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US Monthly Headline News February 2026 - Page 1
Story by Julia Shapero

The Pentagon has threatened to cancel Anthropic’s contract by Friday if the company does not agree to the department’s terms for the use of its AI model, sources confirmed to The Hill on Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Tuesday at the Pentagon amid a dispute over the AI firm’s usage policy, which bars its model Claude from being used for mass surveillance or to develop weapons that can be used without human oversight.

If Anthropic doesn’t agree to the Pentagon’s terms, the department warned it would use the Defense Production Act against the company or designate it as a supply chain risk, a senior Pentagon official told The Hill. Axios first reported the Friday deadline.

“During the conversation, Dario expressed appreciation for the Department’s work and thanked the Secretary for his service,” an Anthropic spokesperson told The Hill in a statement on Tuesday.

“We continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do,” the spokesperson added.

The Pentagon official insisted that tactical operation cannot be led by exception and the legality of the missions are the department’s responsibility as the end user.  
Story by Phillip Nieto

Donald Trump is blocking the release of an unredacted secret whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard that had been held in a locked safe.

The Trump administration cited claims of executive privilege, a power reserved for the president to withhold confidential information, as its justification for refusing to provide unredacted intelligence to congressional lawmakers.

'Executive privilege is rarely used as a reason to not give information to the Gang of Eight,' said Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel at the National Security Agency, to Wall Street Journal. The Gang of Eight refers to the lawmakers overseeing intelligence.

The redacted intelligence found in the complaint reportedly involves a conversation between two foreign national regarding Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Senior Trump officials claimed the allegations against Kushner were demonstrably false but refused to explain further, arguing that doing so would expose highly classified material. Another top US official also told the Daily Mail that the claims 'were nothing more than salacious gossip.'

The intelligence concerning Kushner included a brief conversation about Iran. The classified material was reportedly obtained through clandestine surveillance technology.
Story by Brendan Cole

A man working for an American defense contractor has been jailed in the United States for seven years for selling trade secrets to a buyer with ties to Russia.

Peter Williams, 39, an Australian citizen, admitted selling eight pieces of cybersecurity software and information to a Russian broker for $4 million in cryptocurrency, which he used to buy jewelry, watches, homes and luxury holidays, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said the tools Williams had passed to the Russians would have enabled Moscow to access millions of digital devices, and that his crime was not just one of theft but also one of national security.

Williams was working as the general manager of Trenchant, an intelligence firm owned by U.S. defense contractor L3Harris Technologies, Australian media reported. The firm is said to specialize in tools that help intelligence agencies among U.S. allies to exploit vulnerabilities in computer networks and mobile devices.
Story by Matthew Chapman

A high-profile MAGA influencer on X with hundreds of thousands of followers has been exposed as being secretly run by a White House staffer.

According to Wired, "To its audience, Johnny MAGA looked like an independent voice, another outraged supporter in the MAGA media ecosystem. The account regularly boosts Trump’s Truth Social posts and goes to bat for the administration, attacking Democrats like California governor Gavin Newsom."

The account also pushed images of flag-burning demonstrators in Minneapolis after the killing of Renee Good, saying, “They’re burning the American flag right now in Minneapolis, and they really expect you to believe that ICE shot an innocent civilian.”

The account was created in January 2021 and has often been at the front of pushing far-right, pro-Trump content. It was also active throughout the 2024 election, going after former Vice President Kamala Harris often in very personal ways.
Story by Cy Neff

Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.

The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.

“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”

Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”

Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Story by Amy McCarthy

Nurul Amin Shah Alam was found dead in Buffalo, N.Y. after he was dropped off at a coffee shop by Border Patrol agents

NEED TO KNOW
A blind dad of two was found dead in Buffalo, N.Y., after he was dropped off at a Tim Horton's restaurant by Border Patrol officials
Buffalo Police Department officers responded to a "dead body call" on Tuesday, Feb. 24, and identified the victim as Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a refugee from Burma.

In a statement shared with PEOPLE, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said that agents offered Shah Alam a "courtesy ride" to the Tim Horton's
A blind dad of two has died after he was taken into custody by Border Patrol officers and allegedly left miles away from his home, according to reports.
Story by Margaret Hartmann

For years, Donald Trump stoked conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein and his many powerful friends and associates, despite lingering questions about his own ties to the late sex offender. Trump and Epstein were friends for more than 15 years. The future president was photographed with Epstein many times, flew on his plane, and praised him as a “terrific guy” in the press.

Now, due in large part to Team Trump’s ineptitude, the Epstein files have become the biggest ongoing scandal of his second term. Trump DoJ and FBI officials promised to release the Epstein files then backtracked, prompting Congress to pass a bipartisan law ordering their release by December 19, 2025. The DoJ missed the deadline and is still sporadically dropping sloppily redacted batches of files into its “Epstein Library” on Justice.gov by the millions.
Story by Ross Ibbetson and Phillip Nieto and Elina Shirazi

At least 85 people have been killed in an airstrike on an elementary school in southern Iran, according to the judiciary in Tehran.

The majority of the dead are schoolgirls aged between seven and 12 years old, according to the regime-controlled news outlets Tasnim and Fars.

Missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the the city of Minab, in Hormozgan province, on Saturday morning as the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

Sources inside Iran told the Daily Mail that reports from the regime should be viewed with skepticism as a propaganda offensive is being waged under the fog of war.

A teacher at the school told the London-based outlet Middle East Eye that she saw bodies on classroom benches.

She had left the school to take care of something when she heard the blast. When she arrived back she saw carnage.

'I felt like I had gone mute. I couldn't speak,' she said. 'You could hear the sound of children crying and screaming.'

There were 170 girls at the school at the time of the attack as Saturday is the first day of the working week in Iran.
Story by Hilary Hanson

Longtime CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer went on air Saturday morning following the U.S. and Israel launching a major attack on Iran, and the first words out of his mouth were ominous.

“Looks like this is gonna escalate big time in the coming hours, and days, for that matter,” Blitzer said moments after joining “First of All with Victor Blackwell” at around 8 a.m. Saturday.
Story by bmetzger@insider.com (Bryan Metzger, Lloyd Lee, Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert)

Trump ordered agencies to stop using Anthropic amid a dispute between the AI giant and the DoD.
Shortly after Trump's announcement, the DoD moved to label Anthropic a supply-chain risk.
Anthropic said no "intimidation" would shift its stance against mass domestic surveillance.

The Department of Defense is moving to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, a significant escalation by the government that could threaten how the AI startup does business with other US-based companies.

Anthropic said in a statement on Friday night that it will fight back.

"We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court," Anthropic's statement read, adding that the company had not received "direct communication from the Department of War or the White House on the status of our negotiations."

The company said in its statement that "no amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons."
Story by Peter Aitken

Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed in the U.S.- Israeli strikes on Iran, according to multiple reports.

The death of the Islamic Republic leader marks a major achievement for President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who both called for regime change and urged Iranians to rise up against the clerical government in the wake of the strikes.

Israeli officials initially said they saw “signs” that Khamenei was dead, but later said they had confirmed his death, saying his body had been found, Reuters reported.

Why It Matters
Khamenei, 86, had ruled the Islamic Republic for 36 years after becoming its second leader in 1989, a decade after rising to prominence in the theocratic revolution which toppled Iran’s monarchy.

The U.S.-Israeli military operation code-named “Epic Fury” targeted several high-level Iranian officials including Khamenei and the Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose whereabouts are also unknown.

In a video address shortly after the first strikes, Trump told Iranian protesters the U.S. action would provide “probably your only chance for generations” to force regime change, saying: “Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports that the U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia is under attack amid retaliation after air strikes on Iran.
Story by Alexander Willis

Multiple Republican lawmakers have joined their Democratic colleagues in working to rein in President Donald Trump after his administration launched a major military operation in Iran early Saturday morning.

Leading the charge are Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), who’ve introduced what’s known as a War Powers Resolution, a legislative tool to check the president’s power over declaring war and require congressional authorization before U.S. forces can engage in sustained military action.

“Donald Trump has launched a war on Iran – the Congress must reconvene on Monday to vote on Thomas Massie and my War Powers Resolution to stop this war!” Khanna said in a statement Saturday. “Every member of Congress must go on record today on how they will vote on Thomas Massie and my War Powers Resolution!”
Story by REUTERS

In the run-up to the US and Israeli attacks on Saturday, the US Central Intelligence Agency assessed that even if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he would likely be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two sources briefed on the intelligence said.

The assessments, which were produced over the past two weeks, looked broadly at what could occur in Iran following a US intervention and the extent to which a military operation could trigger regime change in the Islamic Republic - now a pronounced objective for Washington.

The intelligence agency reports did not conclude any scenario with certainty, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Story by EDITH M. LEDERER and FARNOUSH AMIRI

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States and Israel clashed with Iran at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday where the U.N. chief and many countries urged a halt to their attacks and a return to negotiations to prevent the conflict from spreading further into the region and beyond.

Secretary-General António Guterres told the council that everything must be done to prevent an escalation. “The alternative,” he warned, “is a potential wider conflict with grave consequences for civilians and regional stability.”

Guterres said the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes violated international law, including the U.N. Charter. He also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Opinion by Anthony Iafrate

Avowed advocates of the right-wing America First movement had harsh words for President Donald Trump after he announced the U.S. military struck Iran on Saturday morning, with one alleging the president betrayed his MAGA base.

Trump announced at 2:30 EST a.m. Saturday the U.S. military had launched a “massive and ongoing” attack against the Islamic theocracy, vowing in a video posted to social media to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.” Hours later, former Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — previously a staunch Trump ally and MAGA standard-bearer — posted a nearly-700-word reaction to X in which she said the president’s Operation Epic Fury “feels like the worst betrayal.”

“We said ‘No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!’ We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech. Trump, [Vice President JD] Vance, basically the entire admin campaigned on it and promised to put America FIRST and Make America Great Again,” Greene began in her post.

The former lawmaker’s post includes a screenshot of a 2024 post by the Republican Party’s X account advertising Trump and Vance as “the pro-peace ticket.”
Story by Robert Davis

One of President Donald Trump's fiercest loyalists appeared to play a key part in burying the administration's latest scandal, according to two experts.

Last week, it was reported that Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer's husband, Shawn DeRemer, had been barred from the agency's office in Washington, D.C., after he was accused of sexually assaulting a female employee. That step is extraordinary in and of itself, but even moreso considering that DeRemer has not been charged with a crime.
Story by Michael Boyle

“Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost used President Trump’s own words to dunk on his Saturday morning invasion of Iran.

“This attack might be a bad idea,” said the Saturday Night Live star. “I don’t know. I’m not really an expert on Iran. So let’s hear from someone who can explain why we might have done it...”

Jost played a clip of Trump in 2011 angrily speculating over then-President Barack Obama’s foreign policy regarding Iran.

“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate,” Trump said. “He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”
BuzzFeed

When President Donald Trump revealed that the United States Department of War and Israel had launched an attack on Iran, the reactions from politicians, political commentators, and X users started pouring in from everywhere.

In an address to the nation after the attack, Trump posted a video to Truth Social, declaring, "To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside; bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations."

Trump's remarks surrounding the US-Israel strike on Iran have drawn criticism, especially from this 2013 tweet where he said, "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"
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