The Dictatorship

No, Democrats don’t need their ‘own Joe Rogan.’ No one does.

Published

1 year ago

November 20, 2024

No, Democrats don’t need their ‘own Joe Rogan.’ No one does.

Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, my collection of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.

Content creator crisis

A new Pew Research study finds that 21% of American adults regularly get their news from “news influencers” on social media — content creators who, according to Pew, skew more conservative. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, the number jumped to 37%.

Yikes. I imagine this report will only hasten the calls for Democrats to invest in “their own Joe Rogan” — a desperate quest to mirror the conservative media ecosystem that I don’t think is actually feasible, given that social platforms tend to favor Rogan-esque cynicism and conspiracism (not facts or messages of unity, which Democrats often try to rally around).

No, this turn toward social media influencers for news is a crisis. A crisis of doubt in traditional media platforms — justifiable, at times — that has caused many Americans to turn to content creators on social media platforms that, frankly, are widely used to deceive and radicalize their users.

In this pieceI propose some ways to stem the crisis I’m talking about. Spoiler alert: None of them require a tremendous financial investment in liberal content creators (as much as that might benefit me personally).

I don’t think Democrats need their own Joe Rogan. I don’t think anyone needs their own Rogan, which is to say: The number of Americans getting their news from social media platforms is a problem. And doubling down on it isn’t a solution.

X’s new CFO

Elon Musk’s X has hired a new chief financial officer: media executive Mahmoud Reza Banki, who received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump in 2021 after making false statements to federal officials.

Farrow talks phone surveillance

Journalist Ronan Farrow’s new HBO documentary, “Surveilled,” explores the frighteningly pervasive world of high-tech surveillance — and the ways that technology has been weaponized by repressive governments.

Watch his interview with BLN’s Jake Tapper below, in which he explains how easily phones can be hacked and used as surveillance tools.

AI’s big impact on the election

For The Atlantic, writer Matteo Wong highlighted how images generated by artificial intelligence — including ones shared by Trump and Musk — appear to have had a bigger impact on the 2024 election than previously realized. One reason? Many of these images — no matter how fake they looked — were used to affirm propaganda their promoters had already been spreading.

DOJ wants Google to sell Chrome

Bloomberg reports that the Justice Department is expected to ask a judge to require that Google sell off its Chrome browser after the company lost an antitrust lawsuit back in August.

The mad men of the ‘manosphere’

Over at Jezebel, writer Kylie Chung has a detailed explainer on the “m anosphere,” the toxic online sector known for its misogynistic bile. Chung explains how chronically online men are steered toward this content.

“Now, thanks to social media algorithms, content about weightlifting, video games, MMA fighting, and dating has become a pipeline to the right,” Chung writes.

Conservatives’ FOIA-driven purity tests

As they seek to purge civil servants from the federal government, conservatives are using records requests under the Freedom of Information Act to sift through emails and text messages of government employees, looking for things like references to diversity, equity and inclusion programs and climate change.

The Verge’s EIC issues a grim warning

“To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience.”

That’s a quote from The Verge’s editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, who sounds just as concerned as I am about the Big Tech oligarchy that has formed around Trump and the risks it poses to the free press.

Read more from Patel’s interview with media journalist Oliver Darcy here.

Ya’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer. He’s a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

The Dictatorship

Trump’s border czar says ‘small’ security force will remain in Minnesota after enforcement drawdown

Published

23 hours ago

February 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump’s border czar says ‘small’ security force will remain in Minnesota after enforcement drawdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday that more than 1,000 immigration agents have left Minnesota’s Twin Cities area and hundreds more will depart in the days ahead as part of the Trump administration’s drawdown of its immigration enforcement surge.

A “small” security force will stay for a short period to protect remaining immigration agents and will respond “when our agents are out and they get surrounded by agitators and things got out of control,” Homan told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He did not define “small.”

He also said agents will keep investigating fraud allegations as well as the anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a church service.

“We already removed well over 1,000 people, and as of Monday, Tuesday, we’ll remove several hundred more,” Homan said. “We’ll get back to the original footprint.”

Thousands of officers were sent to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “Operation Metro Surge.” The Department of Homeland Security said it was its largest immigration enforcement operation ever and proved successful. But the crackdown came under increasing criticism as the situation grew more volatile and two U.S. citizens were killed.

People take part in an anti-ICE protest outside the Governors Residence in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Protests became common. A network of residents worked to help immigrants, warn of approaching agents or film immigration officers’ actions. The shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers drew condemnation and raised questions over officers’ conduct, prompting changes to the operation.

Homan announced last week that 700 federal officers would leave Minnesota immediately, but that still left more than 2,000 in the state. He said Thursday that a “significant drawdown” was already underway and would continue through this week.

Homan said enforcement would not stop in the Twin Cities and that mass deportations will continue across the country. Officers leaving Minnesota will report back to their stations or be assigned elsewhere.

When asked if future deployments could match the scale of the Twin Cities operation, Homan said “it depends on the situation.”

The Dictatorship

Rubio says ‘no reason’ to doubt Navalny was killed by dart frog poison

Published

2 days ago

February 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Feb. 15, 2026, 6:50 PM EST

ByDavid Rohde

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says there is “no reason” to doubt a new report by five European nations that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed in a Russian government prison with poison found in Latin American dart frogs.

A fatal toxin not found naturally in Russia — epibatidine — was “conclusively” discovered in samples of Navalny’s body by a joint investigation conducted by Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, according to a joint statement by the nations on Saturday.

The toxin is only known to exist in poison dart frogs in Central and South America. One species, the phantasmal poison frog, contains a chemical that is 200 times more potent than morphine.

“It’s a troubling report,” Rubio told reporters at a news conference during a visit to Slovakia on Sunday. “We don’t have any reason to question it.”

It was not clear why the United States did not participate in the investigation of Navalny’s death. But the finding comes amid rising support in the Senate for a bill that would impose sweeping new sanctions against the government of Vladimir Putin, which has been opposed by the Trump administration.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted on the closing day of the Munich Security Conference, where Rubio received a standing ovationthat 84 out of 100 senators have signed on to co-sponsor the bill authored by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

“I don’t understand the reluctance to go after Vladimir Putin and what Russia is doing in Ukraine,” Shaheen told a group of reporters. “The failure by the United States to act has extended this war.”

Russian officials have repeatedly denied playing any role in the death of Navalny two years ago in a government-run penal colony in the Arctic. They called the new European report “a Western propaganda hoax,” according to Russia’s state news agency.

The report comes as U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kusher, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are expected to meet with both Russian and Iranian officials on Tuesday in Geneva. The goal of the Russia talks is to reach a peace settlement in Ukraine by a June deadline the administration has set. (Witkoff and Kushner are also set to join a second round of nuclear talks with Iranian officials in Geneva on the same day.)

Critics of Trump, who promised to end the war days after returning to office, say Russia has not been seriously negotiating and is simply playing for time so it can gain ground on the battlefield. Democrats have also expressed concerns over reports that Witkoff has been negotiating business deals during peace talks with Kirill Dmitriev, a former Wall Street banker who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Dmitriev pitched $12 trillion in bilateral economic agreements with the U.S. It is unclear how such large deals could be achieved. The $12 trillion figure is about four times the size of Russia’s 2025 gross domestic product.

A European diplomat whose country has negotiated with Russia in the past told MS NOW that Moscow has repeatedly made such investment offers. But the business entities end up being largely Russian controlled. “They lure you in,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Shaheen expressed skepticism as well.

“I’m concerned about all things Russian in this administration,” Shaheen said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But I’m beginning to become one with respect to Putin and President Trump.”

David Rohde

David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.

The Dictatorship

FBI links glove found near Nancy Guthrie’s home to suspect on video

Published

2 days ago

February 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Feb. 15, 2026, 3:51 PM EST

A glove with DNA found near 84-year-old missing Nancy Guthrie’s home appears to match those worn by a masked person caught on surveillance footage, the FBI said Sunday.

“The FBI received preliminary results yesterday on 2/14 and are awaiting further testing,” the bureau said in a statement. “This process typically takes 24 hours from when the FBI receives DNA.”

The FBI said investigators collected “approximately 16 gloves in various areas near” Guthrie’s house in Tucson, Arizonawhere she was last seen on Jan. 31. Most of those gloves were “searchers’s gloves that they discarded in various areas when they searched the vicinity” but the glove with the “DNA profile recovered is different and appears to match the gloves of the subject in the surveillance video,” the FBI said.

“What we have is a lead here. The glove retrieved would need to have the victim’s DNA or some other forensic material to tie it to the home,” a law-enforcement source familiar with the investigation cautioned. “It must be connected to the home and victim. That would make the glove actual evidence, at this point it’s a lead. A good lead.”

The FBI said said the glove was found in a field approximately two miles from Guthrie’s house. The glove resembles the one on the hand of a person who was captured on porch camera video footage at the home of NBC “Today Show” host Savannah Guthrie’s mother the night she went missing.

The agency said it is awaiting quality control and official confirmation before putting the individual’s profile into the bureau’s national database, which could take up to 24 hours.

The FBI has described the man captured in photographs and on video as approximately 5’9”-5’10” with an average build. In addition to gloves, he was also seen wearing a ski mask and a black, 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack. The agency on Thursday increased its reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction of anyone involved in Guthrie’s disappearance to $100,000.

Guthrie was reported missing by her family on Feb. 1. Sheriff’s deputies also found blood on the front porch that was later confirmed to belong to the network host’s mother. Guthrie’s children, including Savannah, have posted several videos pleading for their mother’s release, agreeing to pay any ransom demanded and asking for help from the public.

Alex Tabet, Marc Santia and Ken Dilanian contributed to this report.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.