The Headlines - ICE Whistle-Blower Says Training Is ‘Broken,’ and OpenAI Faces Questions About Mass Shooter

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Plus, how Mexico tracked its most-wanted cartel leader.  Here’s what we’re covering: Training for New ICE Agents Is ‘Deficient’ and ‘Broken,’ Whistle-Blower Says, by Nicholas Nehamas and Hamed Aleaziz Mexican Forces Say They Tracked El Mencho to Cabin by Following His Lover, by James Wagner Canada Presses OpenAI for Answers on Mass Shooter’s Chatbot Use, by Vjosa Isai Iran Students Protest for Second Day Despite State Crackdown, by Erika Solomon, Sanam Mahoozi and Devon Lum Iran Turns to Digital Surveillance Tools to Track Down Protesters, by Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur and Farnaz Fassihi The Bad Bunny Effect: Dance Without Fear, by Brian Seibert (The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.) Tune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 24th. Here's what we're covering. For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 500. A former ICE official has come forward as a whistleblower, alleging that the training protocol for new agents is broken and deficient.

Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place. for shortcuts. Ryan Schwank was hired by ICE in 2021 and started teaching legal courses at a federal law enforcement training academy last year. He shared his account yesterday in D.C. at a forum organized by congressional Democrats. Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know the limits of their authority and who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order. Yesterday, Senate Democrats also released dozens of pages of internal ICE records that suggest the Trump administration has curtailed the basic training right as it's been staffing up. Under Trump, ICE has been on a massive hiring spree, bringing in over 12,000 new officers and agents, more than double what it had before.

That surge has threatened to overwhelm the centers which train most federal agents. In response, ICE officials scaled back the regimen. For example, the documents senators released include two different syllabi, one from July and one from this month, which show a 40% decrease in training hours. Other documents suggest that courses like use of force simulation training are no longer required, along with some on immigration law and ICE's legal authorities. Taken together, the new disclosures underscore concern. about the conduct and preparedness of agents from the Department of Homeland Security, who have shot and killed at least three U.S. citizens in the last year. When pressed by Congress earlier this month about whether ICE had lowered its standards,

the acting director of the agency said, quote, the meat of the training was never removed. And the DHS says it's streamlined training without, quote, sacrificing basic subject matter content. In Mexico, authorities are sharing new details about how they track down the country's most wanted cartel leader, known as El Mentiono, who was killed by security forces on Sunday. Mexico's defense minister said authorities found the criminal kingpin, who'd been on the run for years, by 10,000. tracking one of his romantic partners. Late last week, she traveled to meet him at a cabin in the mountains of the Halisco State. After she left, authorities raided the cabin. El Mancho fled into the woods as a gun battle broke out between Mexican troops and his security team. Special forces

then tracked him down. He was severely injured and later died while being transported to a medical facility. The defense minister said Mexican intelligence officers led the search, but that information from American authorities helped pinpoint the cartel leader's location. Meanwhile, the mayhem that broke out across the country after El Mancho's death has now largely subsided. Cartel operatives had blocked highways and set fire to buildings and cars in a show of force. Authorities say at least 62 people were killed. A majority of them were suspected cartel members or members of the Mexican military. The violence rattled many cities, including some that are central to Mexico's tourism industry,

which is a vital economic driver for the country. Several major U.S. airlines canceled flights to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara yesterday, and the operators of three cruise ships that were set to dock on Mexico's Pacific coast in the coming days have canceled their visits. In Canada today, OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, will face questions about how the 18-year-old behind a recent mass shooting used, its platform. The country's Minister of Artificial Intelligence has said he is, quote, deeply disturbed by reports about what the company may have known before the attack. Earlier this month,

the shooter killed two family members at home before killing five children, one educator, and herself at a nearby school. A Times review of her social media accounts found she had a years-long struggle with mental health issues and a growing fascination with weapons and extreme violence. Last June, messages she sent to chat GPT raised flags internally at OpenAI, and she was banned from the platform. According to the company, it had considered informing law enforcement about her account, but ultimately decided not to, since it determined she had no credible plan for an attack. The Wall Street Journal has reported that decision upset some of the company's employees at the time. The top government official of British Columbia, where the

attack took place, said it was very troubling that OpenAI didn't share what he called, quote, related intelligence. Now, Canadian officials will be asking for explanations about OpenAI's safety protocols and its threshold for when information is shared with the police. For its part, OpenAI says it did contact Canadian authorities after the attack, and, that it tries to balance public safety with protecting the privacy of individual users. In Iran over the past few days, anti-government protesters, mainly students, have taken to the streets for some of the first demonstrations in the country since a brutal crackdown on protests earlier this year. The regime is on high alert for a possible attack from the U.S. over its nuclear program,

but it's also trying to suppress the widespread discontent that's threatened to destabilize the government from within. In January, security forces killed thousands of protesters, and since then, they've arrested around 40,000 people, according to several rights groups. My colleagues have been reporting on the high-tech surveillance tools that Iran used earlier this year to target demonstrators. One of the things that jumped out to me the most

is many of these Iranians were out at the protests, and then later they received a text message that was essentially threatening and warning them, saying that their presence at illegal gatherings, quote-unquote, had been noted and that now they were under intelligence monitoring. Adam Satariano, a Times tech reporter, has been looking at how Iran has essentially used people's location data to create a digital dragnet.

We heard other examples of this of how people's phones, or social media behavior were used against them. So people who had posted on social media about the protests or other politically sensitive topics, they found that their SIM cards, so their access to mobile networks had been turned off. Access to mobile banking had been interrupted. We also heard about people who were detained and interrogated and shown evidence of facial recognition or location tracking. And so it's just an example of this menu of surveillance technology that the Iranian government has. And this is something they've been building up for years and years. Iran has

some of the most expansive surveillance technology available in the world. And they've shown a willingness to deploy it in ways that is really notable. And finally, Bad Bunny's performance at the Super Bowl earlier this month has people wanting to learn how to salsa. His hit song, Baile I Novi Dhabli, or Unforgettable Dance, was part of the medley he put on on the field. He led Lady Gaga to the dance floor for it. Ever since the song came out last year, it's been driving people to dance lessons. One salsa teacher in Queens told the times his classes doubled in size.

And since the halftime show, teachers say there's been a dance. another wave of new faces. Salsa, of course, has a big, rich global history. A lot of people pick it up informally at weddings or family events. Others go to studios to learn. But Bad Bunny, the most streamed artist in the world, promoting it, definitely helps, especially among young people. What also helps, people say, is that he's not a professional expert dancer. Not to say he's not good, just that he dances like an everyday person, which kind of gives everyone else permission to join in whatever their level of coordination. Those are the headlines. Tonight, President Trump will give his State of the Union address

at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can follow live coverage at NYTimes.com and we'll have a breakdown of his speech on the headlines tomorrow morning. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back then.