• Biden admin erases “lawful immigration” in new USCIS mission statement: Joe Biden’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has released an updated agency mission statement that glaringly omits “lawful immigration,” “protecting Americans,” and “securing the homeland.” In what appears to be an intentional move to erase the essential distinction between legal and illegal immigration in light of Biden’s de facto open-borders policy, the USCIS’s new mission statement reads: “USCIS upholds America’s promise as a nation of welcome and possibility with fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve.” USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou declared, “This new mission statement reflects the inclusive character of both our country and this agency.” She also noted, “USCIS is committed to ensuring that the immigration system we administer is accessible and humane.” Conspicuously absent was any mention of prioritizing and protecting American citizens’ interests.

• Biden rejects Army report on Afghanistan debacle: A recently released 2,000-page report from the Army’s investigation into the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghan civilians concluded that Biden administration officials “failed to grasp” the situation that was unfolding as the Taliban quickly advanced and overran the Afghan capital. When questioned about the report, Biden responded: “No, that’s not what I was told. There was no good time to get out, but if we had not gotten out, they acknowledged we would have had to put a hell of a lot more troops back in.” When pressed as to whether he rejected the report’s findings, Biden bluntly stated, “Yes, I am. I am rejecting them.” Biden’s rejection also flies in face of what Navy Rear Admiral Peter Vasley, the top U.S. commander on the ground at the time, contended. The U.S. military would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” exit, he asserted, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” Maybe the biggest reason Biden rejects the report is that his wife was helping oversee the exfiltration.

• California’s still unfinished high-speed-rail money pit tops $100 billion: High-speed rail was the way to the future. At least that’s how California Democrats sold the 500-mile bullet train project to voters back in 2008. The estimated price tag for the super-train was $40 billion, but residents were promised the end product would justify the steep cost and serve as a template for the rest of the nation. Well, California’s money pit is certainly serving as a template … for how to waste gobs of money on a public works project that seemingly only gets more costly. The price tag now stands at $105 billion, and so far just 119 of the promised 500 miles of track have been laid. It won’t be operational until at least 2027, and with only an estimated 171 total miles of track. How many billions more will be poured into this boondoggle is anybody’s guess.

• NPR’s deep dive into emoji colors, your tax dollars at work: Did you know that using the traditional emoji color yellow is racist? Well, that is according to a mind-numbing story from taxpayer-funded National Public Radio. In a “deep dive” investigation, NPR reporters note a 2018 study that suggests yellow, the traditional and most common color for emojis, is not a racially neutral color because it is associated with the majority-white population who are not forced to think about matching the emoji color to their skin tone. In other words, it’s racist because it doesn’t force white people to think about race. Meanwhile, where were NPR’s intrepid journalists during the revelation of Hunter Biden’s laptop? Where was the deep dive to expose the truth about the Biden family’s corruptions? This racist emoji story might be excusable if it had come from the likes of CNN, a privately owned company. But this nonsense reporting is being done on the taxpayers’ dime. It’s long past time to end NPR’s government funding.

Government & Politics

• Fresh off disaster at U.S. border, Kamala Harris tapped for special role with Ukraine (Daily Wire)

• CRACK Act: Republican senators move to bar federal spending for crack paraphernalia (Free Beacon)

• “I’m not interested in taking anything”: Beto O'Rourke does a complete 180 from “Hell yes, I’m gonna take your AR-15” (Daily Wire)

Security

• CIA has been secretly collecting data on Americans in bulk, senators say (Fox News)

• ICE blames DC for preventing arrest of Union Station vandal deported four times (Washington Examiner)

• ICE deporting just 100 immigrants a day (Washington Examiner)

Culture

• Corporate-sponsored nudity: Adidas criticized for sharing explicit images on Twitter to promote sports bras (Fox Business)

• A Christian pastor tweeted that women shouldn’t post immodest pictures of themselves online and Liberal Feminist Twitter (including Beth Moore) suffered a nuclear meltdown (Not the Bee)

• New woke Disney Junior show includes song about racial “micro-aggressions” targeting preschoolers (Daily Wire)

• Texas abortions fell by 60% in first month under heartbeat law (Washington Examiner)

World

• Canadian court freezes Freedom Convoy GiveSendGo donations (Daily Wire)

• De rigueur: Russian Olympics figure skater tests positive for banned substance (Daily Wire)

Closing Arguments

• Policy: Yes, the Biden stimulus made inflation worse (National Review)

• Humor: “I’ll wait for you like I wait in the bread line”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders release line of socialist Valentines (Genesius Times)

For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit Headline Report.

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