NEWS YOU MISSED: Critical of ICE? Big Tech Is Giving User Data To DHS + ICE's Masks Are A Lie
Trustworthy journalism every American must see. Sharing and supporting public interest journalism is literally an action you can take to fight for democracy.
Hi, and sorry that it’s been a while! I officiated my bro-in-law’s wedding and then attended the Knight Media Forum in Miami. It was great to escape the cold to attend gatherings focused on the people I care about—family and, well, every human whose life is impacted every day by our toxic information ecosystem.
So, for this installment I’m getting straight to the good stuff—the essential journalism you may have missed in the last two weeks.
I sift through the noise to provide the reporting and ideas that matter and point readers toward journalism that actually improves understanding. If this work makes staying informed easier for you, support it here.
Share this public interest info to your social media or to your friends directly. Then take a concrete action to uplift and defend our democracy’s immune system. Subscribe or donate to any of these outlets. Information becomes our outcomes. Fascism exists where propaganda is strong and journalism is weak. Fight for healthy information before it’s too late.
Here’s what you may have missed:
The New Republic, Unions Can Win in the South
Let’s kick this one off with a win for the working people.
Workers in Tennessee have made history. On Thursday, the United Auto Workers announced that it had finally reached a tentative agreement with management at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which unionized in 2024. If the workers approve the deal, it’ll be the first union contract outside the Big Three auto manufacturers in a Southern state.
Auto companies, especially foreign manufacturers, have been moving operations to Southern states for decades, far away from union strongholds in the Rust Belt, where wages were higher and labor laws were stronger. Unions have been struggling to find a foothold in the South for decades. But if the 3,200 shop workers in Chattanooga vote to ratify the contract, it will help unions gain a stronger foothold there.
Doomsday Scenario, ICE’s Masks Are All a Lie
…In absurd media interviews, like this one on CNBC yesterday, Republican officials are making it seem like working immigration in the US is as dangerous as being an honest narcotics investigator in the heart of cartel-land in Mexico or Latin America.
Do not be fooled.
Every piece of data we have actually shows that to be false.
A CATO Institute study last month found that 2025 — in theory a wildly dangerous year, according to Kristi Noem and other administration officials, when threats and assault against agents and officers leapt by insane astronomical figures, like 413 percent, 1150 percent, or even 8000 percent!!!! — was actually the second-safest year ever for ICE officers and Border Patrol agents.
The mask thing is a complete lie told to us by liars who are trying to give their agents the confidence to habitually violate the Constitution. Add Doomsday Scenario to your media diet and follow Graff on Bluesky.
EVEN MORE: Phil Bump, ICE’s excuse for wearing masks has never actually manifested
Reuters, Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped.
Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found.
The decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Yet the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal.
Reuters shows us how important it is for a democratic society to have newsrooms with the resources to put together large, exclusive studies that aid the public’s understanding of the depth and breadth of constitutional violations.
Brennan Center, Pro-Trump Super PAC Raises Record-Breaking $305 Million
The MAGA movement isn’t funded by the little guy. It’s funded by an anti-democracy elite who lie to America to garner support for an agenda that decimates the working class and makes the rich even richer. Now, they’re raising money for a candidate who is legally barred from running again.
MAGA Inc., the main super PAC supporting President Trump, has raised $305 million since the 2024 election. The sum is completely unprecedented: It’s five times more than the prior record for a president’s super PAC support in the year after being elected and comes almost entirely from donations of $1 million or more.
In the four presidential election cycles since the super PAC era began in 2010, Joe Biden is the only other president to see significant super PAC fundraising after his election. Groups boosting him raised $57 million. But the entire political world assumed at the time that Biden would run for reelection. Trump is legally barred from running again.
Cato Institute, Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994
Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from the federal, state, and local governments. The fiscal benefits have continued to rise, reaching their highest level ever in 2023.
Remember when Kristi Noem said some guys attacked an ICE officer with a shovel which forced the officer to shoot at the guys in self-defense and then Fox told America the officer was fighting for his life?
It was all a lie. Our government and its sympathetic media are lying to us every day.
Add Josh Gerstein to your media diet on Bluesky. Josh reports for POLITICO, a newsroom that has habitually normalized Trump, but his reporting is fact-based and excellent and if you follow him you learned about DOJ’s move to drop its charges before everyone else.
Mother Jones, ACLU’s Lawsuit Over ICE Raid at an Idaho Racetrack Could Be a Game Changer
In October, ICE raided an Idaho racetrack.
…about 200 officers from a range of federal, state, and local agencies descended on the racetrack in full tactical gear, most carrying automatic rifles. They pointed their guns and screamed at terrified families…
The officers rounded up the entire crowd, some 400 people, zip-tying most adults and many teenagers and forcing just about everyone onto the track, where, according to the suit, they sorted people by perceived immigration status, typically based on skin color…
Witnesses cited in the legal filing accuse the officers of myriad abuses—shooting rubber bullets at teens, throwing flash-bang grenades into vehicles with people inside, pushing children and old people, and preventing people from using the bathroom until some children had to relieve themselves in public. But, as experts I’ve interviewed have noted, it is difficult to hold federal officers accountable for misconduct…
In this case, the ACLU’s attorneys argue that federal officers worked closely with the county sheriff and city police officers to terrorize families at the racetrack raid, and were therefore part of a conspiracy.
The conspiracy argument has succeeded before—most prominently, after federal officers conspired with state officers to murder Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton in Chicago in 1969. It also was used to sue over an immigration raid in Tennessee during Trump’s first term. But ACLU attorney Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, who is working on the Idaho case, told me she hasn’t seen it tried during Trump’s second term, and that the outcome of the case could have implications far beyond this small Idaho town: All across the country, the Trump administration is collaborating closely with state and local police to carry out its mass-deportation agenda.
Minnesota Star-Tribune, ‘No humanity’: Detainees describe conditions inside Whipple Federal Building
After the young Muslim woman spent nearly 24 hours locked in the bathroom with the three men, agents moved her to a different locked bathroom in the building’s basement, she said.
When she had her period, agents told her to use toilet paper. When she felt dizzy and vomited twice, agents did not grant her request for medical care. When they gave her a sandwich, she didn’t eat it, fearing it contained pork…
On the fifth day, agents drove her and two other recently released detainees to a light-rail station near Whipple. They took off her handcuffs and told her to call an Uber, even though she didn’t have a phone…
…As they released her into the cold, she recalls their simple words: “You are good to go.”
This young lady’s tale is one of the less horrific of those relayed in this excellent piece of reporting by the Star-Tribune. Sharing stories like this makes it harder for other Americans to deny what is happening.
The Appeal, Unsatisfied With Record Profits, Private Prison Investors Want ICE to Escalate
Add The Appeal to your media diet.
Law Dork, Two judges on the Fifth Circuit gave Trump exactly what he wants to enact mass detentions
In short, the Fifth Circuit reversed judicial precedent and is now allowing the federal government to hold people inside the United States in mandatory immigration detention without any bond hearing while they fight deportation, a shift that could enable large-scale, prolonged confinement and aligns with DHS’s move toward much bigger detention facilities.
Chris Geidner is a trusted legal expert. Add Law Dork to your media diet and follow Chris on Bluesky. He is also in my Bluesky list, Legal Experts, that you can pin to your feed and consult any time you are looking for context on a big court ruling. I can’t control how often they post pictures of their dogs.
The Guardian, NSA detected foreign intelligence phone call about a person close to Trump
Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence, who discussed a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney who was briefed on details of the call.
The highly sensitive communique…was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard.
But rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, Gabbard took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, according to the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj.
One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office, Bakaj said.
This is a major scandal involving the director of our intelligence services, a known liar.
UPDATE: The person being discussed was Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Time will tell if all the details of this scandal reach the full light of day.
The Guardian, The arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are a danger to all Americans
The justice department’s latest actions are plainly aimed at chilling vital reporting about pressing issues of public concern, in clear violation of basic first amendment principles that the supreme court has repeatedly articulated. The court just recently reiterated the importance of ensuring speech has the “breathing room” it needs to survive, recognizing that the fear of “becoming entangled in the legal system” can deter individuals from exercising their first amendment rights. These indictments fly in the face of that ideal.
As the court declared nearly 60 years ago, freedom of the press is “not for the benefit of the press so much as for the benefit of all of us”. The arrest of these two journalists, who were just doing their jobs, is a danger to us all.
At the Knight Media Forum I found a moment to introduce myself to Georgia Fort and tell her that freedom loving Americans are standing behind her. Can you imagine become a person who will be in history books overnight? Just for doing your job?
The New York Times, How the Supreme Court Secretly Made Itself Even More Secretive
Amid calls to increase transparency and revelations about the court’s inner workings, the chief justice imposed nondisclosure agreements on clerks and employees.
The chief justice acted after a series of unusual leaks of internal court documents, most notably of the decision overturning the right to abortion, and news reports about ethical lapses by the justices. Trust in the institution was languishing at a historic low. Debate was intensifying over whether the black box institution should be more transparent.
Instead, the chief justice tightened the court’s hold on information. Its employees have long been expected to stay silent about what they witness behind the scenes. But starting that autumn, in a move that has not been previously reported, the chief justice converted what was once a norm into a formal contract…
…people familiar with [the new agreements] said they appeared to be more forceful and understood them to threaten legal action if an employee revealed confidential information. Clerks and members of the court’s support staff signed them in 2024, and new arrivals have continued to do so, the people said.
…In September 2024, The Times published an article describing how the chief justice pushed to grant President Trump broad immunity from prosecution. The article quoted from confidential memos by the chief justice and other members of the court who applauded his reasoning. Weeks later, the chief justice abruptly introduced the nondisclosure agreements, after the term had begun.
The secrecy allows the justices to dismiss criticism on the grounds that outsiders don’t know or understand what’s happening behind the scenes, said Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
…He said it also allows the court to conceal weaknesses in its processes, including the justices’ reliance on clerks for legal reasoning and writing.
“If the public were aware of how much of the deliberations affecting millions of people are made by 27-year-olds after happy hour, they’d be shocked,” he said.
This article by Jody Kantor of the New York Times highlights the bizarre dynamic of an American public fed up with legacy media that still relies on reporters within legacy media to be aware of how our government functions. Kantor’s reporting provides exactly the type of transparency into Supreme Court behavior that Chief Justice Roberts seeks to block. The public needs reporters like Kantor while also needing the newsroom she works for to more forcefully hold the Trump administration to account, rather than cover for it with stenography, euphemism, bothsidesism and other forms journalism failures that normalize Trump’s fascism.
Elon Musk’s flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, continues to generate sexualized images of people even when users explicitly warn that the subjects do not consent, Reuters has found.
After Musk’s social media company X announced new curbs on Grok’s public output, nine Reuters reporters gave it a series of prompts to determine whether and under what circumstances the chatbot would generate nonconsensual sexualized images.
In a Bluesky post, the reporter on this story wrote, “Together with colleagues I’ve been testing Grok. The chatbot still produces sexualized images — even when told the subjects don’t consent, even when told the photos will be used for public humiliation, even when told the subjects are survivors of abuse.”
READ MORE: Associated Press, X offices raided in France as prosecutors investigate child abuse images and deepfakes
TechCrunch, Homeland Security is trying to force tech companies to hand over data about Trump critics
The Department of Homeland Security has been quietly demanding tech companies turn over user information about critics of the Trump administration, according to reports.
…A new report by The Washington Post on Tuesday found that an administrative subpoena was also used to seek information from Google about an American retiree within hours of him after sending a critical email to Homeland Security’s lead attorney Joseph Dernbach. The retiree’s home was later visited by federal agents inquiring about the email.
The Post described the retiree as someone critical of Trump during his first term, who attended a No Kings rally last year, regularly attends gatherings and protests, and wrote criticisms to lawmakers, all actions protected under the First Amendment.
Within five hours of emailing the Homeland Security lawyer — who was named in an article about the case of an Afghan the U.S. was trying to deport and whose email address is listed on the Florida Bar’s website — the retiree received an email from Google, according to The Washington Post. The email notified him that his account had been subpoenaed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Zack Whittaker wrote this great public interest journalism piece aggregating alarming reports about DHS attacks on the First Amendment, but the company that pays him is undermining journalism. TechCrunch is owned by Regent, a private equity firm with a history of buying up media ventures and laying off staff. It’s a weird time to be a pro-democracy news consumer. Follow Zack on Bluesky and don’t donate to TechCrunch. Instead, donate to one of the other independent and non-profit newsrooms in this round-up.
ProPublica, New Bills Seek to Rein In Oil Companies’ Pollution of Oklahoma Groundwater
Cancer-causing toxic waste is regularly exploding out of the ground in Oklahoma and getting into the drinking water. Why am I telling you about it if you don’t live in Oklahoma? Because this piece is a catch-all for everything I am trying to help people understand.
Journalism is our immune system. It protects the public from harms by informing them of dangers. We can only protest deadly pollution and vote for politicians who will do something about it if we are aware of it in the first place.
Unfortunately, too many Americans under-inform themselves with media diets that do not cover this sort of story at all. Are your sources covering how Trump’s EPA chief, Lee Zeldin, has already rolled back environmental regulations, putting more mercury in our air and drinking water?
READ MORE: The Guardian, Trump’s EPA announces major rollbacks to power plant pollution limits
Share other great 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.
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