NEWS: States Do White Supremacy Immediately After VRA Gutted, 54% Increase In Assaults On ICE Detainees
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Apologies for the delay on this week’s round up of important news. This weekend I attended the Media Party conference at Columbia University and last Tuesday I was at the Hillman Prizes for Journalism award ceremony. A great week of connecting to the incredible journalism that sustains our democracy and the people working tirelessly to make it!
A note on media diet: Great journalists work at compromised outlets. The New York Times and Washington Post broke important stories in this edition, vital information that the public needs to be aware of, yet they operate under ownership structures that create real editorial pressure to push anti-democratic agendas in much of their political and business coverage. A healthy, pro-democracy media diet draws from the full spectrum of fact-based reporting while remaining clear-eyed about who owns what and why that matters. The New York Times has misled in the past and actively harmed marginalized communities. Discernment, the kind you’d use while reading labels in the store when seeking to feed your kids, is a must. This week, the outlets most in need of your financial support are: Baptist News Global, Common Dreams, Democracy Now!, The Present Age, and Oligarch Watch.
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Here’s what you may have missed:
SURVEILLANCE, BIG TECH & CORPORATE POWER
Associated Press, Spying on a Family: How U.S. Tech Built China’s Digital Police State
This investigation from last year won a Pulitzer last week. The reporting reveals that IBM, Cisco, Oracle, Dell, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, Thermo Fisher, and other U.S. firms designed and built the foundation of China’s surveillance state. IBM partnered with a Chinese defense contractor to build the predictive policing system known as “Golden Shield.” Dell marketed “all-race recognition” laptops. Thermo Fisher sold DNA kits “designed” for Uyghurs and Tibetans. The technology powered the mass detention of roughly a million Uyghurs and still traps ordinary Chinese citizens, like a farming family beaten and detained for years over a land dispute. One researcher told the AP: “Everything was built on American tech. China’s capability was close to zero.”
Why this matters: American companies built the infrastructure now used to detain and torture millions, then claimed they bore no responsibility. With each week comes new reporting on the ways US domestic surveillance is creeping ever closer to the China model. With Trump rolling back surveillance safeguards at home, that same playbook looks to be heading our way.
Oligarch Watch, The Zuckerberg Rules
Mark Zuckerberg is facing thousands of lawsuits alleging Meta knowingly designed Instagram and Facebook to addict and harm children. The suits come from more than 30 state attorneys general, nearly 800 school districts, and thousands of families. Meta is now asking a federal court to let Zuckerberg testify in person just once, ever, which means every plaintiff is then stuck playing the same recorded Zuck testimony at their separate trials. In the first case to reach a jury, internal documents showed Meta sought to increase the time 10-year-olds spent on Instagram. Zuckerberg said he didn’t remember; the jury awarded the plaintiff $6 million. Meanwhile, Meta has been pulling ads from attorneys seeking child plaintiffs while running thousands of its own TV ads promoting its teen safety record.
Why this matters: Meta is openly arguing that the world’s sixth-richest man deserves a different set of trial rules than everyone else while suppressing news of the lawsuits against it on its own platform. They are flooding TV with reputation-boosting ads so that you don’t remain angry about courtroom revelations that they are trying to addict children to their harmful product.
ELECTIONS & DEMOCRACY
The New York Times, Trump Administration Demands Names of 2020 Election Workers in Georgia
The Justice Department has subpoenaed the names, emails, and personal phone numbers of every worker who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. That includes thousands of volunteer poll workers and even the bus drivers who operated mobile voting locations. It follows an FBI raid earlier this year that seized 2020 ballots from a county election warehouse. Fulton County is fighting the subpoena, calling it harassment, and notes the statutes of limitations for any 2020 election crimes have already expired. Roughly a third of election officials are now threatened on the job, and the subpoena lands as midterm voting is already underway in Georgia.
Why this matters: This is not part of a serious investigation. The Republican-controlled federal government is compiling a list of every poll worker in a Democratic stronghold. Republicans told an outrageous, strategic election lie for years to justify outrageous actions like this. The goal isn’t prosecuting crimes or making elections safer. The goal is making sure no one is willing to staff the next election. It’s about as corrupt and anti-democratic as it can get.
Democracy Now!, “Gerrymandering Arms Race”: GOP Rushes to Erase Black Representation After SCOTUS Guts Voting Rights
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling last month effectively killed the Voting Rights Act, and Southern Republicans are moving fast. Tennessee is set to pass a 9-0 GOP map that splits Memphis—63% Black and a single congressional district since 1923—into three districts. Florida’s Ron DeSantis signed a map giving Republicans four new seats. Alabama is redrawing its map mid-election, after votes were already cast. Mississippi, 40% Black, is preparing to eliminate its only Black member of Congress. Voting rights reporter Ari Berman estimates Republicans could pick up four to six House seats just by targeting majority-Black districts, in what he calls the largest threat to Black representation since the Jim Crow era.
Why this matters: The Voting Rights Act is the law that made multiracial democracy in America possible. Decades of hard-won representation are being erased in a single legislative session by a white supremacist government.
Slate, Louisiana Republicans Are Taking Attacks on New Orleans Voters to a Shocking Place
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is pushing a package of bills designed to punish majority-Black, majority-Democratic New Orleans for electing reformers. The bills would let the state legislature remove locally elected officials for vague “malfeasance,” cut New Orleans criminal judges, and slash funding for assistant district attorneys by 42%. The most blatant move targets Calvin Duncan, a Black man who spent 28 years in a Louisiana prison for a murder he didn’t commit. While incarcerated, Duncan taught himself law and helped free other wrongfully convicted people. He was eventually declared factually innocent and released. Last year, New Orleans voters elected him criminal court clerk—the office that handles the very records that exonerated him. To stop him from taking the job, Landry signed a bill eliminating the position entirely. A federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional; the 5th Circuit quickly stayed that ruling.
Why this matters: Louisiana's legislature is telling New Orleans voters their elections don't count. Basically, the legislature doesn’t like the person they, the people, elected. It's minority rule acting to preserve the structures in place that uphold the system of minority rule.
IMMIGRATION & ICE
HuffPost, Trump Administration Closes Watchdog Office For Immigration Detention Abuses
DHS is shutting down the office responsible for investigating misconduct and abuse inside immigration jails. Inspections are ending and the public website that told families how to file complaints has gone dark. Congress created the office via legislation in 2019. Over 30 people died in ICE custody last year, the deadliest year since 2004, and 18 have died so far this year. The administration had already cut staff from over 100 to just five.
Why this matters: Eliminating the only office that investigated abuse in immigration jails removes the last meaningful check on a system that is killing people at an accelerating rate. What should be a front page story every day about callous neglect, abuse, and white supremacy is often treated by corporate media as just one more story.
The Washington Post, ICE Guards Used Force on Detainees 1,330 Times Last Year, a 54% Increase
Internal ICE records obtained by The Washington Post show guards used force on nearly 1,330 detained immigrants last year, a 54% increase. The records document detainees pepper-sprayed while demanding food, water, and medical care. Injuries included seizures, broken arms, and eye injuries. The spike came as the Trump administration carried out the biggest expansion of immigration detention in decades.
Why this matters: A 54% jump in force against people in detention is the predictable result of an administration gutting oversight while doubling capacity. Reporting like this is the only reason these numbers exist in public at all.
CORRUPTION & SELF-DEALING
Rolling Stone, How the Trump Family Is Cashing In on the Presidency
Donald Trump has made a fortune since retaking the White House last year. His sons and other family members aren’t doing too bad, either. Reporter Nikki McCann Rodriguez breaks down how the first family has been cashing in on the presidency.
Why this matters: A sitting president personally profiting from his office to the tune of billions of dollars. When the first family treats the White House as a revenue stream, every policy decision becomes suspect.
Rolling Stone, Trump and His Cronies Are Partying as the World Burns
As the U.S. is at war with Iran and gas prices climb above $5 a gallon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent the weekend DJing a family wedding, fist-pumping behind the turntables to a Calvin Harris track. The same weekend, Trump hosted a PGA tour event at his Doral golf club in Florida. Last month, while J.D. Vance was leading failed negotiations to end the Iran war, Trump took in a UFC fight. The author argues the absence of urgency suggests the administration may not care about ending the war.
Why this matters: A president and secretary of state golfing and DJing through a war they started reveals how little they care about who actually pays the cost of their decisions.
Common Dreams, ‘Obscene Transfer of Wealth’ Continues as Another Oil Giant Posts Massive War-Fueled Profits
TotalEnergies reported $5.8 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2026 and announced higher dividends and stock buybacks, attributing the windfall to its “ability to capture price upside” as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran sends oil prices soaring. BP’s first-quarter profits more than doubled. Oxfam projects six of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies will earn $2,967 per second in 2026, roughly $37 million more per day than last year. 350.org’s Fanny Petitbon called it “an obscene transfer of wealth: the war enriches shareholders as it impoverishes citizens.”
Why this matters: A war is making the richest companies on the planet richer at a rate measured in profits per second, while ordinary families absorb the cost in devastatingly higher bills. To these companies, the war isn’t a tragedy, it’s a business strategy.
DOJ & FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT
Bluesky, Nicholas Grossman and Don Moynihan on the DOJ Civil Division’s Signing Bonuses
The DOJ Civil Division is offering attorney signing bonuses of up to $25,000 and trying to hire outside Washington, with satellite offices in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, and Raleigh. Political scientist Nicholas Grossman wrote that the Trump regime’s “desire for authoritarian domination is bottomless, but its capacity is not,” arguing the administration has destroyed DOJ’s prosecutorial capacity by converting it into a tool for hurting the president’s enemies. Public administration scholar Don Moynihan added: “These used to be highly sought after jobs. Now they are offering ICE bonuses.”
Why this matters: DOJ jobs were once the most competitive legal positions in the country. When the Civil Division is reduced to dangling cash to fill seats, it’s a measurable sign that serious lawyers know what this DOJ is now an authoritarian project and are refusing to be part of it.
RELIGION & GOVERNMENT
Baptist News Global, Experts say anti-Christian bias task force report is full of bias
A new 208-page Justice Department report titled “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias within the Federal Government” claims Joe Biden weaponized the federal government against Christians. Religious liberty experts called the claim absurd, noting Biden attended Mass weekly throughout his term. Melissa Rogers, who led faith-based initiatives under Biden, said the report invents a unified “Christian worldview” on contested policies. PRRI’s Robert P. Jones noted that the white evangelicals the report treats as “traditional Christians” make up only about 20% of U.S. Christians, and that 68% of Christians oppose ICE raids at churches, hospitals, and schools — a policy that has led Christian denominations to sue the Trump administration on religious liberty grounds.
Why this matters: A government report defining a single “Christian worldview” and equating disagreement with persecution lays the groundwork for state-favored religion, dressed as victimhood. The actual threat to religious liberty is an administration that attacks the pope, raids churches, and then claims Christians are under attack.
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Houston Chronicle, A&M officials told this philosophy professor to remove some Plato from a course. He’s going to SMU.
Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving for SMU after the A&M System Board of Regents banned teaching “race or gender ideology”—a policy that forced him to remove passages from Plato’s “Symposium” from his core course. Administrators reviewed offerings across 12 universities and modified hundreds of classes. Peterson is the second philosophy professor to leave in recent weeks, and a third withdrew from a tenure-track job last fall, citing fear of being tweeted about by Gov. Greg Abbott. Peterson is heading to SMU because as a private univeristy it is insulated from Texas lawmakers.
Why this matters: A politically appointed board telling professors which Plato passages they can teach is state-run thought control. The kind of thing our MAGA friends and loved ones have been trained to be outraged about is being perpetrated by their movement’s own leaders. Wealthy extremists on the right have been trying to destroy academia (they see it as a threat to corporatism) since the 1970s.
MEDIA & POLITICAL MOVEMENTS
The Present Age, Don’t Fall for the Tucker Carlson Apology Tour
Tucker Carlson is rebranding. In a New York Times Magazine interview he presented himself as theological, anti-war, and remorseful about Trump. The same week, he recorded a podcast with his brother that told a very different story. In the Times version, his break with Trump came over Iran. With his brother, the real grievances were that Trump hadn’t punished his enemies hard enough on vaccines, January 6, the George Floyd protests, and the Russia probe. Carlson also told his brother that Obama “really hates white people” and called the COVID vaccine a biological weapon. Parker Molloy argues Carlson runs the same playbook he always has—diagnose a real problem, then deliver an extremist solution—but his target audience is now the left. Marjorie Taylor Greene has already endorsed him for president, and Democratic operatives are floating an alliance.
Why this matters: Tucker Carlson built his career laundering racist and authoritarian ideas to the masses via his Fox News show. He mentioned the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory on over 400 episodes of that show. The left’s embrace of him because he nominally opposes the Iran war is helping him do the same thing all over again, just to a new audience.
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