Letters from an American - February 17, 2026

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

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February 17, 26. Trump's White House website welcomes visitors with a pop-up that reads, Welcome to the Golden Age. But on this heavy news day, a year into Trump's second term, it is increasingly clear that as his regime focuses on committing the United States to white Christian nationalism, the country is becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the world, and its own economy is weakening.

At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's endorsement of white Christian nationalism does not appear to have swayed European countries to abandon their defense of democracy and join the U.S. slide toward authoritarianism. Instead, as retired Lieutenant General and former commander of U.S. Army Europe, Mark Hurtling, wrote, It squandered the strategic advantage its partnership with Europe has given the U.S. Foreign Affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted that the word in Munich was that Europe needs to emancipate itself from the U.S. as fast as possible. In Germany, Der Spiegel reports plans to bring Ukrainian veterans to teach German armed forces drone use and counter-dron practices the Ukrainians are perfecting in their war against Russian occupation. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney is working to reduce Canada's defense

dependence on the U.S., ramping up domestic defense production. Carney has advanced a foreign policy that centers middle powers and operates without the U.S. That global reorientation has profound consequences for the U.S. economy as well. Canada is leading discussions between the European Union and a 12-nation Indo-Pacific bloc to form one of the globe's largest economic alliances. A new agreement would enable the countries to share supply chains and to share a low-tariff system. Canada also announced it is renewing its partnership with China. As of this week, Canadians can travel to China without a visa. Today, France's President Emmanuel Macron, and India's Prime Minister Narenda Modi upgraded Indian-French relations to a special strategic partnership during a three-day visit

of Macron to Mumbai. They have promised to increase cooperation between the two countries in defense, trade, and critical materials. Trump insisted that abandoning the free trade principles under which the U.S. economy had boomed since World War II would enable the U.S. to leverage its extraordinary economic might through tariffs. But it appears, as economist Scott Linsacom of the Cato Institute wrote today for Bloomberg, that the rest of the world is simply moving on without the U.S. While Trump boasts about the U.S. stock market, which is indeed up, U.S. markets have underperformed markets in other countries. Today, Carl Kintanilla of CNBC reported that the S&P 500, which measures 500 of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. is off to its worst year of performance since

1995 when compared to the All-C-C-World Index, or ACWI, an index that measures global stocks. In May 2023, the Florida legislature passed a law requiring employers with 25 or more employees to confirm that their workers are in the U.S. legally. The new law prompted foreign farm workers and construction workers to leave the state. Now, the Wall Street Journal reported in a February 6th editorial, employers are struggling to find workers they can employ legally. The newspaper continued,

there's little evidence that undocumented migrants are taking jobs from Americans. The reality is that employers can't find enough Americans willing to work in the fields or hang drywall, even at attractive wages. Farmhands in Florida, who work year-round, earn roughly $47,000, which is more than what some young college graduates earn. The lesson for President Trump is that businesses can't grow if government takes away their workers, the Wall Street Journal editorial board concluded. Today, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeyer reacted to the Wall Street Journal editorial, explaining on Fox Business

that the Republican Party expects to replace undocumented workers with young Americans. We need to focus on our state college program, our trade schools, getting people into the workforce even earlier. We passed legislation last year, to help high school students get their hands dirty and get out on job sites more quickly. So I think there's a lot more we can do with apprenticeships, rolling out, beefing up our workforce, and trying to address the demand that is undoubtedly here in the state.

Steve Copac of NBC News reported on February 11th that while the U.S. added 1.46 million jobs in 2024, the last year of former President Joe Biden's administration, it added just 181,000 jobs in 2025. That makes 2025 the worst year for hiring since 2003, aside from the worst year of the coronavirus pandemic. Manufacturing lost 108,000 jobs in 2025. Peter Grant of the Wall Street Journal reported today that banks that have loaned money to finance the purchase of commercial,

purchase of commercial real estate are requiring borrowers to pay back tens of billions of dollars as the delinquency rate for such loans has climbed to a high not seen since just after the 2008 financial crisis. About $100 billion in commercial real estate loans that have been packaged into securities will come due this year and probably won't repay when they should. More than half of the loans are likely headed for foreclosure or liquidation. Trump vowed that he would cut waste, fraud, and abuse out of the country's government programs, but cuts to social programs have been overwhelmed by spending on federal arrest, detention, and deportation programs, as well as Trump's expansion of military strikes and threats against other countries. In his first year back in office, Trump launched

at least 658 air and drone strikes against Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Just today, U.S. Southern Command announced it struck three boats in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean yesterday and killed 11 people it claims were smuggling drugs, bringing the total of such strikes to more than 40 and the number of dead to more than 130. Now Trump is moving American forces toward Iran, threatening to target the regime there. The administration is simply tacking the cost of these military adventures onto government expenditures, apparently still maintaining that the tax cuts for the wealthy incorporations Republicans extended in their July One Big Beautiful Bill Act and tariffs, will address the growing deficit and national debt by increasing economic growth.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, last week projected that the deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, will be $1.85 trillion. Richard Rubin of the Wall Street Journal notes that for every dollar that, for every dollar the U.S. collects this year, it will spend $1.33. The CBO explained that the Republican tax cuts will increase budget deficits by $4.7 trillion through 2035. If the American people have suffered from Trump's reign, the Trump family continues to cash in. Today, Trump's chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Michael Selig, announced he will try to block states from regulating prediction markets, saying they provide useful functions for

society by allowing everyday Americans to hedge commercial risks like increases in temperature and energy price spikes. Republicans insist that prediction markets are more like stock trading than like betting, but a group of over 20 Democratic senators warned last week in a letter to selling that prediction market platforms, where hundreds of millions of dollars are wagered every week, are offering contracts that mirror sportsbook wagers, and in some cases contracts tied to war and armed conflict. They added that the platforms evade state and tribal consumer protections, generate no public revenue, and undermine sovereign regulatory regimes, and urged selling to support regulations Congress has already put into law.

Prediction markets also cover the actions of President Trump, whose son Don Jr. is both an advisor to and an investor in Polly Market and a paid advisor to Kalshi. Polymarket and Kalshi are the two biggest prediction markets, and both are less regulated than betting sites. The Trump family has announced it is starting to start. regarding its own Truth Predict. David Uberti of the Wall Street Journal reported that Eric Trump is investing heavily in drones, particularly in Israeli drone maker Extend, which has a $1.5 billion deal to merge with a small Florida construction company to take the company public.

The Defense Department has invited Extend to be part of its drone expansion program. And yet, it is clear the administration fears the American people. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or BCA, a statewide program that specializes in police shootings, said yesterday that it has received formal notice that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, will not allow it any access to information or evidence that it is collected related to the shooting death of Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Preti. The BCA says it will continue to investigate and to pursue legal avenues to get access to the FBI files. Fury at ICE continues to mount, with voices from inside the government complaining about Homeland Security Secretary Christy Knoem.

Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kubay, Jonathan Allen, and Julia Ainsley of NBC News reported today on her alienation of senior officials at the Coast Guard as she has shifted their primary mission of search and rescue to flying deportation flights. Gnom's abrupt removal of Coast Guard commandant Linda Fagan, only to move into her vacated housing at Joint Base on Acostia Bowling herself, also rankled, along with Nome's lavish use of expensive Coast Guard planes. Daniel Lipman and Adam Ren of Politico reported today that Nome's spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, is resigning. Marissa Payne of the Des Moines Register reported today that in Iowa, Republican state lawmakers are working to rein in the power of the state governor before the 2026 elections, a sure sign that they are working worried that a Democrat is going to win the election. That fear appears to be part of a larger concern that the American people have turned against the Republicans

more generally. Last night, late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert told viewers he had been unable to air an interview he did with a Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Texas, James Talleyco. I was told that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on, Colbert said. And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about this.

Talariko is a Texas state lawmaker studying to be a minister who criticizes the Republican use of Christianity as a political weapon. Such politicization of Christianity both distorts politics and cheapens faith, he says. The true way to practice Christianity, is simple but not easy, he says. It is to love your neighbor. Political positions should grow out of that to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and heal the sick. There is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism, he told Colbert. It is the worship of power in the name of Christ, and it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth. Although Talarico is locked in a time.

tight primary battle with Representative Jasmine Crockett, his message offers a powerful off-ramp for evangelicals uncomfortable with the administration, especially its cover-up of the Epstein files. Without evangelical support, MAGA Republicans cannot win elections. Tala Rico has the administration nervous enough that Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, chair Brendan Carr opened an investigation of the morning talk show The View after Tala Rico appeared on the show earlier this month. Lawyer Adam Bonin explained that Carr changed the FCC's enforcement of the equal time rule, which is not the fairness doctrine. It says that when broadcast networks, not cable, give airtime to someone running for office, they have to give the same time to

any other candidate for that office. The obvious exception is when a candidate does something newsworthy outside of the race, in which case a network can interview that person without interviewing everyone else. For 20 years, that rule has applied to talk shows, but Carr announced last month that if a non-news talk show seems to be motivated bipartisan purposes, then it will not be exempt. For Colbert's show, it would have meant that after interviewing Tala Rico, the network would have had to give equal time to all other Democrats and Republicans running for the Senate seat.

CBS could have challenged the rule, but chose not to. Why is the administration worried about Tala Rico in a state Trump won in 2024 by 14%? I think that Donald Trump is worried that we're about to flip Texas, Tala Rico said. the state there is a backlash growing to the extremism and the corruption in our politics. It's a people-powered movement to take back our state and take back our country.

As of 11 o'clock tonight, Colbert's 15-minute interview with Talariko has been viewed on YouTube 3.8 million times. Forbes says it is Colbert's most watched interview in months. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.