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Exposure to chemical irritants can cause chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. For kids, there’s more potential for serious side effects. By Barbara Rodriguez for The 19th   From the roof of the ​​Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in Portland, Oregon, federal agents late last month watched as thousands of people marched past the processing center in protest. Families and children were among the daytime crowd, which had gathered for an event advertised as family friendly. When some protesters reportedly crossed the facility’s property line and approached the security gate, agents began deploying tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Smoke quickly filled the air. Video of the ensuing chaos showed a young girl — wearing a pink sweater with butterflies — in visible distress as a volunteer medic sprays water on her face. At one point the ponytailed girl said, “Owie, it burns.” “She was confused, stunned, upset, crying,” a witness said. “It shattered me.” Weeks earlier in Minneapolis — where federal agents have injured and killed civilians as part of a massive immigration enforcement operation — an agent threw a flash-bang that rolled under an SUV stopped in traffic. It set off smoke inside the vehicle, forcing a family with children in the passenger seats to run into a nearby home. A 6-month-old in the car stopped breathing briefly. A person holds a Minnesota state flag as federal immigration officers deploy tear gas on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis. “I stopped and I looked at my baby and I was just like, ‘Wake up, you have to,’” the mother told CNN. She administered CPR before taking her infant to the hospital. As the Trump administration expands militarized operations ensnaring U.S. citizens, legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, agents’ use of tear gas and other chemical irritants as crowd control measures is worrying medical professionals and public health experts, who say such exposure could disproportionately impact children and other vulnerable populations. “People have to realize these chemicals are not safe,” said Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician and member of the American Lung Association’s board of directors. “We don’t know the long-term effects. We don’t understand their effects on children. Assume that children should have zero exposure to these chemicals.” Tear gas — a catch-all term to describe chemical compounds that cause irritation to people’s eyes, lungs, mouth, nose and skin within seconds of exposure — has been deployed around residential streets and public spaces in at least four major American cities since last fall. While at least one entity is tracking immigration-related demonstrations in the United States, there is no substantive monitoring on the exact number of times tear gas is deployed, who is deploying it and why, and what chemicals are being released into the air. Critical details like proximity of impact, length of exposure and whether an incident involved a vulnerable group is also unknown. “This gap makes it difficult for the public, for researchers and for policymakers to quantify the impact or identity of these toxic air pollutants across states,” said Julie A. González, a demographer and environmental justice scholar. Several types of chemical irritants are often lumped into a broad definition of tear gas, including those found in devices that disperse smoke when launched and pepper spray. Exposure to these “riot control agents” can cause chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. For people with diseases that impact their heart or lungs, the side effects can be more serious, said El-Hasan. They can be worse for children. “Children’s bodies are different than adult bodies,” he said. “They’re growing. They take more breaths per minute than adults.” Dr. Sarita Chung, a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital, noted how children’s height can add potency to exposure. “Children are usually closer to the ground, where there is greater gas vapors,” she said. “Or it’s more dense, and so they’re going to breathe in more.” Related | ICE violence is up over 290% under Trump The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has repeatedly defended its use of tear gas and other chemical irritants during its recent immigration operations. Law enforcement — not just federal but state and local — have used these chemicals legally for decades to disperse crowds. But citizens are challenging in court whether the federal government’s recent use of force, including tear gas deployment, has been excessive and unconstitutional. Representatives for DHS, ICE and CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment about its use of riot control agents. But an agency spokesperson specifically claimed the incident in Portland last month involved an unruly crowd. The same spokesperson also said the Minneapolis family was not targeted — though she initially blamed the family in a since-deleted post on X. “It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots,” the post read. “PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN.” But some of these incidents involving children occurred outside of organized protest. The family in Minneapolis told news outlets that they were headed home after a child’s basketball game at the time that their vehicle was damaged. In early November, a masked federal agent pepper sprayed into a vehicle near a Sam’s Club in Chicago. The car was being driven by a man who had been attempting to go grocery shopping with his 1-year-old daughter. The chemicals spread into the child’s eyes. “My daughter was trying to open her eyes,” the man told reporters. “She was struggling to breathe.” The Oregonian reported on a 3-year-old who lives across the street from the ICE facility in Portland whose mom routinely rushes her inside from an apartment balcony when chemicals are deployed. Tear gas has been released on busy commercial streets in Minneapolis, with video showing a parent holding a toddler and running away from the smoke. Federal agents lobbed tear gas and flash bangs at protesters in front of the ICE building on Jan. 31, 2026, in Portland, Ore “You can’t just say, oh, avoid the tear gas,” El-Hasan said. “You’re basically talking about random incidents or incidents where very innocent people are just being exposed to these toxic substances.” El-Hasan said if an adult or child has asthma and is exposed to tear gas, it should be assumed that the irritant will get into the body. He recommended anyone who is asthmatic to have an inhaler and take preventative medication if possible. He also suggested they see a medical profession within 24 hours. “We have no great understanding, at least none that has been published, on what the long term effects of these chemicals are on children,” El-Hasan said. “The only thing that we can do is just have people understand what to do if their children or they themselves have been exposed to tear gas, and to do that very quickly afterwards.” But the public’s perception of tear gas use could get reshaped by the emerging imagery and videos of children being exposed to these chemicals. In Chicago last fall, the repeated deployment of tear gas on residential streets during a weekslong immigration enforcement operation led a federal judge to admonish federal government officials as a temporary restraining order restricting tear gas use was in place. “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told then-Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino during an October court hearing, according to Reuters. “They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.” Protesters try to avoid tear gas dispersed by federal agents on Jan. 12 in Minneapolis. Weeks later, Ellis ordered federal agents to give at least two separate warnings before using tear gas and other chemicals on crowds, and to only use them if there was an immediate threat of physical harm. The use of tear gas dates back a century, when soldiers deployed it during World War I. Its use is now prohibited in international warfare. The Army and police used it in 1932 in Washington, D.C., in response to a gathered group of World War I veterans and their families who for weeks protested in support of wartime payments from the federal government amid the Great Depression. That protest, known as the Forgotten March, was linked within weeks to the death of a 3-month-old baby, Bernard Myers. Bernard’s parents claimed exposure to tear gas — the family said they were in a private home that was filled with smoke — contributed to their child’s death. Newspapers at the time reported that while hospital officials said the child died from an intestinal disorder, doctors also reportedly said: “the gas certainly didn’t do any good.” There was public distrust after military personnel visited the hospital to view the boy’s body. Anna Feigenbaum is a professor at the University of Glasgow and author of the 2017 book “Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today.” She highlights Bernard’s case in her book as well as the use of tear gas in residential areas that often results in children being in close range and exposed to the chemicals. “There’s a long history of children being tear gassed, once tear gas started being used domestically,” she said. The disproportionate impact of tear gas extends beyond children. In 2023, scientist Asha Hassan was part of a team that published a survey-based study on the adverse health effects of tear gas on reproductive health following the 2020 protests against police brutality that followed the death of George Floyd. They found people reporting uterine cramping, early menstrual bleeding, breast tenderness and delayed menstrual bleeding. Federal immigration officers deploy tear gas at protesters on Jan. 24 in Minneapolis. Hassan, a professor at the University of Minnesota and an expert on reproductive health, police violence and disability-related research noted that the public’s baseline for understanding the safety of tear gas is limited because it has mostly involved studying the impact of tear gas on young healthy men in a training environment in the 1960s. “Applying or understanding what we know from that long ago, about some of these gasses to populations that all have different bodies — including people who have uteri, people who have chronic conditions, and children — we actually don’t know,” Hassan said. “We actually don’t have the data to say how this might impact their bodies disproportionately or differently than what this original research shows.” People who have been impacted by tear gas exposure have sought legal justice in recent years. In December, residents of an affordable housing complex just 300 feet from the ICE building in Portland filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government’s repeated use of tear gas, smoke grenades and other chemical munitions has seeped into their homes and poses environmental and health risks. “You have a government that regulates everything from serving sizes to what can go into your soda to what can be in your water,” said Jennifer Brown, who was part of a team that published research in 2021 on the use of tear gas and its unknown long-term health impacts. “How is it, then, that it’s OK to use unregulated chemicals on a broad range of civilian populations, especially when these chemicals are banned in war?” Brown’s research concluded that tear gas has been poorly studied, and guidelines on its use do not properly account for variables like duration of exposure. Under the federal government’s own definition of tear gas, “long lasting exposure or exposure to a large dose” may cause blindness, glaucoma and respiratory failure. Related | ‘Abolish ICE’ hits record-high support Separately, the decontamination process after tear gas exposure is already challenging for adults: The federal government recommends that people not only throw away their clothing after exposure, they’re told to cut it off instead of pulling it over their heads. Anything that touches the clothing should be sealed into a bag that’s then placed into another bag. And yet, there is no universal protocol for how law enforcement should discard tear gas canisters and other related residue. In Minneapolis, the chemicals have been left on piles of snow, which can then melt into sewer drains. It’s all hazardous waste, Brown said. “They shouldn’t get anywhere near your skin, your clothes, your house — but both the physical detritus of the canisters themselves and anything that the gas itself touches — it gets into your house, it’s now on your floors. It’s on your linens. It’s on your clothes. Are you washing your clothes in your washer? You really shouldn’t. You should dispose of them as hazardous waste,” she said. This month, congressional Democrats asked for an investigation of ICE agents’ use of force, including their deployment of tear gas and flash-bang grenades at close range. A federal judge has extended a temporary order restricting immigration agents outside the Portland ICE facility from releasing tear gas and other munitions at people unless someone poses an imminent threat. In Illinois, a state lawmaker has filed a bill that would ban tear gas. It’s unclear for now if there will be more accountability over the use of tear gas near children. In Portland, the city’s mayor highlighted the January 31 incident in demanding that ICE agents resign. “To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children,” he wrote in a statement. Chung helps oversee a council on the health effects on children after disasters for the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said the council is monitoring additional instances of tear gas deployment around children, in case it shapes future communication with health care professionals about treatment guidelines. “Tear gas is harmful for the health of children,” she said. “The decontamination process can be challenging, and especially if it’s done in a crowd, and if children are separated from their families, then we need to be diligent about reunification processes to make sure that the children get quickly reunited with their families.”

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  «Putin is the aggressor,” then-President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation that night. “Putin chose this war.» x x YouTube Video Two days before the assault began, former and future President Donald Trump delighted in telling radio show “Clay & Buck” how the Russian dictator’s aggression showed his “savvy” and "genius.” Trump’s remarks came on the same day that Biden announced new sanctions against Russia following Putin’s declaration that he would recognize two regions of Ukraine as independent states and deploy Russian troops there. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump frequently claimed that his special relationship with Putin would allow him to end the war “in 24 hours.” And yet, even before he was inaugurated for a second term, Trump began retreating from that promise. In the year since returning to office, Trump has embarrassed the United States on the world stage, attempting to bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a White House visit, straining the U.S.'s standing with our NATO partners, and making little, if any, progress toward a peaceful resolution. Estimates say that Putin’s war has killed up to 1.8 million people, with no clear end in sight.

The Supreme Court’s decision to block President Donald Trump’s tariffs is a hefty 170 pages long—but only a dozen or so pages constitute the actual opinion of the court, thanks to a fractured majority opinion.  Huge chunks of this monstrosity are mostly just the conservative justices hammering away at their colleagues. It’s just grievances all the way down.  The less said about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 62-page (!!) dissent, the better. You can tell that he’s the sort of guy who thinks his every thought is perfectly formed and divinely inspired, which is why his dissenting opinion is longer than anything else in the decision.  Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2018. But Kavanaugh didn’t even need all of those words. His real job is to just flatter Trump and make sure he gets his way. Since he couldn’t land a majority opinion in this case, he used his dissent to draw Trump a roadmap on how to just keep on tariffin’ even after this ruling.  Honestly, you probably could have done that in, like, five pages, Brett.  Somehow, even though Justice Neil Gorsuch was in the majority, his concurrence is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages. So when it comes to the major questions doctrine, everyone on the Supreme Court except Gorsuch is doing it wrong, you fools. And when it comes to Congress? Well, everyone is also stupid and bad because they won’t understand that legislating is hard and takes time, and they should get off their butts.  It’s some awfully weird sentiment coming from a dude who’s spent the last year by and large joining his conservative colleagues in ignoring the executive branch's unconstitutional encroachment on Congress’ powers.  Sure, we’ve told you multiple times that what you do doesn’t matter, and we will let Trump do what he wants, but how dare you not legislate anyway! Gorsuch didn’t spare Justice Clarence Thomas, framing his view as “Congress may hand over to the President most of its powers, including the tariff power, without limit." Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017 Surprisingly, Gorsuch is not wrong here.  Thomas did exactly that. His dissent tried to punch an enormous hole in the nondelegation doctrine, one big enough to drive a Trump-shaped tariff through, and it was so out of pocket that even the reliably craven Justice Samuel Alito didn’t join it. Broadly, the nondelegation doctrine says that Congress can’t delegate its power to legislate. It delegates other power all of the time, such as giving government agencies authority to develop regulations. But turning over legislative power is a no-no.  But wait! What if Thomas could just decide, single-handedly, that the nondelegation doctrine bars Congress only from delegating legislative power related to deprivation of life, liberty, or property? That would basically allow Congress to give away much of its constitutional power to legislate, allowing Trump full tariff power.  That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito. But, hey, at least Thomas kept it to 18 pages. Small blessings. 

The U.S. women's Olympic hockey team declined President Donald Trump's invitation to attend his State of the Union address on Tuesday, with a spokesperson for the team telling NBC News that they couldn’t attend «due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.» An athlete skis past Olympic rings during a cross country training session at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 5. «We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal–winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,» the spokesperson wrote on X. «They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.» The announcement came after House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that he expected both the women's and men's hockey teams—which both took home the gold in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games—to attend Trump's speech. Trump invited the men to attend his speech during a phone call Sunday as they celebrated an overtime victory against Canada—the first gold medal win in the event since 1980. A video of Trump surfaced, showing him speaking to the team on FBI Director Kash Patel's cellphone as Patel was inexplicably drinking beer and partying with the players on taxpayers’ dime. xDisgusting. Team USA laughing with President Trump as he complains about having to invite the women’s team to the White House too.Yes, the men’s hockey team winning gold is a much bigger deal.But show some fucking respect for your fellow Team USA athletes. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 https://t.co/nn6Y3oWiK0 pic.twitter.com/AUflRNyhjg— All Rice (@thats_bb_suzyn) February 23, 2026 In that same phone call, Trump disparaged the women's team, lamenting that he would also have to extend an invitation to the female players. «I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team, you do know that,» Trump said, as the players laughed. «I do believe I probably would be impeached.» A number of the players on the men's team are Trump supporters, including Matthew Tkachuk, who visited the White House last month with his Stanley Cup-winning NHL team. U.S. men's hockey team celebrates winning gold in the 2026 Winter Olympics. «The two Cups was pretty good, but that walk with you might've trumped it all there. That was pretty amazing,” Tkachuk said at the event, which was held amid backlash to Trump's immigration goons killing Americans. »I'm so proud to be an American and so proud to be here with you and everybody else.« Politics have seeped into this year’s Olympics, with multiple players saying that they were proud to represent the United States but did not support what the Trump administration is doing back home. For example, freestyle skier Hunter Hess said that »it brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now.” “There's obviously a lot going on that I'm not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren't,” he added. “Just because I'm wearing the flag doesn't mean I represent everything that's going on in the U.S.«  And a member of the U.S. curling team, Rich Ruohonen, criticized Trump’s violent and deadly immigration operation in Minnesota. “We'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention what's going on in Minnesota,” he said. “What's happening in Minnesota is wrong. There's no shades of gray. It's clear.” x x YouTube Video Skier Gus Kenworthy was even more blunt, posting on Instagram an AI image with the words “fuck ICE,” which appears to be written in urine in the snow.   x View this post on Instagram A post shared by gus kenworthy (@guskenworthy) “You can call your Senator at (202) 224-3121 to speak up against ICE and put pressure on them during the current DHS funding negotiations,” he captioned the post. Meanwhile, gold-winning U.S. figure skater Amber Glenn said that, »Politics affect us all. It is something that I will not just be quiet about.« Of course, being the malignant narcissist that he is, Trump lost it when he was rightfully criticized by the athletes, disparaging those who spoke out against him on Truth Social. Figure skater Amber Glenn performs at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 21. “Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,» he wrote. And Trump’s comments led MAGA trolls and GOP lawmakers to pile on Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told Hess to “shut up and go play in the snow,” while And Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida simply told him to go home. "YOU chose to wear our flag. YOU chose to represent our country. YOU chose to compete at the Olympics. If that’s too hard for you, then GO HOME. Some things are bigger than politics. You just don’t get it,” Donalds wrote on X. Of course, being able to criticize the government is an essential part of being American. Forcing Olympic athletes to stay quiet or to praise the government, however, is something you’d expect from countries like North Korea or Russia.  But Republicans only want free speech for themselves—not for me, not for you, and not even for Olympians.

Leading Republican voices like Donald Trump Jr. are promoting a new “investigation” by conservative activist Nick Shirley which purports to prove voter fraud in California, but the core premise of the video was quickly debunked. The false allegation adds to the ever-growing pattern of behavior by Shirley and other right-wing serial misinformers like James O’Keefe, who promise bombshells that fizzle at the slightest bit of examination. Shirley posted a video on Saturday alleging that domicile addresses registered at a San Diego UPS store were “illegal.” Shirley claims that “you can receive a ballot at a PO Box, but it cannot be the domicile address—which over 30 of them are, errors and suspected fraudulent activity is everywhere in California voter rolls.” Related | GOP ignores reality to boost MAGA YouTuber's racist attacks The self-proclaimed journalist claimed that despite his purported evidence, “California seems to not care about their voter rolls meanwhile you do not even need an ID to vote,” and further insisted that this was just one example of "voter fraud” in the heavily Democratic state. In his post pushing the Shirley video, Trump Jr. wrote, “It never ends. Imagine if the mainstream media actually spent even a few minutes looking into any of these things?” But the claim was false. As X readers pointed out in a community note later added to Shirley’s post, the UPS store in question is part of a mixed-use residential development with apartments above it. The 30 listed residences in question are in fact perfectly legal residential addresses for voters. Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona called out Shirley’s bogus bombshell. Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable meeting with President Donald Trump on antifa in the State Dining Room at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025, as Savanah Hernandez listens. “PO Box is an acronym for Post Office Box. A UPS Store is not a PO Box and likely serves as the community mail box for the development,” Gallego wrote. “The fact that we are making public policy based on this inexperienced boy is an indictment of the Republican Party.” Shirley’s video is part of an attempt to recreate the fog of disinformation he created a few months ago with a series of videos alleging that Somali immigrants in Minnesota were operating fraudulent daycare centers, and that the practice was being ignored by Democrats leading the state government. But Democrats had addressed those issues previously, with investigations and even resulting convictions.  President Donald Trump and other Republican lawmakers nonetheless used Shirley’s video as an excuse to send federal troops into Minnesota as part of his mass deportation policy, a deployment that led to the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Shirley is an influencer who pivoted into the world of MAGA politics and tailored his content to support bigoted right-wing policy ideas, bringing him millions of followers and support from prominent Republicans like the Trump family and members of Congress.  Related | MAGA influencer's face-plant shows pitfall in creator culture His dishonest work echoes the behavior of serial misinformer James O’Keefe, himself a protégé of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart. O’Keefe has produced several series of videos targeting progressive activists and Democrats, most of which were debunked soon after their release. Continually seeking new controversy to stir up, O’Keefe was eventually exposed for trying to entrap a CNN reporter on a boat stocked with sex toys, as well as an incident where he was arrested while trying to sneak into the office of a Democratic senator.  With support from the Republican establishment and his work’s underlying dishonesty, Shirley is now following in O’Keefe’s slimy footsteps.