In a move described by the White House as the “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and President Trump have finalized a rule to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding. The decision effectively eliminates all federal greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for motor vehicles and engines. The Trump administration projects that this reversal will save Americans more than $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs. According to the EPA, the action will: Eliminate future obligations for manufacturers to measure, control, or report GHG emissions for highway vehicles. Apply retroactively, covering model years manufactured prior to the final rule. Lower vehicle prices by an estimated average of $2,400 per vehicle. Restore consumer choice by removing “de facto” electric vehicle mandates. Officials clarified that this action applies strictly to greenhouse gases and does not impact existing regulations on traditional air pollutants like smog or soot. The EPA’s new determination rests on a reevaluation of Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. Administrator Zeldin concluded that Congress never intended for the Act to grant the EPA authority to manage global climate change. The agency further argued that its previous regulations were “futile,” asserting they had no material impact on global temperature trends. The 2009 finding, established during the Obama administration, served as the legal bedrock for the EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. By determining that carbon dioxide and other GHGs endangered public health, the agency previously mandated strict emission limits that pushed the auto industry toward electrification. “The Endangerment Finding was a disastrous policy that damaged the American auto industry,” President Trump stated during the announcement in the Roosevelt Room. “We are bringing car prices tumbling down by eliminating this red tape.” The move drew immediate praise from Republican lawmakers and industry groups. Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) called it a “transformational impact” for energy-producing states. “By ending the so-called Endangerment Finding, President Trump is delivering the largest cutting of red tape in history — unleashing American energy and making everything more affordable,” U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum echoed. Industry leaders, including the American Trucking Associations and the American Petroleum Institute, supported the shift, citing the need for “achievable” standards and the preservation of gas-powered vehicle options. While environmental advocates are expected to challenge the ruling in court, the administration remains firm that major climate policy must be decided by Congress rather than executive agencies.

A new CNN documentary traces the “activation” of Christian nationalists in the United States back to the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, suggesting that Kirk’s message — and his subsequent murder — had “radicalized” American Christians into believing that they are being “persecuted.” CNN anchor Pamela Brown announced the project exposing “Christian Nationalism,” which she said she’d been working on for several months, and framed the documentary as an investigation into a perceived threat against the United States. WATCH: CNN’s Pamela Brown announces she’s been working on a “special project” warn against “Christian nationalism” and portrays them as a radicalized threat to the country. She then launches into a report where she fears the assassination of Charlie Kirk uniting Christians and scoffs… pic.twitter.com/1J63ta6EIO — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) February 17, 2026 “For the past several months, I’ve been working on a special project, examining the growing influence of Christian Nationalism in America,” Brown explained. She went on to describe Christian Nationalism as an ideology unto itself that was rooted in the “belief” that the United States was founded to be a “Christian nation” and as such, should reflect “Christian values” in its laws and institutions. Brown then said that her documentary started with Kirk’s assassination: “Experts say it was a pivotal moment for the movement, and an occasion where the tragedy of his loss unified Christian nationalists and the Trump administration as they honored him.” After a brief clip of President Donald Trump’s remarks at Kirk’s memorial service, Brown added, “Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and prominent Christian nationalist, was assassinated. It became a rallying call for those who believed in his message … and it was a call to action.” Brown then cut to comments from Matthew Taylor, of the Georgetown University Center of Faith and Justice, who said, “[The] memorial service was one of the most potent examples of this shift in our culture that we’re experiencing right now, where a large segment of American Christians are being activated by these ideas, radicalized by these ideas that say that they are the persecuted ones and that they need to stand up for Christians rights.” In a second clip, Taylor suggested that there was something insidious in President Trump’s promise to “protect Christians.” “Trump has never explicitly said he believes the country should be a Christian nation,” Brown added. “But he is aligned with Christian nationalists and wants their support, and after an assassination attempt during his campaign, Trump said he believes God saved his life so he can lead the country.” TPUSA’s Andrew Kolvet responded to the coming documentary on Tuesday, saying, “Consider this: so CNN does a piece — talking about the radicalization of people at Charlie’s memorial. Charlie was assassinated by a radical, by somebody that was animated, at least in part, by his love affair with somebody that was trans. And instead of burning down the country, like the real radicals did, we held vigils and memorials, and people bought Bibles, and they got baptized.” “How is that a bad thing? What are we even talking about here?” he asked. CNN BACKLASH IS MOUNTING: They just announced a documentary covering the “rise of Christian Nationalism” in America, and it’s not going how they expected it to go.@AndrewKolvet let the TRUTH about America’s spiritual revival and the role Charlie Kirk has in it: “Consider this:… https://t.co/moi2PwF17c pic.twitter.com/isO2nt4bHi — Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 17, 2026

The United States military, under the command of President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth, took out three boats suspected of trafficking drugs on Monday, killing 11 “male narco-terrorists,” according to U.S. Southern Command. The kinetic strikes targeted two boats in the Eastern Pacific and one boat in the Caribbean. U.S. Southern Command said that the suspected drug-runners were “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” On Tuesday, the U.S. military shared unclassified video footage of all three strikes. “Turns out President’s Day — under President Trump — is not a good day to run drugs,” said War Secretary Pete Hegseth. With the latest strikes, at least 145 suspected drug runners have been killed in 42 strikes targeting “narcoterrorist” boats in the Pacific and Caribbean since last September. Monday’s operations followed a strike on Friday that destroyed a boat and killed three suspected drug smugglers. President Donald Trump has defended his authority to carry out the strikes as Democrats argue that Congress must be given a say in the military operations being conducted without a declaration of war. Some Democrats have even claimed that Trump’s boat strikes in international waters amount to murder. Trump, however, has not backed down on his vow to obliterate suspected drug boats and argues that the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels that seek to transport deadly substances into the United States. Shortly after the United States began conducting strikes against suspected drug traffickers, Trump said in a speech at the United Nations, “To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence.” Responding to criticism from lawmakers over the strikes in October, Trump told reporters, “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them.” Trump has also suggested that the United States could target suspected narco-terrorists on land, which he said could include strikes inside Mexico and Colombia. The U.S. strikes were further scrutinized by some lawmakers late last year after it was revealed that the U.S. military conducted a second strike on one boat in early September after some of the suspected narco-terrorists survived the first attack. The War Department has not publicly released the footage of the second strike and has only shown a select few lawmakers footage of the “double tap” strike. Trump’s military campaign against drug traffickers led to the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro last month. Maduro, who was accused of conspiring to traffic drugs to the United States, raged against the U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and vowed to fight U.S. forces if the United States made a move on Venezuela. Following his capture, Maduro was charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy, and he now awaits trial in New York.

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Excerpts literary fiction Read an Excerpt From The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Eleanor is unmoored. By Kim Fu | Published on February 17, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu, an eerie lit-fic novel of grief and guilt, publishing with Tin House on March 3. In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life—from meals, to laundry, to finances—so that Eleanor could focus on her career as a therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house.Desperate to obey her mother one last time, but finding few options she can afford, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes—an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur. Haunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can’t trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the dark choices she’s made. Sunset came on early, the valley surrounded by mountains and rises on all sides, the sun dropping behind the western hills during Eleanor’s last appointment. She turned on the canned downlights and the wooden chandelier, and the room became almost painfully, clinically bright. It was only then that she realized the house had no window coverings. She had somehow not thought about it all day, or noticed during that first tour—she’d just admired the large windows, the dramatic flood of daylight. In a way, it wouldn’t matter for a long time. There’d be no one to see her until next summer, when Matt had said construction would resume, and the days were only getting shorter, so waking with the sun wouldn’t be an issue. She turned off the downlights. From one of the front windows, she noted that the other house, the black-frame house, did have a mix of curtains and roller shades, some open and some closed. All the windows were dark. She would have to worry about whoever lived there looking in, if in fact someone did live there. There were no other cars. She turned off the chandelier, plunging the room back into darkness. She walked around the perimeter, window to window. She couldn’t make out much in any direction. The distant, tightly packed trees were black in the darkness, as were the empty building sites. Only the gravel road reflected the moonlight. The light in the construction office cut a small square of yellow into the blackened mountainside, but seemed to cast no outward glow. An animal fear rose in her, a sense of being exposed, surrounded, seen and unseeing. She wanted to feel celebratory and adult, her first night in the first home she’d ever owned, but she couldn’t help picturing the house from the outside, her figure visible as she walked from room to room, as she sat at the table, climbed the stairs, got into bed. She tested the taps and flushed the toilets. She felt amazed everything worked, everything was real. She could not bring herself to strip completely to shower, even though the upstairs bathroom had no windows. The air in the bedroom felt stale. The mechanism to open the window was complex: a flip lock on either side, a winch in the middle she had to turn to send the top half of the window outward and up, like a hat brim. That noxious industrial smell of the surrounding land entered the room, but it came with a breeze, carrying the scent of waxy pine needles and turned earth from farther upwind. Buy the Book The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts Kim Fu Buy Book The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts Kim Fu Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget She made up the bed with the clean sheets she’d brought. She smoothed and tucked the bedding crisply. All of this belonged to her. All these bare, lovely rooms, more than she’d ever thought possible. Lele would be proud. She would be relieved to know that Eleanor had broken through the inertial tide that had carried her along since Lele’s death, that she had done something so drastic, invested wisely, transformed loss into safety and power. In her new house, Eleanor told herself, she would stop staying up all night, stop sleeping between clients in the middle of the day, stop drinking so much coffee she could feel her heart vibrating in her throat like a live bird. She would eat regular meals, take her own therapeutic advice, rejoin the land of the living. Here, she would choose what to remember and what to forget. * * * Rain pattering on the skylight woke her in the night. She got up and closed the window, fumbling to remember how in the dark, which way to wind the handle, unsure if the locks had caught their latches. She felt her way back into the bed. She looked up at the skylight, droplets striking the glass and forming ripples and dimples, lulling her with their gentle drumbeat. A hand slipped into Eleanor’s under the duvet. Small, bony. Callused fingers, but preternaturally soft along the thin skin of the back, from the hand cream Lele had kept in her purse and beside every sink, applied a dozen times a day. Lele lay beside her, flat on her back. She wore the cotton pajamas she’d died in, buttoned to the collar and densely patterned with orange flowers, each bloom the size of a fingernail. Her grip was loose and limp. Lele turned just her head toward Eleanor, smiling—a mischievous, impish grin she’d never worn in life. In the first months after Lele died, Eleanor had of course seen her everywhere: in a stranger’s gait as they walked down the sidewalk, in the slant of their shoulders, the back of any dark head of hair. Any woman with her coloring, her height, or any single shared feature—her rounded nose in profile, her unpierced ears, a coat she might have worn—had entered Eleanor’s field of vision as Lele. Before the turn, as in a magic trick, before the betrayal that revealed they had been someone else all along. But never like this, never a sustained visitation in her bed—a Lele that stayed, a Lele she could touch. The smile on her face ground against Eleanor’s memories like an ill-fitting gear. You’re not my mother, she thought, the knowledge immediate, reflexive. But of course it wasn’t. It was a pleasant, lucid-feeling dream, something Eleanor had made for herself. A housewarming gift from her own mind. * * * The rain, in the morning, had turned violent, now crashing upon the skylights as though trying to break through. Wind drove the water sideways, lashing against the windows. The warping streams made it appear as though the house were underwater. Eleanor had woken late, in the murky aquarium light. She had a client in less than half an hour. She was alone. As she stepped out of bed, Eleanor’s bare feet landed in a puddle. Water was pooling beneath the bedroom window she’d opened the night before. A thin stream of water ran down the inside of the glass. She must not have closed it fully. She unlocked and opened the window. Water gushed in and onto her pajamas and feet, from where it had pooled along the top of the frame. She winched it closed as tightly as she could. When she depressed the locks, they felt softer than before, and didn’t click. She had left the moving box containing towels on the upstairs landing. She tore the tape open with her hands, grabbed one, and used it to sop up the puddle as best she could. Over her wet pajamas, she threw on one of her rotation of solid-colored sweaters that were presentable from the chest up. She rushed downstairs, leaving wet footprints. The wind was rattling the windows, and a louder, metallic rattling, like a propeller on a loose bolt, was coming from the kitchen. She sat down at her computer, the other chairs tucked in around the dining table, hurriedly pulling her hair into a bun as the platform loaded. Her client appeared on-screen. Choppy when in motion, edges and borders softened. He talked, as he had for the last four sessions, about his more accomplished older brother. “Let’s revisit some of our strategies for dealing with envy,” Eleanor said. She leaned forward as she answered the session-end prompts, the font small and unscalable, her face six inches from the screen. When she sat back, closing the laptop lid, her eyes darted left, drawn to a change, something out of place. Lele sat in the chair at the head of the table. She was dressed in the same orange pajamas, smiling again, but now her mouth was stretched tight, her eyes blank, as though she’d been posing too long for a photograph. For a photographer who would neither take the picture nor let her go. Excerpted from The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu. Copyright © 2026 Kim Fu. Published with permission from Tin House, an imprint of Zando, LLC. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts</i> by Kim Fu appeared first on Reactor.

A coalition of Congressional Democrats unveiled a resolution titled the “Trans Bill of Rights” last week to push back against the “fear” and “hatred” propelled by those who believe that one’s sex corresponds to their biological sex. As written by Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., in a press release, the resolution aims to direct the federal government to expand transgender access to public “services” and “accommodations.” The bill language adds that it aims to ensure that “transgender and non-binary people” get “equal access” to “services and public accommodations that align with their gender identity. The bill also states that transgenders should be allowed to access “the full range of places and services that members of the general public utilize.” Although the bill does not explicitly specify what public “accommodations” the public generally uses, and the Democrats who introduced the bill did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, policy experts such as Vice President of Social and Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation Jay Richards believe that the “public accommodations” in question could include women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and personal spaces. “I’m certain that’s what the drafters intend,” Richards told The Daily Signal. Other provisions include allowing taxpayer funded transition surgeries and abortion, and require institutions to recognize one’s gender identity, or lack thereof, as a legitimate biological gender, which Richards considered to be harmful. “The bill would promote experimental, body-altering interventions for minors,” Richards stated. Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation Laura Hanford echoed Richard’s remarks and told The Daily Signal by allowing gender affirming care to take place, this “Bill of Rights” could further harm children. “They will continue to try and portray the Administration’s actions as excessive in an effort to make themselves look like they are protecting those they are, in fact, harming, she said. “This “Bill of Rights” is an effort to continue to claim that erasing woman and harming children is a “right” to protect rather than an excess to abolish.” In November, the Department of Health and Human Services described gender affirming care as “sex rejecting procedures” that pose “medical dangers” to “children.” However, even though the Trump administration has fought to eliminate transgender ideology and gender affirming care procedures, other conservative policy experts like Hanford that those actions could be reversed under a Democratic administration. Hanford added that the Democratic Party is “lavishly funded” by the LGBTQ activist lobby,” adding that “these groups have not abandoned their goals.” “While the Trump Administration has secured tremendous gains such as gender clinics pausing sex-rejecting procedures, these can readily be reversed in a new administration,” Hanford said. Since his election, the Trump administration has introduced policy to reverse the progressive transgender ideology pushed by Democrats under President Joe Biden’s administration. In Feb. 2025, President Donald Trump signed the Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports executive order, which banned biological males from competing in federally funded women’s sports. Trump argued that allowing men who identify as women in women’s sports is a direct violation of Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which states that educational institutions receiving federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports. Weeks before, the House passed Rep. Greg Steube’s, R-Fla., Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which was sent to the Senate for a vote. “Men have no place in women’s sports,” Steube wrote in a statement. “Republicans have promised to protect women’s sports, and under President Trump’s leadership, we will fulfill this promise.” State lawmakers have also continued to push back in recent years. In 2025, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., who was then a state senator, introduced legislation to ban LGBTQ+ flags from being flown on government property, including schools. Just recently, lawmakers in Illinois introduced legislation that would designate “transgenderism” as a “mental illness.” The post Democrats’ New ‘Trans Bill of Rights’ Looks to Undo Trump Policies to Protect Women’s Spaces appeared first on The Daily Signal.

GENEVA, Feb 17 (Reuters) — Iran and the United States reached an understanding on Tuesday on main “guiding principles” in talks aimed at resolving their longstanding nuclear dispute, but that does not mean a deal is imminent, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said. Oil futures fell and the benchmark Brent crude contract tumbled more than 1% after Araghchi’s comments, which helped ease fears of conflict in the region, where the U.S. has deployed a battle force to press Tehran for concessions. “Different ideas have been presented, these ideas have been seriously discussed, ultimately we’ve been able to reach a general agreement on some guiding principles,” Araghchi told Iranian media after the talks concluded in Geneva. A U.S. official said Iran would make detailed proposals in the next two weeks to close gaps in the nuclear talks. “Progress was made, but there are still a lot of details to discuss,” said the official, who declined to be identified. Both Sides Have ‘Clear Next Steps’ The indirect discussions between U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside Araqchi, were mediated by Oman. The White House did not respond to emailed questions about the meeting. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi said in a post on X “much work is yet to be done” but Iran and the U.S. were leaving with “clear next steps”. Just as talks began on Tuesday, Iranian state media said Iran would temporarily shut part of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global oil supply route, due to “security precautions” while Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards conducted military drills there. Tehran has in the past threatened to shut down the strait to commercial shipping if it is attacked, a move that would choke off a fifth of global oil flows and drive up crude prices. Responding to comments by Trump that “regime change” in Iran might be the best course, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, warned that any U.S. attempts to depose his government would fail. “The U.S. President says their army is the world’s strongest, but the strongest army in the world can sometimes be slapped so hard it cannot get up,” he said, in comments published by Iranian media. Speaking at a disarmament conference in Geneva after the talks, Araghchi said that a “new window of opportunity” had opened and that he hoped discussions would lead to a “sustainable” solution that ensured the full recognition of Iran’s legitimate rights. Earlier, Trump said he himself would be involved “indirectly” in the Geneva talks and that he believed Tehran wanted to make a deal. “I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday. “We could have had a deal instead of sending the B-2s in to knock out their nuclear potential. And we had to send the B-2s.” The U.S. joined Israel last June in bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. The U.S. and Israel believe Iran aspires to build a nuclear weapon that could threaten Israel’s existence. Iran says its nuclear programme is purely peaceful, even though it has enriched uranium far beyond the purity needed for power generation, and close to what is required for a bomb. Iran Says It Will Only Discuss Nuclear Program Since those strikes, Iran’s Islamic rulers have been weakened by street protests, suppressed at a cost of thousands of lives, against a cost-of-living crisis driven in part by international sanctions that have strangled Iran’s oil income. Washington has sought to expand the scope of talks to non-nuclear issues such as Iran’s missile stockpile. Tehran says it is willing only to discuss curbs on its nuclear program—in exchange for sanctions relief—and that it will not give up uranium enrichment completely or discuss its missile program. Khamenei reiterated Iran’s position that its formidable missile stockpile is non-negotiable and missile type and range have nothing to do with the United States. A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday the success of the Geneva talks hinged on the U.S. not making unrealistic demands and on its seriousness on lifting the crippling sanctions on Iran. (Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Elwely Elwelly in Dubai, Menna Alaa El-Din in Cairo, Humeyra Pamuk in Budapest, Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru, Steve Holland in Washington, Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Lincoln Feast, Sharon Singleton and Gareth Jones) The post Iranian Foreign Minister Says Progress Made in Nuclear Talks With US appeared first on The Daily Signal.