Your Lyin’ ICE

Good afternoon. This is the Final NOTUS newsletter for February 13, 2026. You can get it in your inbox every day by signing up here — it’s free!

The Latest

ICE agents made ‘untruthful statements’ about the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minnesota last month. That’s not a Democratic talking point; it’s what acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said today.

• Immediately after the incident, Kristi Noem said three men “ambushed” agents with a broom and a shovel, and she declared them guilty of “attempted murder.” The White House, DHS, Stephen Miller and a host of conservative influencers amplified those allegations.
• But the Justice Department yesterday dismissed the charges against the alleged ambushers, saying that “newly discovered evidence” is “materially inconsistent” with the initial allegations. Lyons said “video evidence” shows that the “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements.”
• Lyons said the agents are on leave, and the DOJ is investigating.

January’s inflation numbers came in better than expected — good news for the Trump administration, especially coming hot on the heels of job numbers that were also better than expected.

• “This was among the most back-to-back positive reports that we’ve gotten in a while,” economist Jason Furman told The Washington Post. “It’s not like this is an all-clear or ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment, but it’s getting closer to the ‘soft landing’ we’ve been waiting for for years.”

The Hill

DHS shuts down in a few hours, and members are off to Munich. As of right now, lawmakers don’t seem to be in a huge rush to figure this one out.

• Mike Johnson cancelled the House CODEL to the Munich Security Conference as a result of the shutdown, but a number of members are heading to Germany on their own dime. The large, bipartisan Senate delegation is already there.

• Rep. Mike Simpson is not going to Munich. The Republican from Idaho tells NOTUS’ Em Luetkemeyer he’s jetting back home to see his wife and dog. When he’s in Washington, he said, he FaceTimes his dog every night and they howl at each other.

The Administration

Kristi Noem is in Arizona today, where she spent some of her day speaking at a press conference about election security and the supposed scourge of illegal voting.

• “I’m still in charge of the Department of Homeland Security,” she said in response to a question asking if she’s “still in charge of the mass-deportation campaign.”

• Surely all unrelated: The DHS secretary and her very close adviser Corey Lewandowski were the subject of buzzy reporting in The Wall Street Journal bouncing around Washington today.

Border czar Tom Homan claimed victory yesterday when he announced the end of the deportation surge in Minnesota, saying it “greatly reduced” the number of “violent criminals” on the street. But NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery found a very different story after interviewing a dozen Minnesota detainees and reading a flood of habeas corpus lawsuits.

Trump says he will visit Venezuela soon, but he hasn’t “decided when.”

• Gaggling with reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, the president also said Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “going to have to get moving” on a peace deal with Russia — and that a second aircraft carrier is going to the Middle East “in case we don’t make a deal” with Iran.

The Office of Management and Budget has allocated $15 million of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s budget to go toward Director Russell Vought’s security detail, Reuters reported. Since USAID was dismantled last year, Vought has served as its acting director.

There’s Always Room For More

Will Stephen A. Smith run for president? In an interview airing Sunday, he tells CBS News that he’s giving it “strong consideration” and will use 2026 “to think about it, to study, to know the issues.”

Thank you for reading! Today’s newsletter was produced by Matt Berman 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.