The Headlines
ICE Whistle-Blower Says Training Is ‘Broken,’ and OpenAI Faces Questions About Mass Shooter
24 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 24th. Here's what we're covering.
For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from 580... A former ICE official has come forward as a whistleblower, alleging that the training protocol for new agents is broken and deficient. Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts.
Ryan Schwenk was hired by ICE in 2021 and started teaching legal courses at a federal law enforcement training academy last year. He shared his account yesterday in D.C. at a forum organized by congressional Democrats.
Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty, do not know the limits of their authority, and who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order.
Senate Democrats also released several dozen pages of internal ICE records that suggest the Trump administration has curtailed the basic training for agents, right as it's been staffing up. Under Trump, ICE has been on a massive hiring spree, bringing in over 12,000 new officers and agents, more than double what it had before.
That surge has threatened to overwhelm the centers which train most federal agents. In response, ICE officials scaled back the regimen. The documents senators released include two different syllabi, one from July and one from this month, that appear to show a 40 percent decrease in training hours.
Other documents suggest that courses like use of force simulation training have been cut, along with some on immigration law and ISIS legal authorities. Taken together, the new disclosures underscore concerns about the conduct and preparedness of agents from the Department of Homeland Security, who have shot and killed at least three U.S. citizens this year.
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Chapter 2: What are the allegations made by the ICE whistleblower regarding training protocols?
airlines canceled flights to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara yesterday, and the operators of three cruise ships that were set to dock on Mexico's Pacific coast in the coming days have canceled their visits. In Canada today, OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, will face questions about how the 18-year-old behind a recent mass shooting used its platform.
The country's Minister of Artificial Intelligence has said he was, quote, deeply disturbed by reports about what the company may have known before the attack. Earlier this month, the shooter killed two of her family members at home before driving to a school and killing five children and one educator.
A Times review of her social media accounts found she had a years-long struggle with mental health issues and a growing fascination with weapons and extreme violence. Last June, messages she sent to ChatGPT raised flags internally at OpenAI, and she was banned from the platform.
According to the company, it had considered informing law enforcement about her account, but ultimately decided not to, since it determined she had no credible plan for an attack. The Wall Street Journal has reported that decision upset some of the company's employees at the time.
The top government official of British Columbia, where the attack took place, said it was very troubling that OpenAI didn't share what he called, quote, related intelligence. Now, Canadian officials will be asking for explanations about OpenAI's safety protocols and its threshold for when information is shared with the police.
For its part, OpenAI says it did contact Canadian authorities after the attack and that it tries to balance public safety with protecting the privacy of individual users. A note, the Times has sued OpenAI, accusing it of copyright infringement related to AI systems. The company has denied those claims.
In Iran over the past few days, anti-government protesters, mainly students, have taken to the streets for some of the first demonstrations in the country since a brutal crackdown on protests earlier this year. The regime is on high alert for a possible attack from the U.S.
over its nuclear program, but it's also trying to suppress the widespread discontent that's threatened to destabilize the government from within. In January, security forces killed thousands of protesters. And since then, they've arrested around 40,000 people, according to several rights groups.
My colleagues have been reporting on the high-tech surveillance tools that Iran used earlier this year to target demonstrators.
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