What Happened Today - 20 Feb 2026
What Happened Today – 20 Feb 2026
Prince Andrew Update
VA Walk back on Ratings Rule
Aliens…train wreck
Board of Peace….and more
Iran Update
Tarriff’s….out!
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Prince Andrew Update
Prince Andrew walks out of custody and, shocker, he’s not “cleared,” he’s just been cut loose under investigation, which is basically the UK way of saying “don’t get too comfortable, we’re not done with you yet.” He spent hours being questioned on this misconduct in public office angle, tied to whether he was feeding Epstein sensitive government or trade info back when he was swanning around as a special envoy, and now police have his mugshot, DNA, and all the usual stuff while they keep tearing through his houses. No charges yet, but the bar here is ugly: if they decide to actually move, misconduct in public office can carry a life sentence, and legal folks are already saying this could drag on for weeks or months while the Crown Prosecution Service decides if there’s enough to formally nail him or just let him slither away again. In the meantime, he’s radioactive—King Charles is doing the “let the process play out” constitutional act, but the palace knows this is another full-blown Epstein-flavored nightmare landing right back on their doorstep.
Trump, meanwhile, did exactly what you’d expect: got asked about Andrew on Air Force One and instantly slid into “I feel so sorry, very sad, terrible for the royal family” mode, like he’s the world’s grieving consoler-in-chief instead of a guy who’s been name-checked in the same Epstein document dumps. He called it “a shame” and “very sad” and “so bad for the royal family,” then pretty quickly pivoted back to his favorite subject—himself—bragging yet again that he’s been “totally exonerated” on Epstein and that he, uniquely, is the “expert” on this kind of accusation because he supposedly beat it all already. The whole thing has big “I’m not like him, I’m the innocent one in this Epstein universe” energy—public sympathy for Andrew on the surface, but underneath it’s Trump doing crisis management for Trump, trying to wall off any new fallout from these DOJ files and emails that keep popping up with his name in them. So Andrew’s out but under a cloud, police are still ripping through his life, and Trump’s up in the sky playing both mourner and main character, feeling “sorry” for the guy while quietly reminding everyone he thinks he got away clean.
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VA Walk back on Ratings Rule
This week the VA really tried it with that “if your meds help, maybe your rating should go down” nonsense, and I’m still pissed just thinking about it. The whole idea that because a veteran is finally on the right cocktail of antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds or whatever, that somehow means we’re magically “better” and don’t need the same level of support, is offensive on every level. I’ve cycled through meds over a decade, and yeah, they help keep my head above water, but this isn’t a cure—it’s maintenance. It’s like taking Advil after you trash your knee on a long hike: you get a little relief, but it doesn’t rewind your body back to your childhood knees in your 50s. The fact that they even floated this rule, dropped it on vets as if we wouldn’t notice, shows exactly how disconnected the system can be from the people actually living with these disabilities day in and day out. But the outrage was immediate and loud, and they yanked it back the next day, which is a huge win for vets and absolutely the right call—though it never should’ve been on the table in the first place. Keep using your voices, keep raising hell when they try to chip away at what we’ve earned, because clearly they only listen when we make it impossible for them not to.
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Aliens…train wreck
Obama goes on a podcast, gets hit with the “are aliens real?” lightning-round question, and drops “they’re real, but I haven’t seen them, they’re not at Area 51” like it’s no big deal, then has to spend the next day doing cleanup duty because everybody lost their minds over whether he’d just confirmed first contact. He comes back and clarifies that he was trying to be light, that statistically life probably exists somewhere out there, but that during his time in office he saw zero evidence of aliens visiting Earth or the U.S. government hiding little green men in bunkers. From the outside, it looked like one of those moments where a throwaway joke hits the conspiracy crowd like a siren, then gets walked back so fast your head spins, and the whole thing starts to fade out as a “that was weird but whatever” story.
And then Trump jumps in like he always does and pours gasoline on it. On Air Force One, he basically accuses Obama of spilling “classified information” by talking about aliens at all, saying he “gave classified information” and “made a big mistake,” while in the same breath claiming he himself doesn’t know if aliens are real and doesn’t really talk about it. The second he says the word “classified,” he does exactly what you’re pointing out: he implies there is, in fact, classified alien-related info to spill, which just lights up the whole “so you’re confirming there’s something there” question all over again. Then, like clockwork, he goes on Truth Social and posts that, because of the “tremendous interest,” he’s going to direct agencies to identify and release government files on extraterrestrial life, UFOs, UAPs—the whole alphabet soup—turning it into another “I alone will reveal the secrets” stunt. So we’ve got Obama making an offhand comment and then clarifying “no, I haven’t seen proof,” and Trump turning it into this circus where he both scolds Obama for supposedly leaking secrets and then demands alien files be released like he’s the ringmaster of Disclosure-Con 2026.
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Board of Peace….and more
So yesterday’s big “Board of Peace” rollout was basically Trump trying to crown himself King of World Affairs and send the bill to…who exactly, we still don’t know. He stood up there and announced that the U.S. is going to kick in 10 billion dollars to this thing, supposedly to rebuild Gaza and fund this new global conflict-fixer he’s cooked up, but he never once spelled out where that money comes from—no appropriation, no line item, no “this has passed Congress,” nothing. Reporters pressed the White House and they couldn’t explain whether this is supposed to be existing aid repackaged, some hypothetical future budget ask, or just Trump writing checks with our tax dollars that Congress hasn’t actually signed off on. Meanwhile, he’s bragging that other countries have pledged around 7 billion for Gaza through this board—mostly Gulf states—and again, all of it is being funneled through a structure he chairs and basically controls.
And yeah, he literally made himself the head of this thing indefinitely—no term, no rotation, just Trump as permanent chair of a self-invented “world peace” club that the Vatican has already said “hard pass” to, and that a bunch of key European allies are avoiding because it blatantly sidelines the U.N. and existing international frameworks. It is absolutely a DIY mini-NATO vibe: an alternative diplomatic platform, stacked with a mix of smaller states, regional players, and some outright awful regimes, where he gets to play global dealmaker without the annoying parts like accountability, treaties, or actual oversight. On top of that, he’s already pulled us out of the WHO (again), stiffed them on hundreds of millions we still owe, and now his team is trying to spin up a U.S.-run “global health” apparatus that would cost around 2 billion dollars a year—almost triple what we were paying to be part of the existing WHO system. Health experts are calling it shortsighted and reckless because instead of working inside a global network we helped build, he wants to reinvent it from scratch, under U.S. political control, at a higher price and with worse coverage.
So yeah, your whole read is dead on: he’s effectively trying to set up his own parallel NATO-style structure with the Board of Peace, plus a knockoff WHO that eats billions more per year so he and his anti-vax, quack-friendly crowd can posture as the new guardians of “global health.” Meanwhile, no one can clearly tell us if this 10 billion for his peace board or the 2 billion a year for the WHO replacement is actually appropriated money, a wish list, or just a headline he tossed out to sound big and “historic” while Congress is nowhere in that conversation. It’s peak circus: massive dollar amounts, new shadow institutions, Trump at the center forever, and the rest of us sitting here asking the most basic question—what money, whose authority, and why are we paying more to get less while he plays world emperor.
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Iran Update
Trump is out here talking like we’re on a countdown clock to something massive with Iran—“10 to 15 days” for a deal or “bad things” happen—while at the same time the Pentagon is quietly dumping a ton of air and naval hardware into the region. That “no new wars” promise is already basically shredded in spirit; you don’t surge bombers, carriers, and missile defenses toward Iran, talk openly about deciding whether to bomb them in a week or two, and then pretend you’re still the peace candidate. He keeps framing it like, “Maybe we get a meaningful deal, maybe we don’t, we’ll see,” but the whole thing is an ultimatum with a visible clock and a big implied threat hanging over it.
On top of that, the U.K. has basically thrown a big legal and political speed bump in front of any strike plan by saying, “Yeah, we have not given you permission to use our bases for this,” which hits places like Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford directly. Those are not just any random facilities; they’re the kind of long-range bomber hubs the U.S. likes to lean on when it wants to hit targets in the Middle East hard and from a distance, and London’s lawyers are clearly worried that signing off on Iran strikes would drag the U.K. into an illegal war. Trump even threw a tantrum over the Chagos/Diego Garcia sovereignty issue right as this was breaking, basically weaponizing that dispute because Starmer’s government wouldn’t green-light his Iran options.
What should we expect? Unless Iran suddenly caves on a “meaningful deal” around its nuclear program—and they’re already signaling they’ll hit back hard if attacked—this next two-week window is going to be nothing but tension, leaks, and “are we doing this or not” speculation. Realistically, the U.S. can still launch strikes without U.K. bases by leaning more on carriers, regional partners, and other assets, but losing Diego Garcia and Fairford for a big air campaign makes everything messier, riskier, and more politically isolated for Washington. So we’re stuck watching a president who swore off new wars openly talk about timelines for hitting Iran while allies balk, Iran threatens to respond “decisively,” and everyone else holds their breath hoping this doesn’t slide from brinkmanship into another full-blown disaster.
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Tarriff’s….out!
The Court basically just told Trump, “No, you don’t get to wake up one day, yell ‘emergency,’ and slap tariffs on half the planet by yourself,” and did it 6–3, which is a massive rebuke of his whole “I am the tariff guy” schtick. They said the law he used—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—does not give him the power to impose these broad, recurring, revenue-raising tariffs at all; that power lives with Congress unless Congress clearly and explicitly hands it over, which it didn’t. Practically, this wipes out a big chunk of his global tariff program: the sweeping 10% “reciprocal” tariff he slapped on almost every country, plus a set of 25% “emergency” duties tied to things like China and “fentanyl” on certain imports from China, Canada, and Mexico, while leaving in place separate steel and aluminum tariffs that were done under a different law (Section 232).
On the money side, this is where it gets messy and infuriating. These now-illegal tariffs have pulled in well over a hundred billion dollars—some estimates put it around 140–175 billion collected over the past few years—and all of that came out of importers’ pockets, which ultimately meant higher prices for everyone here. The Court very pointedly did not spell out exactly what happens with refunds; they knocked the tariffs down, then basically handed the logistics back to the trade courts and Treasury to sort out. What it likely means is: importers who paid these duties (from big-box retailers down to small and mid-sized companies who’ve already been suing) can line up for refunds through the Court of International Trade and Customs, potentially with interest, but it’s going to be a slow, bureaucratic slog with more litigation, not some instant, automatic “cash back” button. That money isn’t sitting in some untouched jar, either—it’s already been absorbed into general federal revenue and baked into budgets—so if the government has to start writing checks back out, it’s a hit to the Treasury that someone eventually has to cover or offset.
Are all tariffs gone? No. This isn’t “no tariffs ever again,” it’s “you can’t use this emergency law as a magic wand to do whatever you want.” The decision strikes down Trump’s IEEPA-based tariffs—about 70% of his global tariff program—but leaves his separate steel/aluminum tariffs and other duties imposed under different, older trade statutes still standing, at least for now. The majority’s logic also signals that if a president wants new big tariffs, they either need a clear statute that explicitly allows it or they need Congress to pass something; vague “emergency” language won’t cut it anymore. Trump could try to repackage some tariffs under other laws (he’s already floated “reframing” things as licenses and other gimmicks), but each move will be challenged and scrutinized in court now with this ruling as the backdrop.
The dissent from Kavanaugh, joined by Thomas and Alito, is basically: “Relax, IEEPA totally lets him do this, and the majority is overreacting.” Kavanaugh’s argument is that tariffs are a traditional tool of regulating imports, that presidents have broad leeway in foreign economic measures during emergencies, and that “context and common sense” show Congress meant to include tariffs even if the word “tariff” never appears in the statute. He also waves a big red flag over the practical fallout: he warns that forcing refunds of “billions of dollars” will be a huge, complicated mess for the Treasury and the trade courts, and he insists that, in his view, this shouldn’t drastically limit future presidents because other statutes still exist that can support tariffs. So stripped of the MAGA loyalty angle, their legal story is: the president should get wide deference in emergencies and foreign economic measures, tariffs fit under that umbrella, and the Court is, in their minds, hamstringing a core executive tool and setting up a budget and refund nightmare.
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I honestly didn’t want to write today…this week was a literal shitshow….and it sure can be overwhelming. Looking forward to the weekend, sure hope the news cycle can just be put on a pause for a bit and give us some breathing room.
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.