NEWS: Trump Officials Plot With Election Liars + GOP's Latest Racist Group Chat
Sharing and supporting public interest journalism is literally an action you can take to expose corruption and fight for democracy.
I point readers toward journalism that actually improves understanding. If this work makes staying informed easier for you, support it here.
Click through and read the articles to drive ad revenue to public interest journalism.
Add these healthy, fact-based sources to your media diet.
Share this info to your social media or to your friends directly.
Take action to uplift and defend our democracy’s immune system by subscribing or donating to this edition’s non-profit and independent newsrooms, ProPublica, Bolts, Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, 404 Media, and The Guardian.
The more you engage with and share pro-democracy information, the better our outcomes.
Here’s what you may have missed:
ProPublica, Trump Officials Attended a Summit of Election Deniers Who Want the President to Take Over the Midterms
Six federal officials attended a February 19 summit convened by Michael Flynn at which prominent 2020 election liars pressed for Trump to declare a national emergency to take over this fall’s midterms.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover.
Attendees included White House lawyer Kurt Olsen, DHS election integrity official Heather Honey, Kari Lake, and Marci McCarthy, who directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency. A DOJ official, Mac Warner, resigned the day after the event after attending without the required ethics approval. Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center warned that the meeting shows “the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government.”
Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’”
Miami Herald, ‘Nazi heaven’: Inside Miami campus Republicans’ racist group chat
The secretary of Miami-Dade County's Republican Party, Abel Carvajal, created a WhatsApp group chat for conservative students at Florida International University. Within three weeks the chat was filled with racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic content, including more than 400 uses of the N-word and graphic calls for violence against Black people. Participants included the president of FIU's Turning Point USA chapter and the former College Republicans recruitment chair. Carvajal, who occasionally participated and deleted messages but never shut the chat down, said he was "shocked" by the content — though logs show he deleted 42 of his own messages.
Minnesota Star Tribune, ICE surged in Minnesota to arrest criminals. Many of them were already in jail.
A Star Tribune analysis of the Trump administration’s “worst of the worst” website found that about half of the immigrants ICE claimed to have detained during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota were already in federal, state, or county custody—not taken off the streets. Of those who were actually at large, just over half faced violent crime charges or convictions. Federal officials also listed inaccurate criminal histories, duplicated entries, and people who had already been freed—errors they dismissed as a “minor glitch.”
Talking Points Memo / ProPublica, Top DOD Official in Charge of the ‘Golden Dome for America’ Project Has Financial Ties to Contractors
Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg founded Cerberus Capital Management, and at least four companies already awarded Golden Dome contracts are owned by Cerberus. A second official, Marc Berkowitz, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, owns between $1 million and $5 million in Lockheed Martin stock and collects two Lockheed pensions—while Lockheed has already received Golden Dome contracts and is competing for a larger role. The disclosures are part of nearly 3,200 financial records ProPublica made public, revealing a broader web of financial ties between senior Trump officials and the industries they regulate.
The Guardian, Gen Z males twice as likely as baby boomers to believe wives should obey husbands
A global Ipsos survey of 23,000 people across 29 countries found that nearly a third of Gen Z males believe a wife should always obey her husband — twice the rate of Baby Boomer men, of whom just 13% agreed. A third of Gen Z males also said husbands should have the final word on important decisions, and 21% believe a "real woman" should never initiate sex, compared to 7% of Boomer men.
Harvard Business Review, AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It
An eight-month study of a 200-person U.S. tech company found that generative AI tools didn’t reduce workloads, they intensified them. Workers expanded into tasks outside their roles, blurred the boundary between work and rest by prompting AI during breaks, and took on more simultaneous threads, producing cognitive overload even as work felt productive. The result was a self-reinforcing cycle: AI accelerated tasks, which raised expectations for speed, which increased reliance on AI, which widened the scope of work further. The researchers warn that what looks like a productivity gain in the short run can mask unsustainable workload creep, and recommend organizations develop deliberate norms around AI use before burnout sets in.
Bolts Magazine, How State and Local Leaders Are Responding to ICE: Your Questions Answered
Ten Democratic-run states have banned local participation in ICE’s 287(g) deputization program, and states like Illinois offer the strongest protections by requiring a judicial warrant before any transfer to federal custody—while red states like Texas, Florida, and Louisiana have passed laws forcing local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE, with Florida even creating a state board to monitor compliance and remove officials who refuse. ICE is buying commercial warehouses nationwide to hold up to 10,000 detainees each, and while local governments have limited zoning power to stop federal facilities, community opposition has already forced ICE to scrap detention plans in Mississippi, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. On prosecuting federal agents, Bolts finds that “absolute immunity” claims are legally unfounded but practically daunting—and that a new coalition of elected prosecutors called the Fight Against Federal Overreach is working to coordinate state-level accountability efforts.
Mother Jones, A Knock on the Window and a Glimpse of America’s Surveillance Future
DHS has deployed a smartphone facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify—used more than 100,000 times since May 2025—that photographs a person’s face and queries databases containing passport records, visa files, and border entry photos. Mobile Fortify retains biometric data on U.S. citizens for 15 years. Though facial recognition “is notoriously error prone and has long been critizied for inaccuracies when identifying people of color” DHS has not publicly disclosed Mobil Fortify’s error rate. The ACLU called the tool “unprecedented and illegal,” warning it represents “a big and very scary step toward a kind of totalitarian checkpoint society.” DHS has also quietly removed Biden-era privacy safeguards for facial recognition from its website and is moving to consolidate its biometric databases into a single platform, while data analytics firm Palantir secured a new five-year, $1 billion software agreement with the agency.
Wired, How to Organize Safely in the Age of Surveillance
Wired asked technologists, activists, and cybersecurity experts how to build a mass movement without exposing participants to monitoring by ICE, CBP, and other agencies. Key recommendations include using Signal for encrypted communication, building a “threat model” tailored to your group’s specific risks, and weighing the trade-off between secrecy and the openness that gives organizing its power. Even in-person meetings carry risk from cell phone tracking, facial recognition, license plate readers, and physical surveillance. Experts warn there is no risk-free path, only informed choices.
Columbia Journalism Review, A Reporter in Nashville, Detained by ICE
Estefany Rodríguez, a journalist for Nashville Noticias who had been covering ICE raids, was detained on March 4 without a warrant. Rodríguez came to the U.S. legally from Colombia after receiving death threats for covering cartels, has a valid work permit and pending asylum claim, and had a scheduled ICE appointment for March 17. Her lawyers argue DHS had no legal basis to arrest her. Her detention follows the arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in January and the deportation of Emmy-winning Salvadoran reporter Mario Guevara—believed to be the first journalist deported from the U.S. in retaliation for their work. The Committee to Protect Journalists noted that both Guevara and Rodríguez worked for Spanish-language outlets with lower national profiles, and warned that even one such arrest could deter dozens of journalists from covering ICE in their communities.
404 Media
DOGE’s cuts were reckless and harmful, cancelling education research, violence reduction and victim services programs, and billions in scientific research funding. They were carried out by young men and boys with zero experience to be doing what they were doing. And they relied on ChatGPT for much of the work. Here is video of a deposition of one of them provided by 404 Media.
Share other public interest journalism you saw this week in the comments so I can put it in the next one. Be sure to check out my Bluesky lists for an easy way to find pro-democracy journalism and commentary in just minutes each day.
Quick reminder: You don’t have to navigate our broken information ecosystem alone. I help people understand what’s really going on by pointing them to fact-based reporting and expertise from trustworthy sources. Paid subscribers make it possible for this work to remain available to everyone. To become a paid subscriber click here.