What Happened Today - 13 Feb 2026
What Happened Today – 13 Feb 2026
USS Gerald Ford - Iran
Tarriff update…no shocker here…
The Courts and Freedom of Speech
Whistleblower – Gabbard…and now maybe Kushner
DOJ has lost 8k+ lawyers
Trump’s Healthcare and TrumpRX
Pam Bondi’s Burn Book Backlash
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USS Gerald Ford - Iran
The USS Gerald Ford is heading to the Middle East is Trump putting a giant floating threat right on Iran’s doorstep, and everyone in the region is going to feel that pressure in a big way. This isn’t some routine port visit; it’s the second massive carrier strike group he’s stacking into an already tense neighborhood where one miscalculation can spiral way too fast.
What’s coming is more muscle in the Gulf and Arabian Sea, with the Ford linking up alongside the Lincoln and a wall of destroyers, subs, and carrier-based jets all staged to hit Iran or its proxies if Trump decides to swing. The White House is openly using this as leverage to squeeze Tehran back to the table on its nuclear program, but the message is just as much “we’re ready to strike” as it is “let’s talk.” Iran, in turn, is going to answer with its usual playbook: threats to close or disrupt traffic near key waterways, more bluster through the IRGC, and leaning on groups like Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis if they really want to show they’re not scared.
The fear here is that with two carrier groups in the mix, the margin for error shrinks to basically nothing—one drone, one missile, one misread radar track and suddenly people are talking “limited strikes” and “retaliation,” and that’s how you stumble into a war nobody actually voted for. You’ve got sailors and aircrews who’ve already been deployed for months now being told their tour is getting stretched so this stunt can play out, which only adds more strain behind the scenes while politicians rattle sabers from a safe distance. Markets are going to watch this closely too: anything that looks like serious risk to oil shipping in the region and you can expect jitters, price jumps, and a whole lot of “uncertainty” talk from the finance people. Bottom line, sending the Ford in doesn’t calm anything down—it turns the temperature up and bets the stability of the region on Trump not waking up one morning and deciding today’s the day he wants his big “Iran moment.”
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Tarriff update…no shocker here…
So the big “tariffs are making us rich” story basically blew up today, and it confirms what a lot of us have been yelling about: we paid for this mess, not China, not Mexico, not the rest of the world. The New York Fed and other analysts are saying nearly 90% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs in 2025 landed on U.S. businesses and consumers, which means this wasn’t some genius move where foreigners picked up the tab—it was a backdoor tax hike on all of us. Prices on imported stuff spiked, companies ate some of it in lower profits, and the rest just got shoved straight into higher prices on the shelf, which is exactly why everything’s felt more expensive while MAGA keeps bragging about “tough trade.”
On the “how much did America make off our money” side, the federal government pulled in around $180–200 billion in tariff revenue in 2025 alone and is on track for tens of billions more this fiscal year, which is a massive jump compared with the pre‑Trump baseline. But that cash doesn’t get put in some special “China paid for the wall” piggy bank—it just goes into the general Treasury fund, disappears into the big budget soup, and barely dents the deficit. So when Trump and MAGA talk like tariffs paid for tax cuts or big projects, the math just doesn’t back it up; the revenue is real, but it’s nowhere near big enough to offset the giveaways, and it came straight out of our wallets in higher costs and lower real wages.
As for “where is the money” and “why haven’t we seen benefits,” the answer is pretty blunt: it went into the same federal pot as every other tax dollar, while we got stuck with higher prices and slower trade. You feel the hit when you buy groceries, appliances, cars, or anything with imported parts, but you don’t see a line item on your paycheck saying “tariff rebate” because there isn’t one—this was marketed as hitting Beijing, but functionally it was a consumer tax dumped on Americans during an affordability crisis. Even MAGA‑world can’t really dodge the numbers now: their own “America First” tariffs ended up being “America Pays First,” with something like nine out of every ten tariff dollars effectively coming from us, not some foreign villain in a campaign speech.
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The Courts and Freedom of Speech
The judge in Mark Kelly’s case basically said what a lot of us have been thinking: the Pentagon trying to smack down a retired Navy captain and sitting senator for speaking out was not just wrong, it was flat‑out unconstitutional. He called their argument “horsefeathers,” said they had “trampled” Kelly’s First Amendment rights, and warned they were threatening the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees just for daring to talk publicly about unlawful orders and national security. That’s a big deal, because it draws a hard line: once you’ve hung up the uniform, you don’t lose your voice, and this administration doesn’t get to weaponize military rules to silence veterans who call them out. Kelly’s been clear this isn’t just about him, and the judge basically backed that up in plain language, making it clear veterans’ freedom of speech is not some optional extra the White House can dial up or down depending on who’s criticizing them.
On the Don Lemon front, today is his big arraignment day in Minnesota, where Trump’s DOJ is dragging him into federal court over that church protest tied to an ICE demonstration, trying to frame journalism and protest coverage as some kind of “conspiracy” to violate religious rights. He’s charged under statutes usually used for blocking access to clinics and places of worship, even though he’s saying he was there as a journalist, documenting what was happening, not organizing the action. The hearing this afternoon is where he’ll enter his plea, and his lawyers are already calling the whole thing an attack on the First Amendment and a politically motivated move to send a message: if you embarrass this administration while covering protests, they might come for you next. So on one side you’ve got a judge slamming the brakes on Trump trying to muzzle veterans, and on the other, the same government stretching the law to drag a journalist into court—two fronts in the same fight over who actually still has free speech in this country.
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Whistleblower – Gabbard…and now maybe Kushner
So this whistleblower story that started as “what did Gabbard bury” has now basically swung a spotlight straight onto Jared Kushner, and it’s getting messier by the day. What we know right now is that the complaint is built around a top‑secret intercepted conversation between two foreign nationals talking about Kushner in the context of Iran, with claims that would be a very big deal if they turn out to be real—but so far, nobody has produced hard proof beyond that intercept. The whistleblower isn’t just flagging Kushner’s name; they’re accusing Tulsi Gabbard, as DNI, of effectively sitting on the intel for political reasons—locking it away for about eight months, routing it through her office instead of normal channels, and walking a paper copy over to Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles instead of letting the broader intel community and Congress see it.
Gabbard, of course, is denying all of it—calling the complaint “baseless” and “politically motivated,” insisting she followed the rules and that she’s actually a champion of whistleblowers, which is a wild claim when the core allegation is that she buried a whistleblower report that happened to touch Trump’s son‑in‑law. The Trump crowd is trying to wave it off as gossip and “salacious” chatter from foreign spies, but the fact that multiple outlets have now confirmed Kushner was the one being discussed means this isn’t going away; it’s now about whether a senior intelligence official bent the system to protect the president’s family and his foreign money guy. What’s likely coming next is more pressure from Congress to see the full, unredacted complaint, more legal moves from the whistleblower’s lawyers to force Gabbard’s hand, and a slow grind of hearings, leaks, and subpoenas that pull Kushner’s foreign cash, Iran policy, and “private deals” back into the spotlight. Whether this turns into criminal exposure or just another example of Trump‑world using national security like a shield for their own drama, it already tells you one thing: the people who keep screaming “witch hunt” are once again right in the middle of the cauldron.
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DOJ has lost 8k+ lawyers
The fact that the DOJ has effectively bled out around eight thousand people—including thousands of lawyers—is not normal churn, it’s a five‑alarm warning siren that something is deeply broken inside the country’s top law enforcement shop. Between January 2025 and now, you’ve got a net loss of roughly 8,900 Justice Department employees, with more than 2,500 attorneys retiring or resigning and hundreds more pushed out through “reductions in force,” reassignments designed to make them quit, and loyalty‑screening games. Whole sections like civil rights, environment, and key litigating branches have seen a third to three‑quarters of their lawyers walk out, either shown the door or deciding they’re not going to stick around and be turned into political enforcers for Trump.
People should be absolutely shocked by this scale of loss, because we’re not talking about a few bad managers or some budget cut; this is years and decades of experience being wiped out and replaced—if it’s replaced at all—with loyalists or empty chairs. The stories behind those numbers all sound the same: career prosecutors reassigned to nonsense “task forces” until they quit, immigration judges and civil rights lawyers purged, senior attorneys told to take a buyout or face termination, and others resigning in protest because they refused to twist the law to protect Trump’s friends and hammer his enemies. Some were straight‑up fired; a lot more were pushed into “voluntary” exits that were only voluntary in the most technical sense, because the real test inside DOJ now isn’t competence, it’s loyalty to the guy in the Oval Office.
When that many lawyers decide they’d rather walk away from careers they spent their whole lives building instead of stay under this leadership, the question isn’t “why are they being so dramatic,” it’s “what is happening inside DOJ that they’re not willing to be part of.” A justice system run on fear, patronage, and political obedience instead of independent judgment is exactly how you slide into a place where civil rights cases don’t get brought, environmental crimes don’t get prosecuted, corruption probes get buried, and the only thing that thrives is whatever serves Trump’s agenda. Anyone looking at an eight‑thousand‑person exodus from the country’s top law enforcement agency and shrugging it off is missing that this isn’t just bureaucracy drama—it’s the infrastructure of the rule of law being quietly hollowed out in real time.
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Trump’s Healthcare and TrumpRX
Trump’s “great healthcare” push right now is basically a flashy brochure with a lot of big promises and not a lot of actual protection for people who get sick. His new Great Healthcare Plan is mostly about high‑deductible plans, more health savings accounts, price transparency talking points, and chipping away at ACA support instead of building something that guarantees solid coverage when you need it. They’re extending some Medicare funding and telehealth flexibilities, but at the same time they let the expanded ACA subsidies expire, which is already jacking up premiums for millions and putting older folks and low‑income people right back on the edge of losing coverage or cutting back on care. So when Trump brags that he’s delivering “the best healthcare,” it’s mostly tweaks and headlines that help insurers and employers and leave regular people still stuck with huge deductibles, narrow networks, and a ton of financial risk if anything really goes wrong.
TrumpRx is the new shiny object: a government‑backed coupon site where you can get discounts on a limited set of brand‑name drugs if you pay cash and your meds happen to be on the list. Right now it’s roughly 40‑plus drugs from a handful of big pharma companies, tied to deals where they got tariff breaks and other regulatory goodies in exchange for offering lower prices through this special channel. Pharmacies like CVS are now taking TrumpRx cards, and the discounts can be real for specific meds—but it’s only for certain drugs, mostly helps people paying out of pocket, and doesn’t fix the underlying problem that insurance, deductibles, and overall prices are still out of control. In other words, TrumpRx is great marketing for Trump and great PR for pharma, but it’s not a universal solution; it’s a discount program layered on top of a broken system, and the people who aren’t on those select drugs or who are drowning in premium and deductible costs still get left holding the bag.
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Pam Bondi’s Burn Book Backlash
Pam Bondi’s little “burn book” stunt is exactly the kind of slimy, underhand crap that tells you how this crowd thinks about power: not as a responsibility, but as a weapon. She walked into that House Judiciary hearing with a binder full of personal oppo on Democrats, including a printed list of what Pramila Jayapal searched in the DOJ’s Epstein files database—literally a “Jayapal Pramila Search History” sheet—so she could throw it back in their faces when they pressed her on Trump and Epstein. That means the Justice Department wasn’t just logging searches for internal security; Bondi’s team pulled those logs, printed them out, and then used them in a live oversight hearing to try to shame, intimidate, and derail the very members who are supposed to be holding her accountable.
That’s why it feels so backstabbing: lawmakers were told to go into this tiny, controlled room, no phones, special log‑ins, just notepads, to review sensitive Epstein documents, and they did that in good faith assuming the executive branch wouldn’t turn around and spy on what they clicked and then use it as ammo in front of the cameras. Instead, Bondi turns congressional oversight into a junior‑high mean girl routine, treating members’ research like gossip fodder, with staff behind her flipping pages in her “burn book” so she can launch personalized attacks instead of answering why Trump’s name was hidden, why victims’ info wasn’t properly protected, and why the release was delayed. When even Speaker Johnson is saying it’s not appropriate for DOJ to be tracking and printing that kind of material, you know this crossed a line; it’s not just rude, it’s a direct hit on separation of powers, and it sends a very clear message: if you dare look too closely at what they don’t want you to see, they’ll dig through your digital footsteps and try to humiliate you for it instead of doing their damn job.
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As we head into the weekend…who knows what will happen, so brace for anything and hope it stays quiet.
Speak Truth! Keep speaking TRUTH!
Don’t Give up the Ship!
Go Cause Good Trouble, with Your Elbows Up!
These are facts that I researched and verified – AI helped put together some sentence structure, but the words and tone are mine. These are my views based upon facts, research and thoughtful consideration using logic. I own the copyright to any images used. I’m comfortable to stand alone to uphold truth. Feel free to check me, but do not attack me. I am only causing good trouble.