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

Missing Ratcliffe messages

The CIA’s chief data officer testified in court last month that he was unable to locate any “substantive messages” from CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s Signal app as part of an ongoing lawsuit stemming from his and other top Trump officials’ use of the messaging app to share highly sensitive U.S. military plans.

According to ABC News:

For the record, all defendants in this lawsuit — including Ratcliffe — were instructed by a judge on March 27 to preserve all Signal messages sent from March 11 to March 15. And several current and former U.S. national security officials told CNN they worry messages Ratcliffe sent in the thread may have damaged the country’s ability to gather intelligence on the Houthis going forward. In light of all that, the missing messages certainly raise eyebrows. American Oversight, the organization that filed the lawsuit, suggested in a statement that the revelation about Ratcliffe’s messages raises questions about whether some in the administration are destroying evidence.

Read more on ABC News.

Database tracking DOGE gets deleted

The Trump administration is being sued over its deletion of an online database meant to track how federal funds are being spent. The nonprofit group that brought the lawsuit, Protect Democracy Project, says the database offered “the only public source of information on how DOGE (Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency) is being funded — information that Congress and journalists have used in reporting and oversight.”

Read more at The Hill.

Zuckerberg takes the stand

Meta’s high-stakes trial, in which the U.S. government has accused Facebook’s parent company of holding a monopoly through its ownership of WhatsApp and Instagram, kicked off on Monday, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stand. The case could determine whether Meta has to spin off any of its social media companies to comply with anti-monopoly laws.

Read more at Reuters.

And check out this recent CNBC interview with Lina Khan, the former Federal Trade Commission chair who oversaw the agency when it first filed the lawsuit against Meta during the Biden administration.

Snooping suspicions

As part of a recent report for The Guardian, federal employees shared their fears that they are being snooped on by Trump administration officials trying to crack down on dissent. According to the paper, the employees fear that Trump appointees “may be snooping on conversations, using software to track computer activity and, possibly, using artificial intelligence to scan for disloyalty or mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) buzzwords.”

Read more at The Guardian.

Immigrants face digital death under Trump administration

I recently wrote about the highly unusual and overtly cruel strategy the Trump administration is using to dehumanize and deter migrants by marking thousands of them as dead in the federal government’s Social Security system to effectively cut them off from obtaining employment or other government services.

Check out my post about it here.

MAGA masculinity and Trump’s tariff war

I also recently appeared on “Alex Witt Reports” to discuss my recent post about the trend of right-wing influencers promoting the idea that Trump’s destructive trade war and efforts to increase manufacturing are good for men — and their dignity — in particular. It’s part of the absurd trend of hypermasculine influencers who have aligned themselves with Trump.

Read my post about it here. And you can watch my conversation with Witt below.

Sen. Wyden’s cyber-related stoppage

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has put a hold on Trump’s nominee to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, saying he won’t release the nomination unless the administration publishes a report on vulnerabilities in the telecommunications industry.

Read more at Reuters.

Palantir plays to the MAGA crowd with ‘meritocracy’-based fellowship

Palantir, a tech company that was co-founded by far-right investor Peter Thiel and whose CEO has been gung-ho about using the company’s potentially deadly technologies to aid Donald Trump’s mass deportation and military plansrecently launched a “Meritocracy Fellowship” program in response to the company’s claim that “college is broken” and “meritocracy and excellence are no longer the pursuits of educational institutions.” To be honest, this sounds like little more than a jab at affirmative action policies that promote diversity on college campuses, which right-wingers falsely suggest is antithetical to meritocracy.

Read more about the program at Business Insider.

Un-4chan-ate circumstances

4chan, a forum website popular among far-right extremists, was recently hit with a major hack that has people wondering what — if any — data related to the site may have been exposed.

Read more at The Verge.

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

Late last week, the Trump administration officially denied the state of Washington’s request for disaster aid to assist with recovery efforts related to last year’s “bomb cyclone” that killed at least two people and damaged hundreds of homes and businesses.

The administration sent a letter Friday responding to former Gov. Jay Inslee, who filed the request for $34 million to the Federal Emergency Management Agency before his term ended and he was replaced by current Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson. The letter says:

The letter doesn’t give a specific reason to justify why the administration thinks the funds aren’t warranted. The Fox affiliate in Seattle reports that the cyclone ravaged local infrastructure like highways, utilities and public electrical power systems and that thousands of damage reports have been filed.

Ferguson said he plans to appeal the decision:

Denying federal disaster aid to areas led by Democrats has become a trend for President Donald Trump — one that dates to 2018, when his first administration withheld aid from Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Last week, the administration notified North Carolina that it would no longer fully reimburse the state for funds it’s spending to recover from the devastation it suffered from Hurricane Helene last year. The move is particularly ironic considering that Trump’s pitch to North Carolina voters hinged on disinformation about the purported lack of federal aid. Democratic Gov. Josh Stein denounced the moveand North Carolina is also appealing the decision.

Local outlet NC Newsline explained that “the agency’s decision means that North Carolina will lose a critical share of federal assistance in what’s expected to be a years-long rebuild process.” The Trump administration had previously refused to approve a recovery budget for the city of Asheville unless officials cut references to a program to help minority- and women-owned businesses.

To put some context around these recent decisions, Trump has openly stated his desire to withhold disaster aid from California (led by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom) for the recent Los Angeles County wildfires recovery unless officials agreed to institute restrictive voting laws in the state.

Trump has also floated the idea of shutting down FEMA entirelya plan that risks leaving states without critical aid in the wake of natural catastrophes. But in lieu of a complete shutdown, he and his administration seem content to weaponize FEMA and deny residents in Democratic-led states the recovery funds they desperately need.

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

Americans have come to rely on the promise that every citizen has the right to have their voice heard. But the U.S. House of Representatives largely erased that promise last week when, in a 220-208 vote, it passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. Don’t be fooled by its heroic-sounding name. This legislation aims to disenfranchise millions of voters, many of them people of color and women, and further concentrate power among those who are already powerful.

This legislation aims to disenfranchise millions of voters, many of them people of color and women.

The law would require people looking to register to vote to provide passports or birth certificates — and, for citizens who don’t have those documents at their disposal, acquiring them costs both money and time.  Thus, the so-called SAVE Act would undermine voting rights and block some citizens from the ballot box. The Center for American Progress reports that approximately 146 million American citizens don’t own a passport. But that’s not all. The bill would make it harder for the tens of millions of spouses who have changed their last names through marriage to vote because, for example, the name on their birth certificate won’t match the name they use to vote. And the SAVE Act’s in-person registration requirement would force roughly 60 million rural residents to drive far from home to become eligible to vote.

What will be next? Will we soon be forced to take literacy tests to prove our right to vote? Will voters be forced to pay a poll tax to cast their ballots?

Despite the lies that some elected leaders have told, the SAVE Act would do nothing more than legalize voter suppression.

Let’s be clear. Voter fraud is a myth. There is little, if any, credible evidence that widespread voter fraud exists. The justification for the law is rooted in a divisive lie — a dog whistle — that our elections are not secure. They are.

The SAVE Act is the latest in a string of voter suppression efforts that have been growing longer in recent years.

Last-minute polling place changes, polling place closures that result in predictably long lines, and voter roll purges — the kinds of things that the Voting Rights Act used to protect against — are all forms of voter suppression, and those acts of suppression disproportionately affect communities of color. The obvious goal? To deter Black and brown voters from casting their ballots.

All around the country, the NAACP has been fighting attempts to silence voters. We refuse to sit idly by as the House tries to return this country to a time when the right to vote depended on being white, being male, and owning property.

For the last three months, Congress and the Trump-Musk administration have shown the American people it cannot be trusted.

Americans have watched political leaders recklessly gut key jobs from our federal workforcethreaten Social Security and Medicaid and bully our allies around the world. Trump posting “This is a great time to buy,” and then announcing a suspension of certain tariffs that caused the stock market to spike, prompted questions about whether he was manipulating the stock market. Meanwhile, millions of American families are struggling to put food on the table.

The SAVE Act is not being proposed in isolation. It’s part of a larger undoing of our democracy.

So it’s not surprising that the House passed this legislation that, under the pretense of preserving democracy, would have the effect of silencing millions of voters across the country. The SAVE Act is not being proposed in isolation. It’s part of a larger undoing of our democracy.

We cannot allow the right to vote — our means of shaping policies and our future — to be taken away from us. There is still time to protect voting rights.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Actwhich Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., has already reintroduced, would ensure American citizens have an equal opportunity to participate in our democracy. And it would prevent states with a history of discriminatory voting practices from implementing new laws or changes that could harm voters.

The NAACP calls on Congress to ditch the SAVE Act and pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act instead.

The Lewis act aims to restore and strengthen protections against voter discrimination that were eroded by the Supreme Court in 2013. By restoring key elements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and addressing loopholes exploited to undermine fair elections, the act will ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in our democracy instead of blocking American citizens from voting.

The SAVE Act would not result in fair elections. But the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named for the late U.S. representative from Georgia and civil rights activist who put his life on the line in Selma, Ala., for voting rights for all, would. Lewis correctly believed that every citizen — regardless of political party or background — has a voice that deserves to be heard at the ballot box. The right to vote is one of the most sacred principles of our nation. Protecting voting rights is not a partisan issue — it’s an American one.

The SAVE Act furthers a partisan lie that voter fraud is threatening our democracy. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, by contrast, recognizes that voter suppression is the threat and promotes the nonpartisan idea that more people voting is the path to more democracy.

Rather than passing a bill that pretends to save our democracy, let’s actually do something to save it before it is too late.

Derrick Johnson

Derrick Johnson serves as president and CEO of the NAACP, a title he has held since October 2017. Under hisleadership, the NAACP has undertaken such efforts as the 2018 “Log Out” Facebook Campaign  after reports of Russian hackers targeting African Americans, the Jamestown-to-Jamestown Partnership, marking the 400th year enslaved Africans touched the shores of America and 2020’s We are Done Dying Campaign, exposing the inequities embedded into the American healthcare system and the country at large. He is dedicated to advocating on behalf of the Black community and all those who are affected by systemic oppression and prejudice.