus said the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. “Hell had barged into our local church that morning, boasting to have shut us down, but hell doesn’t have the final say,” he wrote. “Nobody does, except God alone.” Parnell concluded his article by presenting the forgiveness of the gospel. Of the church invaders, he wrote, “God willing, they will answer for what they have done in a court of earthly justice. But if they turn from their sins and trust in Christ, they need not fear the court of heaven. All of their sins can be wiped away.” The post Minneapolis Pastor Says Don Lemon Was ‘in on the Terror’ of Church Invasion appeared first on The Daily Signal.

REUTERS–Some U.S. troops are leaving Syria as part of a “deliberate and conditions-based transition,” a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal reported the United States was withdrawing all of its roughly 1,000 troops from Syria. “U.S. forces remain poised to respond to any ISIS threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts to prevent the terrorist network’s resurgence,” the senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. “However U.S. presence at scale is no longer required in Syria given the Syrian government’s willingness to take primary responsibility for combating the terrorist threat within its borders,” the official added. Last week, the U.S. military said it completed a withdrawal from a strategic base in Syria, handing it over to Syrian forces, in the latest sign of strengthening U.S.-Syrian ties that could enable an even larger American drawdown. This story was first published by Reuters The post Some US Troops Departing Syria, Official Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I think all of us have had some news of Marco Rubio’s very impressive speech at the Munich Security Conference. Remember, this is where the Europeans have pushed back on criticism. A year ago, JD Vance tried to enlighten them that they were on a path word toward civilizational decline, and one of the manifestations of that was debt, energy problems, borders, censorship, and they didn’t react well to that. They didn’t react very well either when Donald Trump said it was a concern of Europe and the United States that Greenland be defended, especially in the age of these new hypersonic missiles coming into the West from the Arctic Circle, from either China or Russia. That didn’t go down well because of the way that they felt Trump was bullying them. But this was a different speech. It had three or four components that were very persuasive. You got a standing ovation at the end. The first was Rubio made it clear that we are—in the age of DEI—we are a European country in the sense that our legacy was Europe and in, particularly, Great Britain. But our laws, our language, our literature, our institutions, they’re Western. That was kind of a controversial thing to say when people on the DEI woke side say, “No, we’re indigenous people,” or “We’re from Africa” or something. But what he was trying to say is that we feel that you are kindred, you’re kindred civilization, you’re our mother’s civilization. He gave a lot of examples about cities in America. New Amsterdam—Amsterdam, Netherlands—was New York. And he tried to point out how we came to be. And then he moved on that he wasn’t criticizing them in the traditional fashion, but he was saying that we made the same mistakes. The only difference, as he implied, he inferred—he was not explicit, he was implicit—was that you haven’t got really yet a continent of Donald Trumps just wage a counter revolution. But yes, we had let in 10 million people on an open border. Yes. We destroyed meritocracy for four or five years with DEI. Yes. We bought into critical legal and critical race theory that made exemptions based on one superficial appearance from the normal application of the law. Yes, our defenses were not what they should be, that we have neglected, especially the prior four years in maintaining a predominant or superior American fleet, Air Force, and Army. And yes, he said in addition that you can’t have a society, it won’t function if you don’t have fossil fuels or nuclear power, especially in Europe. It doesn’t have the … most of Europe is to the north of us. It doesn’t have the advantages that we do. And even with our southern states, solar and wind are too undependable to predicate an entire economy on them. The third thing he did was: He was saying that we want a strong NATO. Maybe we’re inelegant sometimes, but the more that a 500 million-person Europe can defend itself, the better it is for us. And a couple of reasons. We’re a distant power across the Atlantic Ocean, but we can offer lift capacity, logistics, nuclear deterrence. And we want to work with Europe, but because they’re on the continent and there’s a war raging in Russia, they have to be the frontline troops. We’re there to help them. But we can’t take the primary role because we have obligations for the West worldwide. And that brought up one of the fourth things that he said was if Europe would arm itself with a population of 500 million plus—we’re only about 340 million—then that would free up some of our resources to address common European and common American threats, such as China in the Pacific or Iran, or problems in the Middle East. After all, we have to keep the Straits of Hormuz, the South China Sea, the Red Sea open and that benefits Europe. But we can’t do that if we have a disarmed Europe where we are tied down in Europe and in Asia. And then, of course, implicitly said we had the same common enemies. So it was a big success. He got a standing innovation. A lot of people don’t like to be told the truth in Europe, but they understand that economically, financially, militarily, and politically, they are in a crisis, and it needed somebody to deliver this message. What was nice about the timing was that JD Vance, as I said, and Trump had given the tough love version, and he came and gave the good cop version. I could mix my metaphors. One final note: It really enhanced the position of Marco Rubio because he’s sort of become Trump’s fireman. When there’s a problem that seems unsolvable or that people, whether it’s in Panama or whether it’s in the Middle East, or whether it’s in the Western hemisphere, people call on Rubio. And I think we should watch that very carefully because I think we’re going to enter into the 2028 race, not with a Vance, Rubio Vice President, but with two strong candidates. Then, I don’t know. If the nomination is decided, I think it’s up for grabs. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: Rubio Tells Europe What It Needs to Hear appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Two More Hospitals Announce an End to Gender Affirming Care

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr said at a press event Wednesday that he got a big laugh when he looked back at the way CBS “Late Show” Host Stephen Colbert used a hoax to manipulate the media this week. Rebuking the legacy media’s blind regurgitation of Colbert’s claim that CBS prohibited him from airing an interview with Democrat Texas Senate primary candidate James Talarico because the FCC banned the interview, Chairman Carr pointed out that even CBS says that neither the network nor the FCC prevented Colbert from airing the interview. Instead, the media-savvy Rep. Talarico (D-Texas) and Colbert played a hilarious hoax on the all-too-predictable media, Carr explained. “When I stepped back and looked at the entire arch of the news story yesterday, I was highly entertained. I think it was one of the most fun days I’ve had on the job, watching for the hilarity of how this story played out,” Carr said: “Look, anybody that’s not suffering from a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome could see, right away yesterday, the exact story arch and how it was going to play out. “You had a Democrat candidate who understood the way that the news media work. And he took advantage of all of your prior conceptions to run a hoax, apparently for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks – and the news media played right into it.” “Yesterday was a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media,” Carr said, mocking the way media were duped into doing the bidding of Colbert and Talarico: “And, this was very plainly an effort ginned up to get clicks and to raise money. And you guys ate it up like slop.” What’s more, the media are still refusing to correct their misreporting - even now that the facts have come out - Carr said: “And when it was pointed out that the facts were completely different than what the fake news media was running with, nobody did an about-face and did a fact-correction.” “And, again, I think this is why the American people simply don’t trust the news media, anymore,” the FCC chairman explained. On Monday, Colbert claimed on his late-night talk show that CBS had prohibited him from airing Talarico’s interview because of the FCC’s equal-time rule, which says broadcasters can’t influence elections by promoting one candidate over another. In this case, following the rule would have simply meant providing airtime to other Democrats (Talarico’s Democrat primary opponents). In fact, however, CBS had explained to Colbert that he had multiple options that would have allowed him to air the interview. “As they advised Colbert, there’s lots of ways that you can do this, including having all the legally qualified candidates on,” Carr said, noting that the candidates wouldn’t even have to appear on the same show or at the same time. “But, for some reason, they chose not to do this,” Carr said. “But again, there was one partisan candidate who fed this slop to mainstream national news media and you guys ran for it,” Carr said, chiding the gullible reporters who fell for the hoax: “And I was just laughing, because watching it was clear that this story was going to turn at some point and the truth was going to come out.” “Congress passed the equal-time provision for a very specific reason: they didn’t want the media elites in Hollywood and New York to put their thumb on the scale and pick the winners and losers in primaries and general elections,” Carr said: “The whole idea here is more speech, not less. “You can have more candidates on, you can have zero censorship with the equal-time provision. It’s about empowering people.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has teamed up with former boxer Mike Tyson to battle the proliferation of processed foods in America — but not everyone is thrilled with the Trump administration’s choice of role model.“I had a sister that died from obesity. So when they heard my story, they used me for the commercial, and it was just me telling the truth. People shouldn’t be surprised to see because I’m one of the most healthiest people on the planet,” Tyson told Lara Trump, while sitting with Calley Means and RFK Jr. on Fox News.“So they should think that I will want to be a participant in this, and I’m affected of course not only by my sister, but by my daughter and by my friends. You know, they just can’t stop picking up the food because the ultraprocessed food is a narcotic more than it is anything, a nutritionist,” Tyson added.While BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere respects Tyson’s dedication to health, he’s not among those thrilled with the team up.“Mike Tyson’s considerably older than me. The fact that he could even last in a ring for five minutes with a guy in his what, 20s or 30s, pretty freaking impressive to me. He’s in great shape,” Stu comments.“But what I’m going to focus on a little bit more is the fact, the fact, that Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist. Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist. Not a guy who got #metoo-ed because people were like, ‘Hey, I think he did something wrong once. He made a bad joke,’” he continues. “No. Mike Tyson went through a trial, was convicted of rape, and then went to prison for rape.”“Tyson really is a one of one when it comes to convicted rapists speaking out against baked goods. There’s really no other examples of this happening in our entire society, maybe worldwide, because ... we don’t typically use them later on to advertise products,” he says.“They’re not typically government spokespeople for food movements,” he adds.Want more from Stu?To enjoy more of Stu's lethal wit, wisdom, and mockery, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.