20 Feb 2026

US makes plans to reopen embassy in Syria after 14 years

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By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has informed Congress that it intends to proceed with planning for a potential reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, which was shuttered in 2012 during the country’s civil war.

A notice to congressional committees earlier this month, which was obtained by The Associated Press, informed lawmakers of the State Department’s “intent to implement a phased approach to potentially resume embassy operations in Syria.”

The Feb. 10 notification said that spending on the plans would begin in 15 days, or next week, although there was no timeline offered for when they would be complete or when U.S. personnel might return to Damascus on a full-time basis.

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The administration has been considering reopening the embassy since last year, shortly after longtime strongman Bashar Assad was ousted in December 2024, and it has been a priority for President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack.

Barrack has pushed for a deep rapprochement with Syria and its new leadership under former rebel Ahmad al-Sharaa and has successfully advocated for the lifting of U.S. sanctions and a reintegration of Syria into the regional and international communities. Last May, Barrack visited Damascus and raised the U.S. flag at the embassy compound, although the embassy was not yet reopened.

The same day the congressional notification was sent, Barrack lauded Syria’s decision to participate in the coalition that is combating the Islamic State militant group, even as the U.S. military has withdrawn from a small, but important, base in the southeast and there remain significant issues between the government and the Kurdish minority.

“Regional solutions, shared responsibility. Syria’s participation in the D-ISIS Coalition meeting in Riyadh marks a new chapter in collective security,” Barrack said.

The embassy reopening plans are classified and the State Department declined to comment on details beyond confirming that the congressional notification was sent.

However, the department has taken a similar “phased” approach in its plans to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, following the U.S. military operation that ousted former President Nicolás Maduro in January, with the deployment of temporary staffers who would live in and work out of interim facilities.

20 Feb 2026

The UT System’s New ‘Controversial Topics’ Policy Is About Policing Knowledge

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In a recent classroom conversation, a student asked whether it was still “allowed” to talk about immigration policy in relation to Texas history. He did not ask because the topic was abstract. He asked because his family lives at the center of it.

That question should concern all of us.

The University of Texas System’s new policy limiting the discussion of “controversial topics” is being framed as a safeguard—an effort to restore “trust,” ensure “balance,” and prevent faculty from engaging in advocacy. But beneath that language lies something far more troubling: a restructuring of who gets to decide what counts as legitimate knowledge.

And in Texas, that decision  is not neutral.

Calls for “both sides” and “non-advocacy” may sound reasonable on the surface. For generations, women of color have shown that “neutrality” is often a way to police whose stories matter and whose expertise counts. Knowledge rooted in lived experience is repeatedly framed as political, while dominant perspectives are treated as universal.

When faculty are told to avoid “controversial” material not explicitly listed in a syllabus, who decides what qualifies? When politically appointed regents and administrators—not disciplinary experts—determine which topics are “germane,” academic freedom quietly shifts into political compliance.

We have seen this pattern before.

Scholarship that challenges white supremacy, colonialism, or state violence is labeled as divisive. Programs rooted in Indigenous, Latinx, and Black knowledge are consolidated, put under review, or dismantled. The result is not balance—it is containment. And nowhere is this containment more stark than in the erasure of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies.

In the UT system nearly 46 percent of the population is Latino. And where Latino students are the majority in public schools, calling the histories, literatures, and political realities of these communities “controversial” is not about neutrality. It is about deciding whose knowledge is expendable.

You cannot teach Texas history honestly without confronting conquest, segregation, labor exploitation, border regimes, and racialized policymaking. You cannot “balance” away genocide or dispossession. To pretend otherwise is not rigor—it is refusal.

But perhaps the most troubling defense of this policy is the claim that it protects students.

On the other hand, feminism teaches us something different: Silence is the tool of the oppressor. 

Our students are not encountering these issues for the first time in a classroom. They are living them. Immigration raids do not pause because a syllabus avoids the topic. Gender violence does not disappear because a professor is told to “remain neutral.” Racism, economic precarity, and state surveillance shape students’ daily lives long before they ever raise a hand in class.

To label the conditions of students’ lives as “controversial” is to tell them their realities are inconvenient. That their truths are risky. That power—not integrity—decides what can be named.

That is not care. That is control.

And it raises a deeper, more difficult question—one we can no longer avoid: Do we continue to fight for our stories to be included in the curriculum at UT System institutions that repeatedly prove themselves hostile toward Indigenous, Latinx, and Black communities? Or do we take this moment to reimagine higher education outside of white supremacy?

What if, instead of fighting to be included in an exclusionary system, we shifted our emphasis from institutional approval to the power of collective consciousness shared among us? What if the work before us is not simply reform, but refusal?

Chicana feminism has always understood that liberation does not come from proximity to power, but from transforming how knowledge is produced, shared, and lived. It asks us not only how institutions exclude us, but how we might begin to unlink—physically and spiritually—from colonial logics altogether.

Audre Lorde reminded us that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Texas higher education is showing us, once again, the limits of trying to dismantle white supremacy from within institutions built to preserve it.

So perhaps the question is not only how we defend academic freedom inside universities like UT—but how we build spaces of critical consciousness beyond them.

We already have blueprints. Martha Cotera, a Chicana/o civil rights activist, showed us what it looks like to create our own intellectual homes when institutions refuse to hold us. In Austin, that legacy lives in projects like Jacinto Treviño College—a reminder that higher education does not have to be tethered to colonial governance, political surveillance, or white validation to be rigorous, transformative, and rooted in community.

Public universities may continue to hollow themselves out—incrementally, bureaucratically, and quietly. But our knowledge does not disappear when institutions turn away from it.

It migrates. It reorganizes. It builds elsewhere.

What is being labeled “controversial” today is the very knowledge Texas will need to survive tomorrow. Whether universities choose to honor that responsibility—or abandon it—communities will continue doing what they have always done: creating spaces where truth is not feared, but cultivated.

The question is no longer whether higher education can be saved as it is.

The question is whether we are ready to imagine—and build—what comes next.

The post The UT System’s New ‘Controversial Topics’ Policy Is About Policing Knowledge appeared first on The Texas Observer.

20 Feb 2026

Forest Lake School Board, deadlocked 3-3, reopens search for new board member

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The Forest Lake Area School Board has picked a firm to lead the search for a new superintendent and is reopening its search for a new board member.

After not reaching agreement on any of the 11 applicants who applied to fill the vacancy that was created in October when Luke Hagglund resigned, the board voted Thursday night to undergo another search.

The deadline for applying is 4 p.m. March 16; applicant review by the board will take place at the March 19 board meeting.

The board also decided to hire Minneapolis-based Ray & Associates to conduct its search for a new superintendent. Applications for those interested in applying for the superintendent position were due Dec. 3. Superintendent Steve Massey announced in October that he plans to resign June 30.

Board chairman Curt Rebelein said working with a search firm would be valuable for the board, which has been mostly deadlocked 3-3 since Hagglund’s resignation.

“I think it will bring a much needed unity, some cohesiveness, and rebuild some trust,” Rebelein said. “There’s obvious trust issues that we all have with one another in one capacity or another, so I see tremendous value there, not just in picking the next executive to lead the district and work with us to do that, but in making this unit a little bit more functional, a little bit more productive and being able to get some work done rather than failing on these 3-to-3 votes all the time.”

Being deadlocked “causes damage to the district … and (is) ultimately going to cause damage to the students and their experience, and I don’t want to see that happen,” Rebelein said.

Although some board members said they were in favor of the Minnesota School Board Association leading the search, the board voted unanimously to hire Ray & Associates.

FYI

The deadline for applying for the open seat on the Forest Lake Area School Board is 4 p.m. March 16. Information about the school board and the vacancy application is available by contacting Joy Mouch at jmouch@flaschools.org or 651-982-8104. Applications also may be picked up at the school district office during business hours. Questions can be directed to board members at schoolboard@flaschools.org or at 651-982-8104.

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20 Feb 2026

Melania Trump donates her white and black-trimmed inaugural ball gown to the Smithsonian

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By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump said “it’s incredible” to see her white and black-trimmed inaugural ball gown on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

It’s the second inaugural gown she has turned over to the First Ladies Collection at the museum, following the donation of her 2017 gown.

On Friday, Melania Trump continued the long-standing tradition of first ladies donating their inaugural gowns when she handed over the strapless white and black-trimmed sheath and a black neckpiece adorned with a reproduction of a Harry Winston diamond brooch she wore on the night of Jan. 20, 2025. The ensemble was on display on a mannequin on stage.

First lady Melania Trump presents her 2025 inaugural ball gown to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
First lady Melania Trump speaks at an event to present her 2025 inaugural ball gown to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
First lady Melania Trump and designer Hervé Pierre pose for a picture with her 2025 inaugural ball gown at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
First lady Melania Trump’s 2025 inaugural ball gown is presented to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

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First lady Melania Trump presents her 2025 inaugural ball gown to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

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She gave brief remarks about the gown, its meaning and her love of fashion design, and described it as more than a dress.

“This is more than 50 years of education, experience, and wisdom realized with each thread, each stitch, each sharp edge,” she said. “The meticulously formed black shape ‘Z’ on the front bodice summons decades of my early memories, life experiences, and influences. And, all of these stories are tucked deep within its crisp, strong seams — forever.”

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The first lady, a former fashion model, said fashion design is another form of creative expression and that the black and white in the gown “sets a mood rich with emotion.”

“This dress speaks with a distinct point of view, a modern silhouette, bold and dignified, and ruthlessly chic,” she said.

After a short program, the mannequin was taken upstairs and added to the first ladies’ exhibit, which features more than two dozen of their gowns. Melania Trump and Herve Pierre, her longtime stylist and the designer of both of her gowns, came to see the gown in its see-through case.

“It’s incredible. It’s a historic moment,” she said when a reporter asked how it felt to see the gown on display. The museum was reopening to the public Friday afternoon.