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Ken Burns’ The American Revolution highlights why America’s founders built checks and balances—an urgent reminder as Congress, the courts, and citizens confront growing threats to democratic governance.
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Partial Shutdown; Congress Asserts Itself a Little
Feb 17, 2026
DHS Shutdown
As expected, the parties in the Senate could not come to an agreement on DHS funding and now the agency will be shut down. Sort of.
So much money was appropriated for DHS, and ICE and CBP specifically, in last year's reconciliation bill, that DHS could continue to operate with little or no interruption. Other parts of DHS like FEMA and the TSA might face operational cuts or shutdowns.
You might think that only ICE and CBP could operate without interruption, but as this Wall Street Journal article notes, DHS Secretary Noem has a pretty freewheeling approach to how to spend the agency's money.
The article also notes Noem's antipathy towards FEMA which suggests that that sub-agency of DHS would receive no special help while new funding is unavailable.
Could Congress appropriate funds for FY2026 all of DHS except for ICE & CBP? Sure. Rep. DeLauro (D-CT3) proposed exactly that this week. But so far her proposal has not garnered any interest.
If Congress took that route, ICE and CBP would still have, according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), 750% more money than they had before the reconciliation bill passed.
Both chambers of Congress are out next week so no movement is expected until the week of February 23 at the absolute earliest.
Tariffs
Last year, Speaker Johnson (R-LA4) used a Rules Committee rule to block any votes in the House that would object to the President's use of tariffs. Well, that rule ended this week. When Johnson tried the maneuver again this week it failed 214-217. And that opened the door to the first of probably many successful votes against the President's vast new tariff structure.
Because the Senate would also have to agree to the resolution to end the tariffs and then the President would have to sign it, it's extremely unlikely that this vote will lead to an end to any tariffs. But it is one of the very few instances of the Republican majority not squashing an objection to something the President really wants and is thus notable.
DOJ Spying on Lawmakers Reviewing Epstein Files
Speaker Johnson has become something of a broken record whenever he's asked about some administration overstep into Congressional authority: he says he doesn't know anything about it and/or that it's probably fine. So it was a bit of a surprise this week when he had heard the news that the Department of Justice was spying on legislators' search histories during their reviews of Epstein files and said it was "inappropriate". Not exactly a robust defense of Congressional power, but a notable departure from his usual pattern.
House Passed a Few Other Bills
None of these bills are anywhere near becoming a law. They first have to pass the Senate.
- H.R. 1531: PROTECT Taiwan Act, which would make it the policy of the United States to prevent China from participating in certain international organizations if the President determines that Taiwan or the interests of the United States are being threatened, passed 395-2.
- H.R. 6644: Housing for the 21st Century Act, passed 390-9. This is a large bill with lots of parts, but the Bipartisan Policy Center has an explainer.
- H.R. 2189: Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act, which would would amend the definition of firearm in the Gun Control Act of 1968 to exclude certain nonlethal projectile devices, passed 233-185.
- H.R. 3617: Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply Act, which would direct the Department of Energy to assess vulnerabilities in critical energy resource supply chains, including critical minerals and rare earth elements, and develop strategies to address disruptions and over-reliance on adversarial nations (sponsor press release), passed 223-206.
- S. 1383: Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would enact a host of new requirements to register to vote, passed 218-213. This bill, despite originating in the Senate, still has to go back to the Senate for another vote because originally S. 1383 was about something totally different. The House substituted in new text about voting registrations, changed the bill name and now it has to go back to the Senate.
- H.R. 261: Undersea Cable Protection Act of 2025, which would prohibit the Secretary of Commerce from prohibiting, or requiring any permit or other authorization for, the installation, continued presence, operation, maintenance, repair, or recovery of undersea fiber optic cables in a national marine sanctuary if such activities have been authorized by a Federal or State agency, passed 218-212.
One New Law
- H.J.Res. 142: Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, which prohibits Washington, D.C. from opting out of tax cuts passed last year, passed 49-47. It goes next to the President for signing.
Amy West is the GovTrack research and communications manager.
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A public health professor argues that trauma-informed, flexible, community-centered teaching is essential to help students succeed in 2026’s volatile environment.
Photo by 2y.kang on Unsplash
Transform Teaching Now: Accommodate Learning In Chaotic Times
Feb 16, 2026
It’s an extremely stressful time for many Americans, including students in higher education. They need to deal with the ongoing impact of chaos on their learning through this academic year and beyond. Faculty need to adjust to their needs.
The most recent American Psychological Association Stress in America™ survey shows “62% of U.S. adults 18 and over reported societal division as a significant source of stress in their lives.” Seventy-six percent of U.S. adults say the future of the nation is a significant cause of stress.
Following the ongoing protests, arrests, disruptions and ICE killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, a recent New York Times/Siena University poll says 63% of Americans disapprove of ICE tactics. Sixty-one percent say ICE has gone too far.
As a public health professor with over a decade of teaching experience, I’m deeply concerned about the ability of students in higher education to meet their learning goals in this volatile socio-political environment made intentionally chaotic by erratic and disruptive events that arise almost daily.
Eighty-seven percent of the 127 students and guests (my class is open to the public) in my graduate public health course recently responded to a poll that they feel that the current and past social, economic, and political policies and programs cause them stress or anxiety.
Chronic anxiety and stress impact all systems of the body – musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems. These impacts result in tight shoulders, feelings of shortness of breath, occasional heartburn, nausea and headaches.
The chronic anxiety and stress about the socio-political environment today can also make people feel unsafe, making it hard to concentrate, retain information and integrate concepts. Research shows that stress and emotions have a main influence on the learning process.
In a national study, 30% of college students reported that anxiety impacted their academics. Another found that one in five college students are stressed all the time.
This is not new. During the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety and depression spiked globally, increasing 25% in two years impacting the academic performance of students. The efforts taken then need to inform action today.
In responding to the broad mental health needs, many universities, like mine, added mental health providers, created safe spaces for students and provided evidenced-based programming for students. Yet few efforts were made to encourage faculty to change their pedagogical approaches and/or their lesson plans and assessments to accommodate student learning.
When students feel unsafe and uncertain, some simple adjustments by faculty can help. Integrating efforts to deepen the relationships within the learning community in the class can allow for organic mutual support and sense of community.
This can be done by adding more interactive learning activities that allow the students to share their knowledge and expertise in a discussion-based learning process.
Integrating more breaks and reflexivity in the learning process is also helpful. Studies show, for men in particular, that students report being unable to sustain attention to a lecture longer than 20-30 minutes.
Integrating evidenced-based trauma informed approaches like mindful breathwork, taking a set of intentional collective deep breathes before learning begins, or starting class with music or storytelling is also helpful in welcoming students to the learning space.
Instructors can provide more agency and control over the assignments by inserting flexibility in the assessment process. They can allow students to choose their topics or assignments and opt out of some assignments (for instance, they can complete seven out of 12 assignments). Flexible assignment deadlines can provide students some relief when they are unable to focus.
Deeply integrating community engagement in teaching so each learning objective can be applied and experiential can also ease stress. My own research has shown this can have multiple levels of benefits.
If needed, faculty must be able to set the syllabus aside and identify a set of learning experiences that allow faculty to facilitate students learning in new and innovative ways.
For instance, in spring 2025, when ICE was sent to Chicago neighborhoods, students in my class were dealing with a high level of anxiety. My co-instructor and I put aside what we had planned and instead co-designed, as a class, a learning event called Mindful Meals to meet the learning objectives in a more trauma informed way.
This leveraged the assets of the students themselves to host a meal for the school community. Faculty, staff, students and community partners were invited to sit with us, using a World Café model.
Students demonstrated mastery of the course concepts and practiced their community engagement skills to create an environment where students could sit and reflect on the harms we are experiencing as a public health community.
One student arranged video documentation of the World Cafe, so it could inspire other teachers in other schools of public health to make critical modifications to their instruction during this difficult time.
The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health call for transformative approaches to teaching and learning that involve diverse and inclusive learning communities to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
Included in this changing environment is a level of chaos most have not seen before. This chaos includes the loss of funding for health equity research and programming making future public health careers uncertain.
The public health field is experiencing censorship and erasure of critical theoretical and methodologic approaches that situate health as determined by a social and political process. This is seen in federal requirements to remove words from research such as structural, systemic, political, legislation, segregation, marginalized, underrepresented, and disadvantage. This is causing disorientation, frustration and stress.
During this difficult time, it is critical for faculty and instructors across higher education to rethink their syllabi and teaching approach and deepen our connections as a learning community to adapt to the unique needs that 2026 has wrought.
In her 1994 book, Teaching To Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks writes, “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.”
Jeni Hebert-Beirne, PhD, MPH is an award-winning Professor of Community Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project.
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AI-generated “nudification” is no longer a distant threat—it’s harming students now. As deepfake pornography spreads in schools nationwide, educators are left to confront a growing crisis that outpaces laws, platforms, and parental awareness.
Getty Images, d3sign
How AI Deepfakes in Classrooms Expose a Crisis of Accountability and Civic Trust
Feb 16, 2026
While public outrage flares when AI tools like Elon Musk’s Grok generate sexualized images of adults on X—often without consent—schools have been dealing with this harm for years. For school-aged children, AI-generated “nudification” is not a future threat or an abstract tech concern; it is already shaping their daily lives.
Last month, that reality became impossible to ignore in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. A father sued the school district after several middle school boys circulated AI-generated pornographic images of eight female classmates, including his 13-year-old daughter. When the girl confronted one of the boys and punched him on a school bus, she was expelled. The boy who helped create and spread the images faced no formal consequences.
The case ignited debate over internet safety, deepfake pornography, and school discipline. But it also exposed a deeper truth we are reluctant to confront: decisions made by powerful tech leaders are reshaping childhood faster than schools, parents, or laws can respond—and schools are being left to manage the fallout without the tools they need.
Recent survey data confirms this is not an isolated incident. Researchers found that AI “nudification” is increasingly common in schools, used to harass, humiliate, and exert power over peers. What adults may still perceive as shocking misconduct has, for many students, become disturbingly normalized.
In nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C., creating and distributing child sexual abuse material is a crime. AI-generated deepfakes, however, present a unique challenge. These images are easy to create, can be shared widely in seconds, and often disappear from platforms just as quickly. Even when perpetrators are identified, the speed, volume, and anonymity of digital sharing make enforcement extraordinarily difficult.
Expecting the legal system to track and prosecute every child and teenager contributing to this epidemic is neither realistic nor effective. If we focus only on punishment after harm occurs, we will always be too late. The goal must be prevention.
Research shows that 31 percent of young people are familiar with deepfake nudes, and one in eight knows someone who has been victimized by them. Girls account for 99 percent of the victims. One in 17 youth and young adults has been directly targeted by AI-generated sexual images—roughly one student in every middle school classroom in the United States. This is not a fringe issue or a moral panic. It is a widespread form of sexual harassment enabled by technology that outpaces our safeguards.
Students need clear guidance to navigate a digital world where a single harmless photo can be transformed into a weapon—sometimes without malicious intent, but with devastating consequences. Yet only 28 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, and just 12 include instruction on consent. This gap has created ideal conditions for the deepfake crisis to flourish.
Without education on bodily autonomy, digital boundaries, consent, and meaningful safeguards from tech companies, young people are left unequipped to recognize the harm in creating and sharing explicit AI images. They are even less prepared to respond when they or their peers become targets.
As a mother, I resist the urge to say simply that parents need to talk to their kids. Parents are essential, but many lack the technical knowledge, consistent access, or awareness needed to explain how these images are created, how quickly they spread, and the profound psychological harm they cause. That is where schools must step in.
As a former middle school teacher, I have sat across from parents explaining the seriousness of emerging online trends long before they reached Facebook groups, GroupMe chats, or parent blogs. Schools are often the first places where this harm appears—and they are uniquely positioned to respond.
Schools can and should provide structured, age-appropriate education that reaches all students, ensures consistent messaging, and creates space for honest discussion. Lessons should include:
- How popular apps and tools generate AI images
- The legal ramifications and potential criminal liability
- The deep psychological and emotional harm inflicted on victims
- Clear school- or district-wide reporting protocols
- The rights of victims and available supports
Educators already manage cyberbullying, hunger, school violence, and adolescent mental health. Some may ask whether this is one burden too many. But integrating education about AI-generated pornography is not an added responsibility—it is a necessary evolution of student safety in a digital age.
Unlike many victims, both the woman targeted on X and the 13-year-old girl in Lafourche Parish reported their abuse. But for every report, how many students suffer in silence—ashamed, afraid, or unsure whether adults will take them seriously?
While platforms like X attempt to normalize or minimize the harm of deepfake nudification, educators must push back against the idea that this behavior is accessible, acceptable, or consequence-free. That message does not stay online. It reaches classrooms, school buses, and lunch tables. When perpetrators face little accountability and victims are punished for reacting, the lesson students learn is devastatingly clear.
If tech leaders will not fully account for the damage their products enable, schools must act—not through harsher punishment, but through education. Teaching AI literacy, consent, and respect is our strongest defense against a problem that is only growing. Prevention, not discipline, is how we protect children—and how we ensure no more students have to fight back just to be heard.
Julienne Louis-Anderson is a former educator, curriculum writer, and educational equity advocate. She is also a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in Partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute
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Democracies Don’t Collapse in Silence; They Collapse When Truth Is Distorted or Denied
Feb 16, 2026
Even with the full protection of the First Amendment, the free press in America is at risk. When a president works tirelessly to silence journalists, the question becomes unavoidable: What truth is he trying to keep the country from seeing? What is he covering up or trying to hide?
Democracies rarely fall in a single moment; they erode through a thousand small silences that go unchallenged. When citizens can no longer see or hear the truth — or when leaders manipulate what the public is allowed to know — the foundation of self‑government begins to crack long before the structure falls. When truth becomes negotiable, democracy becomes vulnerable — not because citizens stop caring, but because they stop receiving the information they need to act.
The framers wrote the First Amendment because they understood the danger of leaders who try to control information. They had lived under a government that censored newspapers, punished criticism, and used fear to silence dissent. So they wrote a simple, absolute command: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. They were not protecting journalists as a profession; they were protecting the people’s right to know what their government is doing.
Senator John McCain, who died in 2018 after more than three decades of service in Congress, was widely regarded as an influential figure within his party and a leader who valued bipartisan cooperation. Though he and then‑Senator Joe Biden belonged to different political parties, they worked together for years on national security, foreign policy, and veterans’ issues — a reminder that strong leaders can debate fiercely while still upholding democratic norms.
McCain had been warning about the dangers of undermining the press for years. In a 2017 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press (McCain Interview), he said that he “hated the press,” but defended it because democracy cannot survive without it. He cautioned that suppressing a free press is “how dictators get started,” emphasizing that an adversarial press — one willing to challenge leaders and expose uncomfortable truths — is essential to preserving individual liberties.
Yet today, we are watching the very scenario the framers feared. Leaders who dislike scrutiny increasingly turn to a familiar strategy: discredit the press so the public will distrust the facts. They label critical reporting as “fake,” call journalists names, question their motives, and attack their credibility. These tactics are not spontaneous; they are strategic. They are designed to weaken the institutions that hold power accountable and to convince citizens that only the leader can be trusted.
Most citizens only see the tip of the iceberg — the public statements, the press conferences, the televised moments. But journalists uncover what lies beneath: documents, decisions, contradictions, and consequences. When leaders attack the press, they are not reacting to the tip of the iceberg; they are trying to keep the public from seeing what lies below the surface.
And yet, the free press remains one of the most resilient institutions in American life. It has survived the Sedition Act, McCarthyism, and Watergate. Even under relentless pressure, journalists persist in uncovering facts that powerful people would prefer to keep hidden. That resilience is not accidental — it is the design the framers intended.
I once overheard a senior citizen speaking with a friend about the documents found at Mar‑a‑Lago. I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember the look on her face when she said, “They did not tell us that on our news.” It was a moment of quiet realization — the kind that reveals how easily citizens can be kept in the dark without ever knowing it. She wasn’t choosing silence; she was receiving only fragments of the truth.
A friend once asked me, “Why are people so upset? Why don’t they leave President Trump alone? After all, the FBI delivered the documents to him at Mar‑a‑Lago.” I had no words. I simply asked who told her that, and suggested she look deeper to find the truth. Her comment wasn’t malicious — it was the product of a news environment where people can be absolutely certain they are informed while receiving information that is incomplete or inaccurate.
This is why democracies do not collapse in silence. Citizens hear what is happening. They see what is happening. The danger is not that the public is unaware — it is that leaders work to distort, deny, or drown out what the public witnesses. When noise replaces information and denial replaces accountability, leaders can act without scrutiny. A weakened press does not just limit what citizens know — it expands what leaders can hide. Recent events continue to show how easily truth can be distorted or denied. Reporting from the Associated Press (APNews) and Reuters (Reuters.com) on Venezuela shows why independent journalism matters: without it, the public would have no window into decisions that affect national policy and global stability.
Misinformation now spreads at the speed of a click, while truth moves at the speed of verification. Interviewers must be prepared, ask evidence‑based questions, and challenge falsehoods in real time because the public is watching in real time.
Many Americans now rely on one‑sided news sources that reinforce what they already believe. These echo chambers create insulated audiences who rarely encounter conflicting information. The constant barrage of conflict and contradiction becomes emotionally exhausting, making disengagement feel like self‑protection. But disengagement creates a vacuum — and power always fills a vacuum.
Defending a free press does not mean pretending that all news outlets uphold the same standards. Some blur the line between fact and opinion or amplify misinformation. But the failures of some outlets do not diminish the constitutional role of a free and independent press. A democracy cannot function when citizens are misled — nor can it survive when journalists are silenced.
Leaders have a responsibility not only to govern, but to model the democratic values they swore to uphold. That begins with telling the truth — even when the truth is inconvenient or politically costly. The best rule for any leader is simple: if you do not want the public to know about it, then do not do it. Public office is not a private enterprise. Decisions made in the dark almost always betray the people who must live with the consequences.
My mother used to say, “What you do in the dark always comes out in the light.” It is a truth echoed across history, philosophy, and even scripture — Luke 12:2–3 (NIV) and Mark 4:22 (NIV) — the idea that hidden actions eventually become known.
If leaders cannot tell the truth, they should at least refuse to lie. If they cannot answer a question, they should not attack the person asking it. If they cannot be transparent, they should simply say, “No comment at this time,” rather than distort, dehumanize, or deny. Leaders honor the First Amendment and must commit to transparency, correct misinformation rather than amplify it, and respect the independence of institutions that exist to protect the public — not the powerful.
Protecting a democracy built on truth requires action from every institution and every citizen. The press must continue to investigate and publish information about government actions, even when those findings are uncomfortable or politically inconvenient. Journalists must hold leaders accountable, challenge attempts to block or suppress reporting, and uphold the highest ethical standards. Their role as watchdogs is not ceremonial — it is constitutional. They must defend their right to gather accurate information, use the courts when necessary to challenge unlawful restrictions, and explain to the public why a free press is essential to self‑government. A democracy cannot function when journalists are intimidated, sued, retaliated against, or threatened for doing their jobs. Those are the tactics of weak leaders, not democratic ones.
Citizens also carry responsibility. Democracy depends on an informed and engaged public — people who attend meetings, ask questions, write emails, make calls, and speak directly to officials when something is wrong. Citizens must research information to validate facts, support fact‑based journalism, and challenge misinformation respectfully but firmly. They must choose their news sources carefully, avoiding echo chambers that reinforce only what they already believe. They must exercise their rights to speak, record, photograph, and assemble peacefully in public forums — especially when those rights are challenged, as when ICE officers recently tried to prevent protesters from filming. And when necessary, citizens must protest peacefully, as seen in the Jimmy Kimmel case, to defend free expression and the public’s right to know.
Elected officials must model the democratic values they swore to uphold. Congress must stop covering up, repeating, or defending lies. They must stop twisting the truth to protect political allies and stop hiding behind excuses like “I haven’t read it” or “I didn’t know.” Transparency is not optional; it is the foundation of public trust. Leaders must give honest answers — or, when necessary, simply say “No comment” rather than mislead the public. Public office is not a private enterprise. Decisions made in the dark almost always betray the people who must live with the consequences.
A president must respect the First Amendment and the public’s right to know. That means telling the truth — not lying, covering up, or manipulating information. A president must stop attacking, discrediting, or dehumanizing the press, and must stop calling factual reporting “fake” simply because it is unfavorable. If a president does not want an action reported, the solution is simple: do not engage in conduct that cannot withstand public scrutiny. No president should intimidate journalists, instill fear, retaliate against them, or use lawsuits and legal threats to silence reporting — because that is what weak leaders do.
Truth is a public good — and when it is weakened, the entire civic ecosystem suffers. A nation that cannot see or hear the truth cannot remain a democracy. But a people who insist on truth — who demand transparency, challenge misinformation, and hold leaders accountable — will always have the power to protect it, and to pass it forward.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and national advocate for ethical leadership, government accountability, and civic renewal. She writes about democratic norms, constitutional responsibility, and the role of truth in public life.
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