Grand jurors standing up to tyranny nationwide

Something extraordinary is happening in federal courthouses across America: Grand juries are exercising their power to reject criminal charges in high-profile cases, according to Chesa Boudin, the former San Francisco district attorney and Eric Fish a law professor at the University of California, Davis writing in   The New York Times.

In Washington, a grand jury refused to return a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer during a crackdown ordered by President Trump. In Chicago, grand jurors have declined to indict in several felony cases stemming from a similar operation; prosecutors seemed to get the message and dismissed additional cases. In Minnesota, federal prosecutors have charged some demonstrators with misdemeanors in cases involving encounters with federal agents — and it is very likely that they did so in some cases because the prosecutors expected grand juries would reject felony charges.

Federal grand juries in Virginia twice decided not to indict Letitia James, the New York attorney general, after a judge dismissed an initial case against her. Another federal grand jury in Virginia declined at least one charge against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director; the prosecutor later improperly filed a version of the indictment the full grand jury never saw.

This week, a grand jury rejected an effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to indict the six members of Congress who appeared last year in a video underscoring the obligation of service members to refuse illegal orders.

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CREATORS: Obeying an Unlawful Order is Not a Defense

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
February 17, 2026

Befehlsnotstand is a word worth noting. The word is of German origin. The legal term refers to soldiers who obey illegal orders because they are afraid of the consequences if they do not obey. The defense didn't work in Nuremberg after World War II and won't work today.

In a weird twist on the concept of befehlsnotstand, last fall, Sen. Mark Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers released a video advising U.S. military personnel that they "can refuse illegal orders."

Kelly was joined by Senator Elissa Slotkin and Reps. Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Maggie Goodlander, and Chris Deluzio — all with military or intelligence backgrounds.

They emphasized, "Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders," while urging troops to uphold their oath to the Constitution. This statement came amid concerns regarding potential unlawful orders by the Trump administration, particularly from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

This comes into focus, yet again, as the Trump administration, through the U.S. military, carried out another deadly strike on a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the Caribbean Sea.

According to ABC News, the U.S. Southern Command announced that the boat "was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations." It said the strike killed three people. A video linked to the post shows a boat moving through the water before exploding in flames.

This most recent attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration's strikes on alleged drug boats to 133 people in at least 38 attacks carried out since early September in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Under both U.S. and international law, it is flagrantly illegal to use the military to kill civilians suspected of only crimes. The United States is not in an armed conflict with anyone in Latin America. That means the people on these boats are civilians. Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets.

The Trump administration countered by saying the cartels behind the drug trafficking are terrorists and, therefore, the attacks are legal. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued a "secret" memo to legally justify the US military's strikes on these boats and their occupants.

This memo reportedly details the Trump administration's legal reasoning. Initially, the strikes are lawful because the United States is in an "armed conflict" with unspecified drug cartels, and the officials who have authorized or carried out these strikes should not be prosecuted for murder or other crimes, reported the American Civil Liberties Union. Even as legal experts from across the political spectrum have challenged these claims, the administration has refused to release the OLC memo or any related records.

To complicate things even further, on at least one occasion, two survivors of a boat attack, considered shipwrecked, were killed by a second attack. In addition, reports from January indicate that the U.S. military has used disguised aircraft, designed to look like civilian planes, to attack suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. This tactic has raised serious legal and ethical questions regarding "perfidy," which is considered a war crime under international law, according to The Guardian.

Under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), service members are legally obligated to obey only lawful orders. According to the military website MyBaseGuide.com, an illegal order is a directive that violates a law, regulation, or the Constitution.

Examples of illegal orders include committing a crime, engaging in unethical acts, or violating human rights standards. The UCMJ requires military personnel to disobey patently illegal orders, such as those directing war crimes or "targeting civilians."

International Courts have established that befehlsnotstand is not a defense. The defense was unsuccessful for senior members of Adolph Hitler's leadership during the post-World War II Nuremberg trials and likely would be unsuccessful today.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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People who fight culture wars often believe what they say, people who lead culture wars often don’t

Russell Moore writes at Christianity Today: 

People have almost given up on bridging the divides in American life. Republicans and Democrats cannot pass any bipartisan legislation or even watch the same Super Bowl halftime shows. And yet throughout the last two decades of polarization, one figure seems to have discerned the code for bringing both sides of the culture war together. His name was Jeffrey Epstein.

The Epstein files have largely been redacted, with parts of them hidden from us, but we’ve seen enough to know that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell were two of the most corrupt and connected sex criminals in American history. Despite how much is still confusing, we can also see this: On at least one important point, the most outlandish theories were right. There really is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses. And many of them were people building a following by telling others that there is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses.

Reading through the names of those connected with Epstein, one can hardly believe the range listed there. Some were unsurprising: for instance, creepy filmmaker Woody Allen or the man formerly known as Prince Andrew. But even then, the scope is unsettling. Even the Dalai Lama had to put out a statement noting that he was never involved with Epstein. Just as incredible, many of the people listed were partying with those they spend a lot of time telling the rest of us to hate.

Both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were apparently friendly with Epstein. The New Age syncretist Deepak Chopra is in the documents many times—often with shady, enigmatic phrases—but so are those who accused the pope of New Age syncretism. With Middle Eastern tensions what they are, still the files include both sheikhs and Israelis. All over the files are connections with both left-wing populist provocateur Noam Chomsky and right-wing populist provocateur Steve Bannon. Epstein makes fun of evangelicals yet recommends a James Dobson article.

How can this be?

Maybe one reason is that Jeffrey Epstein figured out the deep, dark secret of this moment: The people who fight culture wars often believe what they say, but the people who lead culture wars often don’t.

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Thousands of new parents reported to police over false-positive drug tests

In at least 70,000 cases in 21 states, parents were referred to law enforcement agencies over allegations of substance use during pregnancy, according to six years of state and federal data obtained and published for the first time by The Marshall Project. In many cases, the referrals began with false positive results from flawed drug tests — sometimes triggered by the women’s prescribed medications.

 Harris-Rashid with her third child, Rai. Harris-Rashid used legal CBD gummies and a topical hemp-based ointment to ease frequent nausea and pain when she was pregnant with Rai in 2021. Kathryn Gamble for The Marshall Project 

 After Harris-Rashid gave birth, the hospital staff administered drug tests, and she and her child tested positive for marijuana. Kathryn Gamble for The Marshall Project

The sheer number of people that law enforcement is tracking is far higher than experts previously knew, including academics and reproductive rights organizations monitoring what they call pregnancy criminalization. Even so, the numbers The Marshall Project compiled represent a significant undercount.

“My initial genuine reaction is, frankly, shock and dismay,” said Dana Sussman, senior vice president of the legal advocacy organization Pregnancy Justice, which counted more than 1,800 pregnancy-related arrests and prosecutions from 2006 through 2024. She added, “This represents an incredibly regressive and counterproductive approach.”

The Marshall Project spent a year collecting and analyzing data on referrals to law enforcement. Reporters began with a request for federal data, then asked state child welfare agencies to verify the numbers and provide state policies. The totals reflect the number of newborn cases that those agencies shared with police or prosecutors.

Although most of those referrals did not lead to criminal investigations, many women were threatened with arrest or criminally charged. Others were confronted by police in their hospital rooms or homes and forced to turn over their children.

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Stay Outraged: Trump summarily attacks another boat in the Caribbean

A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Friday, the U.S. Southern Command said, raising the death toll in the Trump administration’s five-month-old campaign against suspected drug smugglers at sea to 133, according to The New York Times.

The attack was the first known strike in the Caribbean Sea since early November and the 39th disclosed by the U.S. government in the campaign, according to a tracker maintained by The New York Times.

The announcement on Friday was accompanied by an 11-second video clip that appeared to show a missile striking the middle of the boat as it traversed open waters, and destroying it.

The command said, citing unspecified intelligence, that the boat had been following “known drug-trafficking routes in the Caribbean” and that it was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.

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Sheriff: 'Guthrie will be found' has operation change form rescue to recovery?

 According to The New York Times:

Officers Block a Street: Late Friday, law enforcement officers came to a neighborhood about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s home and closed off a street. The police operation is related to the investigation into her abduction on Feb. 1, a Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said.

Sheriff Discusses the Case: Chris Nanos, the Arizona sheriff leading the search for Nancy Guthrie, described investigators’ disappointment when learning a person they detained this week was not involved. But in an interview with The Times, he said DNA had been discovered on Ms. Guthrie’s property and sent for testing and expressed confidence that Ms. Guthrie would be found. Read more ›

Flood of Tips: The release of security video showing a masked man on Nancy Guthrie’s porch early on Feb. 1, the morning she disappeared, has opened a floodgate of possible leads to law enforcement. More than 4,000 calls were made to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in the 24 hours after the images were made public this week. Read more ›

Oklahoma executes man involved in drive-by shooting

The 3rd Execution of 2026

Kendrick Simpson who admitted to killing two men in a drive-by shooting in 2006 was put to death February 12, 2026 in Oklahoma, reported The Associated Press.

Simpson, 45, was pronounced dead at 10:19 CST following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, prison officials said. He was convicted of killing Anthony Jones, 19, and Glen Palmer, 20, by firing into their car following an altercation at an Oklahoma City nightclub.

“I love y’all,” Simpson said to his family and members of his legal team while he was strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber. “Thank y’all for being here to support me.”

Simpson’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Don Heath, read Scripture in the chamber during the execution, which lasted about 12 minutes. A doctor entered the room and declared Simpson unconscious about five minutes after the first drugs began to flow.

Simpson, who had fled to Oklahoma City from the devastated city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, admitted to the killings during a clemency hearing last month. He apologized to the victims’ families and to a third man who was in the vehicle when Jones and Palmer were shot.

Palmer’s sister, Crystal Allison, witnessed the execution and said she was disturbed to see Simpson smiling at his family members while strapped to the gurney.

“The same smile that had been tormenting me for 20 years, he still smiled that same smile laying on his deathbed,” she said.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement Thursday that justice had been served for Palmer and Jones.

“Their young lives were taken tragically and far too soon,” Drummond said. “I hope today brings some measure of peace to their families who have endured unimaginable pain for the past 20 years.”

Simpson had apologized to the victims’ families and accepted responsibility for the killings during last month’s clemency hearing.

“I don’t make any excuses,” Simpson said at the time. “I don’t blame others, and they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

Despite his apology, the state’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board narrowly voted to deny Simpson clemency.

On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court had no comment after rejecting a late appeal to block the execution.

Simpson’s attorneys had argued that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from chronic trauma in his childhood years growing up in a New Orleans housing project.

“Kendrick is a man worthy of your mercy and compassion,” his attorneys wrote in his clemency application. “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst offenses and offenders. Kendrick and his case represent neither.”

On the night of the killing in January 2006, prosecutors say, Simpson had placed an assault rifle in the trunk of a vehicle he and his friends drove to a club in northwest Oklahoma City. After an altercation at the club between Simpson and Palmer, prosecutors say, Simpson and his friends followed Palmer and Jones from a nearby gas station, and that Simpson pointed the gun out the window and fired about 20 rounds into their car. Both victims were shot multiple times.

The state uses the sedative midazolam, followed by vecuronium bromide to halt breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Simpson’s scheduled execution was to be the second of the year in the United States. Florida, which conducted a state record of 19 executions in 2025, put Ronald Palmer Heath to death with a three-drug injection on Tuesday for his conviction in the 1989 killing of a traveling salesman he and his brother met at a Gainesville bar.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025, with Florida leading the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second place with five executions each that year.

Florida is scheduled to carry out the next execution in the U.S. on Feb. 24, the planned lethal injection of Melvin Trotter for the killing of a grocery store owner during a robbery.

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