Greetings! Happy National Flannel Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

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🇦🇲 Vance visit rekindles Armenian genocide classification fight. Vice President JD Vance toured Armenia this week, and the politics followed him like a shadow with a passport. His social media post initially used the words “Armenian genocide”, then the phrasing was quietly swapped out. That edit hit a century-old nerve, because language is the first battlefield and the last receipt. Armenians point to mass killing and displacement of 1.5M people beginning in 1915 as a textbook case. Turkey has long rejected the genocide label, arguing the deaths occurred amid war and collapse, not a planned extermination. The stakes are not only moral, but diplomatic, because a single noun can rearrange alliances. Vance’s team has not offered a detailed public explanation for the change. Critics read the deletion as backpedaling under pressure, not proofreading. Supporters argue it was a wording cleanup, not a worldview update. The episode proved names matter because they decide what history is allowed to mean.

🇺🇳 United Nations cash crunch waits on United States arrears. The United Nations (UN) is watching Washington’s checkbook with the intensity of a landlord on rent day. Officials say the United States owes nearly $4B across core accounts. The UN says $2.196B is unpaid on the regular budget, including about $767M due this year. It also says another roughly $1.8B is owed for peacekeeping operations. UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric has warned that payment delays quickly become operational delays, because salaries and missions do not accept “eventually.” The financial squeeze lands as the organization juggles conflicts, humanitarian crises, and basic institutional upkeep. American UN envoy Mike Waltz has signaled the administration wants reforms alongside funding. Other countries are paying, but the UN says the United States makes up the overwhelming majority of the biggest arrears pile. That imbalance turns budgeting into geopolitics, because a ledger can become leverage. The UN is not asking for applause, just cash on schedule, preferably without conditions stapled to it.

🎓 Judge blocks deportation move against Tufts student Rumeysa Öztürk. A federal immigration judge has halted the deportation of Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student from Turkey, according to her attorneys. The order pauses removal while her legal fight continues, buying time but not closure. Öztürk’s case has drawn attention because of how it began, not just where it may end. Video reviewed by her legal team shows masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents putting her in handcuffs and driving her away in an unmarked vehicle in March 2025. Her lawyers describe that seizure as a racist abduction of a veiled Muslim woman dressed up as procedure. The government has not embraced that framing, but the footage has sharpened public scrutiny. Öztürk has remained in custody as her case moves through the system. The court action changes the immediate risk calculation, not the underlying allegations or politics. Supporters cast her as a student caught in enforcement overreach, while critics argue the state has broad removal powers. For now, the judge’s ruling acts as a speed bump in a process built for momentum.

🚨 ICE chief defends agents after two protesters die. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Todd Lyons faced Congress on February 10th with two deaths hanging over the hearing. Lawmakers pressed Lyons over the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota, where authorities say a Border Patrol agent shot him during a confrontation. They also raised the death of Veronica Good, who was shot by an ICE agent in California, according to the account discussed at the hearing. Lyons defended officers’ actions and cast enforcement as a dangerous job with fast decisions. He also pitched ICE as central to the administration’s broader deportation push. Alongside Lyons, officials including Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott and immigration services director Joseph Edlow appeared, widening the blast radius of responsibility. Critics argued the incidents point to an accountability deficit, not isolated tragedy. Supporters argued the deaths reflect volatile protests, not rogue conduct. The hearing underscored how enforcement now functions as both policy and spectacle. When agencies are built for force, every fatal outcome becomes a referendum on legitimacy. And in Washington, legitimacy is a currency that devalues quickly once blood enters the record.

🏭 Booming output, sluggish hiring, and the new math of work. The American economy is growing fast, but hiring is moving like it’s stuck in traffic. Gross domestic product surged at a 4.4% annual pace from July through September, after 3.8% growth from April through June. Yet official data show employers added about 49K jobs per month in 2025, a pace that feels allergic to the word “boom.” Benchmark revisions due Wednesday are expected to cut those payroll numbers further. A preliminary estimate suggested as many as 911K jobs could be erased for the year ending March 2025. Bank of America economist Shruti Mishra says later revisions may have shaved another 20K to 30K jobs per month after April 2025. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said current counts may overstate job creation by about 60K per month. Even so, Mishra expects the unemployment rate stayed low at 4.4% in January. Economists say immigration policy shifts have lowered the “break-even” job number needed to keep unemployment steady. The result is a strange split screen: security for people already employed, and frustration for anyone trying to get in.

📉 Stocks end mixed as yields slide on softer shopper data. Markets tried to rally, then remembered consumers still have feelings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 52.27 to close at 50,188.14. The Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) fell 23.01 to 6,941.81, a modest retreat after a recent run. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 136.20 to 23,102.47, with tech-heavy names taking the brunt. Treasury yields sank after a report suggested American shoppers are pulling back, and anxiety is rising with it. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.14% from 4.22%, a move traders treated like a mood ring. The same data showed the lowest consumer sentiment reading in about a year. Inflation expectations also ticked higher, which is the kind of detail that ruins a perfectly good rally. Investors now see a familiar dilemma, where growth is fine but confidence is fragile. The closing tape captured the day’s verdict: not panic or party, only hesitation.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!