Policy / February 13, 2026
But Tom Homan is a liar and the work is not done. Plus, Gallup’s new polling policy (is the analytics company in Trump’s tank?), deepfake law, and more in this week’s issue. Elijah v. UNITED STATES.
Protesters take part in an anti-ICE march in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, January 31, 2026.
(Madison Thorn/Anadolu via Getty Images) On Thursday, Tom Homan, the corrupt and fascist “border czar” whom the media insists on treating as respectable, announced the end of “Operation Metro Surge,” which is the Trump administration’s name for its unconstitutional invasion of Minnesota. Homan declared “success,” shared data on the number of immigrants who were deported or sent to concentration camps, but did not enumerate the number of people his henchmen assaulted, injured or murdered, and fled. I guess the next time he receives an envelope filled with cash, it will be wrapped with a “Mission Accomplished” banner.
I’m also forced to assume that Homan is either outright lying about the end of the Minnesota occupation or trying to confuse the media in some way. It’s because the only thing this administration does is a lie or misdirection, and taking one’s citizens at their word is something only fools and corporate media publications do. Since Homan replaced SS cosplayer Greg Bovino in Minnesota, the media has lost interest in the horrors unfolding in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Declaring the “end” of the operation does not necessarily mean that ICE leave the Gopher State.
I must also point out that Homan’s supposed end to the great occupation of the North coincides with the budget confrontation on DHS funding to Congress. Trying to buy time just long enough to get an extra year of funding for their goon squads seems like exactly the sort of thing Republicans would do — and Democrats would fall for it.
Fortunately, some Minnesota Democrats don’t seem too eager to trust. On Thursday, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her signed an order requiring federal agents to identify themselves. Asked about Homan’s comments, she said: “Any announcement of a withdrawal or end to Operation Metro Surge must be followed by real action.” » Minnesota Governor Tim Walz noted that Homan did not tell people when the government goons would leave, but Walz offered to help them “pack their bags.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor but hasn’t exactly covered herself in the glory of resistance, said, “Removing ICE from Minnesota is just the beginning. We need accountability for the lives lost and extraordinary abuses of power by ICE agents, and we need to see a complete overhaul of the agency.”
Current number
No, Senator Klobuchar, we do not need an “overhaul” of the agency. We need abolition of the agency.
You can see why I have trust issues. I don’t trust Homan to keep his word, I don’t trust the media to continue reporting the facts instead of just transcribing the administration’s press releases, and I don’t trust the Democrats not to betray everyone in their endless, sickening attempts to find the middle between fascism and freedom.
As I said a few weeks ago, Minnesota made Trump blink, and that East a kind of victory. What we saw there is proof that dedicated, nonviolent resistance can work. But this work is not done, and it will not be finished until the fascists are sent back to the barbecue and munitions haunts from which they came, their institutions are discredited and destroyed, and their leaders are held accountable for their crimes.
The bully and the ugly
When I say we need to abolish ICE, I’m talking about getting rid of all masked squads operating under cover of the law. This includes those who work for the State of California. Earlier this week, a federal judge blocked California’s “No Secret Police Act,” which prohibits federal officers from wearing masks. When I saw the headline, I was upset, but then I read the opinion of U.S. District Judge Christine Snyder (a Clinton appointee). She said the law discriminates against federal officers because it allows state police to wear masks. So it turns out I shouldn’t be mad at the judge; I should be angry at California lawmakers who legislated an exclusion for theirs secret police in their No Secret Police Act. Politicians are unreliable assholes. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will allow Trump to revoke temporary protection status for immigrants from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua. These are judges that we can be angry. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals supported the Trump administration’s mass detention policy to lock people up without a hearing, trial or opportunity to post bail. I mean, I wake up every day angry at the Fifth Circuit. I hate the Fifth Circuit so much I boo number five when it comes Sesame Street. U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai (Biden appointee…based on his name, I was pretty sure he wasn’t a Trump appointee, but I googled it anyway because I don’t assume my biases are facts) rejected the Department of Justice’s efforts to seize voter information in the state of Oregon. The judge ruled that the DOJ could no longer be trusted, saying the “presumption of regularity” traditionally afforded the government “no longer holds.” If you subscribe to The nationyou will receive a printed article on what it all means, after our heroic interns… replace my prejudices with facts. Speaking of the totally untrustworthy Department of Justice, Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to back down and look the victims of Jeffrey Epstein in the face during his four-hour testimony before Congress on the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. Instead, she tried to make the hearing so toxic that people would completely forget about Epstein’s victims. I don’t think it worked, but I’m sure it made Trump happy. Inspired Takes
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David Gelernter, the Yale computer science professor seen in the Epstein files pimping one of his students, no longer teaches students. Yale student Zachary Clifton announced the news in The nation as part of a deep dive in the career of the teacher. One of the main takeaways is that Gelernter is at Yale not because he’s a great computer science professor, but because he’s a climate-denying Republican who brings diversity of points of view. This happens all over academia: universities recruit low-quality conservative “thinkers” simply because they are conservative, and those same “thinkers” then go on to embarrass the university when they… act like conservatives. Another example seen this week is that of Ohio State professor Luke Perez, a conservative committed to promoting intellectual diversity. Pérez was placed on leave after hitting a journalist who was trying to interview the Republican that Perez had invited to speak on campus. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The nationby Katha Pollitt had his first exposure to deepfake art and… well, she tried to put Melania Trump in a Saranwrap bikini to get around Grok’s nudity filters, so that’s the kind of thing you’ll enjoy reading. Pollitt’s overall point is that deepfakes are extremely bad and harmful, a point I completely agree with. However, the lawyer in me still feels uneasy when it comes to regulating deepfakes because of the potential for violating First Amendment protections, including the protection that allows people to make “clear parodies” of public figures and generally mock them. The way to decide it is to tell you can’t make deepfakes about individuals but you can make them public figures, which is similar to how defamation laws work. But this solution runs into problems, as some of the most egregious deepfakes involve fake sex tapes of Taylor Swift and people putting words in the mouths of former presidents — two things that would be protected under my proposal. Don’t worry, though: When I find a real solution to this problem, I’ll tell you, and then you can all make some deep truth videos of Congress ignoring me. The worst argument of the week
Donald Trump’s approval rating is approaching new lows. This is not news. What’s new is that Gallup, which has tracked presidential approval ratings for 88 years, will no longer produce presidential approval polls.
I was born at night, but not last night. You’ll simply never convince me that Gallup rightly made the momentous decision to stop tracking Trump’s approval ratings at a time when those numbers are looking very bad for the authoritarian-in-chief. Making this decision now smacks of complicity and constitutes a new failure of a major institutional actor in an era of institutional failures.
There are, in theory, very good reasons for Gallup to stop tracking the president’s approval ratings. First: they are stupid. Trying to gauge the success or failure of an administration based on whether people say they “like” what the president does is like trying to gauge the health of a company based on how many people liked its Super Bowl commercial. The poll contributes to the “horse racing” coverage of our politics, which is one of the many reasons our politics coverage often looks like reheated crap.
However, the timing of Gallup’s decision is another example of a large organization changing the rules in real time to bend to Trump’s will. It’s similar to when The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times decided “not to make presidential endorsements” at the exact moment their owners decided they didn’t like the endorsements their publishers were making. It doesn’t seem like you’re being principled when changes to your well-established procedures coincide with things that will make Trump happy; it looks like you are bowing to a strong man.
If Gallup wanted to make this change in an honorable way, it should have announced that it was going to launch this policy with the following administration. “In 2029, we will stop opinion polls. » That would make sense. This would suggest a different political strategy. Doing it now, months before the midterm elections, no less, makes it look like Gallup is trying to help Trump.
Because he’s trying to help Trump.
What I wrote
Like I said, I’ve been working on a printed piece, so nothing from me this week. Besides, I’m leaving next week. Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, I’m so cold, y’all. Like “typing with fingerless gloves” cold. I’m not even go anywhere next week. I just plan to stay under my covers like a bear and hope that when I wake up, it will be spring.
In news unrelated to the current chaos
In an NBA game this week, the Utah Jazz were ahead of the Orlando Magic by 17 points. In the fourth quarter, Utah decided to bench four of its five starters, including the players who led the team in points for that night (and for the season overall). Orlando has returned, and I beat Utah by three points.
Utah is tanking. The team intentionally tries to lose games in order to get a better draft pick. Tanking can happen in any sport that has a draft system in which worse teams get better picks, but it’s commonplace in the NBA. For the most part, players won’t intentionally try to play badly, even if they’re on a bad team; They’re playing to inherit their next contract, and they want to look as good as possible for other teams who might want to sign or trade for them. This means that tanking falls to the coaches. They put good players on the “injured list” when they aren’t actually injured, or limit their minutes so they can’t play too long and potentially win the game. Or they do what the Jazz did and refuse to play their best players when they accidentally win.
There’s really nothing the fans can do. Buying a ticket should come with an implicit promise that the team will, you know, try to win the game, but that promise is not legally binding. Many fans even support tanking as a rational play: If the team is not good enough to win a championship this year and there is a young cornerstone player in next year’s draft who could help the team win in the future, the team should lose now, increase its chances of drafting that player, and hope for the future.
But maybe there is something the players can do. Gambling laws require games to be “fair” in a certain sense, and intentionally trying to lose is not fair. Real people got real money from the outcome of the Utah vs. Orlando game. The NBA encourages people to bet on its games. It is illegal for these games to be rigged. If a player tried to lose, intentionally, this player would be investigated by the government and probably banned from the sport. Earlier this year, 26 people, including college basketball players, were indicted on racketeering charges for attempting to manipulate gambling results. Last year, NBA players were indicted for illegal gambling, although most of the alleged misconduct involved illegal Mafia-backed poker games (of course, running into debt to the Mafia at the poker table is the gateway drug to trying to lose games on the basketball court).
I don’t see why tanking should be held to any different standards than other forms of rigged betting. Utah intentionally manipulates the outcome of game events by attempting to lose. What they are doing should be illegal under any state gambling law.
There is a lot of discussion within the NBA about how to handle tanking, but I have the quickest way to fix it. If the state of Nevada decided to no longer accept betting on NBA games because the results are rigged, I promise you the NBA would stop tanking by next season. Degenerate players could save basketball.
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Note: Elijah will be off next week but can’t wait to come back with a new Elijah v. UNITED STATES on Friday February 27.
Elie Mystal Elie Mystal is The nationjustice correspondent and columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: New York Times bestseller Let me respond: A Guide to the Constitution for Black Men And Bad Laws: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining Americaboth published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie c. US » here.
