What Happened Today - 26 Feb 2026
What Happened Today – 26 Feb 2026
Withholding Medicare in Minnesota
Epstein update…
Hegseth is after Mark Kelly…again
On Immigration…
More State of the Union Drama
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Withholding Medicare in Minnesota
What Vance rolled out on Minnesota is exactly what it sounds like: using poor and sick people as leverage in a political shakedown, and then trying to wrap it in the word “fraud” like that magically makes it noble. They’re “temporarily” freezing roughly a quarter‑billion dollars in Medicaid money that keeps low‑income folks, disabled people, and seniors afloat, and acting like there’s no real‑world fallout while they wait for Minnesota to crawl to them with a “corrective action plan.” They’re pitching it as a “war on fraud,” but it’s pretty obvious this is also a shot at a blue governor they hate and a warning shot to every other blue state: fall in line or we play games with your safety net.
The basic excuse is that audits found serious fraud tied to Minnesota Medicaid services like daycare and related providers, and instead of surgically going after the bad actors, the Trump crew decided to pull back $259 million in federal Medicaid payments and sit on it until the state does things their way. Vance is out there bragging that Minnesota is “just the first,” because he’s leading Trump’s new anti‑fraud task force and clearly wants a headline‑grabbing scalp to show he’s “tough.” The CMS head, Mehmet Oz of all people, is basically saying: we’re holding the cash, and if Minnesota doesn’t fix things to our satisfaction, they can stack up to a billion dollars in deferred payments over the year. That’s not targeted enforcement; that’s turning the entire state’s low‑income healthcare into a hostage situation to make a political point.
On the “physically hurt people” piece: this is exactly how that happens without anybody saying the quiet part out loud. You don’t have to order violence; you just cut off the money that pays for chemo, insulin, mental health meds, nursing homes, and disability care, and you pretend it’s some clean, bloodless “accountability” measure. People lose coverage, providers close, waitlists grow, and the folks with the least cushion end up sicker, poorer, and in some cases dead, while the White House pats itself on the back for being fiscally responsible. None of this is hypothetical—when states have gaps in Medicaid funding, we see hospital closures in rural areas, people skipping meds, and worse health outcomes across the board. So yes, yanking Medicaid money over politics is a form of physical harm dressed up as policy: they know exactly who depends on this program and who’s going to pay the price while they posture.
Legally, this is on very shaky ground if they push it too far, and they know it. The Supreme Court has already said the feds can’t basically put “a gun to the head” of states by threatening to pull huge chunks of Medicaid money to force policy changes, and that there are limits under the Spending Clause and the Tenth Amendment on coercing states through funding threats. The line between “we’re protecting program integrity” and “we’re punishing a state we don’t like and trying to bully their elected officials” is exactly what courts look at when they decide if something is unconstitutionally coercive. If this ends up as a broad, prolonged blockade of core Medicaid funding instead of a narrow, evidence‑based fraud hold, federal judges are going to have a field day with it, especially given the precedent that you can’t just yank existing Medicaid dollars as a bludgeon.
So will it get struck down? My read: if Minnesota sues—and they’d be crazy not to—there’s a decent chance a court at least freezes this move or forces the administration to narrow it way down, because the Supreme Court has already told the federal government “you can’t coerce states by kneecapping Medicaid” and this looks a lot like the same energy with a new coat of paint. Even if they try to hide behind “fraud,” the combination of timing (election season), the public tough‑guy rhetoric from Vance, and the sheer size of the dollars involved makes it look far more like political punishment than routine program integrity enforcement. Bottom line: they’re playing chicken with people’s health to score points and intimidate blue states, and they’re betting that courts either won’t stop them fast enough or won’t want to wade into it—meanwhile, the bodies that hit the ground from this kind of stunt are always the same people: poor, sick, disabled, elderly, and invisible to them.
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Epstein update…
The fact that Hillary is being hauled in today to testify behind closed doors on Epstein, after Republicans refused her request for a public hearing, pretty much tells you everything about the game they’re running. They want the leaks, the out‑of-context snippets, the MAGA committee members doing their little Fox News monologues on the courthouse steps while the actual transcript sits locked up for days. She and Bill pushed for this to be out in the open, on camera, so people could see the full exchange, and Comer and crew said nope—standard practice is closed‑door, then we decide what the public hears and when. You don’t do that if you care about truth; you do that if you care about narrative and memes and fundraising emails. And you just know MAGA is going to come out claiming “bombshells” no one can see yet, counting on the fact that most of their base won’t wait for the actual transcript.
Meanwhile, all around the edges of this Epstein mess, big names are finally getting real consequences—or at least feeling enough heat that they’re jumping ship—and it still feels like we’re barely scratching the surface. Larry Summers is walking away from Harvard after the school’s review of Epstein documents shows just how deep his connections and emails went, and they’re framing it like some graceful retirement when it’s obviously fallout. Bill Gates is in front of his own staff admitting his Epstein relationship was a “huge mistake,” owning that he kept meeting the guy after the conviction and bringing other foundation people into the orbit, while still insisting he saw and did nothing criminal. The former Norwegian prime minister, Thorbjørn Jagland, is literally in the hospital in critical condition after a reported suicide attempt, right after he was charged with “gross corruption” tied to Epstein—raids on his homes, years of contact, luxury trips, the whole thing. And now the president of the World Economic Forum, Børge Brende, is suddenly resigning right after an independent review lays out his dinners and communications with Epstein, and he’s pretending he’s just stepping aside so Davos can “avoid distractions.” This isn’t fringe; this is the very center of global power quietly bleeding out around one predator’s network.
And then there’s the DOJ, which somehow “might have” accidentally left out Epstein‑related documents that involve a woman’s claims of being assaulted by Trump and Epstein in the 1980s, and they’re now “reviewing” whether those files were improperly withheld. Think about how wild that sentence is: Congress had to pass a law to force the release of these files, the DOJ brags about dumping 3.5 million pages, and reporters still find gaps where specific FBI interview summaries with a Trump accuser appear to be missing. Only after media and members of Congress say, “Uh, where are these?” does DOJ hop online and go, essentially, “Oh, our bad, we’ll check.” At the same time, Republicans are laser‑focused on getting Hillary on tape behind closed doors, while Trump and everyone currently in power around him are acting like this has nothing to do with them and offering zero transparency, zero testimony, zero answers.
So yeah, it’s absolutely insane that we just keep letting this roll like it’s normal. We’ve got former presidents, cabinet secretaries, billionaire philanthropists, university elites, European leaders, and Davos bosses all getting touched by the same set of documents, and the system’s response is: a couple resignations, a carefully lawyered apology, a secret deposition, and a Justice Department shrugging its shoulders about maybe misplacing some of the most explosive files. The people who helped enable this world—where a rich predator could buy access to politicians, academics, and global institutions—are still largely self‑policing, still controlling who gets seen as accountable and who stays untouched. Trump world stays quiet, Republican leadership aims all the cameras at the Clintons, DOJ inches along, and everyone pretends this is just another partisan food fight instead of a full‑blown indictment of how power protects itself. The craziest part is how numb we’re expected to be to it—like a prime minister in the hospital, a WEF chief stepping down, and a U.S. president’s accuser’s files maybe missing from a mandated release can all hit in the same news cycle and we’re supposed to just move on to the next outrage.
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Hegseth is after Mark Kelly…again
Hegseth going after Mark Kelly again is exactly what it looks like: Trump’s war secretary is obsessed with making an example out of the one high‑profile veteran who dared to say out loud that troops should refuse illegal orders, and he just cannot let it go. A federal judge already smacked him down hard, saying his attempt to demote Kelly’s retired rank and mess with his pension was unconstitutional retaliation that chilled the free speech of millions of military retirees, and blocked the Pentagon from touching his rank or pay. Instead of taking the L and backing off, Hegseth is now appealing that ruling, ramping up the public fight, and leaning into this narrative that Kelly’s video—where he and other veterans reminded service members they must refuse unlawful orders—was somehow “seditious” and destructive to military discipline. Kelly’s response makes it pretty clear what’s going on: he’s saying Trump and Hegseth are trying to turn him into a cautionary tale to scare every other retired officer into shutting up about their reckless, possibly illegal moves overseas and at home, and that the only reason you appeal a ruling like this is because you want the power to stomp on veterans’ speech and punish dissent.
It’s wild that we’re at a point where the guy running the Pentagon is more fixated on policing a senator’s speech from a YouTube video than on the fact that his boss keeps flirting with blatantly unlawful uses of the military—and instead of being embarrassed that a judge had to lecture him on the First Amendment, he’s doubling down. Hegseth keeps throwing around words like “seditious” to describe a veteran reminding troops not to carry out illegal orders, while the same administration is launching controversial strikes, sending Guard troops into cities over governors’ objections, and trying to rewrite what “lawful” even means. The whole thing has big authoritarian energy: punish the dissenter, rewrite the rules so retirees are treated like active‑duty when they criticize the president, and send a message that if you ever wore the uniform, you’d better keep your mouth shut or they’ll come for your rank and your benefits. And we’re just…supposed to live with this as normal now, like it’s totally fine for a ruling party to use the Pentagon to chase down one senator over a video reminding troops to follow the law, while everyone who actually undermines democracy gets a promotion.
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On Immigration…
On immigration, it’s somehow getting even darker. In Buffalo, a 56‑year‑old Rohingya refugee named Nurul Amin Shah Alam, almost completely blind and barely able to see out of his remaining eye, was found dead on the streets days after Border Patrol took him from jail and dumped him at a coffee shop miles from his home, at night, in the freezing cold, with no one called to pick him up. This man survived genocide in Myanmar, came here as a refugee, then got tased and beaten by Buffalo police in 2025 because he was disoriented, wandered onto someone’s property, and didn’t understand commands to drop the “weapon” he was holding—which was literally a curtain rod he used as a cane. He spent about a year in the Erie County jail, took a plea to a misdemeanor so he wouldn’t get shipped off to ICE, then when he finally gets out, Border Patrol picks him up on an immigration detainer and instead of taking him to a safe place, they leave a blind, illiterate, non‑English‑speaking man in an unfamiliar part of the city and walk away. The medical examiner is calling it “health‑related,” but that doesn’t change the fact that this is what our system did: it took one of the most vulnerable people you could imagine and turned him into collateral damage because no one could be bothered to treat him like a human being. This is what “enforcement” looks like now—ICE and Border Patrol so desensitized that abandoning a blind refugee five miles from home in winter is just another box checked in the system.
And while that’s happening on the ground, a federal judge just had to step in and say out loud what should have been obvious from day one: Trump’s “third‑country” deportation scheme is illegal and has to stop. DHS has been quietly shoving people out of the country not back to their home, but to random “third” nations they have no ties to, often without real notice, without a chance to explain that they might be tortured or killed there, and without any genuine opportunity to challenge it in court. The judge basically said you cannot just grab someone and send them to an “unknown and potentially dangerous country” and pretend that counts as due process; you have to at least try to remove them to their country of origin or a country an immigration judge has actually named, and you have to give them meaningful notice and a chance to object. So on one hand, you’ve got a blind refugee dead after being effectively discarded like trash, and on the other, a court spelling out that this administration’s broader project—outsourcing people’s lives to whatever third country will take them—is unlawful and unconstitutional at its core. And we’re just letting this keep rolling, as if ICE and CBP haven’t become functionally deadly—sometimes by force, sometimes by neglect, sometimes by bureaucratic cruelty dressed up as “policy”—while lawyers and judges play catch‑up after the harm is already done.
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More State of the Union Drama
The State of the Union fallout is exactly the snapshot of who has power and who gets hurt in this country. Ilhan Omar brought a guest from Minneapolis, Aliya Rahman, a disabled woman with autism, a traumatic brain injury, and torn rotator cuffs who had already been roughed up by federal immigration agents back home, and Capitol Police still decided the right move was to physically manhandle her out of the chamber for the crime of…standing up silently. No sign, no chant, no shouting—she literally just stood there for a short stretch while half the room was standing on and off all night anyway, and officers yanked her by the shoulders after she told them about her injuries, hard enough that other guests tried to step in and ask them to stop. She ended up in the hospital and then in jail until nearly 4 a.m., charged with “unlawful conduct” and “disrupting Congress,” and the official line is basically: tickets say no demonstrations, she didn’t sit when she was told, so this is all on her. That’s where we’re at—disabled woman quietly standing in protest against a president who’s made her life hell gets treated like a threat, while the guy on the podium bragging about cruelty never faces even a fraction of that force or accountability.
Then look at who they tapped as “designated survivor”: VA Secretary Doug Collins, a hardcore Trump loyalist whose latest brilliant idea was a regulation that would have let the government judge our disability ratings based on how “better” we look on meds instead of the actual underlying injury or illness. If your PTSD, pain, or other conditions ease because you’re finally on the right treatment, the rule would have allowed VA examiners to say, “Well, you’re functioning now, so maybe you’re less disabled,” and chip away at your rating and benefits—which of course makes vets think twice about even taking the meds they need. It took a massive backlash from veterans’ groups like VFW, DAV, MOAA and others yelling that no one who wore the uniform should ever have to choose between following doctor’s orders and keeping their earned benefits for Collins to suddenly slam pause and “suspend” the rule. So yeah, having that guy as the designated survivor—meaning if the unthinkable happened, he’d be the one in charge—hits different when you’re a vet; it tells you exactly where we rank in his priorities: as a line item to trim, a problem to manage, and ultimately a political prop in Trump’s orbit, not human beings whose livelihoods and health he’s supposed to protect.
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Today is yet another day where I am just disgusted with my own government. I am disgusted with the people who put Trump back in power and are letting all of us get absolutely trampled. I am especially disgusted with the people who still cheer this on. The MAGA crowd coming out yesterday saying Trump’s 1 hour and 47 minute speech was eloquent and amazing—you are disgusting. America as we knew it is gone, and it is at the hands of these hateful, greedy, nasty people and ALL who support him.
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.