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“Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.”

The words are those of Renee Good’s wife Becca. They cut to our heart – our humanity. She was shot in the face by an ICE agent, who then muttered: “Fuckin’ bitch.” The murder of this 37-year-old mom as she tried to drive around the ICE guys who stopped her is national news, of course. Almost everyone has seen at least one of the many videos of the incident and, you might say, the national dialogue about virtually anything else has been put on hold.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested, detained, deported, and/or imprisoned many people that it has unilaterally determined to be undesirables.  At first, they claimed they would deport only criminals, but it has already gone beyond that.  We at the Free Press consider every person who has been sent to the Tecoluca (El Salvador prison), Guantanamo naval base, or detained in other prisons throughout the country to be innocent until proven guilty. We will include students who have been expelled for protesting genocide.  It appears the government will revoke Visa's to get rid of undesirable students.  This article will be updated as long as is necessary.

Feminism has a crucial role to play in modern life, but I sometimes wish it would leave our fairy tales alone. The results of its revisionist meddling are too often unconvincing and unsatisfying.

Remember last year’s Maleficent? It turned an age-old story on its head by revealing that the fairy (Angelina Jolie) who turned a princess into a “Sleeping Beauty” was not evil at all. No, she was merely wronged and misunderstood. Worst of all, we learned that the somnambulant princess could not be awakened by a kiss from the handsome prince, but only by a motherly peck from that same fairy.

How heartwarming. And how utterly unromantic.

Thank goodness Disney’s new live-action version of Cinderella doesn’t wear its feminism on its sleeve. It has nods to modern sensibilities, to be sure, but they’re handled with a lighter touch.

The relationship between the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Palantir did not begin in 2025.  

It began in 2011, when Palantir embedded itself within Homeland Security Investigations, supplying DHS with tools to track flights, scan driver’s license data, and map human movement through cell phone records. This was before data mining had a name, and decades before the public understood that their private lives were being fused into searchable systems.

Even now — for many — that understanding has never really arrived.

In 2014, ICE first contracted with Palantir Technologies. This contract gave them $41 million to build ICE an ‘Investigative Case Management’ (ICM) system. That decision cemented what is now a fifteen-year relationship, one that has survived multiple presidencies, and has been alive nearly long enough to vote.

Details about event

Check out more events on the Free Press Calendar

February 8, 2026, 3PM to 4:30PM
Ohio Statehouse, McKinley Monument
If you’d like to volunteer a couple hours a week to fight ICE terror, you may also consider joining a Neighborhood Defense Unit near you in order to patrol and alert our communities of ICE activity. Email peoplesdefense.cbus@proton.me to get involved!

Faucet with water dripping

The local public hearing in the Aqua Ohio rate cases ─ previously postponed due to severe weather ─ has been rescheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 9 at the New Albany Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library.

Aqua Ohio is a regulated water and sewer utility serving thousands of consumers in communities across Ohio, including residents of Franklin and Marion counties.

The utility is asking the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to approve significant rate increases. Under Aqua’s proposal, some Franklin County consumers could see their monthly sewer bills increase by approximately $17 a month, or more than $200 per year – an increase of roughly 30% for certain consumers.

Additional details are available in Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) consumer alerts linked below.

ICE arresting someone

As immigration enforcement activity becomes more visible, many people are feeling uncertain, anxious, or unsure where to turn. Questions come up quickly. What happens if Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") shows up at my door? What do I have to do? What are my rights?

Clarity matters in moments like these. Fear thrives in confusion. Rights exist to provide structure, limits, and protection, especially when power is being exercised.

This article is meant to explain, in plain terms, what Your Rights are if you encounter ICE, whether at home or in public, and how to protect yourself without escalating a situation.

If ICE Comes to Your Home

Your home is one of the most protected places under the Constitution.

If someone claiming to be ICE comes to your door, you do not have to open it. You may ask who they are and why they are there, and you can do so with the door closed.

On January 27, 2026, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight―the closest setting, since the appearance of the clock in 1946, to nuclear annihilation.

This grim appraisal has impressive evidence to support it.  

The New Start Treaty, the last of the major nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties between the United States and Russia, expired on February 5, without any serious attempt to replace it.  New Start’s demise enables both nations, which possess about 86 percent of the world’s 12,321 nuclear weapons, to move beyond the strict limits set by the treaty on the number of their strategic nuclear weapons (the most powerful, most devastating kind), thus enhancing the ability of their governments to reduce the world to a charred wasteland.

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