February 11, 2026 ❧ ICE is leaving death cards, mass graves in Sudan, immigrants propped up the U.S. government financially, fancy cat saved Brooklyn’s borough hall.
Plus: Meet Coalie, the world’s worst mascot; X offices raided in France, Marco Rubio lies about talks with Cuba, and someone dares to ask the question: should poshness be a protected characteristic?
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HERE & ABROAD
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❧ In Other News ❧
❧ ICE LEAVING IS LEAVING “DEATH CARDS” IN COLORADO. ICE agents in Colorado left playing cards—a haunting, ICE-branded ace of spades containing the address of a detention center in Aurora—in the cars of people they detained outside of Vail last month. Some of the vehicles were left running in the highway, the agents not even bothering to turn off the ignitions, after luring the drivers with fake traffic stops. The move mirrors a psychological warfare tactic U.S. soldiers used in Vietnam who left playing cards on the bodies of people they killed. Colorado lawmakers are now demanding that the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General launch an investigation into ICE’s Denver Field Office.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 5
❧ TRUMP REVIVES COALIE, INFRINGES ON CURRENT AFFAIRS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY? As you know, Current Affairs doesn’t accept paid ads, so to fill the space, the magazine creates topical, but improbable, art that parodies modern advertisements and mocks the ruling class. About a year ago, the News Briefing first published a joke featuring the entirely made up “Carson the Carcinogenic Cloud,” who is “the pride of Cancer Alley;” he later became a full-page magazine ad. The Trump administration seemed to think Carson was on to something, and have revamped and relaunched Coalie, a probably AI-generated cartoon lump of coal hellbent on his own combustion. Originally debuted in 2018 by the federal agency responsible for regulating coal mines, this black lump is here to tell you to “Mine, baby, mine!” Congratulations to the Trump administration for coming up with a slogan that manages to evoke, at the same time, a climate catastrophe and a child who doesn’t want to share his toys. If Current Affairs could afford a lawyer, we’d be dragging Coalie to court. It was our idea to send a cancer-causing cartoon on any kind of press-generating national tour.
❧ MARCO RUBIO BLOCKING TALKS WITH CUBA. Trump is only as good as his babysitters, and his babysitters, like U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are well aware of their power. Despite telling Trump that negotiations with Cuba are going well, the Secretary of State has been stonewalling talks. No high level negotiations have actually taken place, Drop Site News reports. Rubio’s not-so-secret goal is regime change in Cuba, and by throwing dirt in the gears of negotiations, he’s perhaps hoping to usher in the government’s downfall. The Trump administration has threatened tariffs of on any country that sells oil to Cuba, and the island country is quickly running out of energy to power its country.
Howie Polikoff realizes he contradicts himself. He has left-leaning politics, but supports the richest team in major league baseball, the Yankees. “I’m egalitarian in the streets, plutocratic in the cleats,” he writes in his piece for Current Affairs. Oh, how his beloved team has failed him, losing season after season despite their financial advantage and dedicated fanbase. “Yankees fans have grown accustomed to a familiar pattern of incompetence. Entrenched, unaccountable leadership. Data-obsessed strategizing with disastrous results. Their one consistent success has been raising gobs of money, to the extent one wonders if winning is actually a second priority.” And then it hit Polikoff: “Where else have I made this critique? What other group of aged, number-crunching bean counters has rewarded my conflicted support with institutionalized dysfunction?” You got it: the Democrats! Polikoff’s comparison is so accurate it almost hurts.
❧ Ugh, Trump ❧
❧ In the Epstein files, the Miami Herald’s Julie Brown found a previously unknown conversation between Trump and Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter in 2006, right when authorities were first digging into Epstein. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him — everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump reportedly told Reiter during a phone call. Since the “everyone” who knew presumably includes Trump, it’s not clear why he didn’t report Epstein himself. Hmmmm. Trump apparently admitted he “was around Epstein once when teenagers were present” but “got the hell out of there,” then told the police chief to focus on Ghislaine Maxwell. Congress has begun viewing unredacted versions of the recently released Epstein files, and it is already leading to accusations of a Department of Justice-orchestrated coverup.
❧ A shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security still looms as Democrats and Republicans fail to agree on the meager reforms suggested by Democrats, which amounted to “Why can’t ICE just stick to normal police brutality?" A redline for Republicans: requiring ICE to get judicial warrants instead of the administrative ones they write themselves, better known as adhering to the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, ICE agents are at the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, for some (bad) reason, and the Europeans hate it. They’re booing JD Vance. (Bring back booing!)
❧ The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to revoke the endangerment finding this week, a scientific conclusion which officially acknowledged the public health threats of climate change, and provided rationale for the government to curb emissions. Without the finding, it’s open season for pollution.
❧ In More News ❧
❧ X OFFICES RAIDED IN FRANCE. Grok, Elon Musk’s AI, has recently come under fire for generating sexualized deepfakes of women and children, to say nothing of the AI’s Hitler streak. Last week, as part of a criminal probe into Grok and X’s alleged platform abuses, French prosecutors and Europol raided X’s Paris offices. The investigation centers on claims that creation and dissemination of sexually explicit images and Holocaust-denial of content is illegal in France and that X may have violated the country’s laws on algorithm use and content moderation. Musk called the investigation a “political attack.” If it is, it is not as political as Holocaust denialism or generating naked pictures of women you find annoying.
Art by Nick Sirotich from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 5
❧ MASS GRAVES DISCOVERED AT SUDAN UNIVERSITY. The Sudan University of Science and Technology sustained $258 million in damage after its campuses in Khartoum were ransacked by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, per the Sudan Tribune. Entire laboratories—including a rare nuclear chemistry facility—were destroyed, and thousands of computers and other pieces of equipment were stolen or burned. In their stead, university grounds have reportedly been used by the RSF to bury more than 1,000 bodies in individual and mass graves. The RSF is carrying out a genocide in Sudan as it wages a civil war. Last month, the World Health Organization called the war “the world’s worst health and humanitarian crisis,” with 33.7 million people in need of aid.
Art by Jesse Rubenfeld from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 8, Issue 5
❧ CATO INSTITUTE FINDS THAT IMMIGRANTS HAVE BEEN PROPPING UP THE U.S. FINANCIALLY. The CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, has just published a new white paper disproving the idea that immigrants drain public finances, and undercutting one of the Trump administration’s favorite justification for its mass deportations, Fortune reports. It turns out, immigrants—both documented and undocumented—have paid more in taxes than they received in government benefits from 1994 to 2023, resulting in a cumulative fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion that helped reduce budget deficits and curb the growth of national debt. Without immigrants’ contributions, U.S. public debt could be more than 200 percent of GDP today, a red zone that some economists think could trigger a crisis.
❧ The Current Affairs Awards ❧
The Award for Bad Take of the Week goes to: Sophia Money-Coutts!
Money-Coutts, whose name sounds like a playground taunt for a billionaire, has staked out the rare position in the Telegraph that “being posh should be a protected characteristic.” Apparently she has forgotten that poshness, or any kind of elite membership, has historically been the most protected characteristic. In fact, the upper class has used the entire force of the government, as well as the police, to insulate their businesses and their mansions from any lower class people who might to partake in their largesse. But alas, the admittedly posh Ms. Money-Coutts has also faced discrimination: “I, too, have been mocked for my accent,” she writes, “Which is why I often ask for the ‘bathroom’ in restaurants, because I feel like someone from another age asking for ‘the loo’.” Call the government!
ANIMAL FACT OF THE WEEK
Jerry Fox, a cat, saved Brooklyn’s Borough Hall
According to Cats About Town, a cat-centric walking tour in New York, in 1904, a cat named Jerry Fox once saved what is now the oldest public building in Brooklyn. Mr. Fox alerted people to a growing flame, sparked by a lit cigar left too near some papers by a local judge. It was the crowning achievement in what was Mr. Fox’s long career in public safety. He patrolled the neighborhood, stopping multiple crimes and thwarting would-be thieves with his siren-like howls, and even chased away a rabid dog. A year before the fire, Mr. Fox had started losing his eyesight, so an optometrist made him custom glasses, which of course, made Mr. Fox famous. The glasses worked: Mr. Fox spotted the flame, and his celebrity was cemented. His passing just a year later was written about in the New York Times.
Writing and research by Emily Carmichael. Editing and additional material by Emily Topping, Alex Skopic, and Nathan J. Robinson. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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