Top U.S. & World Headlines — February 16, 2026

Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The U.S. military is planning for possible strikes on Iran that could last for weeks if President Trump orders the attack. That's according to two U.S. officials speaking to Reuters. It comes amidst a CBS News report that President Trump informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu during his meeting at Mar-a-Lago in December that the U.S. would back Israeli strikes against Iran's ballistic missile program if the U.S. can't reach a deal with Iran. Meanwhile, in an interview with the BBC, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Majid Tavravanshi, said his country is willing to make compromises to reach a nuclear deal with the U.S. in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

On Saturday, 250,000 people rallied in Germany on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, protesting against Iran's government following a call from Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. At the conference, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called for regime change in Iran.

If we back out now, it'll be the biggest mistake we've made, far worse than the Syrian red line, far worse than Afghanistan. You can't say, keep protesting, we got you back, help's on the way, and nothing happened. That's why I'm confident that President Trump will get an outcome consistent with

those three statements, through diplomacy or military force.

Israeli forces have killed at least 11 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 24 hours. Since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire last October, Israel has killed over 600 Palestinians and wounded over 1,600, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. This is Alyan Abayouk, whose son was killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Do you believe there is a board of peace? Do you believe that Trump will come to help us or defend us? The one who is supplying Israel with all sorts of deadly weapons, supplying it with money, with political support, with protection, and with an international umbrella—do you believe that there is peace that Trump or someone else would provide for us?

On Sunday, President Trump announced members of his so-called Board of Peace have pledged $5 billion towards rebuilding Gaza. Indonesia's military said it's committing up to 8,000 troops to be deployed in Gaza by the end of June. Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders, Medicins Sans Frontières, known as MSF, has halted some of its nonessential medical operations at Nassar Hospital in Gaza after staff and patients reported seeing armed

men inside the facility. Since the October 10th ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the organization says, quote, MSF teams have reported a pattern of unacceptable acts, including the presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients and a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons," unquote. Last month, Israel ordered MSF and 30 other international groups to cease operations in

Gaza and the occupied West Bank if they did not agree to new rules that include sharing information about staff. Doctors at Border says it did not submit a list of its staffers in Gaza, since Israel could not guarantee their safety. In the occupied West Bank, the Oscar-winning Palestinian director of No Other Land says his family has been attacked again by Israeli

settlers, leaving his brother hospitalized and four members of his family arrested by the Israeli army. Hamdan Bilal says the violence began on Sunday, when Israeli settlers began attacking his family's home in the village of Sisya. Bilal says the settlers' raid was led by the same man who previously attacked him last March, injuring his head and stomach, after Bilal's film made global headlines for winning

an Academy Award. Bilal says his brother called police only to have soldiers from the Israeli army raid the home, attacking everyone inside. The violence came hours after Israel's government approved a plan to allow land registration in the West Bank for the first time since 1967, paving the way for Israel to annex Palestinian lands.

Israeli human rights groups warn the land registration process will facilitate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians in violation of international law. A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean Friday, according to U.S. Southern Command. The U.S. military said the boat was allegedly following drug-trafficking routes," unquote, without providing any evidence.

Since September, the Pentagon's conducted 39 strikes against boats they say are smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 133 people, again without providing evidence. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced U.S. forces raided a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel in the Caribbean in an effort to target oil shipped from Venezuela. The Trump administration has been seizing tankers in order to take control of Venezuela's

oil.

It comes as The Wall Street Journal reports the Pentagon used Anthropx artificial intelligence tool CLAUD in its operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Pentagon was able to use Claude through Anthropic's partnership with the data company Palantir. A spokesman for Anthropic told The Wall Street Journal the company is, quote, committed to using frontier AI in support of U.S. national security," unquote. In southwestern Russia, Ukrainian drone strikes set off fires at the Black Sea port of Taman

on Sunday, an attack that wounded two people and damaged an oil storage tanker warehouse and terminals. Elsewhere, debris from Russian drones damaged infrastructure in Ukraine's Odessa region, disrupting water and electricity supplies to civilians. The violence comes ahead of a new round of U.S.-brokered talks involving Russian and Ukrainian envoys, who will meet in Geneva Tuesday and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a report by U.K. and European nations issued Saturday finds Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's death in a Siberian penal colony in 2024 was likely due to a deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuadoran poison dart frogs. The toxin was reportedly found in smuggled samples taken from Navalny's body. Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered contrasting visions of America's role in the world at the Munich Security Conference

in Germany over the weekend. Congressmember Ocasio-Cortez sharply criticized U.S. foreign policy and tied rising income inequality to authoritarianism around the world.

They are looking to withdraw the United States from the entire world so that we can turn into an age of authoritarianisms—of authoritarians that can carve out the world where Donald Trump can command the Western Hemisphere and Latin America as his personal sandbox, where Putin can saber-rattle around Europe and try to bully around our own allies there, and for, essentially, authoritarians to have their own geographic domains.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast immigration as an existential threat to both Europe and the U.S.

In the pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together. And now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward to rebuild.

The Trump administration is planning to spend more than $38 billion to acquire warehouses across the U.S. in order to retrofit them into new ICE jails with capacity for tens of thousands of prisoners. Sixteen large buildings will be converted into regional processing centers, jailing more than 1,000 immigrants at a time, with a further eight large detention centers capable of holding 7,000 to 10,000 prisoners for an average of two months.

That's according to documents first revealed by The Washington Post. This comes as a Reuters review found hundreds of judges around the United States have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Trump's administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully. Yet the administration's continued jailing people indefinitely, even after courts rule the policy is illegal.

In Minnesota, two ICE agents have been suspended and face a criminal investigation into whether they lied to a jury about shooting a Venezuelan immigrant last month. The officers claimed Julio Cesar Sosa Celis and his cousin, Alfredo Alejandra Aljorno, attacked them with a snow shovel and a broom after a traffic stop on January 14th, and said one of the officers fired in self-defense. Shortly after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described it as, quote,

an attempted murder of federal law enforcement," unquote. But video evidence directly contradicts claims the men attacked federal agents. So Sasselli says he had retreated into his home and was shot in the leg while in the process of closing and locking the door. On Thursday, a federal judge dismissed felony assault charges against the cousins after

the U.S. attorney in Minneapolis said newly discovered evidence had contradicted the officers' testimony, and after ICE admitted the federal agents made false statements under oath. The Department of Homeland Security entered a partial shutdown early Saturday morning, after Senate Democrats refused to support a DHS funding bill. They're pressuring Republicans to agree to tighter controls and immigration enforcement, including requiring federal agents to wear identification, get judicial warrants to enter

private property and to stop wearing masks. About 90 percent of the more than 260,000 employees at DHS are deemed essential workers, meaning they'll be required to work, though they could miss paychecks if the shutdown lasts for weeks. That includes nearly 60,000 airport security workers with the TSA, and nearly 20,000 staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to return Babson College student Anny Lucia López-Bellosa to the United States after she was wrongfully deported to Honduras in November. At the time, López-Bellosa was trying to fly from Boston to her home in Houston, Texas, to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was told there was an issue with her boarding pass at the gate before she was detained by

federal immigration agents. She was taken to Texas and deported to Honduras two days later, despite a court order blocking her removal while her case was pending. Judge Richard Stearns has given the Trump administration two weeks to facilitate Annie's return to the United States. His order comes after a federal prosecutor admitted in January ICE had mistakenly deported

her. Healthcare advocates are calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to resign, after he downplayed the risks of COVID-19 by saying he, quote, used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats, unquote. RFK, Jr. made the remark in an interview with the podcaster Theo Vaughn.

I'm not scared of a germ. You know, I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.

Protect Our Care said in response, quote, "'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to lay bare why he's the most dangerous, in over his head, ill-suited person ever to lead such an important federal agency that has life-and-death power," unquote. This comes after the Food and Drug Administration last week blocked review of a flu vaccine developed by Moderna using the same mRNA technology that led to the rapid development of vaccines against COVID.

The review was blocked by Vinay Prasad, a vaccine skeptic handpicked by RFK Jr. last May to lead the division of the FDA that oversees vaccine regulation. Former President Barack Obama has responded publicly to a racist video shared on social media by President Trump, which depicts the Obamas as apes. In a podcast hosted by Brian Tyler Cohen and published on Saturday, Barack Obama refused to directly address the video, but said many people, quote, find this behavior deeply

disturbing.

There's this sort of clown show that's happening in social media and on television. And what is true is that there doesn't seem to be any shame about this.

Although the White House took down the video, after about 12 hours, President Trump refused to apologize for sharing it. The Senate's only black Republican, Tim Scott, said, quote, "'It's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House.'" Unquote. Reuters is reporting the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russell

Vought, is using $15 million of what remains of USAID's operating expenses to fund his security detail. A source tells Reuters Vought's detail includes more than a dozen U.S. marshals. Russ Vought is the chief architect of Project 2025, which outlined the Trump administration's plans to downsize federal agencies and fire thousands of federal workers.

Last year, the Trump administration dismantled USAID, canceled most of its aid programs around the world and fired about 10,000 workers. The Trump administration's decision to shut down USAID resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition around the world. And in California, thousands of San Francisco public school workers ended their strike Friday, after four days on the picket line.

United Educators of San Francisco announced a tentative agreement with the school district that included fully funded health care starting in 2027 and higher wages. The union represents some 6,000 teachers, librarians, social workers and nurses from more than 100 schools across San Francisco. It was the city's first teacher strike in nearly half a century. It was the city's first teacher strike in nearly half a century.

And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.