NEWS: DHS Is Taking DNA From Protesters + Trump’s Iran War Negotiator Is on the Saudi Payroll
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A note on media diet: Great journalists work at compromised outlets. The New York Times and CBS News broke important stories in this edition, yet both operate under ownership structures that create real editorial pressure to push anti-democratic agendas. A healthy, pro-democracy media diet draws from the full spectrum of fact-based reporting while remaining clear-eyed about how ownership and agenda can create misleading frames. The New York Times has misled in the past and has a pattern of normalizing Donald Trump. CBS is owned by extremist ideologues. Discernment, the kind you’d use while reading labels in the store when buying groceries for your kids, is a must. Just like in the aisles of the supermarket, navigating the choices available to us to ensure our media diet is healthy comes with pitfalls and nuance.
This week, the outlets and organizations most worthy of your financial support are: ProPublica, The Intercept, CalMatters, NPR, Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance, Popular Information, The Freedom of the Press Foundation, Evident and Doomsday Scenario.
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Here’s what you may have missed:
NPR, ICE officers are taking DNA samples from protesters they’ve arrested
NPR found six people in Minnesota, Illinois, and Oregon who say they were arrested while peacefully observing ICE activity and had their DNA swabbed before release. Federal law does require DNA collection from people arrested by federal officers, but legal experts say the constitutionality hinges on whether the underlying arrests were lawful — and civil rights lawyers say observing ICE is protected First Amendment activity. It is unclear where the samples are going or how they’re being used; DHS did not answer NPR’s questions and has previously denied the existence of a protesters database. DNA collected by federal immigration officers has historically been added to the FBI’s national database, accessible to state and local law enforcement across the country. One person tackled by a masked ICE officer while filming from a sidewalk was later found to have three broken ribs.
Why this matters: DNA is not a fingerprint — it reveals ancestry, health risks, and genetic traits, and it implicates an entire family tree across generations. Collecting it from people exercising First Amendment rights, then feeding it into a national law enforcement database, is what a Stanford law professor calls an officer deciding in the field that someone “crossed the line” — with permanent, irreversible consequences. A catalog of political dissidents’ genetic data in government hands is a tool of authoritarian control.
Popular Information, UPDATE: After sending billions to Kushner and Trump, Saudis lobby to escalate Iran War
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been privately lobbying Trump to continue and escalate the war with Iran, calling it a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East and pressing for attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure and boots on the ground. The New York Times reported the lobbying but omitted a critical fact: Trump’s chief Iran negotiator, Jared Kushner, has collected more than $110 million from the Saudi government since 2021 through his private equity firm, which received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund controlled by MBS — while generating little to no return. Kushner’s firm is now seeking an additional $5 billion from foreign sources and has already met with the Saudi PIF. The Saudi government also financed a $7 billion Trump Organization development deal in January 2026. Trump has said Kushner was among those who convinced him to start the war.
Why this matters: The United States is at war, and the man leading its negotiations has received over $110 million from the government lobbying to keep that war going. That is not a conflict of interest — it is the definition of corruption. A free press exists precisely to connect these dots, and Popular Information did what the New York Times did not.
Freedom of the Press Foundation, Report on abuse of Section 702 by NSA to spy on Americans
CBS News, FBI and IRS to investigate nonprofit groups for domestic terrorism links, sources say
The FBI and IRS are forming a joint initiative to investigate nonprofits for suspected domestic terrorism links. In a December memo, AG Pam Bondi instructed federal law enforcement to prioritize investigations into groups she deemed “extremist.” Bondi broadly applied the extremism label to include opposition to ICE, “radical gender ideology,” anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity. A new command center for the effort will be established at the FBI. IRS agents will probe nonprofit funding streams. It is not clear which specific groups will be targeted.
Why this matters: Weaponizing the FBI and IRS to investigate nonprofits based on sweeping ideological criteria is a textbook authoritarian tactic to suppress constitutionally protected dissent. CBS News is owned by Paramount Global, and its coverage can reflect the priorities of powerful corporate ownership—but a conscious news consumer doesn’t reject fact-based public-interest reporting because of its source. When other outlets that are trustworthy, like Democracy Now!, back up the reporting it lends credibility. A healthy media diet draws from a wide range of outlets to verify information.
Fast Company, The X algorithm really is trying to radicalize you—researchers just proved it
A European research team split roughly 5,000 X users into two groups. One group saw X’s standard algorithmic “For You” feed, the other saw posts simply in chronological order. After seven weeks, the political attitudes of the two groups were compared. Those being fed the algorithm shifted toward more conservative positions on issues like criminal investigations into Trump and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Traditional news sources appeared 58% less often in the algorithmic feeds than the chronological ones. Most troublingly, switching the algorithm off and putting those users on a chronological feed did not automatically expose them to different content or reverse their ideological shift. Algorithm-tuned accounts ended up with chronological feeds containing 28% more posts from conservative political activists. According to a Pew Research study, X users are the most likely amongst users of social media apps to report that they use the platform to “keep up with politics.”
Why this matters: Democracy depends on an informed electorate. A platform algorithmically engineered to push users toward radicalizing content is a propaganda machine with 600 million users.
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance, What Was Actually in the Mueller Report
After Mueller died, MAGA accounts began flooding social media with false claims that the Mueller investigation found nothing. But the Mueller report produced 37 indictments and 7 convictions. Trump tried to get Mueller fired, pressured his White House counsel to lie on his behalf, tried to get his attorney general to shut down the Russia investigation, and offered pardons to witnesses to keep them quiet. Mueller didn’t indict Trump because Justice Department rules prohibit indicting a sitting president, not because Trump was innocent. Trump pardoned five of the people Mueller convicted, including three who had stood in federal court and admitted under oath that they were guilty.
Why this matters: With Mueller dead and MAGA now controlling the Justice Department he spent his life serving, the effort to rewrite the historical record continues. Vance’s piece is a concise, sourced reminder that the findings of the Mueller investigation were not a hoax.
Doomsday Scenario, Remembering Robert Mueller
Robert Mueller, who died last Friday at 81, was a Purple Heart recipient, Marine combat veteran, and the most consequential FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover. He was confirmed to senior government roles six times, by both parties, across six administrations. Mueller refused to let the FBI participate in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture programs. His special counsel investigation exposed Russian interference in the 2016 election and deep criminality in Trump’s orbit, but AG Bill Barr declared it an exoneration before the public could read it, and Mueller, Garrett Graff writes, was “too shocked and slow at responding.” Graff’s verdict: Mueller was outplayed in his final chapter by a man operating in bad faith, in a Washington whose rules had changed around him.
Why this matters: Mueller represents a disappearing model of apolitical public service. Trump dodged Vietnam with bone spur deferments, has mocked POWs, and now controls the Justice Department Mueller spent his life serving. The contrast between these two men tells us a great deal about what American democracy is losing.
Evident, Visual investigation into aggressive, unconstitutional tactics by Border Patrol agents
The Intercept, Air Force Academy Prepares Ideological Overhaul, With Erika Kirk Bringing “Bold Christian Faith”
The Air Force Academy’s oversight board, a congressionally mandated body, has been dismantling DEI and reviewing curriculum under Trump’s orders. The White House appointed Erika Kirk to that board, and when announcing it, invoked her late husband Charlie Kirk’s Christian faith as a qualification. Experts say this is unconstitutional.
Why this matters: Appointing ideological activists to oversight boards, citing faith as a qualification, and purging DEI from admissions at the academy that commissions roughly half the Air Force’s new officers signals an effort to reshape military culture from the top down. A former academy official put it plainly: they are trying to turn the military into “a Christian nationalist praetorian guard.”
TechCrunch, Online bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027, Cloudflare CEO says
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, whose company handles infrastructure for one-fifth of all websites, says AI bot traffic will exceed human traffic on the internet by 2027. AI agents performing tasks on behalf of users visit vastly more websites than humans do. Where a person shopping for a camera might visit 5 sites, an AI agent doing the same task might visit 5,000. Before generative AI, bots made up roughly 20% of internet traffic. Prince says that number is now growing without any sign of slowing down.
Why this matters: The web was built as a space for human communication and the exchange of ideas. When bots dominate traffic, they distort what gets amplified, what gets monetized, and what gets seen, making it harder for citizens to distinguish real public opinion from manufactured noise. This will profoundly impact our democracy.
The New Republic, Trump Accidentally Admits to Epic Iran Blunder as War Takes Worse Turn
The full podcast episode is available at the link above. From the introduction:
Donald Trump’s war on Iran appears to be a fiasco, and speaking to reporters, he made a surprising claim: He insisted no one anticipated that Iran would attack other countries in an effort to widen the war. But this was indeed widely expected, and amusingly, in saying that, Trump revealed that he didn’t anticipate it. That’s a striking admission about his own lack of foresight. Which captures something broader: On many fronts, Trump didn’t prepare for eventualities that most experts fully did anticipate. Now Trump is lurching in all directions: First, he threatened to bomb Iranian electric plants, then he backtracked while claiming that “very strong talks” were underway, but Iran then flatly denied that.
Why this matters: A president who launches a war without anticipating its most foreseeable consequences is a danger to every American with a family member in uniform, and to the stability of the entire region.
The New York Times, 34 Former Military Members Were Put on Deportation Track in the Past Year
The Trump administration began deportation proceedings against 34 former military members and 248 of their relatives after rescinding policies that had given immigrant service members more deference in such matters. In a high-profile case, Sae Joon Park, a Purple Heart recipient who hadn’t lived in South Korea since age seven, left Hawaii under threat of deportation after decades of checking in regularly with immigration officials. Military recruiters still promise immigrants a swift path to citizenship for enlisting, but some relatives of service members are now too afraid to apply for the family protections they’re entitled to, fearing it will make them a target. Since Trump’s second inauguration, his administration has arrested 125 former service members for immigration violations, more than five times the 24 arrested in all of fiscal year 2024.
Why this matters: The U.S. military actively recruits immigrants with the promise of citizenship and protection for their families. Deporting veterans and their relatives while continuing to make that promise is a betrayal of the most basic compact between our government and the people who risk their lives for it.
Center for American Progress, By the End of the Week, the Trump Administration’s War in Iran Will Likely Have Cost $25 Billion
Now in its fourth week, Trump’s war on Iran has killed more than 1,000 Iranian civilians, including 200 children, and 13 U.S. service members. Gas prices are up roughly a third to a national average of $3.98. The war cost $11.3 billion in its first six days alone and will likely surpass $25 billion by the end of this week. The White House is now seeking more than $200 billion in supplemental funding for the war, less than a year after Trump signed the largest cuts to the social safety net in U.S. history. Those tax cuts are projected to leave 10 million more Americans without health insurance and strip food assistance from millions of children. The same $25 billion could provide free school lunches to every child in America not currently receiving them for roughly four years, or cover two years of community college tuition for millions of students.
Why this matters: A government that claims it cannot afford Medicaid, school lunches, or housing assistance is spending $25 billion in four weeks on a war the government has provided no real justification for.
ProPublica, Trump Has Detained the Parents of More Than 11,000 U.S. Citizen Kids
In the first seven months of Trump’s second term, ICE arrested and detained the parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children, an average of more than 50 American kids per day losing a parent to detention. Trump is deporting mothers of U.S. citizen children at four times the rate Biden did. More than 75% of those deported mothers had no criminal convictions beyond traffic or immigration offenses. The Trump administration quietly revised its internal directive on how agents should handle arrested parents, stripping the word “humane” from the preamble. DHS responded to ProPublica’s findings by saying “ICE does not separate families.”
Why this matters: These are American citizens being separated from their parents by their own government. ProPublica’s data-driven investigation puts hard numbers on what the administration has tried to obscure.
The Nation, AI Is the New AIPAC
Justice Democrats communications director Usamah Andrabi argues that AI corporations, like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta, are using opaquely named super PACs to flood Democratic primaries with millions in election spending. They run ads that never mention AI while backing candidates who oppose AI regulation. In North Carolina’s Fourth Congressional District, Anthropic’s Jobs and Democracy PAC spent over $1.6 million to boost Rep. Valerie Foushee, appointed to oversee AI regulation, against progressive challenger Nida Allam, who favored a federal ban on new AI data centers. Andrabi argues that AI super PACs are following the playbook established by AIPAC and crypto lobbies: spend big in the bluest seats, elect the weakest Democrats, and protect corporate interests.
Why this matters: When corporations use dark money to elect the lawmakers who are supposed to regulate them, democracy loses before a single vote is cast. The author’s perspective deserves scrutiny, he works for an organization that backed the candidates the AI lobby opposed, but the core facts about AI super PAC spending and the Foushee race are documented and worth your attention.
CalMatters, Why a private company is investigating rapes at an ICE detention center instead of the sheriff
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department failed to investigate seven reported rapes at the Otay Mesa immigration detention center in 2025, having signed away that authority to CoreCivic, the nation’s largest for-profit prison contractor, in a 2020 memorandum of understanding. Under the agreement, the detention center’s warden decides whether to investigate rape allegations, and CoreCivic did not request law enforcement involvement in any of the cases. Because the sheriff opened no criminal investigations, no cases were forwarded to the district attorney. Most of the nearly 1,500 detainees at the facility are awaiting immigration hearings and have not been convicted of any crime. San Diego County is simultaneously suing CoreCivic and the Trump administration for blocking a public health inspection of the same facility.
Why this matters: A for-profit prison company investigating its own rape allegations is a conflict of interest by design. People in government detention have constitutional rights, including protection from sexual violence. When law enforcement cedes that responsibility to the corporation profiting from their incarceration, those rights are not guaranteed.
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"The Air Force Academy’s oversight board, a congressionally mandated body, has been dismantling DEI and reviewing curriculum under Trump’s orders. The White House appointed Erika Kirk to that board, and when announcing it, invoked her late husband Charlie Kirk’s Christian faith as a qualification. Experts say this is unconstitutional."
It feels like Erika Kirk has a lot of her past hidden. I wonder if she should receive more scrutiny from independent media. Seems like there are some skeletons there..