Glory to Ukraine!
Glory to the defenders of Ukraine and the entire modern civilization!
Today in the issue:
- The three-day shutdown has ended. Democrats demand reforms of the Department of Homeland Security, while Republicans are against it. As a result, it may be left without a budget.
- Unofficial hearings in Congress boycotted by Republicans: the horrifying story of US citizen Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by a border patrol officer.
- Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to testify in the Epstein case in the House Oversight Committee.
- A Democrat won the special election for the Texas Senate by nearly a 15% margin in a district where Democrats haven’t won in 36 years.
▶ On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the budget for the 2026 fiscal year with a narrow majority of 217-214 with one not voting, including changes made by the Senate. The bill was sent to the White House, where the president promptly signed it. Thus, the shutdown—a partial halt in the work of the federal government—was brief and “technical,” starting on Saturday and ending on Tuesday, lasting three and a half days. The budget will remain in effect until the end of the fiscal year—September 30.
The changes made by the Senate concern the Department of Homeland Security. Its funding is extended only for two weeks proportional to what it was in the previous budget. Congress must review a new bill for the Department of Homeland Security’s budget within two weeks. Democrats have set the inclusion of substantial changes to the rules of immigration police and border patrol as a condition of supporting this bill in the Senate—requiring all officers and agents to wear working video cameras, prohibiting the wearing of masks, banning home invasions without a judicial warrant, mandating coordination of all actions with local police and authorities, and other rules and restrictions aimed at eliminating or at least significantly limiting the arbitrariness of immigration police—extremely harsh treatment of people, including US citizens, which has recently led to two cold-blooded and brutally committed murders of American citizens.
It is clear that the discussion of all these demands by the Democrats will be very intense and very difficult. Most Republican lawmakers are categorically against any restrictions on the immigration police, including those that would require them to adhere to the Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary home invasions and requires a judicial warrant. Republicans are against it because the 47th president naturally does not want any restrictions on the immigration police, and because many of them themselves oppose any such restrictions.
Therefore, the Department of Homeland Security may be left without a budget for a long time. However, Republicans, as part of the procedure for reviewing the previous budget (allowing bills to be passed in the Senate by a simple majority) last summer passed a law with their votes only, named by them to please Trump “one big beautiful law” (Democrats call it “one big ugly law”), which provides among other things $75 billion for the Department of Homeland Security for four years – for recruiting new immigration police officers and building immigration prisons for detained immigrants. But if the department does not have a budget, it will not be able to finance many aspects of its activities, or the White House will have to break the law and bypass Congress to transfer money from other budget items for its financing.
▶ Democrats in Congress held unofficial hearings on Tuesday, where victims of immigration police abuses across the country, U.S. citizens, and relatives of killed U.S. citizens, described how immigration and border service officers shot at them, dragged them out of their cars, broke into their homes and apartments, detained, and took them to immigrant detention centers. The hearings are unofficial because Republicans, who have a majority in both houses of Congress, block such official hearings. No Republican wanted to attend the hearings, which, however, were broadcast live by the MS NOW channel (formerly MSNBC).
A harrowing story was told by a U.S. citizen, 31-year-old teacher from Chicago, Marimar Martinez. A border service officer, involved in the ICE raid in Chicago, shot her five times when she was just driving down the street, which was blocked by ICE officers and border patrolmen conducting a raid. Marimar Martinez was seriously injured, managed to drive about a mile and a half in her car, after which she stopped and called for an ambulance. She was taken to the hospital, but was kidnapped from there a few hours later by ICE officers while in critical condition and sent to prison labeled as an “internal terrorist.” The border patrolman who shot her boasted to his friends, sending them photos of the wounded woman with the caption: I fired five shots and made seven holes in her, learn from it!
The Trump prosecutors attempted to charge Martinez with “domestic terrorism,” assaulting a federal agent, and demanded her arrest, wounded and kidnapped from the hospital, until trial without the right to bail. The court rejected this insane absurdity. The prosecution had to drop the charges.
Other stories are no better. This is happening in the US in the 21st century. And this can now happen to any American, on any street, in any city, at least in any city in any “blue,” democratic state.
▶ Former President Bill Clinton and former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will answer questions from members of the House Oversight Committee in connection with the Epstein case on February 27th and 26th, respectively.
▶ The reaction of the 47th president and his administration to yet another barbaric, terrorist Russian attack on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and other Ukrainian cities was a cynical absence of reaction. Specifically, the 47th president responded to a journalist’s request by saying, well, Trump said, Putin kept his promise and did not target energy facilities from Sunday to Sunday. The 47th president is satisfied with this. He is fine with Putin.
White House Press Secretary Levitt added that “the war would never have started if President Trump had remained our president,” and the war started, as Levitt stated, because our president was the “weak and incompetent” Biden.
As usual, there was no response from the State Department to the new Russian war crime.
▶ On Saturday, the second round of early elections was held in Texas for the 18th district in the House of Representatives to fill the seat of the Democratic congressman who passed away in March last year, and in the Texas Senate for the 9th Texas Senate district.
The 18th Texas district in the US House of Representatives elections includes the nearest suburbs of Houston and is very “blue,” democratic. In the second round, two Democrats participated, one of whom won and became the 214th Democrat in the House of Representatives.
However, the 9th Senate election district of the Texas legislature, which includes the city of Fort Worth, is deeply “red,” Republican. Democrats haven’t won any elections there since 1991 — 35 years. In November 2024, Trump received 17% more votes there than Harris.
And now, in this district, 34-year-old Democrat Taylor Remet, a union activist working at the Lockheed Martin plant, achieved a landslide victory over his Republican opponent, who was supported by Trump, including a tweet on election day. The margin was almost 15% of the votes.
For 36 years, Democrats haven’t won elections there! Less than a year and a half ago, Trump won there with a 17% margin. Now, a Democrat has won with a margin of nearly 15%!
Such election results in a traditionally “red,” Republican district speak more about Trump’s and the Republican Party’s rating than any polls.
No wonder that right after this election, the 47th president stated that Republicans need to “nationalize the elections in 15 places.” He probably meant 15 “blue” states. On Tuesday, he even clarified what “nationalize” means — counting votes from a “center,” creating a structure within the federal government for this purpose.
Speaker Johnson, in response to journalists’ requests to comment on the president’s words, said that the idea is basically correct but cannot be implemented. Well, thank you for acknowledging that. Unlike the president, Johnson is a Doctor of Jurisprudence. He cannot ignore the fact that, according to the U.S. Constitution, elections are conducted, organized, and controlled by the states; each state conducts them independently, without central control, and Congress can only set certain uniform frameworks, such as the general date of federal elections or financial rules for election campaigns.
There are 1081 days left until the end of the story titled “Fear: Trump in the White House” © (title of the book by Bob Woodward, published in 2018).
Thank you to everyone who read this. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Take care of each other, help each other. Wishing everyone good health.
Ultimately, what happens in the world depends on us. Whether we fight evil, do Good, remain mere observers, passively wait and believe that someone somewhere will solve something for us, or we struggle against evil and do everything possible to ensure that Good prevails.
We must not allow evil to triumph. The victory of evil would mean the end of the world we live in. We cannot allow this. Especially now.
Ukrainian Friends, I embrace and love you all. Please take care of each other; I ask you very much.
Ukraine is and will always be.
And evil will be defeated and punished. And it will certainly happen.
