‘Pretty Boring Stuff’

Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for February 12, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here — it’s free!

The Latest

We’ll have a partial government shutdown starting tomorrow, and members of the House and the Senate are leaving town for a week.

• ICE and CBP have enough money to keep operating at full capacity, but FEMA, TSA and the Coast Guard don’t. Republicans warned that flight delays may be a thing again.
• Border czar Tom Homan said DHS is ending its surge in Minnesota.

A federal judge ordered the administration to ‘facilitate’ the return of Venezuelans it deported to El Salvador. That might be difficult, but Judge James Boasberg said it’s “up to the government to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so.”

Pete Hegseth can’t punish Mark Kelly for that ‘illegal orders’ video, per a preliminary injunction issued today by Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee.

• A grand jury refused Jeanine Pirro’s attempt to indict Kelly and other Democrats earlier this week. Elissa Slotkin said she expects Pirro to try again. Leon’s order wouldn’t prevent that, but the reasoning behind it would.

The Administration

The EPA said greenhouse gases don’t threaten Americans’ health and welfare. By abandoning the so-called “endangerment finding,” the agency eliminated the legal basis for “all EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from trucks, cars, power plants and other sources of pollution,” NOTUS’ Anna Kramer reports.

Donald Trump said he doesn’t understand why people are interested in Jeffrey Epstein. “It’s pretty boring stuff,” the president told reporters. “I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said COVID couldn’t keep him away from recovery meetings. “I said, ‘I’m not scared of a germ,’” he told Theo Von. “You know, I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats. I know this disease will kill me. If I don’t treat it, which for me means going to meetings everyday, it’s just bad for my life. For me, it was survival.”

• In her book on her affair with Kennedy, journalist Olivia Nuzzi said the HHS secretary used psychedelic drugs like DMT when his wife wasn’t around.

The Hill

The Senate approved a bill to rewrite the D.C. tax laws. The bill would force the District to match new federal deductions for tips and overtime.

The House Daily Press Gallery is now the Frederick Douglass Press Gallery. “It’s an important thing for us to give honor where honor is due,” Mike Johnson said. “That’s a biblical admonition, and Frederick Douglass is certainly deserving of that honor.”

• Flashback: At a Black History Month event in 2017, Trump said Douglass “is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” Douglass died in 1895.

All In The Family

The classified whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard involves a conversation about Jared Kushner among two foreign nationals, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Barron Trump is getting into the beverage business as a director for a new yerba mate company based near Mar-a-Lago.

Life Comes At You Fast

Thank you for reading! Today’s newsletter was produced by Kate Nocera and Andrew Burton. If you liked it, please forward it to a friend. If someone shared it with you, please subscribe — it’s free! Got a tip or comments to share? Email us at finalnotus@notus.com.