Pete Hegseth So Good At Job. Tabs, Fri., Feb. 13, 2026

Morning news roundup! Things to read!

Good morning good morning, come get your tabs!

This woman, her husband, and their small daughter were kidnapped by ICE in New York and would like you to know the horrors that we are perpetrating on families like hers. It’s horrors! (Slate)

Epstein’s friend Jean Luc Brunel raped this woman when she was an 18-year-old model. But as soon as Brunel killed himself in his prison cell in 2019, the French dropped any investigation, and the Americans never responded at all. (The Times)

Can we let some Black and gay people back in the Navy yet please? All these straight white men bad at their jobs. (ABC News)

More on Pete Hegseth being so good at his job that the FAA had to shut down flights to El Paso so the CBP wouldn’t laser-kill any planes with the death laser Hegseth loaned em. (The Fucking News)

Well this bill that just passed the House, literally the “Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act,” allowing criminals to access a whole new type of guns, seems bad and stupid! (Giffords)

I don’t think we should arrest women for miscarrying, particularly when they went to the hospital like “help I am miscarrying.” The state of Kentucky apparently disagrees. (Abortion, Every Day)

OpenAI fired its trust and safety executive for “sexual discrimination” after she refused to sign off on OpenAI “adult mode.” We are very sure they’re not lying on her at all. (Gift link Wall Street Journal)

There was a lovely Episcopal bishop, apparently, who managed to save (many of) the Dakota who were being imprisoned in Minnesota, though several dozen were executed for being Dakota. Activists have been trying to get Bishop Whipple’s off the ICE building in Minneapolis for years now, because keep his name out your nasty ICE mouth. (The Verge / 2019 MPR)

Carrie Prejean is apparently still around, and Ken Paxton (?) fired her from the White House Religious Liberty Commission (?) for saying Catholics don’t believe in Zionism (?) and so Candace Owens isn’t antisemitic (?) but Carrie Prejean says Paxton isn’t the boss of her (?). I guess! (The Bulwark)

“Trump sucks” has percolated down to the low-info voters. (G. Elliott Morris)

Most Americans are good, and there’s still compassion and love. (Digby at Salon)

Trumpists thought they had won the Culture Wars forever, mostly because weak-suck law firms, newspapers, and universities rolled over the second they could. This was a mistake, on everyone’s part. (Brian Beutler)

Rebecca Traister finally got to write about something happy and wonderful: filmmaker (and proud mother of Zohran Mamdani) Mira Nair. Did Traister want to subsume Nair’s professional identity to her familial role? Of course she didn’t! Did Nair want to tell hilarious stories about her delightful son? Of course she did! (New York mag)

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