AIKEN, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 12, 2026--
AGY, the leading U.S. manufacturer of high-performance glass fiber reinforcements, today announced two senior leadership appointments, effective February 1, 2026, bolstering the Company’s commitment to systematic growth, industry-leading innovation, and long-term value creation.
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Patrick Hunter has been appointed Chief Commercial Officer and President of AGY. Since joining the Company in early 2024, Hunter has played a key role in strengthening the commercial organization, expanding strategic customer relationships, and aligning go-to-market execution with AGY’s growing portfolio of advanced products and capacity investments.
In his expanded role, Hunter will continue to lead AGY’s global commercial organization while assuming broader responsibility for enterprise execution and growth initiatives across aerospace, defense, electronics, and advanced industrial markets.
“Patrick has been instrumental in sharpening AGY’s commercial strategy and positioning the Company for its next phase of growth,” said Al Ridilla, Chief Executive Officer of AGY. “His leadership and execution discipline will be critical as we scale the business and pursue long-term opportunities.”
Doug Mann has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of AGY. With more than 30 years at the Company, Mann has been a driving force behind AGY’s technical evolution, product innovation, and process development.
Throughout his career, Mann has led the development of differentiated technologies and new products that underpin AGY’s global competitive position. His technical expertise is widely recognized across North America, Europe, and Asia. As CTO, Mann will continue to lead AGY’s technology and product development efforts, ensuring continued innovation while supporting customers’ evolving performance requirements.
“Doug’s depth of technical knowledge and longstanding leadership have been foundational to AGY’s success,” Ridilla added. “His appointment ensures continuity as we invest in next-generation materials and applications.”
These leadership appointments reflect AGY’s focus on succession planning, leadership continuity, and operational excellence as the Company expands its capabilities to meet growing demand for advanced glass fiber solutions.
About AGY
AGY is a leading innovator and manufacturer of specialty glass fibers enabling high-performance composite solutions for aviation, defense, electronics, artificial intelligence, digital connectivity and architecture applications that are integral to civilian life and critical to the national security supply chain. Headquartered in Aiken, SC, AGY is the singular remaining specialty glass fiber manufacturer in the United States. Flexible production operations, R&D teams, and a product innovation center allow AGY to customize material solutions and develop next-generation products for clients globally.
Doug Mann, CTO, AGY
Patrick Hunter, CCO & President, AGY
The immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to mass detentions, protests and two deaths is coming to an end, border czar Tom Homan said Thursday.
“As a result of our efforts here Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Homan said at a news conference.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Metro Surge on Dec. 1.
Federal authorities say the sweeps focused on the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area have led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people. While the Trump administration has called those arrested “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” many people with no criminal records, including children and U.S. citizens, have also been detained.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
Here's the latest:
At the beginning of a Senate hearing on immigration enforcement in Minnesota, the state’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, asked for an end to the enforcement surge in his state, saying “it’s already gone too far.”
At the same time in Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan was announcing that it was ending.
But that news didn’t make it into the senate hearing for roughly an hour.
At that point, Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford told the panel about Homan’s announcement, saying it was probably news that those on the panel hadn’t heard yet.
People attending congressional hearings, members of Congress and their staff usually have access to their phones so they can keep up with fast-changing news while hearings are going on. But witnesses giving testimony usually don’t look at their phones during the hearings.
Trump is inviting the leaders to talks in Florida at a moment when the administration is spotlighting what it sees as concerning Chinese influence in the region.
The summit was confirmed by a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the yet-to-be formally announced gathering of leaders. It will also come just weeks before Trump is expected to travel to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Trump administration has made it a priority to assert dominance over the Western Hemisphere, where China has long built influence through massive loans and high trade volumes.
The administration last month launched an audacious military operation to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and whisk him and his wife to New York to face federal drug conspiracy charges.
— Aamer Madhani
— Gov. Tim Walz: “The long road to recovery starts now. The impact on our economy, our schools, and people’s lives won’t be reversed overnight. That work starts today.”
— Sen. Amy Klobuchar: “Minnesotans stood together, stared down ICE, and never blinked.”
— Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: “They thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison says it’s highly unusual for the state to be shut out of investigations of shootings like they have in the aftermath of the deaths of two Americans.
Ellison is appearing at a Senate hearing to look at immigration enforcement in the state.
He was asked by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan about what type of cooperation the state has had with the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department on investigations into the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“We haven’t had any cooperation up until now which is really unusual,” Ellison said.
Peters also asked whether the federal government was stonewalling the state and Ellison agreed.
Despite their strong support for Trump, Republicans are increasingly alone in supporting Trump on his immigration enforcement tactics, a new AP-NORC poll finds.
About 6 in 10 independents now say Trump has “gone too far” in deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, an apparent increase from 46% in an AP-NORC poll in April.
Only about 2 in 10 independents have a positive view of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Having the border shut, that’s OK. But what Trump is doing with ICE and Homeland Security? You don’t go yanking people out of cars. You don’t go shooting people,” said independent Rick Kinnett, a 60-year-old Navy veteran from Crawfordsville, Indiana.
Brooke Rollins and HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., last month unveiled new dietary guidelines, which back away from long-standing advice to limit saturated fats and urge Americans to choose whole-food sources of saturated fat — such as meat, whole-fat dairy or avocados — while continuing to limit saturated fat consumption to no more than 10% of daily calories.
Those guidelines could have a big impact on U.S. schools districts that receive federal funding for school meals and must follow rules set by the Agriculture Department.
“We expect the actual rules to come out probably in four to six weeks, but we are working very diligently on that right now,” Rollins said Thursday. “We want to ensure that we can move very quickly as we’re working to get better, more nutritious, more wholesome foods into our schools.”
But that still left more than 2,000 on Minnesota’s streets. The border czar said Thursday that the drawdown began this week and will continue next week.
He also said he plans to stay in Minnesota to oversee the drawdown.
Homan took over the Minnesota operation in late January after the second fatal shooting by federal immigration agents and amid growing political backlash and questions about how the operation was being run.
Judge Roy K. Altman of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida rejected an attempt by Britain’s national broadcaster to delay proceedings. He set a February 2027 trial date.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him.
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The Republican Kentucky senator says he called an oversight hearing to evaluate “the facts” around immigration enforcement in Minnesota and across the country.
Paul said during his opening statement that any time an American citizen is killed is a “tragedy” but made clear that filming government officials in a free society is a “constitutional right” and not “an act of aggression.”
Paul criticized what he called a “rush to judgment” after the shootings and said while he supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they had work to do to “restore public trust.”
The immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to mass detentions, protests and two deaths is coming to an end, border czar Tom Homan said Thursday.
“As a result of our efforts here Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Homan said at a news conference.
“I have proposed and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude,” he continued.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Metro Surge on Dec. 1.
Federal authorities say the sweeps focused on the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area have led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people. While the Trump administration has called those arrested “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” many people with no criminal records, including children and U.S. citizens, have also been detained.
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While most U.S. adults think Trump has overstepped on immigration enforcement in cities, only about one-quarter of Republicans agree, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
About half of Republicans say Trump’s actions have been “about right,” while about one-quarter of Republicans say he hasn’t gone far enough.
Teviss Crawford, a 20-year-old student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said he’s pleased with Trump’s leadership on immigration, although he wishes the president could find a way to deport more immigrants who are in the country illegally.
“I don’t think the deportations have been enough, to be honest. I think it’s much too lax,” he said of Trump’s crackdown.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading a large U.S. delegation this week to the Munich Security Conference where increasingly nervous European leaders are hoping for at least a brief reprieve from President Trump’s often inconsistent policies and threats that have roiled transatlantic relations and the post-World War II international order.
A year after Vice President JD Vance stunned assembled dignitaries at the same venue with a verbal assault on many of America’s closest allies in Europe, accusing them of imperiling Western civilization with left-leaning domestic programs and not taking responsibility for their own defense, Rubio plans to take a less contentious but philosophically similar approach when he addresses the annual gathering of world leaders and national security officials Saturday, U.S. officials say.
The State Department’s formal announcement of Rubio’s trip offered no details about his two-day stop in Munich, after which he will visit Slovakia and Hungary. But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the trip, said America’s top diplomat intends to focus on areas of cooperation on shared global and regional concerns, including in the Middle East and Ukraine as well as China, an economic powerhouse seeking to take advantage of the uncertainty in U.S.-European ties.
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— Matthew Lee
The Interior Department has distributed only a fraction of the $150 million Congress set aside in last year’s sprawling spending bill for the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
A spokesperson for the department said Wednesday that the single biggest recipient of funding is America250, which has gotten $25 million of the money set aside in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for celebrations and commemorations of America 250. The money went to Interior to distribute but did not specify recipients or amounts. The spokesperson said decisions are being made on how to disperse the money.
The acknowledgement comes one day after a congressional subcommittee hearing where Democrats raised questions about how much public funding Freedom 250, created by President Donald Trump, has received and whether that was to the detriment of America250.
Freedom 250 has received less than $4 million from the pool, said someone with knowledge of the money that organization has received.
Four members of Idaho’s congressional delegation sent a joint letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last September requesting money be dispersed to A250 commissions in all 56 states and territories to support local history organizations. The congressional delegation hasn’t received a response.
— Gary Fields
“I can tell you President Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president,” Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez said in an NBC News interview.
With the comments, Rodriguez is continuing to make the case that last month’s U.S. operation to capture Maduro last was a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty even as the Trump administration says she’s cooperating with their effort to overhaul Venezuela’s vast oil industry.
U.S. forces whisked Maduro and his wife to New York to face drug conspiracy charges. Rodriguez in the interview said the Maduros are “innocent.”
Rodriguez met with Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Wednesday in Caracas.
A new AP-NORC poll also finds the Republican Party’s advantage on Trump’s signature political issue has shrunk since October.
About 3 in 10 U.S. adults trust Republicans to do a better job handling immigration, while a similar share say the same of Democrats. An additional 3 in 10, roughly, don’t think either party would do a better job handling the issue, and about 1 in 10 say both parties would handle it equally well.
In October, 39% of U.S. adults said they trusted the Republicans to better handle immigration, while 26% said that about the Democrats, giving the GOP a 13-point edge. In the new poll, the difference between the parties is only 4 points.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
The new polling comes as the nation watches the human impact of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, where thousands of heavily armed masked agents have descended upon the capital city to find and remove immigrants in the country illegally.
There have also been numerous violent clashes with protesters, including two U.S. citizens were killed by federal agents in recent weeks.
About 6 in 10 Americans also believe Trump has “gone too far” when it using federal law enforcement at public protests in U.S. cities, the poll found.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on coal power in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on coal power in the East Room at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
