Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 2/24

[SVPete]

ICE Training Myths Collapse Under DHS Facts

ICE Training Myths Collapse Under DHS Facts

For months, we've heard endlessly from talking heads on dinosaur media and Democrats that ICE agents are woefully undertrained, rushing through streets using lower standards, creating chaos. They predicted constitutional abuses.

A press release by the Department of Homeland Security states that the idea is, well, bunk.

The Department of Homeland Security released hard numbers and direct statements clarifying the structure of ICE law enforcement training.

During the last administration, new recruits didn't spend much time at the academy. Not anymore.

The agency explained that ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training. Under the prior administration, agents trained eight hours a day, five days a week. Under President Donald Trump, new hires are being trained 12 hours a day, six days a week.

“No training requirements have been removed,” DHS stated, adding that it is the “same hours of training officers have always received.”

To further enhance the training schedule, DHS removed redundant modules and incorporated updated tools along with scenario-based exercises. The curriculum includes firearms proficiency, de-escalation tactics, and comprehensive instruction on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

The left has claimed the training had shrunk to 42 days and that Spanish-language instruction disappeared, preventing communication.

Both claims immediately collapsed.

Language classes, which previously covered only a specific dialect of Spanish, have been replaced with robust translation and interpretation services that apply to multiple languages. The majority of new officers brought on during the hiring surge are experienced law enforcement officers who have already successfully completed a law enforcement academy.

Among other narrative-lies, ICE-Haters have been claiming ICE officers are untrained.

[SVPete]

NYT: Who's Bright Idea Was It to Release the Epstein Files, Anyway? UPDATE: NYT Disclosure Fail

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/02/24/nyt-whos-bright-idea-was-it-to-release-the-epstein-files-anyway-n3812221

Perhaps we can use a milder analogy for this featured op-ed at the New York Times today: buyer's remorse. Democrats and the Protection Racket Media hyped up the Epstein Files, promoted the victims demanding full disclosure except when it came to their own information, and kept insinuating that Donald Trump was hiding the Information That Would Finally Stop Him. Instead, progressive elites in Academia, Hollywood, Wall Street, and even the royal family and the UK government have seen their lives torpedoed.

Having bought and used the Epstein Monkey's Paw, Democrats and the progressive elite are deep in regret. Former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman wags his finger at all of them from the pages of the NYT, and a few Republicans too, for violating investigative norms that exist for good reason – as we are all discovering now (via Instapundit's Stephen Green).

Richman starts off by blaming the Trump administration and DoJ for a lack of trust among the public, a point to which we'll return shortly. He finally gets to the meat of the issue about halfway through:

The tools we give the government are justified not only by the importance of the criminal enforcement mission but by the care and professional judgment prosecutors and agents are required to exercise with the information they obtain with those tools. ... Still, prosecutors’ use of the materials they collect is ordinarily bounded by their mission — to charge individuals (or not to charge them), to satisfy disclosure obligations after a case is brought and, if possible, to convince a jury or to obtain a guilty plea.
...
We have to reckon with what happens when a huge investigative haul — with its swirling mix of gossip, casual association and possible criminal misconduct — is opened up for public viewing. The justice system should never be the only means of holding people accountable. The power of shame can be a good thing, and some reputations deserve to be tarnished. But informal accountability processes can easily slide into misuse of unfiltered source material.

If an ordinary schlub of ordinary intelligence like me could foresee that unselectively releasing raw data from an investgation would entail the risk of harming numerous innocent people, the Trump-Haters knew this as well and knowingly hypo-vehiculated hundreds of innecent people in the hope that somwhere under the tons of equine feces was a Gotcha-Trump pony.

[Ralph Wiggum]

NYT: Who's Bright Idea Was It to Release the Epstein Files, Anyway? UPDATE: NYT Disclosure Fail

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/02/24/nyt-whos-bright-idea-was-it-to-release-the-epstein-files-anyway-n3812221


If an ordinary schlub of ordinary intelligence like me could foresee that unselectively releasing raw data from an investgation would entail the risk of harming numerous innocent people, the Trump-Haters knew this as well and knowingly hypo-vehiculated hundreds of innecent people in the hope that somwhere under the tons of equine feces was a Gotcha-Trump pony.

I've been racking my brain (not often, though) wondering what the end game is with the Epstein files. Clearly Epstein was a DEMOCRAT scumbag who did hob-nob with the rich and powerful, of which then citizen Trump was. Everyone knows that 95+% of the names in his files was a Democrat. But there are I guess some weird insinuations that Trump is involved with all sorts of shenanigans. One supposes they also believe the "pee tape" was real.

I just don't get it, and quite frankly it is far beneath my pay grade to ponder.