News Stories Showing How Things Are NOT Normal; Super Bowl Reporters Learn San Francisco Isn’t Actually a Hellhole–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Feb. 12, 2026

Indy Digest: Feb. 12, 2026

Here are a trio of news articles from the week that illustrate, quite clearly, how THINGS ARE NOT NORMAL RIGHT NOW.

1. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues leasing property—and is trying to do so as quietly as possible. Wired reports:

Federal records obtained by WIRED show that over the past several months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have carried out a secret campaign to expand ICE’s physical presence across the U.S. Documents show that more than 150 leases and office expansions have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas. In many cases, these facilities, which are to be used by street-level agents and ICE attorneys, are located near elementary schools, medical offices, places of worship, and other sensitive locations.

In El Paso, Texas, for example, the agency is moving into a large campus of buildings right off of Interstate 10 near multiple local health providers and other businesses. In Irvine, California, ICE is moving into offices located next to a childcare agency. In New York, ICE is moving into offices on Long Island near a passport center. In a wealthy community near Houston, Texas, ICE appears poised to move into an office building blocks away from a preschool.

The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal buildings and functions as the government’s internal IT department, is playing a critical role in this aggressive expansion. In numerous emails and memorandums viewed by WIRED, DHS asked GSA explicitly to disregard usual government lease procurement procedures and even hide lease listings due to “national security concerns” in an effort to support ICE’s immigration enforcement activities across the U.S.

2. The Trump administration has officially declared that the country does not need to take steps to lessen greenhouse-gas emissions. CNBC says:

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a landmark scientific finding that serves as the legal foundation for federal regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, in a devastating blow to efforts to combat climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding, established under President Barack Obama in 2009, classified carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases as a threat to public health and welfare.

It underpins Clean Air Act emissions standards and rules for cars and light trucks, power plants, and oil and gas industry facilities.

“This is about as big as it gets,” President Donald Trump said at the White House with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding.”

Zeldin said all greenhouse gas emissions standards on light, medium and heavy duty vehicles that followed the endangerment finding have been eliminated. “No longer will automakers be pressured to shift their fleets towards electric vehicles,” he said. …

Obama said in a social media post that the Trump administration’s action makes the U.S. “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”

The Sierra Club, the largest environmental group in the U.S., said Trump has formalized “climate denialism as official government policy.”

3. The Trump administration is apparently tracking the Epstein files searches by members of Congress. CBS News says:

A high-profile House Democrat is accusing Attorney General Pam Bondi of “spying” on her search history while she pored through Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, after Bondi was seen at a combative congressional hearing Wednesday with what appeared to be a list of the lawmaker’s searches.

One of the printouts that Bondi referenced during the hearing was a list labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History,” referring to Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington. The document listed out at least eight different files from the Justice Department’s trove of Epstein records, including their file numbers and brief descriptions of their contents, according to images snapped by photojournalists who covered the hearing.

It’s not entirely clear how the list was compiled, but since Monday, the Justice Department has allowed several members of Congress to visit its offices and search through a database of unredacted Epstein files. In recent weeks, the department has made millions of records on the late sex offender public, but with redactions to take out survivors’ names and other information, drawing criticism from some lawmakers who argue the redactions were excessive.

Jayapal said in a statement to CBS News on Wednesday: “It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files.”

“Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched,” said the Democrat, who previously chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”

Not. Normal.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Before we get to more bleh news, we would like to congratulate our friends at the Palm Springs Post on the publication’s five-year anniversary! We know as well as anyone how hard the local-news biz can be, and a milestone like this is a big deal. Congrats, Mark and Kendall!

• Moderna is speaking out after the FDA’s vaccine division head—who also happens to be a vaccine critic—rejected its new mRNA flu vaccine. The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link): “In an hour-long meeting in January, Food and Drug Administration career staff laid out their objections to a plan to block a new flu shot from vaccine maker Moderna. They argued that refusing to even consider the vaccine was the wrong approach to address any concerns about the product. Vinay Prasad, the head of the FDA vaccine and biologics division, overruled them—despite the agency earlier signing off on Moderna’s approach to studying the shot. Prasad told Moderna earlier this month he wouldn’t review its flu application, arguing that its clinical trial was inadequate. The Moderna decision is part of a pattern of regulatory U-turns and overruling of FDA staff by Prasad, a Covid-vaccine critic elevated by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. At least nine companies, many of them focused on rare or hard-to-treat diseases, have said Prasad’s team has surprised them in recent months with rapid shifts in its decisions, in some cases rejecting their products after previously blessing their approaches.”

• Speaking of incompetence and confusion … the Federal Aviation Administration announced that the airspace around El Paso International Airport would be closed for 10 days—an unprecedented action. The FAA soon backtracked. What in the heck happened? The Associated Press tries to explain: “The Pentagon allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use an anti-drone laser earlier this week, leading the Federal Aviation Administration to suddenly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. The confusing arc of events began as the FAA announced it was shutting down all flight traffic over the city on the U.S.-Mexico border for 10 days, stranding some travelers, but the closure ended up only lasting a few hours. The Trump administration said it stemmed from the FAA and Pentagon working to halt an incursion by Mexican cartel drones, which are not uncommon along the southern border. One of the people said the laser was deployed near Fort Bliss without coordinating with the FAA, which decided then to close the airspace to ensure commercial air safety. Others familiar with the matter said the technology was used despite a meeting scheduled for later this month between the Pentagon and the FAA to discuss the issue. … Normal flights resumed after seven arrivals and seven departures were canceled. Some medical evacuation flights also had to be rerouted.” Wow!

• The New York Times sub-headline reads: “A young aide behind social posts that echoed white supremacist messaging will help run social media for the much larger Homeland Security Department.” Is anyone surprised? Details (gift link): “The Department of Homeland Security has hired a social media manager from the Department of Labor for a key communications job, despite posts he made on Labor Department media accounts that raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging. Peyton Rollins, 21, was hired this month to help run Homeland Security’s social media accounts, which have become public bullhorns for President Trump’s mass-deportation efforts and come under scrutiny of their own for appealing to right-wing extremists. … Mr. Rollins has spent most of the past year giving the Labor Department’s social media pages a makeover in Mr. Trump’s image. Current and former employees said career staff members had been pushed aside after Mr. Rollins’ arrival and rarely, if ever, crafted social media posts once he took control. Instead, Mr. Rollins personally posted social media content, which he has included on his personal website. Agency posts of late have used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like ‘Restore American Greatness’ and ‘the globalist status quo is OVER.’ An image of Mr. Trump, with bombers flying overhead, was accompanied by the message, ‘One of one.’”

• Federal prosecutors tried to get a grand jury to indict six members of Congress, including Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, after they posted a video encouraging members of the military to disregard illegal orders. The grand jury said no. The Associated Press reports: “The Justice Department opened an investigation into the video featuring Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and four other Democratic lawmakers urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful. All the lawmakers previously served in the military or at intelligence agencies. Grand jurors in Washington declined to sign off on charges in the latest of a series of rebukes of prosecutors by citizens in the nation’s capital, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. It wasn’t immediately clear whether prosecutors had sought indictments against all six lawmakers or what charge or charges prosecutors attempted to bring. Grand jury rejections are extraordinarily unusual, but have happened repeatedly in recent months in Washington as citizens who have heard the government’s evidence have come away underwhelmed in a number of cases. Prosecutors could try again to secure an indictment.”

• In an interview with The Conversation, Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge, explains why this refusal to indict is so meaningful: “It’s a very one-sided process. There are no defense attorneys present. There’s a court reporter, the grand jury, the United States attorney, and such witnesses as the United States attorney decides to call. While the target of a grand jury can endeavor to present witnesses, including themselves, that generally never happens because of the danger of self-incrimination. The grand jurors can ask questions of the witnesses, but the United States attorney can choose the evidence that it wants to present to the grand jury, and typically they present only such evidence as is necessary in order to establish probable cause that a crime has been committed. … (A refusal to indict is nearly) unprecedented, although we now see a wave of grand juries pushing back against the government. I don’t recall a single instance, during the almost 20 years I served as a U.S. District judge, when a grand jury refused to return a true bill, an indictment. It just is completely aberrational. The grand jury would have to totally reject the whole premise of the case that’s being presented to them by the United States attorney because, remember, there are typically no witnesses appearing before the grand jury to dispute the facts. The grand jury is clearly saying, ‘Even accepting the facts you’re putting before us as true, we don’t think under these circumstances this case is worthy of a federal indictment.’”

• Pour one out for Gallup’s presidential approval polls. CNN says: “Gallup, one of the country’s most well-known polling firms, announced Wednesday that it will no longer track presidential approval or favorability of political figures. The move ends the longest-running continuous effort to track US opinion of the nation’s president, dating back to the tenure of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s. The company attributes the change to a shift toward research on ‘issues and conditions that shape people’s lives.’ Gallup has some of the longest trend data in polling on public opinion about prominent issues and the nation’s mood, which it plans to continue, and says that it will no longer ‘publish assessments of individual political figures.’ The end of presidential approval tracking at Gallup is the latest in a long line of shifts that have remade the landscape of polling over the last few decades. Some major public pollsters, including Gallup, stepped back from conducting polling on which candidate voters prefer, sometimes referred to as horserace polling. Changes in the ways people communicate made it harder, more time-consuming and more expensive to conduct polling by telephone, long the gold-standard of survey methodology and the methodology Gallup has used for its presidential approval tracking. That’s led to major shifts in how public pollsters do their work.”

• And finally … the Super Bowl brought a lot of sportswriters and other reporters to the Bay Area—and those reporters realized the conservative narrative that San Francisco is a chaotic hellhole was a load of B.S. SFGate reports on one example: “Over 70,000 people attended the game at Levi’s Stadium, but approximately 1.3 million passengers traveled into San Francisco International Airport. As these visitors returned home, they brought with them a clearer sense of what San Francisco is actually like — as opposed to a politically motivated narrative that has derided the city. ‘I’m going to tell you: They lied to you about San Francisco,’ longtime NFL writer Adam Rank said Tuesday during ‘The Jim Rome Show.’ ‘They tried to take a run at Frisco, saying it was some terrible place and you needed to be scared. It really was nothing like that. It was a delightful city.’”

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