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  31. <title>Tips For Stepping Back From Screens and Starting a New Hobby</title>
  32. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/tips-for-stepping-back-from-screens-and-starting-a-new-hobby/</link>
  34. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Whowhatwhy Editors]]></dc:creator>
  35. <pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 17:41:14 +0000</pubDate>
  36. <category><![CDATA[Editors' Picks]]></category>
  37. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101804</guid>
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  39. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image1-13.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="tech, digital world, screen time overload, analog alternatives, hobbies, happiness" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" data-smartcrop-focus="[36,48]" /><p>PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.</p>
  40. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/tips-for-stepping-back-from-screens-and-starting-a-new-hobby/">Tips For Stepping Back From Screens and Starting a New Hobby</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  41. ]]></description>
  42. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image1-13.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="tech, digital world, screen time overload, analog alternatives, hobbies, happiness" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[36,48]" /><h3><b>Tips For Stepping Back From Screens and Starting a New Hobby (Maria)</b></h3>
  43. <p>The author <a href="https://apnews.com/article/finding-a-hobby-screen-alternatives-ef4c9320e1ede4a0b3ce04f5f4b149dd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “‘Last year, Rachel Martin came to a startling realization: She spent most of her free time staring at screens. Watching TV, playing video games and creating digital art, Martin, 33, sometimes spent more than 12 hours a day looking at screens. She longed for an analog alternative. After some trial and error, she found one: journaling with fountain pens and specialty inks&#8230;‘Step one is experiencing positivity when you engage in these activities,’ Rutgers Associate Prof. Gabriel Tonietto said. ‘The consequences are feeling more relaxed, feeling less stressed, feeling happier.’”</p>
  44. <h3><b>Sonia Sotomayor, in Seattle Area, Talks About What Gives Her Hope (Reader Steve) </b></h3>
  45. <p>From <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sonia-sotomayor-in-seattle-area-talks-about-what-gives-her-hope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>The Seattle Times</i></a>: “But, she said, she remained hopeful. She talked about American history — it took a century after the country’s founding to end slavery. It took another century after that to end legal segregation. Women can vote today, she said, because other women fought and died for the right. ‘We have people who are courageous enough in every generation to get up and fight the battle,’ she said. ‘That’s what gives me hope, that there are good people in the world.’”</p>
  46. <h3><b>It’s Time for Democrats To Get Behind Mamdani — Or Risk Getting Left Behind (Reader Jim) </b></h3>
  47. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-1281444738"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-3673663963" data-whowh-trackid="97784" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97784" data-cfpw="97784"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=champion" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="Champion-truth"><img decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Champion-truth.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97784 );</script></div><p>The author <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/09/14/democrats-zohran-mamdani-poll-ny-mayor-race/86096756007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “Democrats are once again failing to meet the moment and risk being behind the times – something that will hurt them as they try to rally the party for the 2026 midterm elections. Mamdani is clearly doing something right; it would be good for the Democratic Party to acknowledge that, even run with it. The poll found that two things are working in Mamdani’s favor: his likability and his stances on issues they care about. Those two factors are areas where the Democrats need a boost.”</p>
  48. <h3><b>Humans Are Altering the Seas. Here’s What the Future Ocean Might Look Like (Laura) </b></h3>
  49. <p>The author <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/04/climate/ocean-water-temperatures-sea-levels.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jU8.BK86.FwO9yGdEMqfq&amp;smid=url-share" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “Among the other ecosystems at high risk are sea grass meadows, rocky intertidal zones and mangrove forests. These parts of the ocean, near shore, are the ones people most depend on. They provide natural defenses against storm damage. And the vast majority of commercial and recreational fishing, which together support more than two million jobs in the United States alone, takes place in shallower coastal waters.”</p>
  50. <h3><b>France Says Apple Notified Victims of New Spyware Attacks (Sean) </b></h3>
  51. <p>From <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/11/france-says-apple-notified-victims-of-new-spyware-attacks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>TechCrunch</i></a>: “France’s national cybersecurity response unit said on Thursday that it was aware that Apple on September 3 sent a new notification to affected customers whose Apple devices may have been hacked. The cybersecurity unit said receiving a threat notification means that at least one of the devices linked to a customer’s iCloud account ‘has been targeted and would be potentially compromised.’ It’s unclear how many individuals, including in France, received the September 3 threat notification, which spyware was used, or when the intrusions began.”</p>
  52. <h3><b>At the Bus Stop, a Living Ad for Nature (Russ) </b></h3>
  53. <p>The author <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2025/green-bus-stops-shelters-bees-heat/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “Green roofs on buildings have become even more common in many cities around the world, and those larger surfaces stand to have more environmental impact than a relatively tiny bus shelter. But roof plantings are often out of view from the street. Cultivating a garden on a bus shelter can influence how people perceive the world as they make their way around town.”</p>
  54. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/tips-for-stepping-back-from-screens-and-starting-a-new-hobby/">Tips For Stepping Back From Screens and Starting a New Hobby</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  55. ]]></content:encoded>
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  61. <title>Main Takeaway From Kirk Killing: Maybe It’s the Social Media Manipulation</title>
  62. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/main-takeaway-from-kirk-killing-maybe-its-the-social-media-manipulation/</link>
  64. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Russ Baker]]></dc:creator>
  65. <pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:00:19 +0000</pubDate>
  66. <category><![CDATA[US Politics]]></category>
  67. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101780</guid>
  68.  
  69. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Memorial_Charlie_Kirk_Orem_UT_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Memorial, Charlie Kirk, Orem, UT" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,53]" /><p>Moments of national hysteria like the present require some sense of how we got here.</p>
  70. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/main-takeaway-from-kirk-killing-maybe-its-the-social-media-manipulation/">Main Takeaway From Kirk Killing: Maybe It’s the Social Media Manipulation</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  71. ]]></description>
  72. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Memorial_Charlie_Kirk_Orem_UT_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Memorial, Charlie Kirk, Orem, UT" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,53]" /><p>Charlie Kirk’s brand of fomentation was enabled by heavily subsidized social media.  </p>
  73. <p>Kirk was known and admired by his fans for his in-person appearances before the young audiences he cultivated. But the reality is that without <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/13/charlie-kirk-turning-point-politics-debates/">the great resonance of his social media accounts</a> — and deliberate amplification of them by others with their own agendas, including, we know, <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/10/25/turning-point-usa-seeks-43-million-to-escalate-the-rights-culture-war-in-american-schools/">wealthy interests</a> — he almost certainly would not have achieved the fame (and fortune) that made his killing not just a national story but a potentially seismic political event.</p>
  74. <p>Almost everyone you know by name today — like Kirk — is famous because of algorithmic promotion, not merit. Thoughtful, reasonable voices rarely break through.</p>
  75. <p>Because it is most often those stoking animosity who are given the biggest platform. </p>
  76. <p>The lack of real moderation of content (screening posts for content deemed dangerous according to a set of established criteria) on social media is no accident. Donald Trump has weaponized this chaos, his allies have run with it, and the supposedly “neutral” platforms turn a blind eye, allowing hate, lies, and threats to spread unchecked in their pursuit of profit and influence. </p>
  77. <p><b>***</b></p>
  78. <p>Kirk’s admirers truly consider him moderate, applauding <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/09/12/us-news/young-conservatives-reveal-what-charlie-kirk-meant-to-them-and-how-they-will-keep-his-message-alive/">his purported open-mindedness, </a>although his entire image rested on a staged debate machine that shut out capable opponents<a href="https://nypost.com/2025/09/12/us-news/young-conservatives-reveal-what-charlie-kirk-meant-to-them-and-how-they-will-keep-his-message-alive/">.</a> But take a look at the following quotes and judge for yourself:</p>
  79. <p class="indented"">Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation. … <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-penalty-public-executions-1873073">What age should you start to see public executions</a>? [His co-host suggested 12 years old, and Kirk apparently agreed. Afterward, Kirk asserted that exposing children to the sight of executions would bring down crime.]</p>
  80. <p class="indented"">If I<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/mike-freeman/2024/02/04/charlie-kirk-black-pilot-comment-tuskegee-airmen/72412319007/"> see a Black pilot</a>, I’m going to be like, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.” </p>
  81. <p class="indented"">If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/heather-mac-donald-charlie-kirk-white-civilization-has-decided-engage-great">moronic Black woman</a>, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because [of] affirmative action?</p>
  82. <p class="indented"">Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson. &#8230; They’re saying “I’m only here because of affirmative action.” Yeah, we know. You <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexalisitza/viral-charlie-kirk-quotes">do not have the brain processing power</a> to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot. <i>[Referring to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), a Yale graduate with a J.D. from the University of Virginia, after she said she got into schools thanks to affirmative action </i>— <i>but did not graduate because of it] </i>… We know! It’s very obvious to us that you were not smart enough to be able to get in on your own.</p>
  83. <p class="indented"">The American <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-american-democrat-party-hates-country-they-wanna-see-it-collapse-they">Democrat Party hates this country</a>. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.</p>
  84. <p class="indented"">The <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-pushes-great-replacement-conspiracy-they-wont-stop-until-you-and-your">great replacement strategy</a>, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different. … They hate those of you that live in rural and small America. They hate those of you that own land and have guns and believe in a better country, and they have a plan to try and get rid of you. … You believe in God, country, family, faith, and freedom, and they won’t stop until you and your children and your children’s children are eliminated. </p>
  85. <p class="indented"">I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-worth-have-cost-unfortunately-some-gun-deaths-every-single-year-so-we">some gun deaths every single year</a> so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.</p>
  86. <p>More and more people will be exposed to Kirk’s “wisdom.” Since his death, his social media accounts have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/13/media/charlie-kirk-erika-social-media-tpusa-followers">gained millions of followers.</a> </p>
  87. <p>Kirk’s wife Erika has proved equally adept at utilizing social media, posting <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirks-widow-erika-weeps-over-his-casket-in-emotional-photos/">graphic images</a> of her over her husband’s open casket and making ominous <a href="https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2025/09/12/erika-kirk/">threats</a>: “You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country.” </p>
  88. <p>Robert F. Kennedy Jr., never to be underestimated, apparently <a href="https://x.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1965891715119939701">thought</a> Kirk was in a category of greatness comparable, say, to RFK’s namesake and father:  </p>
  89. <p class="indented"">Once again, a bullet has silenced the most eloquent truth teller of an era. My dear friend Charlie Kirk was our country’s relentless and courageous crusader for free speech. We pray for Erika and the children. Charlie is already in paradise with the angels. We ask his prayers for our country.</p>
  90. <p>Shooters are also created by social media. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us/colorado-high-school-shooter-identified.html">Colorado high school shooter</a> is yet another example of a violent actor “radicalized” by what he saw and read online. (At the time I’m writing this, we don’t yet know what motivated Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, but we do know he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smcmjod2Vmk">comes from a Republican Mormon family</a> of MAGA supporters who were steeped in assault weapon culture. </p>
  91. <p>He’s also been described as being <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=extremely+online">extremely online</a> — a term for those who are so deeply immersed in the online world that it displaces their real-world orientation — and possibly a “<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-memes-meaning">groyper</a>.” The swirling uncertainty did little to impede the drive, <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-charlie-kirk-killing-utah-political-violence-rcna230710">led by Trump himself</a>, to exploit the killing for maximum political advantage.</p>
  92. <figure id="attachment_101782" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101782" style="width: 900px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-featured-single@2x wp-image-101782" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Charlie_Kirk_Donald_Trump_West_Palm_Beach_3x2.jpg-900x600.jpg" alt="Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, West Palm Beach" width="900" height="600" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-101782" class="wp-caption-text">Kirk and Donald Trump campaigning at the Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, FL, July 15, 2023. Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/53067467229/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>
  93. <p>And in an incident that deserves much more attention than it got, a SWAT team in Seattle burst into a suburban home and arrested a <a href="https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/pierce-county-sheriff-investigators-stopped-13-year-old-attacking-a-school/281-4d27870c-dbd8-469c-959a-371f01b2a0d9">13-year-old</a> who had a huge cache of weapons and ammunition. The youth had gone onto social media to praise past school shooters and say he couldn’t wait till it was his turn. </p>
  94. <figure id="attachment_101783" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101783" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-featured-single wp-image-101783" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Seattle_Juvenile_Firearms_Stash_597x581.jpg-450x438.png" alt="Seattle, juvenile, firearms stash" width="450" height="438" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-101783" class="wp-caption-text">Stash of semi-automatic firearms seized from Seattle home of a 13-year-old linked to the guns by social media postings. Photo credit: <a href="https://x.com/KING5Seattle/status/1965239248572858503" target="_blank" rel="noopener">KING 5 News / Twitter</a></figcaption></figure>
  95. <p>Some lives matter more than others. Kirk’s life apparently mattered more to his supporters — and to the media, based on the coverage — than the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/us/minnesota-assassination-charges.html">lives of a Democratic Minnesota legislator</a> and her husband, and the wounding of another Democratic lawmaker and his wife or the children who were shot the same day in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/13/gun-violence-charlie-kirk-colorado-school-shooting">Colorado</a>. </p>
  96. <p>Somehow, those Democrats and children shot by unhinged weaponized extremists weren’t worth mentioning in Trump’s speech seeking to blame all violence on the left.</p>
  97. <p>The obvious problem and common thread: easy access to deadly weapons and training throughout this country. Yet the solution, which is to change that, is somehow never seriously considered. </p>
  98. <p>Nor is culpability. The GOP-dominated Utah Legislature had just <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2025/09/11/utah-campus-gun-law-breaking-down/">made it <i>easier </i>to bring weapons</a> onto campuses. Why no hue and cry over that? Why no demand that the Utah Republicans justify their action? </p>
  99. <figure id="attachment_101784" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101784" style="width: 900px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-featured-single@2x wp-image-101784" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Charlie_Kirk_Kyle_Rittenhouse_2021_AmericaFest_3x2.jpg-900x600.jpg" alt="Charlie Kirk, Kyle Rittenhouse, 2021 AmericaFest" width="900" height="600" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-101784" class="wp-caption-text">Kirk and Kyle Rittenhouse speaking with attendees at the AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, AZ, December 20, 2021. Photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/51775521428" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>
  100. <p>Meanwhile, what about MSNBC’s craven <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/msnbc-fires-matthew-dowd-charlie-kirk-shooting">firing of Matthew Dowd</a> for his accurate analysis of Kirk’s impact? </p>
  101. <p>It was okay to insult Jimmy Carter right after he died; or to joke on Fox News about a savage attack on Paul Pelosi; or, like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/politics/mike-lee-minnesota-assassination-democrats.html">mock the assassinations</a> of a prominent Democratic Minnesota legislator and her husband (“this is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way”).</p>
  102. <p>But Dowd is fired for noting that Kirk’s main function was to stoke animosity? When in fact Kirk constantly invoked images and language that fostered hate, from referring to “prowling Blacks” to advancing the “Great Replacement Strategy” theory, where Democrats want to see white people replaced as a means of securing more votes and ultimate power. </p>
  103. <p>Obviously the shooting was horrendous but… such a glaring double standard to can Dowd? And not just Dowd, but <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-social-media-posts-2129536">a host of others</a> who have been fired for being insufficiently “respectful” of Kirk’s sanctified memory — in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/09/13/nx-s1-5538476/charlie-kirk-jobs-target-social-media-critics-resign">a witch hunt that keeps gathering steam</a>. So much for the “free speech” that is being MAGA-touted as Kirk’s immortal legacy.</p>
  104. <p>But apparently it’s OK to call, on-air, for the homeless and mentally disturbed to be terminated (as in, <i>permanently</i>) by “involuntary lethal injection or something, just kill ‘em.” That is if you’re Fox News’s Brian “Final Solution” Kilmeade, whose co-hosts stare blankly into the camera in apparent indifference to, or agreement with, the unspeakable, and whose bosses haven’t even cleared their throats. Kilmeade has <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5502547-fox-news-host-apologizes-homeless-remark/">apologized</a> for his “insensitivity” and moved on — still employed, unlike Dowd and co.</p>
  105. <p>Possibly Kilmeade got his inspiration from Trump who, a few years ago, said of the disabled, “maybe those kinds of people<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/us/politics/donald-trump-nephew-book-fred-trump.html#:~:text=The%20president%20%E2%80%9Cseemed%20engaged%2C%20especially,searching%20for%20someone%20to%20blame."> should just die</a>,” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.” And when Trump’s nephew asked him for help with the medical expenses incurred by his disabled son, Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/us/politics/donald-trump-nephew-book-fred-trump.html#:~:text=The%20president%20%E2%80%9Cseemed%20engaged%2C%20especially,searching%20for%20someone%20to%20blame.">replied</a>, “I don’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”</p>
  106. <p>Let’s hope that being liberal is never considered a disability.</p>
  107. <p>*** </p>
  108. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-2915796780"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-371129145" data-whowh-trackid="97785" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97785" data-cfpw="97785"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=free" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="free the truth promo"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/frame_7__1_-1.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97785 );</script></div><p>And speaking of ways to die in America, it’s worth noting that on Friday the Trump administration proposed ending a program that requires coal-fired power plants, industrial factories, and oil refining facilities to report their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/climate/epa-emissions-data-collection-halt.html">planet-warming pollution</a> to the federal government — pollution that kills hundreds of thousands every year.   </p>
  109. <p>In other words, the right is, understandably, outraged by the death of one particular person who was an ally — but, bafflingly, they’re just fine with making the planet uninhabitable for all human beings.</p>
  110. <p>One other thing: As of Sunday, September 14, 2025, 10:00 p.m. EDT, the number of gun-related homicides and accidental killings <a href="https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/">for this year</a> is 10,488. </p>
  111. <p>But the day isn’t over yet.</p>
  112. <hr />
  113. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/main-takeaway-from-kirk-killing-maybe-its-the-social-media-manipulation/">Main Takeaway From Kirk Killing: Maybe It’s the Social Media Manipulation</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  114. ]]></content:encoded>
  118. </item>
  119. <item>
  120. <title>Don’t Want to Be Called Fascist? Stop Acting Like One</title>
  121. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/dont-want-to-be-called-fascist-stop-acting-like-one/</link>
  123. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Klaus Marre]]></dc:creator>
  124. <pubDate>Sun, 14 Sep 2025 11:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
  125. <category><![CDATA[US Politics]]></category>
  126. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101763</guid>
  127.  
  128. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Stephen_Miller_Joseph_Goebbels_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Joseph Goebbels, Stephen Miller" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,30]" /><p>It looks as though Charlie Kirk was murdered by yet another young, white, disturbed male who was acting alone. And yet, Republicans are gearing up to use the assassination to silence their opponents.</p>
  129. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/dont-want-to-be-called-fascist-stop-acting-like-one/">Don’t Want to Be Called Fascist? Stop Acting Like One</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  130. ]]></description>
  131. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Stephen_Miller_Joseph_Goebbels_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Joseph Goebbels, Stephen Miller" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,30]" /><p>Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk at the hands of yet another young, white, male shooter whose motives are <i>entirely*</i> unclear at this point, Republicans were quick to point fingers at Democrats for creating a hostile atmosphere by calling Donald Trump and his supporters Nazis, fascists, and far-right. This, they proclaimed, must stop… or else.</p>
  132. <p>We gotta be honest, trying to dictate to Americans what they can and can’t say, and threatening them with consequences if they don’t comply, sounds like some real fascist-level stuff.</p>
  133. <p>This is especially true if the people who are supposed to be cowed into silence in this way are the ones pointing out that Trump and his supporters are trying to turn the United States into an authoritarian regime.</p>
  134. <p>As for their resistance to Nazi comparisons, we get it. <i>Nobody</i> likes to be called a Nazi. People who aren’t Nazis (or think they are not) don’t like it because the Nazis were the worst. And people who <i>are</i> Nazis don’t like it because it makes it more difficult for them to do Nazi stuff because nobody likes Nazis. </p>
  135. <p>Although, to be fair, a <a href="https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Views_on_Hitler_poll_results.pdf">plurality of GOP voters</a> (41 percent) said before last year’s election that they would vote for somebody who said Adolf Hitler did some good things, which is more than the combined number of Republicans who said this would get them to vote for that candidate’s opponent (19 percent) or who would stay home and not cast a ballot in that race (17 percent). </p>
  136. <p>If you are a regular <i>WhoWhatWhy</i> reader, then you will know that we have written extensively about this topic (and if you are not but want to be, you can sign up to one of our newsletters <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/newsletters/">here</a>). </p>
  137. <p>Earlier this year, we argued that, while Trump’s supporters may not be Nazis (and that <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/opinion/corruption-over-cruelty-why-trump-is-no-hitler/">the president himself fortunately isn’t like Hitler at all</a>), <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/trump-supporters-may-not-be-nazis-but-they-would-have-made-good-ones/">they would have made good ones</a>, which applies even more to <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/opinion/imagine-a-world-in-which-stephen-miller-gets-to-do-whatever-he-wants/">some of the white nationalists who play key roles in his administration</a>.</p>
  138. <p>But we’ll get to Stephen Miller in a moment.</p>
  139. <p>The main takeaway here is that the similarities between the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany and of MAGA in today’s United States are striking.</p>
  140. <p>In large part, that’s because both Trump and Hitler used the same authoritarian playbook to seize and cement power.</p>
  141. <p>But there are also ways in which the parallels are simply eerie. The aftermath of Kirk’s tragic death is shaping up to be one of those.</p>
  142. <p>And that brings us to a guy named Horst Wessel (and, to be clear, this is not a comparison between the two men themselves but rather their deaths and what came/comes next).</p>
  143. <p>Wessel was an early supporter of the Nazis. He joined the party in 1926 and was a member of its paramilitary wing. In 1930, he was shot in the head by a Communist and died in the hospital a few days later (as opposed to this week’s assassin, the killer back then actually was a known far-left street thug).</p>
  144. <p>Up to that point, this wasn’t an overly remarkable story. Political violence in the Weimar Republic was off the charts at that time and clashes between Nazis and Communists in the streets of Berlin and elsewhere were a common occurrence.</p>
  145. <p>What happened next, however, was. </p>
  146. <p>Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief, turned Wessel into a martyr behind whom he wanted the Nazis to rally. “A nation only honors itself when it honors its dead,” Goebbels said in 1933 about Wessel. “One man rises above any movement as a symbol, and that movement then does well to keep this symbol whole and pure.” </p>
  147. <p>And Goebbels certainly did that. </p>
  148. <p>A poem that the deceased had composed became the lyrics for the official fight song of the Nazis (and later the second anthem of the Third Reich); the Berlin district in which he was killed was renamed into Horst Wessel City; monuments were erected in his honor (including in the Dachau concentration camp); and streets, schools, and squares throughout Germany were named after him.</p>
  149. <p>Goebbels added that Wessel was “aware of the bitter taste of death, but he accepted it because it was necessary for Germany and because it was necessary for the German people.”</p>
  150. <p>Now, nearly a century later, another authoritarian movement and a new demagogue are getting ready to turn Charlie Kirk into a martyr behind whom the MAGA movement can rally, and whose death can be used to crack down on those who oppose it.</p>
  151. <p>Which brings us to Stephen Miller. </p>
  152. <p>On Friday night, he went on Fox News to do just that. “I have not shared this before with anybody, but the last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven, was, he said, that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” he told Sean Hannity, the face of the propaganda outlet. </p>
  153. <p>Well, that’s convenient, Stephen.</p>
  154. <p>Mind you, while the MAGAverse desperately wants Kirk’s murderer to be a rabid left-winger who was radicalized when Democrats said that Trump and his supporters pose a threat to democracy, there isn’t really any evidence to support that. </p>
  155. <p>But proof is also not required. After all, their movement lives in a reality that the president and Fox News created. That is why a nebulous cabal only known as “they” are being blamed for what happened. </p>
  156. <p>You may recall that <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/the-only-they-them-republicans-like/">“they” were also supposedly trying to kill Trump</a>, even though the would-be assassin from Butler, PA, was another young, white male, and there is still no evidence suggesting that he was radicalized by any left-wing group, ideology, or rhetoric.</p>
  157. <p>Doesn’t matter. To every person on the right, “they” did this — and “they” must pay. </p>
  158. <p>Kirk’s widow Erika also made that clear. “The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God’s merciful love,” she said in a televised speech in which she called her husband a “martyr.”</p>
  159. <p>While we will obviously cut a grieving widow a lot of slack, we cannot stress enough that there is no “they” here. “They” didn’t kill her husband; a 22-year-old man, who by all accounts acted alone, confessed to the murder.</p>
  160. <p>However, with him in custody, who else could be made to pay? </p>
  161. <p>To Miller, the answer to that question is clear. “There is a domestic terrorism movement in this country,” he told Hannity. </p>
  162. <p>Who are these “terrorists”? Miller isn’t overly specific, but we can infer that it is “radical left organizations” that call him a Nazi. </p>
  163. <p>“And my message is, to all of the domestic terrorists in this country spreading this evil hate: you want us to live in fear, we will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law, take away your freedom,” Miller added. </p>
  164. <p>Once again, that sounds awfully fascist. And because it does, we have a pretty good idea what’s going to come next. </p>
  165. <p>First, Republicans will lionize Kirk and castigate anybody who points out that he held some pretty reprehensible views on a wide range of issues.</p>
  166. <p>You can expect the party’s performance artists to come up with all kinds of plans to memorialize Kirk. We’re already seeing this with proposals to have him lie in state or to put a statue of him in the Capitol. </p>
  167. <p>As you may recall, Goebbels calls this “honoring the dead” and finding one man “to rise above the movement as a symbol.” </p>
  168. <p>The more troubling part is what Trump, Miller, and many other rightwing influencers are calling for, which is for the government to target groups they don’t like — even though those have nothing to do with Kirk’s assassination.</p>
  169. <p>But, just like Wessel’s death in 1930, for an authoritarian movement, this is an opportunity that is too good to pass up. </p>
  170. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-2793874221"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-4093447251" data-whowh-trackid="97785" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97785" data-cfpw="97785"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=free" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="free the truth promo"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/frame_7__1_-1.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97785 );</script></div><p>Of course, if we’re wrong and this administration is nothing like the fascists of yesteryear, then Trump, Miller, the talking heads on Fox News, and all those right-wing influencers will surely apologize for their rush to judgment, acknowledge their own role in fomenting political violence with their rhetoric, and urge everybody to take a step back. </p>
  171. <p>If they want to convince us that they’re <i>not</i> a threat to democracy, then they can do <i>that</i>. </p>
  172. <p>Absent that, however, we are going to keep calling a spade a spade… and a fascist a fascist.</p>
  173. <p>*Anybody who claims at this point to know his motive, whether it’s Republicans saying that he was radicalized by left-wing ideas or Democrats suggesting that he was part of a far-right faction of MAGA that felt Kirk didn’t go far enough in his views, is lying and being highly irresponsible.</p>
  174. <hr />
  175. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/dont-want-to-be-called-fascist-stop-acting-like-one/">Don’t Want to Be Called Fascist? Stop Acting Like One</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  176. ]]></content:encoded>
  180. </item>
  181. <item>
  182. <title>Kash Patel and Dan Bongino Practice Performative Policing</title>
  183. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/cartoon/kash-patel-and-dan-bongino-practice-performative-policing/</link>
  185. <dc:creator><![CDATA[DonkeyHotey]]></dc:creator>
  186. <pubDate>Sun, 14 Sep 2025 11:00:20 +0000</pubDate>
  187. <category><![CDATA[Cartoon]]></category>
  188. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101760</guid>
  189.  
  190. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonkeyHotey_Patel_Bongino_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, incompetent FBI leaders" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,28]" /><p>Recent events have revealed the unprofessionalism of the top two law enforcement officers at the FBI.</p>
  191. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/cartoon/kash-patel-and-dan-bongino-practice-performative-policing/">Kash Patel and Dan Bongino Practice Performative Policing</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  192. ]]></description>
  193. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonkeyHotey_Patel_Bongino_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, incompetent FBI leaders" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,28]" /><div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-1182012733"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-1095115267" data-whowh-trackid="97784" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97784" data-cfpw="97784"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=champion" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="Champion-truth"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Champion-truth.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97784 );</script></div><p>For the members of the Trump administration, all that matters is what soundbites they push out through their media accomplices. Attention is the coin of the realm these days and all of Donald Trump’s team of former podcasters, lobbyists, and FOX News hosts understand the assignment. They have to get something in the news every day that either glorifies them — starting with Trump — or casts aspersions on their enemies.  </p>
  194. <p>Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Kash Patel tried to grab headlines first by claiming a suspect was in custody, which turned out not to be true. Then he flew to Utah to claim personal credit for the most successful parts of the investigation. His conduct even <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/13/politics/kash-patel-fbi-leadership-concerns">drew criticism</a> from people in the MAGA coalition. </p>
  195. <p><b>While you’re here enjoying DonkeyHotey’s latest cartoon, please take a moment to read these articles on related topics: </b></p>
  196. <ul>
  197. <li  aria-level="1"><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/republicans-use-kirks-murder-for-anti-free-speech-purge/">Republicans Use Kirk’s Murder for Anti-Free Speech Purge</a></li>
  198. <li  aria-level="1"><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/charlie-kirks-unfortunate-death-and-the-reality-it-reveals/">Charlie Kirk’s Unfortunate Death and the Reality It Reveals</a></li>
  199. <li  aria-level="1"><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/author/donkeyhotey/">Other DonkeyHotey cartoons</a></li>
  200. </ul>
  201. <hr />
  202. <p><i>The cartoon above was created by DonkeyHotey for WhoWhatWhy from these images: Dan Bongino caricature </i><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/54785120691/"><i>(DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0)</i></a><i>, Kash Patel caricature </i><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/54783245233/"><i>(DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0)</i></a><i>, body </i><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_021207-N-6404B-001_Mess_Specialist_takes_aim_at_a_target_through_the_sights_of_a_9_mm_pistol_during_Force_Protection_qualifications_held_while_the_ship_is_underway.jpg"><i>(US Navy / Wikimedia &#8211; PD)</i></a><i>, and background </i><a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/abandoned-warehouse-interior-with-graffiti-31326390/"><i>(Mike Norris / Pexels)</i></a><i>.</i></p>
  203. <hr />
  204. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/cartoon/kash-patel-and-dan-bongino-practice-performative-policing/">Kash Patel and Dan Bongino Practice Performative Policing</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  205. ]]></content:encoded>
  209. </item>
  210. <item>
  211. <title>Saturday Hashtag: ##FacialRecognitionFallout</title>
  212. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/saturday-hashtag-facialrecognitionfallout/</link>
  214. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sean Ogden]]></dc:creator>
  215. <pubDate>Sat, 13 Sep 2025 18:46:40 +0000</pubDate>
  216. <category><![CDATA[Editors' Picks]]></category>
  217. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101750</guid>
  218.  
  219. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image2-1.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="facial recognition, surveillance" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,50]" /><p>Welcome to Saturday Hashtag, a weekly place for broader context. </p>
  220. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/saturday-hashtag-facialrecognitionfallout/">Saturday Hashtag: ##FacialRecognitionFallout</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  221. ]]></description>
  222. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image2-1.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="facial recognition, surveillance" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,50]" /><p>The US government paid <a href="https://www.biometricupdate.com/202509/ice-awards-clearview-ai-9-2m-facial-recognition-contract">$9.2 million</a> to <a href="https://www.clearview.ai/press-room/clearview-ai-ranks-no-710-on-the-2025-inc-5000-list-of-america%E2%80%99s-fastest-growing-private-companies#:~:text=5000%20for%20the%20second%20time,through%20both%20convictions%20and%20exonerations.">Clearview AI</a>, a company that scraped over <a href="https://www.regulatoryoversight.com/2025/04/51-75m-settlement-in-clearview-ai-biometric-privacy-litigation-illustrates-creative-resolution-for-startups-facing-parallel-litigation-and-enforcement-action/">50 billion</a> photos from the internet without consent.</p>
  223. <p>That includes selfies, tagged photos, and images from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, dating apps, and public blogs. If your face has appeared online in the last decade, it’s likely in their system.</p>
  224. <p>Clearview’s tool lets any paying user upload any face and instantly see everywhere that person appears online, in political rallies and posts, family photos, location data, and more.</p>
  225. <p>You never agreed to this. But if you’ve been online, you’re in the face database.</p>
  226. <p>And it’s not just ICE; the FBI, local police, and other government agencies are already using it. <a href="https://www.clearview.ai/press-room/clearview-ai-launches-clearview-consent-companys-first-consent-based-product-for-commercial-uses#:~:text=Practical%20uses%20for%20Clearview%20Consent,all%20with%20the%20customer's%20consent.">Private industry</a> is also using a separate version of the software. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/police-surveillance-and-facial-recognition-why-data-privacy-is-an-imperative-for-communities-of-color/#:~:text=On%20the%20procurement%20side%2C%20Clearview,collect%20and%20process%20personal%20information.">Mass biometric surveillance</a> isn’t a future threat. It’s already a reality.</p>
  227. <h2><b>AI That Recognizes Your Face — and Your Life</b></h2>
  228. <p><a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/clearviews-dangerous-misreading-of-the-first-amendment-could-spell-the-end-of-privacy-laws#:~:text=Secretly%2C%20and%20without%20consent%2C%20a,a%20secret%20warehouse%20of%20housekeys.">Clearview</a> scrapes and stores images to build permanent facial fingerprints, then links them to searchable online profiles. It doesn’t matter if the post is years old or deleted; if it was once public, it has probably been captured.</p>
  229. <p>This isn’t just tech innovation, it’s digital surveillance on a mass scale. A single photo could be used to map out your:</p>
  230. <ul>
  231. <li  aria-level="1">Online presence</li>
  232. <li  aria-level="1">Political affiliations</li>
  233. <li  aria-level="1">Relationship history</li>
  234. <li  aria-level="1">Physical location patterns</li>
  235. <li  aria-level="1">Family and friends network</li>
  236. </ul>
  237. <p>This is less about crime prevention and more about control.</p>
  238. <p>The lack of any <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/08/28/nx-s1-5519756/biometrics-facial-recognition-laws-privacy">federal legislation</a> has motivated 23 state attorneys general to initiate protections.</p>
  239. <p>States with biometric privacy laws (23 total, as of 2025):</p>
  240. <ul>
  241. <li  aria-level="1">Private right of action (individuals can sue): Illinois (Biometric Information Privacy Act, California, Washington</li>
  242. <li  aria-level="1">Attorney general enforcement and explicit biometric laws: Texas, Oregon, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado</li>
  243. <li  aria-level="1">Attorney general enforcement via border comprehensive privacy laws: Utah, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Montana, Delaware, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont, Kentucky, Rhode Island</li>
  244. </ul>
  245. <p>In the <a href="https://natlawreview.com/article/first-bipa-litigation-class-members-receive-equity-clearview-ai">Clearview AI Biometric Information Privacy Act lawsuit</a>, an Illinois federal court gave victims 23 percent ownership in the company instead of cash. The ruling leaves Clearview free to continue its surveillance practices, effectively signaling that privacy laws can be broken so long as you pay for the privilege.</p>
  246. <p>Reactions to the pay-to-play deal reflected broader fears about weakened privacy and unchecked facial recognition use:</p>
  247. <p class="indented">
  248. This shocked me that police can just essentially get this unvetted tool from some random company and download it to their phones and just start using it in active investigations. … All of a sudden, the Department of Homeland Security is getting access to it and officers around the world. — <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23919134/kashmir-hill-your-face-belongs-to-us-clearview-ai-facial-recognition-privacy-decoder">Kashmir Hill</a>, privacy journalist</p>
  249. <p class="indented">
  250. Face recognition technology is a special menace to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security. Our faces are unique identifiers, and most of us expose them everywhere we go. … Taken together, these systems can quickly, cheaply, and easily ascertain where we’ve been, who we’ve been with, and what we’ve been doing. — <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/resisting-menace-face-recognition">Adam Schwartz</a>, the Electronic Frontier Foundation</p>
  251. <h2><b>Who’s Using It and Why It Matters</b></h2>
  252. <p><a href="https://www.clearview.ai/clearview-2-0">Clearview</a> clientele includes:</p>
  253. <ul>
  254. <li  aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_70CMSD21P00000127_7012_-NONE-_-NONE-">DHS/ICE</a> (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)</li>
  255. <li  aria-level="1"><a href="https://cyberscoop.com/feds-spending-on-facial-recognition-tech-continues-unmitigated-despite-privacy-concerns/#:~:text=Privacy-,Feds'%20spending%20on%20facial%20recognition%20tech%20expands%2C%20despite%20privacy%20concerns,up%20to%20$1.5%20million%20dollars.">The FBI</a></li>
  256. <li  aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-local-police-facial-recognition">State and local police agencies</a></li>
  257. </ul>
  258. <p>What began as a tool to fight child exploitation and terrorism is now being quietly normalized for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65057011">routine policing</a>, traffic stops, protester identification, and even low-level investigations.</p>
  259. <h2><b>No Oversight, No Consent</b></h2>
  260. <p>There is currently no <a href="https://www.tcwglobal.com/blog/u.s.-biometric-data-law#:~:text=handling%20biometric%20information.-,Federal%20US%20Biometric%20Data%20Law,data%20will%20be%20used%20for.">federal law</a> regulating the use of facial recognition data in the US. That means:</p>
  261. <ul>
  262. <li  aria-level="1">No public transparency</li>
  263. <li  aria-level="1">No requirement to inform you if your face is scanned</li>
  264. <li  aria-level="1">No legal requirement for consent</li>
  265. <li  aria-level="1">No consistent process to remove your image</li>
  266. </ul>
  267. <p>Laws in places like Illinois (under the<a href="https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Articles?ActID=3004&amp;ChapterID=57"> BIPA</a>) offer some protection, but most Americans are completely exposed.</p>
  268. <h2><b>Your Face, Their Asset</b></h2>
  269. <p>AI Facial recognition is the “<a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/gender-journal/online/volume-xxi-online/the-end-of-anonymity-how-facial-recognition-technology-will-worsen-online-harassment/">end of anonymity</a>,” and Clearview is making that future right now.</p>
  270. <p>Your digital footprint is exposed to relentless invisible threats, not just what you share, but data on your movements and image captures of your face, collected and used without your consent. This constant surveillance imposes a level of <a href="https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-remove-yourself-from-the-internet">vigilance</a> that erodes quality of life for everyone.</p>
  271. <h2><b>What You Can Do About It</b></h2>
  272. <p><b>Check Your </b><a href="https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/state-laws-related-to-digital-privacy"><b>State’s Laws</b></a>: If you live in Illinois, California, or Texas, you may have more rights under biometric privacy laws.</p>
  273. <p><b>Push for Federal Oversight</b>: Civil rights groups like the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology">ACLU</a> and the <a href="https://act.eff.org/action">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a> are pushing for national biometric privacy legislation.</p>
  274. <p><b>Limit Your </b><a href="https://research.com/education/how-to-manage-digital-footprint"><b>Image Footprint</b></a>: Consider adjusting privacy settings, avoiding facial tagging, and minimizing public posts that include your face.</p>
  275. <p><a href="https://krebsonsecurity.com/"><b>Stay</b></a> <a href="https://cdt.org/"><b>Informed</b></a><b>:</b> <a href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/privacy/">Technology</a> moves faster than the law. Surveillance tools can shift from niche to mainstream in mere months — further eroding your <a href="https://privacyrights.org/">privacy</a> without you even realizing it.</p>
  276. <hr />
  277. <h3><b>Facial Recognition and Legal Boundaries: The Clearview AI Case Study</b></h3>
  278. <p>From <a href="https://www.regulatoryoversight.com/2025/06/facial-recognition-and-legal-boundaries-the-clearview-ai-case-study/"><i>Regulatory Insight</i></a>: “In this episode of the <i>Regulatory Oversight</i> podcast, Stephen Piepgrass welcomes David Navetta, Lauren Geiser, and Dan Waltz to discuss the $51.75 million nationwide class settlement involving Clearview AI and its broader implications. The conversation focuses on Clearview AI’s facial recognition software, which has sparked controversy due to its use of publicly available images to generate biometric data.”</p>
  279. <h3><b>ICE To Pay Up To $10 Million For Clearview Facial Recognition To Investigate Agent Assaults</b></h3>
  280. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-1981349610"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-2648712283" data-whowh-trackid="97785" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97785" data-cfpw="97785"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=free" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="free the truth promo"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/frame_7__1_-1.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97785 );</script></div><p>The author <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/08/ice-to-pay-10-million-for-clearview-facial-recognition-to-investigate-agent-assaults/">writes</a>, “As ICE ramps up its attempts to locate and deport undocumented immigrants, it’s faced a massive backlash in some parts of the U.S., including protests and, on occasion, attacks of ICE agents. Now, to identify people who have assaulted agents, ICE has turned to Clearview AI, a provider of a controversial facial recognition technology that compares images of people to a massive database of face images scraped from social media and other public websites.”</p>
  281. <h3><b>US To Share Biometric Data With Chile ‘To Track Criminals,’ Homeland Security’s Noem Says</b></h3>
  282. <p>The author <a href="https://apnews.com/article/chile-us-biometric-data-criminal-homeland-security-noem-941d6e040a920cd453ab5ec2fa7ff021">writes</a>, “The United States will deploy biometric technologies in partnership with Chile to control migration and disrupt criminal networks, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday during a visit to the South American nation. ‘This arrangement is going to serve as a bridge to help Chile and the United States work towards bringing criminals to justice and knowing who is in our countries perpetuating crimes,’ Noem said while signing the preliminary agreement with Chile’s Security Minister Luis Cordero and Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo.”</p>
  283. <h3><b>Linkage Attacks Expose Identity Risks in Public ECG Data Sharing</b></h3>
  284. <p>From <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15850">Cornell University</a>: “The increasing availability of publicly shared electrocardiogram (ECG) data raises critical privacy concerns, as its biometric properties make individuals vulnerable to linkage attacks. Unlike prior studies that assume idealized adversarial capabilities, we evaluate ECG privacy risks under realistic conditions where attackers operate with partial knowledge. …  Our findings underscore the urgent need for privacy-preserving strategies, such as differential privacy, access control, and encrypted computation, to mitigate re-identification risks while ensuring the utility of shared biosignal data in healthcare applications.”</p>
  285. <h3><b>Tracking US State Biometric Privacy Legislation</b></h3>
  286. <p>From <a href="https://www.huschblackwell.com/2025-state-biometric-privacy-law-tracker">Husch Blackwell</a>: “Illinois, Texas, and Washington have passed legislation regulating private entities’ collection and use of biometric information. In 2025, more states are introducing similar bills that address biometric privacy issues. Our interactive map tracks those bills. Click the states to learn more.”</p>
  287. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/saturday-hashtag-facialrecognitionfallout/">Saturday Hashtag: ##FacialRecognitionFallout</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  288. ]]></content:encoded>
  292. </item>
  293. <item>
  294. <title>A Modest Proposal: How Democrats Could Take the House (Before November 2026)</title>
  295. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/a-modest-proposal-how-democrats-could-take-the-house-before-november-2026/</link>
  297. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan D. Simon]]></dc:creator>
  298. <pubDate>Sat, 13 Sep 2025 11:00:48 +0000</pubDate>
  299. <category><![CDATA[US Politics]]></category>
  300. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101741</guid>
  301.  
  302. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Control_of_the_House_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="119th, US House of Representatives, Control, Republicans, Democrats" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[49,49]" /><p>Come in, they said, we’ll give ya shelter from the storm.</p>
  303. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/a-modest-proposal-how-democrats-could-take-the-house-before-november-2026/">A Modest Proposal: How Democrats Could Take the House (Before November 2026)</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  304. ]]></description>
  305. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Control_of_the_House_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="119th, US House of Representatives, Control, Republicans, Democrats" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[49,49]" /><p>Earlier this week, Republican Cyrus Javadi, a member of the Oregon House of Representatives, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/cyrus-javadi-becomes-democrat-leaves-gop-2127109">announced that he was switching parties</a> to join the Democrats. He stated his prime motivation:</p>
  306. <p class="indented"">The Republican Party abandoned the principles that drew me to it in the first place: limited government, fiscal responsibility, free speech, free trade, and, above all, the rule of law.</p>
  307. <p>Such <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_politicians_who_switched_parties_in_office">party flips</a>, which have gone both ways in recent years, are rare, even in ordinary times — and rarer still in this era of hyperpolarization and lockstep party loyalty.</p>
  308. <p>But Javadi’s move got me thinking. About the US House, Election 2026, and — as Jonathan Swift once famously put it in a 1729 satirical essay in which he suggested the poor of Ireland sell their kids to the rich for cooking and eating as a solution to poverty — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal">a modest proposal</a>.<i> </i></p>
  309. <p><i>But, unlike Swift’s, a serious one.</i></p>
  310. <p>Following this week’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/us/politics/james-walkinshaw-virginia-house.html">special election victory</a> and swearing in of Democrat James Walkinshaw (VA-11), the <a href="https://radiotv.house.gov/house-data/party-breakdown">current partisan split</a> of the House is 219 Republican, 213 Democrat. </p>
  311. <p>Another special election <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Special_elections_to_the_119th_United_States_Congress_(2025-2026)">coming up later this month</a>, in which a Democrat is heavily favored, should make it 219–214, with two seats still vacant — one a safe Democratic seat, the other a safe Republican seat, with the Democratic seat slated to be filled first.</p>
  312. <p>At 219–214 (or 220–215), it would take just <i>three </i>Republicans following Javadi’s lead and switching parties for the Democrats to gain the majority, 217–216 (or 218–217). </p>
  313. <p>I doubt it would take them an hour to depose Trump ultra-sycophant Mike Johnson (R-LA) as speaker and then proceed with the taking over of key committees.</p>
  314. <p>That would be a <i>huge </i>shift in federal power — resulting in not only a complete blockage of President Donald Trump’s agenda but also the acquisition of the powers of investigation and subpoena, to be aimed at the corruption and power-grabbing lawlessness of Trump’s executive branch. </p>
  315. <p>Not to overstate it, it could be the last best hope of stopping America’s rapid descent into authoritarianism and worse.</p>
  316. <p>And it could happen <i>now</i>, or soon — long <i>before </i>the 2026 election, which Trump <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/elections/putin-the-election-integrity-whisperer-gives-trump-pointers-for-2026/">is endeavoring</a> to <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/donald-trump-plan-to-rig-2026-midterm-elections-voter-suppression-gerrymandering-certification/">rig by various means</a> in order to keep his wholly owned and operated party in power and to keep his own ever-expanding power unconstrained.</p>
  317. <p>You might ask what could possibly make <i>any </i>of those 219 House Republicans — at a time of military-grade party discipline — jump ship? But bear with me here.</p>
  318. <p>I think it’s fair to rule out all the representatives from “safe” Republican districts — which, thanks to a combination of natural demographic sorting and <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/full-frontal-gerrymandering-trumps-roided-up-play-to-hold-the-house/">ruthless gerrymandering</a> — constitute the vast majority of the 219. </p>
  319. <p><i>But not all.</i></p>
  320. <p>According to an analysis compiled by <a href="https://progressivepunch.org/scores.htm">ProgressivePunch.org</a>, there are 3 GOP House members from districts that lean Democratic, 16 from districts that lean Republican, and 11 from swing districts. That is a total of 30 Republican House members who, as currently handicapped, will face some sort of competitive election in November 2026. </p>
  321. <p>Many in this sizable group are solid MAGA, but at least a few are less gung ho. </p>
  322. <figure id="attachment_101743" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-101743" style="width: 900px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-featured-single@2x wp-image-101743" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Jen-Kiggans-Labor-Day-BBQ-900x600.jpg" alt="Jen Kiggans, Labor Day BBQ, Virginia" width="900" height="600" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-101743" class="wp-caption-text">Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) at Glenn Youngkin’s Labor Day BBQ on September 4, 2023. Photo credit: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jen_Kiggans_9-4-23.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Glenn Youngkin / Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)</a></figcaption></figure>
  323. <h2>Jen Kiggans, Opportunity Knocks!</h2>
  324. <p>To take one example, let’s look at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen_Kiggans">GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans (VA-2)</a>. Kiggans was an appealing candidate, a former Navy helicopter pilot and a geriatric nurse practitioner, who was serving in the Virginia Senate when she ran for the US House seat in 2022. Her district is a classic swing district: She defeated incumbent Democrat Elaine Luria by the slim margin of 3.4 percent (51.6 to 48.2) and was reelected in 2024 by virtually the same slender margin (50.7 to 46.9).</p>
  325. <p>Kiggans is also relatively moderate, as Trump-era Republicans go, earning an overall Progressive Score for her House tenure of 17.03 percent. Which does not seem all that “liberal” or even “moderate,” but which turns out to rank 8th highest among all 219 House Republicans.</p>
  326. <p><i>The Washington Post</i> noted that “[h]er record didn’t always fit neatly along a party line.” For example, she voted to expand nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people and in favor of environmental protection measures.</p>
  327. <p>Like virtually all Republicans, Kiggans has had to tack sharply right in her voting thus far in Trump’s second term, when any departures from strict party discipline — which means total loyalty to Trump — are punished severely, not only by the chamber’s leadership but by threats, made by Trump himself, to field and fund primary opponents. </p>
  328. <p>Earlier this year, before their epic falling out, even Elon Musk got into the act, with broad threats to lavishly <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5133777-elon-musk-threatens-republican-senators/">fund primary opponents</a> against any and all straying congressional Republicans.</p>
  329. <p>So now imagine you’re Jen Kiggans and looking toward the 2026 election. You know it’s going to be tight; you know the <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Virginia_state_government">GOP does not hold trifecta control</a> of Virginia’s state government, so you can forget about <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/23/texas-passes-congressional-map-gerrymander-00519116">Texas-style redistricting</a> coming to your aid; and you know that if you cross Trump at any point you’re likely toast — hit with a primary opponent in addition to whomever the Democrats run against you.</p>
  330. <p>You also know a few other things: 1) The president’s party generally <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/11/13/1136103595/the-midterms-didnt-produce-a-wave-heres-what-thats-meant-historically">loses seats in the midterms</a>, and those losses come from the relatively small batch of swing and lean districts like yours; 2) The Democrats’ lead in the <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/congressional-ballot-voting-intention">generic congressional ballot</a> is hovering between 4 and 5 percent, bad news for Republicans in swing districts; 3) Trump is somewhere between <a href="https://www.cnn.com/polling/approval/trump-polls">10 and 20 points underwater</a> in approval, and that is territory that can turn those ordinary midterm losses into a rout and should make any incumbent from a swing district and the unpopular president’s party, like yourself, very nervous.</p>
  331. <p>It remains to be seen whether Trump’s slow bleed in the polls continues, is stanched and rebounds, or turns into a hemorrhage. But you can see that Trump has shown little or no interest in broadening his appeal beyond his base, while he <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/as-his-popularity-tanks-donald-trump-turns-to-power/">builds more and more power at the expense of his popularity</a>. </p>
  332. <p>As a result of all this, right now your prospects of reelection are likely not much better than 50–50. They’d be at least as good, and probably significantly better, as a Democrat! From a strictly careerist perspective, it’s a great move.</p>
  333. <p>There’s also this: You were a Navy pilot and probably have, privately at least, a very dim view of what Trump is trying to do to the military. You’re likely no fan of the Pentagon purges, political appointments, extrajudicial blowing up of boats, or, for that matter, sexist Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.</p>
  334. <p>And you are a geriatric nurse practitioner and probably have, privately at least, a very dim view of what Trump and his “run wild” anti-vaxxer secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are doing to public health. You’re probably no great fan of Medicaid and Medicare cuts and hospital closures. Their relentless attack on women’s reproductive health probably leaves you cold.</p>
  335. <p>But there’s zero room for these views in your lockstep, Trump-owned party — no opportunity to express publicly what distresses and concerns you privately. Not as a Republican. Not anymore.</p>
  336. <h2>Consider Yourself … One of Us (Sing It!)</h2>
  337. <p>OK, so now imagine we’re the Democratic Party leadership, and we’re on the talent recruitment committee. Do we take a run at Jen Kiggans? You’re damn right we do!</p>
  338. <p>We begin by offering her the moon, and sweeten the deal from there: “Come be a Democrat,” we coo, “and we pledge we won’t primary you, ever. And we think you’d make a great senator in a few years when old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Warner">Mark Warner</a> steps down. Did you say something about the Appropriations Committee? Done! Here you go, plenty of bucks for your upcoming campaigns — just say when!</p>
  339. <p>“And here’s the best part, Jen: You won’t have to swallow your gorge and keep voting for things you secretly abhor, like the military turned loose on US cities! Yes, of course, there’s some party discipline, but, well, we’re Democrats! So unlike your present party, we’re not running a supermax prison here; we’ll give you some breathing room!”</p>
  340. <p>If you’re Jen Kiggans, do you find the package appealing? You bet you do! </p>
  341. <p>The Democrats might not have you at hello, but if they keep piling the goodies on the tray, and if Trump keeps dropping in the polls, taking the leap starts to make all kinds of sense!</p>
  342. <p>Do it for yourself. Do it in the interest of the country you love, the country you see Trump destroying, while you’ve been biting your tongue and wearing out your rubber stamp. </p>
  343. <p>Perhaps you can take inspiration from the motto displayed above the chapel doors of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD: <i>Non sibi sed patriae</i> (Not for self, but for country). Though in this case it would work out for <i>both </i>you and America.</p>
  344. <h2>Who Else?</h2>
  345. <p>Are there at least two more Jen Kigganses among those 30 — a handful of House Republicans facing more or less competitive elections and/or seething with disgust? </p>
  346. <p>Remember the verdict of Cyrus Javadi, as previously mentioned and worth repeating: </p>
  347. <p class="indented"">The Republican Party abandoned the principles that drew me to it in the first place: limited government, fiscal responsibility, free speech, free trade, and, above all, the rule of law. </p>
  348. <p><i>One suspects that sentiment is not Javadi’s alone.</i></p>
  349. <p>Consider a few of the Republicans who could, and should, be receptive:</p>
  350. <p class="indented"">Rep. Don Bacon (NE-2), who represents a “Lean Democratic” district and has a career Progressive Score of 12.81 percent, ranked 17th of 219 among Republicans; </p>
  351. <p class="indented"">Rep. Juan Ciscomani (AZ-6), from a swing district, ranked 10th with a score of 16.73; </p>
  352. <p class="indented"">Rep. Zachary Nunn (IA-3), also from a swing district, ranked 14th with a score of 14.72; </p>
  353. <p class="indented"">Even Rep. David Valadao (CA-22), from a “Lean Republican” district (which may wind up leaning Democratic if California’s <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/07/california-republicans-brace-for-redistricting-wars-00548906">retaliatory redistricting plan</a> goes through this November), ranked 25th with a score of 10.66.</p>
  354. <p>There are others, but you get the idea. </p>
  355. <p>It has surely not escaped their notice how dramatically Democrats all over the country have been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/politics/democrats-special-elections-trump">overperforming baseline expectations</a> in just about every special election. <i>These Republicans know they are in trouble.</i> </p>
  356. <p>If Trump’s polling sinks any further, they could well be seeing the handwriting on the wall foretelling a blue wave, or tsunami, that sweeps most or all of those competitive districts into the Democratic column, costing them their seats and possibly their political careers.</p>
  357. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-3269747432"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-300165181" data-whowh-trackid="97785" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97785" data-cfpw="97785"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=free" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="free the truth promo"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/frame_7__1_-1.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97785 );</script></div><p>Might not the Democratic Party, offering shelter from that coming storm, have a good case — good enough to make the sale with three or more of these vulnerable Republicans? </p>
  358. <p><i>Before </i>the 2026 election, so as to have some say in the conduct (and perhaps the aftermath) of that election; prevent the passage of the odious, voter-suppressing, <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/cleta-mitchell-calls-on-congress-to-pass-a-super-save-act/">anti-democratic SAVE Act</a>; and give that crucial election a better chance of being free and fair. </p>
  359. <p>Stranger things have happened. Why not sound them out? Why not trot out your own version of <i>The Art of the Deal</i>? </p>
  360. <p>There’s nothing really to lose and a country to gain.</p>
  361. <hr />
  362. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/a-modest-proposal-how-democrats-could-take-the-house-before-november-2026/">A Modest Proposal: How Democrats Could Take the House (Before November 2026)</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  363. ]]></content:encoded>
  367. </item>
  368. <item>
  369. <title>Republicans Use Kirk’s Murder for Anti-Free Speech Purge</title>
  370. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/republicans-use-kirks-murder-for-anti-free-speech-purge/</link>
  372. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Klaus Marre]]></dc:creator>
  373. <pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 18:16:23 +0000</pubDate>
  374. <category><![CDATA[Rights & Liberties]]></category>
  375. <category><![CDATA[US Politics]]></category>
  376. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101738</guid>
  377.  
  378. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/48989460473_10bf51cc84_k.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="charlie kirk, culture war" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[49,24]" /><p>Charlie Kirk spent much of his career advocating for a free exchange of viewpoints and debating those with views that differed than his own. Therefore, it is highly ironic that Republicans are using his death to crack down on free speech.</p>
  379. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/republicans-use-kirks-murder-for-anti-free-speech-purge/">Republicans Use Kirk’s Murder for Anti-Free Speech Purge</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  380. ]]></description>
  381. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/48989460473_10bf51cc84_k.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="charlie kirk, culture war" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[49,24]" /><p>You can say what you want about his politics, but there is no denying that a big part of Charlie Kirk’s legacy was his willingness to go to traditionally liberal strongholds such as college campuses to engage with people who expressed opposing viewpoints. And, while Republicans pledged to uphold that legacy following Kirk’s murder on Wednesday, they have a funny way of showing it. </p>
  382. <p>Because, according to the Trump administration, GOP-led state governments, and the social media MAGA mob, you <i>can’t</i> say what you want about Kirk’s politics… at least not without facing serious consequences.</p>
  383. <p>Based on his own words, the right-wing organizer would be appalled. </p>
  384. <p>“You should be allowed to say outrageous things,” Kirk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnqSNEiLTeY">told his audience</a> at the Oxford Union Society earlier this year. “You should be allowed to say contrarian things.”</p>
  385. <p>Calling free speech a “birthright,” he reminded his audience at the event that, one day, their political opponents could be in charge, and then they would like to be able to exercise that right.</p>
  386. <p>“When that happens, do you want [a hypothetical right-wing Prime Minister] Nigel Farage to be able to lock you up if you criticize his government?” he asked members of the 200-year-old debating society.</p>
  387. <p>The Trump administration clearly does not share that sentiment and vowed to retaliate against government employees and “foreigners” who reacted to Kirk’s murder in a way it deems to be inappropriate.</p>
  388. <p>“It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American,” stated Department of Defense spokesman Sean Parnell. “The Department of War has zero tolerance for it.”</p>
  389. <p>His boss, Fox News morning show host-turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, <a href="https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/1966274615975739604">said</a> the Pentagon would be tracking these cases “very closely” and will “address” them.</p>
  390. <p>Now, we are not advocating for anybody to celebrate Kirk’s death. It’s odious. However, we do believe that people should be allowed to say what they want about him, even if it is in poor taste, without the government coming after them for it. </p>
  391. <p>Also, who defines what it means to “mock” the assassination? Does pointing out that he was a fierce supporter of the Second Amendment and then became a victim of gun violence count as “mocking”? </p>
  392. <p>And it’s not just the more than 3 million people on the payroll of the DOD who have to watch what they say, but also “foreigners.” </p>
  393. <p>“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” <a href="https://x.com/DeputySecState/status/1966114506116927972">stated</a> Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. “I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action. Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the [State Department] can protect the American people.”</p>
  394. <p>In other words, if you are visiting the US or live there on any kind of visa, the Trump administration wants you to hold your tongue. </p>
  395. <p>Meanwhile, over in Congress, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wants to permanently shut down the social media accounts of anybody who says things about Kirk that he doesn’t like. </p>
  396. <p>“I’m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” <a href="https://x.com/repclayhiggins/status/1966114479042593251?">he said</a>. “If they ran their mouth with their smartass hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man who dedicated his whole life to delivering respectful conservative truth into the hearts of liberal enclave universities, armed only with a Bible and a microphone and a Constitution… those profiles must come down.” </p>
  397. <p>Higgins didn’t stop there. </p>
  398. <p>“I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their driver’s licenses should be revoked,” he added. “I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I’m starting that today.”</p>
  399. <p>Easy there, tough guy! </p>
  400. <p>That’s an incredibly stupid and anti-American thing to say — but we still believe he should have the right to say it. That’s how free speech works.</p>
  401. <p>It’s important to note that it’s not just the federal government that is trying this new form of censorship.</p>
  402. <p>For example, Florida Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas fired off a memo to the state’s school district superintendents to make sure that their teachers know to watch their mouths. </p>
  403. <p>“Teachers are held to a higher standard as public servants and must ensure their conduct does not undermine the trust of the students and families they serve,” Kamoutsas said. “We will hold teachers who choose to make disgusting comments about the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk accountable. Govern yourselves accordingly.” </p>
  404. <p>It seems as though Florida is trying to do the governing of speech here. And what are “disgusting” comments? And is the same warning to be issued<i> any</i> time there is an act of political violence — against, say, a Democratic office-holder or influencer? </p>
  405. <p>And when it’s not Republican officials who want to censor speech, it’s a MAGA online lynch mob that’s combing through social media channels to find anybody who said something about Kirk that they deem to be unacceptable and then trying to get them fired or make their lives miserable. </p>
  406. <p>The right-wing activists behind accounts like “Libs of TikTok” and “Catturd” spent their day Thursday outing people whose posts they didn’t like and then celebrated their dubious achievement.</p>
  407. <p>“To all the hundreds of demonic teachers who have been fired today. You thought you were going to dance on the grave of Charlie Kirk to your 10 friends. We made sure the world saw what a scumbag POS loser you are,” <a href="https://x.com/catturd2/status/1966294124367073583">wrote</a> “Catturd” to his 3.8 million followers on X. “I’m so happy millions of people found out what a lowlife you are in real life. My hope is that you can never find employment again, you deserve it, you’re evil.”</p>
  408. <p>Now, we don’t know how Kirk would have felt about this free speech purge being carried out in his name. </p>
  409. <p>For example, it is worth noting that his actions did not always meet his rhetoric. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, maintains a “Professor Watchlist,” the mission of which is “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”</p>
  410. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-2675989712"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-1341016579" data-whowh-trackid="97785" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97785" data-cfpw="97785"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=free" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="free the truth promo"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/frame_7__1_-1.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97785 );</script></div><p>In that sense, maybe all these Republicans <i>are </i>following his example.</p>
  411. <p>However, based on his own words, he <i>should</i> have at least objected to it on philosophical grounds.</p>
  412. <p>At the very least, he would have realized that, if for no other reason, censorship is bad policy because what goes around will surely come around at some point. </p>
  413. <p>When that happens, we’ll still be here fighting for the same principles of free speech that Republicans are abandoning now that they are the ones in power.</p>
  414. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/us-politics/republicans-use-kirks-murder-for-anti-free-speech-purge/">Republicans Use Kirk’s Murder for Anti-Free Speech Purge</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  415. ]]></content:encoded>
  419. </item>
  420. <item>
  421. <title>Disposable Masks Used During Covid Left Chemical Time Bomb, Research Suggests</title>
  422. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/disposable-masks-used-during-covid-left-chemical-time-bomb-research-suggests/</link>
  424. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Whowhatwhy Editors]]></dc:creator>
  425. <pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 17:51:48 +0000</pubDate>
  426. <category><![CDATA[Editors' Picks]]></category>
  427. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101731</guid>
  428.  
  429. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/face_mask_3x2.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="science, environment, Covid pandemic, disposable face masks, research, chemical time bomb" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,50]" /><p>PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.</p>
  430. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/disposable-masks-used-during-covid-left-chemical-time-bomb-research-suggests/">Disposable Masks Used During Covid Left Chemical Time Bomb, Research Suggests</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  431. ]]></description>
  432. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/face_mask_3x2.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="science, environment, Covid pandemic, disposable face masks, research, chemical time bomb" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,50]" /><h3><b>Disposable Masks Used During Covid Left Chemical Time Bomb, Research Suggests (Maria)</b></h3>
  433. <p>The author <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/08/disposable-face-masks-covid-chemical-timebomb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, &#8220;The surge in the use of disposable face masks during the Covid pandemic has left a chemical time bomb that could harm humans, animals and the environment, research suggests. Millions of tons of plastic masks created to protect people from the spread of the virus are now breaking down, releasing microplastics and chemical additives including endocrine disruptors, the research found&#8230;Equipment intended to protect people now may pose a risk to the health of people and the planet, potentially for generations.&#8221;</p>
  434. <h3><b>Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way (Dana, Sean) </b></h3>
  435. <p>From <a href="https://www.404media.co/charlie-kirk-was-not-practicing-politics-the-right-way/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>404 Media</i></a>: “What happened to Kirk is horrifying, and we fear deeply for whatever will happen next. But it is undeniable that Kirk was not just a part of the extremely tense, very dangerous national dialogue, he was an accelerationist force whose work to dehumanize LGBTQ+ people and threaten the free speech of professors, teachers, and school board members around the country has directly put the livelihoods and physical safety of many people in danger. We do no one any favors by ignoring this, even in the immediate aftermath of an assassination like this.”</p>
  436. <h3><b>Chicagoans Change Routines as Immigration Crackdown Looms (Reader Steve) </b></h3>
  437. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-3490169825"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-2596328531" data-whowh-trackid="97784" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97784" data-cfpw="97784"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=champion" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="Champion-truth"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Champion-truth.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97784 );</script></div><p>The author <a href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-trump-chicago-passports-82e175e9a98b6d7b534f35950166f7c4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “The streets in some of Chicago’s liveliest neighborhoods are quiet these days. Public schoolteachers want online learning for families scared to venture out. And houses of worship are urging people to carry identification everywhere they go. As the nation’s third-largest city awaits a much-hyped federal intervention, residents are making changes in their daily routines. President Donald Trump has promised Chicago will see a surge in deportations and National Guard troops as he targets Democratic strongholds.”</p>
  438. <h3><b>Gaza Students Found a Lifeline to US Colleges. Then Trump Shut the Door (Laura) </b></h3>
  439. <p>From <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/10/gaza-palestinian-student-visa-ban-trump/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>The Intercept</i></a>: “After receiving her acceptance in April, [Maryam] submitted her visa application earlier this month — right after the Trump administration instructed US embassies to ban most Palestinian visitor visas. These restrictions, put in place in August, apply to students, as well as those traveling to the US for business, medical treatment, or to visit family…Continuing her higher education in Gaza would be impossible. Israel destroyed Maryam’s university in Gaza City, where she was a fourth-year software engineering student, in October 2023.”</p>
  440. <h3><b>What Do I Do About My Family’s Vaccinations Now? (Laryn) </b></h3>
  441. <p>From <a href="https://www.vox.com/health/460528/vaccine-recommendations-rfk-hhs-new-guidance-covid" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Vox</i></a>: “Know which sources can help you find your bearings. Even though many experts in the public health establishment are pushing back on the federal government right now, it’s still worth understanding what the CDC recommends. You can find this on the CDC’s website. After that, you want to get the bigger picture: Understand what the relevant professional medical societies recommend…Your family physician, primary care doctor, and pharmacist will also be able to walk you through the best available information. They may also be able to tell you about any recent changes to the federal policy.”</p>
  442. <h3><b>The Surprising Recovery of Once-Rare Birds (Dana) </b></h3>
  443. <p>The author <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-recovery-of-once-rare-birds-263595" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “What has brought these species back while others are disappearing? In some cases, like the bald eagle, state wildlife officials have reintroduced the birds. But others have returned on their own as habitat protection and restoration, the elimination of certain pesticides, and a shift away from shooting raptors and other large birds made the region less threatening for them. As a wildlife biologist, I believe their return is a testament to conservation and the positive effect of reversing harms to the natural environment.”</p>
  444. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/disposable-masks-used-during-covid-left-chemical-time-bomb-research-suggests/">Disposable Masks Used During Covid Left Chemical Time Bomb, Research Suggests</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  445. ]]></content:encoded>
  449. </item>
  450. <item>
  451. <title>Propaganda 2025: How Lies Became the New Currency of Truth</title>
  452. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/propaganda-2025-how-lies-became-the-new-currency-of-truth/</link>
  454. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jeff Schechtman]]></dc:creator>
  455. <pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 11:00:31 +0000</pubDate>
  456. <category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category>
  457. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101719</guid>
  458.  
  459. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/CROWDS_INFLUENCERS_ALGORITHMS_Grears_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Influencers, algorithms, crowds, media landscape" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,50]" /><p>Lying has become a viable strategy for success. How influencers, algorithms, and crowds turn deception into accepted reality in the digital age. </p>
  460. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/propaganda-2025-how-lies-became-the-new-currency-of-truth/">Propaganda 2025: How Lies Became the New Currency of Truth</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  461. ]]></description>
  462. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="682" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/CROWDS_INFLUENCERS_ALGORITHMS_Grears_3x2.jpg.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="Influencers, algorithms, crowds, media landscape" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[50,50]" /><p>We inhabit a fractured information landscape where truth itself has become negotiable.</p>
  463. <p>Lying has not only lost its stigma — it’s become a viable strategy for success.</p>
  464. <p>Politicians lie with impunity, corporate leaders fabricate narratives, and social media influencers craft false personas, all understanding that in the attention economy, authenticity is just another performance metric.</p>
  465. <p>Our guest on this week’s <i>WhoWhatWhy</i> podcast, Renée DiResta, author of <i>Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality</i>, reveals the machinery behind this transformation. </p>
  466. <p>The infrastructure of deception, she explains, has become so sophisticated and pervasive that we’ve normalized dishonesty as <i>s</i>imply another tool in the communications toolkit. </p>
  467. <p>This isn’t merely about grand political conspiracies, but about how the digital revolution has fundamentally altered our relationship with truth at the most basic human level. </p>
  468. <p>As a researcher at Stanford’s Internet Observatory, she discovered how a complex system of influencers, algorithms, and crowds now determines what information moves through society. The result, she details, is a landscape of bespoke realities, each carefully curated and algorithmically amplified, where making something trend is often perceived as indistinguishable from establishing it as true.</p>
  469. <p>DiResta’s personal journey, from concerned parent to focused researcher, illustrates how those who study online deception often become victims of it themselves. Her work documenting false election claims led to congressional inquiries and professional exile, showing how passionate activists spreading misinformation can overpower truthful voices.</p>
  470. <p>In this conversation, we explore why lying has become consequence-free, how the invisible architecture of influence operates, and whether there’s still time to reclaim our shared understanding of reality in an age when propaganda has been democratized but not necessarily for democracy’s benefit.</p>
  471. <p><iframe loading="lazy" style="border: none;" title="Embed Player" src="https://play.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/38186925/height/592/theme/modern/size/extra-large/thumbnail/yes/custom-color/87A93A/time-start/00:00:00/video-height/400/playlist-height/200/direction/backward/download/yes/font-color/000000" width="100%" height="592" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
  472. <h3><a href="http://apple.co/1MEe9s7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-19599" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Apple_Podcast_Icon_30x30.png" alt="iTunes" width="30" height="30" /> Apple Podcasts</a><a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93aG93aGF0d2h5Lm9yZy9hdXRob3IvamVmZi1zY2hlY2h0bWFuL2ZlZWQv" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Google_Podcast_Icon_30x30.png" alt="Google Podcasts" width="30" height="30" />Google Podcasts</a><a href="http://whowhatwhy.libsyn.com/rss" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-19600" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/RSS_Podcast_30x30.png" alt="RSS" width="30" height="30" /> RSS</a></h3>
  473. <hr />
  474. <p><strong>Full Text Transcript:</strong></p>
  475. <p><em>(As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to a constraint of resources, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like and hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.)</em></p>
  476. <p><strong>[00:00:09] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>Welcome to the <em>WhoWhatWhy</em> podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Jeff Schechtman. In the grand tapestry of human communications, we have witnessed epochs of transformation from the printing press to radio, television to the internet. But perhaps no shift has been as seismic or as perilous as the one we&#8217;re experiencing today, where once information flowed through established channels with recognized gatekeepers, we now inhabit a fractured landscape where truth itself has become negotiable. We live in an age where lying has not only lost its stigma, but has become a viable strategy for success. Politicians lie with impunity, knowing their supporters will rationalize it or ignore the deception. Corporate leaders fabricate narratives, confident that algorithm amplification will outweigh factual correction. Social media influences craft false personas, understanding that authenticity is now just another performance metric. The infrastructure of deception has become so sophisticated, so pervasive, that we&#8217;ve normalized dishonesty as simply another tool in the communications toolkit. This isn&#8217;t merely about grand political conspiracies or foreign interference campaigns, though those exist. It&#8217;s about how the digital revolution has fundamentally altered our relationship with truth at the most basic human level. When anyone can create a compelling lie, when algorithms reward sensational fiction over mundane facts, when online crowds can be mobilized to defend any narrative, the very concept of shared reality begins to dissolve. The machinery of influence has been democratized, but not necessarily for democracy&#8217;s benefit. In this new ecosystem, a handful of skilled propagandists can wield the power once reserved for media moguls and heads of state. They understand that in a world of infinite information streams, the person who masters the attention economy masters the truth. The result is a landscape of bespoke realities, each carefully curated and algorithmically amplified, where making something trend is often indistinguishable from making it true. My guest, Renée DiResta, has spent years as a forensic investigator on this new machinery of deception. Her journey began as a concerned parent confronting vaccine information and evolved into groundbreaking research at Stanford&#8217;s Internet Observatory. Her new book, Invisible Rulers, The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, offers both a chilling diagnosis of how we arrived at this moment and a blueprint for understanding how small communities of propagandists have learned to manipulate public opinion on a massive scale. But DiResta&#8217;s story is also deeply personal. She has found herself transformed from researcher into target, facing congressional inquiries, online harassment, and professional exile, all for the sin of studying how lies become accepted truths in the digital age. Her experience reveals the circular nature of our crisis. Those who seek to understand the mechanics of deception become victims of those very mechanics. Today, we&#8217;re going to explore why lying has become so pervasive and seemingly consequence-free, how the invisible architecture of influence operates in the 21st century, and whether there&#8217;s still time to reclaim our shared understanding of reality. It is my pleasure to welcome Renée DiResta here to talk about Invisible Rulers, The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality. Renée, thanks so much for joining us here on the <em>WhoWhatWhy</em> podcast.</p>
  477. <p><strong>[00:03:49] Renée DiResta: </strong>Thanks for having me, Jeff.</p>
  478. <p><strong>[00:03:50] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>It&#8217;s a delight to have you here. Thank you so much. Certainly, there have always been lies from politicians. There have always been propagandists, people trying to make us believe things, but something is fundamentally different in the time we live in today. Talk about that from a 30,000-foot view, first of all.</p>
  479. <p><strong>[00:04:09] Renée DiResta: </strong>Right. As you say, propaganda is very, very old. The term comes from Pope Gregory. After the printing press emerged and the Catholic Church began to realize that pamphlets being spread from person to person, the printed word was leading to a sense that their faith was being undermined, that the true faith specifically was being undermined. The word propaganda comes from the Pope&#8217;s exhortation to the bishops, the cardinals, that they must go and propagate the faith, propagate the true faith. It&#8217;s a very, very old term. As you know, politicians have also lied for as long as there have been politicians. I think the reason I wrote the book was to explain the kind of complex system between influencers, algorithms, and crowds that exists today, a system that really emerged with the internet that is very distinct to the internet. What I mean by that is we always, all of us individually, had the power to spread information within our communities. We could sit and we could talk to each other. You could go to maybe your local town hall where you would hang out, play bridge or something like that. You could write an op-ed in your local newspaper with the origin of what we now kind of quaintly called web one. You could run a blog, you could post your thoughts to the web, and maybe people would find it. But once we had social media, there were virality components built in. Algorithms gave you the power to help share other people&#8217;s content as well. We became creators as well as distributors. The system that began to emerge turned everybody into not only people who could speak in our local community, but people who could share information globally. And that in aggregate, collectively, we became the people who curated and distributed information. But not just by ourselves. This was happening in conjunction with algorithms who served also as gatekeepers deciding what signal from a sufficient number of people was enough to propagate that information along. So the combination of crowds of people plus algorithms really began to shape the flows of information. So this was distinct and new. And it happened very, very quickly, very rapidly. So the speed and the scale was new. Millions and then eventually, in some cases, billions of people were on these platforms. And then the other thing that I talk about heavily in the book, the sort of third leg of the stool, if you will, is the influencer, which is this very interesting figure that is also unique to the age of social media. And where we&#8217;ve always had celebrities, people that are known for being in music, maybe, or in movies, sometimes media theorists will kind of joke around sometimes and say that the celebrity is known for being well known. Sometimes you become famous and it just kind of becomes a self-referential cycle. But on the internet, ordinary people can kind of amass a following, grow a large number of followers, sometimes into the millions, sometimes larger than a newspaper or even a celebrity. And those people become kind of key nodes in networks that decide what information gets more or less attention just based on the size of their following. So these sort of three things together, the crowd, just groups of ordinary people acting in concert, the influencer, particular folks who are very good at putting out messages that reach a lot of people, that have a lot of resonance, they&#8217;re great storytellers, they&#8217;re very charismatic, and then the algorithms, which are curatorial functions on social media platforms that are serving the interests of the platform, the business interest of the platform, that often really shape the information that we see. And these three things together become this system that really determines what information moves and it really influences public opinion today.</p>
  480. <p><strong>[00:08:05] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>The irony of this, I suppose, is that the original intent of all of this, the idea of moving from top-down information to even a kind of participatory information, was to democratize that information. And it has had more or less the opposite impact.</p>
  481. <p><strong>[00:08:23] Renée DiResta: </strong>Well, it is democratized. Just because you don&#8217;t like what message moves doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not democratic, right? So I think that one of the interesting questions is who participates in which processes? And oftentimes you&#8217;ll see institutions and experts and people who are accustomed to the broadcast media environment still thinking that that is the way to get messages out into the world. You know, I remember I was at Stanford University for five years and when, you know, you alluded to in the introduction, when conspiracy theories about me started, I remember Stanford Com saying something sort of that really struck me as incredibly funny, which was, oh, don&#8217;t worry about it, it&#8217;s not in the Washington Post, Renee. And I thought that that was so incredibly funny because it was such an indication of where this institutional communication team thought that public opinion was still shaped. Why would I care about what people online were saying? It wasn&#8217;t in the Washington Post. It wasn&#8217;t on the nightly news on a reputable channel, right? It was just some people online that were saying a thing. Because they didn&#8217;t think about crowds of people online as being profoundly influential. They didn&#8217;t think about the alt-media podcast circuit as having millions and millions of listeners. They still thought of institutional top-down media as being the place where you went to give a quote. And that was legitimate important media. And so this democratized bottom-up network, that space where opinion is often shaped for very, very large communities of people, in fact, that to them was a completely different ecosystem. And it just wasn&#8217;t even really on their radar as something to consider important.</p>
  482. <p><strong>[00:10:09] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>Talk about the ways in which this has played into what we have often referred to as a kind of confirmation bias. And in the process of that, along with these three legs of the stool that you&#8217;re talking about, has created what you call this bespoke reality.</p>
  483. <p><strong>[00:10:28] Renée DiResta: </strong>So one of the things that social media algorithms tend to do is they show you more of a thing that they think you will like. So that can be a thing that you&#8217;ve engaged with previously. Or it can be a thing that people who it sees as being like you are interested in. So if you are interested in, let&#8217;s say gardening, even if you&#8217;ve never searched for cooking content, a whole lot of people who are interested in gardening also happen to be interested in cooking. This kind of comes along with the interest base. Or maybe fitness. People who are interested in gardening maybe live healthy lifestyles. And so maybe it&#8217;ll push you some fitness content. Not because you&#8217;ve ever gone searching for fitness, but because a whole lot of other people who like gardening also like fitness. So the way that the algorithmic suggestions work, the platform wants to keep you on site. And so by making these suggestions, giving you these little nudges, it sees what you go and engage with. If you consistently ignore or click the button that says you don&#8217;t want to see those fitness posts, then it&#8217;s going to stop showing you them and it&#8217;s going to move on to something else. But over time, it&#8217;s going to refine its suggestions to be really tailored to what you want to see. And in the realm of gardening and fitness and cooking and sports and whatever else, these can be just very innocuous suggestions that just provide entertainment, maybe information, maybe education. But sometimes when you get into the realm of politics or into the realm of certain types of hot button or controversial topics where there can occasionally be a lot of misleading or polarizing information in the world, that same process can happen. And what that means is when you are clicking and engaging with that kind of content, oftentimes, and this is very natural human behavior, people are more likely to want to continue to click and engage on content from influencers or specific posts that they like because they agree with it. And so you are reinforcing that over time. It doesn&#8217;t mean that you&#8217;re never going to see other things, particularly if you&#8217;re on a platform like X, where you&#8217;re going to see people from the other side of an issue and that kind of fighting with other people is part of the point of the platform, actually. You&#8217;re going to continue to see it. It&#8217;s not like you&#8217;re in a hermetically sealed echo chamber. But what you&#8217;re reinforcing for the algorithm is that you kind of want to see certain types of content and it&#8217;s going to continue to show it to you.</p>
  484. <p><strong>[00:13:02] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>And this gives undue power to certain influencers. It develops what you talk about is this asymmetry of passion. Talk about that.</p>
  485. <p><strong>[00:13:11] Renée DiResta: </strong>So there are certain issues where people who are on one side really come out and create tons and tons and tons of content, and people on the other side just don&#8217;t. And I talked about this in the context of the vaccine conversation. You know, I had my first baby in 2013. I have three kids. And at the time, again, the Facebook recommendation engine realized I&#8217;d had a baby and I posted some baby pictures and it began to recommend me mom content. And it began to recommend me all kinds of mom content. And like I said, I joined some groups for like making your own baby food, which made it decide that I was like a crunchy mom. I&#8217;m really not actually, but it decided I was. And so based on, you know, certain kind of behaviors and groups that I had joined, it started pushing me anti vaccine groups and people who make their own babies that maybe are more likely to also be anti-vaccine. And it was kind of an interesting situation because there were dedicated anti vaccine groups on Facebook with, you know, tens of thousands, or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of members in them. But there were not pro-vaccine groups of that size. And that&#8217;s because most people just go and vaccinate their children and it doesn&#8217;t become their identity. They&#8217;re not out there passionately posting about how they vaccinated their kids every day, because it is not a thing that it is just not a normal behavior that people did. You just go, you get vaccinated, you move on. And so when the platform is looking for content to recommend, when people are searching for vaccine information, overwhelmingly, the majority of the content that it had available was anti-vaccine content. And this was something that Google struggled with. Also, for a long time, you know, there&#8217;s a very routine shot that babies are given when they&#8217;re born, the vitamin K shot, and it&#8217;s to prevent brain hemorrhaging. And it&#8217;s not a vaccine, there&#8217;s no virus associated with it. But the people who began to, you know, the anti-vaccine movement was creating blog posts about how the vitamin K shot was toxic. And that was what was rising to the top of Google search results, because nobody was producing content about why the vitamin K shot mattered. You had some very kind of boring, bland CDC type content, maybe some pediatric content. But at the time, it didn&#8217;t seem like a thing that ordinary people had to be talking about and creating content about. So the asymmetry of passion really tilted what kind of content was available for platforms and search results to return. We call this a data void sometimes, when a certain keyword won&#8217;t have a whole lot of information for it. And so what gets returned is this sort of content. In some cases, it&#8217;s even political propaganda around, you know, sometimes you can see like extremists will do this to come up with a term, they&#8217;ll tell people, you should go look for this term. And then when you go and look for it, it&#8217;s content that they want you to find. And so that&#8217;s how that works.</p>
  486. <p><strong>[00:16:14] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>And so much of this has given rise to so many political things that fall under this general rubric of the big lie and the way that has been self-reinforcing.</p>
  487. <p><strong>[00:16:27] Renée DiResta: </strong>So with something like the big lie, one of the things that happens, I&#8217;ll continue with the vaccine example, because I mentioned that in some of these groups, you know, you have tens of thousands of people in them, right? So once you join some of these groups, you really find a sense of camaraderie. And oftentimes that also leads to people continuing to participate. And it becomes, you know, sort of a part of their identity, a big part of their identity. And this is, you know, we just picked the one example that I have a personal history with, personal story around. But it doesn&#8217;t matter what the particular example is, that happens in a lot of different political communities. And people will begin to very, very strongly and deeply identify with that particular, in the book, I use the term factions. And they&#8217;ll even sometimes put like a little emoji in their bio so that when they&#8217;re communicating with somebody online, it&#8217;s immediately apparent like what factions, what issues they care about. People who really care about like biking in cities will have the bike emoji in there. You know, it gets very niche sometimes. And so what you have is this dynamic where, you know, you mentioned the big lie. In that particular case, you had a situation where Trump supporters, right, who were, you know, they very deeply trust Donald Trump. And they deeply trust the right-wing influencers who they have listened to and followed for a very, very, very long time. And around election 2020, I spent a whole chapter on this in the book, just really kind of explaining how it happened, explaining the buildup over time. They were told for the entirety of the presidential campaign that the election was going to be stolen, that there was going to be massive fraud. Trump hammered on that over and over and over again. And the influencers, the right-wing political influencers, would engage with ordinary people who would see something in their neighborhood, and they would take a picture of it, and they would tag the influencer in. And in one case, there was a very kind of famous case in Sonoma where a man saw ballot envelopes in a dumpster. And these were ballot envelopes from, I think it was 2018, that had been properly disposed of. And, you know, they had been held for the requisite length of time, and then they had been disposed of in the dumpster. But, you know, this individual took this photo, tagged in the right-wing media, the right-wing influencers, and the story goes viral that mail-in ballots, you know, implying that they&#8217;re from 2020, are being destroyed, that they&#8217;re just being disposed of, and that, you know, of course, they layer on these theories that they&#8217;re Trump ballots. And the rumor flies far, you know, faster and further than the eventual, you know, explanation from the election officials explaining what is happening and, you know, these are old ballots, et cetera, et cetera. And so you have this buildup of distrust combined with this messaging that&#8217;s coming from political elites and political influencers saying it&#8217;s going to be stolen, it&#8217;s going to be stolen, it&#8217;s going to be stolen. And so when he loses, what they&#8217;ve been hearing is that it&#8217;s going to be stolen, it&#8217;s going to be stolen, it&#8217;s going to be stolen. And on election day, there&#8217;s always some irregularity somewhere in the United States, right? Some machine goes down, something goes wrong. And so those stories that had happened on election day, you see the influencers kind of combing back through them and then pulling them back up and reframing them as here is how they stole it and, you know, pushing them out again. You know, there was a situation in Maricopa County, Arizona, where people were very afraid that Sharpie markers were bleeding through and they were convinced that this was a conspiracy to make their ballots unreadable. And so they went and they kind of dredged that back up and they said, oh, they stole it in Arizona. You know, so this became an example where evidence was twisted to fit the frame, you know, frame is a way that you can kind of position events in the world, right? So you have the evidence that are, you know, examples of real things that happened are twisted and repositioned to fit this frame, which is the election will be stolen. And that is what is communicated to these very passionate people who have been hearing for a long time from people that they trust that this is what is going to happen. And that is the that is how Stop the Steal worked. And unfortunately, it&#8217;s a very repeatable process, because these folks have also been told you can&#8217;t trust the other media, the other media lies to you. So when other media comes out and says, no, there&#8217;s no evidence of this, no, there&#8217;s no evidence of a steal, no, the, you know, there&#8217;s no evidence of ballot fraud, etc, etc. They have been primed already to distrust that media. And that is one of the reasons why it&#8217;s very, very hard to break down that barrier and begin to kind of reinhabit a shared reality.</p>
  488. <p><strong>[00:21:39] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>And one of the things that we have seen happen beyond just reinforcement of what people believe to begin with, but we see people with with sort of a casual engagement with an idea, casual engagement with a subject, suddenly adopt some of these things as core beliefs.</p>
  489. <p><strong>[00:21:59] Renée DiResta: </strong>So in the case of online influencers, in particular, adopting a belief can often translate into more attention and more revenue. So there&#8217;s an incentive, potentially, we call this audience capture, to take a to take a position that you think your audience wants you to have, doesn&#8217;t matter if you sincerely hold it or not. What matters is that if you express it, you&#8217;ll get the kind of engagement from followers, you&#8217;ll get retweets, and you can monetize it. There was an interesting example of, you know, there&#8217;s a debate going around right now about flag burning because of a president&#8217;s executive order. And Matt Walsh, who&#8217;s a sort of, you know, right wing kind of firebrand, somebody pulled up that he had been tweeting in 2019 about how flag burning should absolutely be legal. And then, of course, yesterday, he was tweeting about how it absolutely should not be legal, right? And so there&#8217;s this sense of, did he have a sincere change of heart over that time? Or is it more that the political winds of his audience, who are, you know, very heavily Trump supporters and aligned with the president, have, you know, this is where that belief has gone in that particular political community. This is the belief that comes with that identity now. So you express it, right? And so that question of where is the sincerity versus are you expressing it in part because this is going to get you a ton of engagement and your posts are monetized on that social media platform. So maybe he&#8217;ll come out and say something like, no, no, no, I changed my mind. And here&#8217;s how my views evolved on that over time. People do change their minds. But one of the things that you see on social media is a trajectory where people will have this movement into a conversion into the beliefs that their audience has. And that question always lingers in the back of my mind, which is how much of this is sincere and how much of this is, these are the people who are subscribing to your substack. Right.</p>
  490. <p><strong>[00:24:15] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>To what extent has this problem and all that we&#8217;ve been talking about evolved in conjunction with the way social media itself has evolved, the way people have learned to interact with it, the way it too now is becoming bifurcated in so many ways?</p>
  491. <p><strong>[00:24:34] Renée DiResta: </strong>Oh, it&#8217;s absolutely, I mean, it&#8217;s inseparable. You have to think about it as a complex system, right? There&#8217;s a, you know, we are, there&#8217;s that quote by, oh boy, it&#8217;s like Winston Churchill, we shape our buildings and then they shape us, right? I just kind of butchered that, consider that a paraphrase. But it&#8217;s the idea that you, you know, you are a product of your environment, right? And, and when you have a, when you&#8217;re engaging on a social media platform, the incentive for the creator is determined by what the platform algorithm rewards. The creator isn&#8217;t only creating content for the human audience, they&#8217;re creating content for the algorithm. And that&#8217;s something that I think people really, really need to understand. When, when I make, you know, I&#8217;ve started making video content a little bit more now, just because people want to get their content on video and that&#8217;s fine. And so I&#8217;ll take, you know, a 4,500 word explainer essay that I feel like now I&#8217;m mostly writing for the AI to read, you know. And then if I, if I make a video of it for like Instagram Reels, Reels is very upfront with you. And it&#8217;ll say, if you make this over three minutes long, I&#8217;m not going to push it out to anybody other than the people who follow you, right? So there&#8217;s the immediate constraint there, right? So you&#8217;ve got an immediate time constraint. And then there are certain things that it is going to reward as far as like types of formatting, types of cuts. Sometimes on TikTok, it&#8217;ll reward use of certain types of sounds. Recency is important. There are certain, you know, on YouTube, like the thumbnail that you use is, is important. The title that you use is important. What is the title that you&#8217;re giving your video? There&#8217;s a reason people use these clickbaity sounding titles. And that&#8217;s because that is what the algorithm uses when it&#8217;s picking from the millions and millions and millions of pieces of content that it can use to show somebody. Your content is so heavily influenced by what the algorithm is going to show people. And so whether you want to or not, you are, you know, in order to, to get attention, you are playing that game. And so the, I think that it is, you know, you have to just think about it as, you know, it&#8217;s like the medium is the message, right? You&#8217;re just, you&#8217;re essentially just evolving your, your content and how you communicate is so heavily shaped by the system that determines whether people see the communication.</p>
  492. <p><strong>[00:27:10] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>Talk a little bit about your own experience, Renee, and the way your research into this, the work that you were doing at Stanford really created a world of problems for you.</p>
  493. <p><strong>[00:27:22] Renée DiResta: </strong>Well, I mean, look, I study adversarial abuse online. That&#8217;s how I&#8217;ve always described it. And, you know, when it&#8217;s adversarial, that means that there are people who are going to be mad at you when you, you know, when you, when you point at it, right? So it&#8217;s not a surprise. The, the work that we did in 2020 was chronicling election rumors and, and misinformation and disinformation that we thought we were going to see a lot of content from state actors. We actually sort of set about in 2020 anticipating we&#8217;d see a ton of stuff from Russia and China and Iran in part because it was the first big presidential election since the Russian interference in 2016, which I might add, we are now re-litigating as Tulsi Gabbard tries to redefine reality. But Russia did interfere in 2016 and we anticipated that we would see more, more interference in 2020. So we set up this project and the, and then, and then lo and behold, most of the rumors came from the sitting president of the United States. And this presented an interesting challenge because when you are chronicling things, you know, our, we just kind of recorded stuff as they happened. We had a team of about 120 student analysts and we had a ticketing system called JIRA, where you could just log things as they happened. And, and then we could kind of go back and, you know, add more information later. So the thing that is, you know, sometimes a challenge is that when the overwhelming majority of the rumors are coming from one side, because only one side is alleging the election is being stolen, then it looks like you are biased against one side. That is the accusation that they make against you. You know, they say things like, oh, all of your tickets are targeting the right. No, no, no, that&#8217;s not true. You&#8217;ve got that cause and effect backwards. The, the database at the end chronicled things that happened. The things that happened were rumors spread by people on the right. That is what happened. Had they been spread by people on the left, that would be more evenly distributed, but the left was not alleging election theft. And so there are far fewer rumors from the left in the election rumor database. So, so the, you know, Jim Jordan and his merry band decided to accuse us of a mass, you know, conspiracy to, um, to silence conservatives. And, uh, and this was, um, you know, they&#8217;re just being absolutely wild. Um, I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m allowed to say the word BS on your, there&#8217;s an academic definition for the word bullshit, which is, you know, information, uh, spread without regard for the truth. Right. And so there were these, um, sort of bloggers and these Twitter files guys who started saying things like Stanford censored 22 million tweets, which was just a staggering number. And, and where they got that from was after the election. Um, we added up the number of tweets in the most viral rumors that spread during the 2020 election. So things like Sharpie gate, right. That Sharpie markers were leading through only for Trump voters or the dominion. You might remember there was this lawsuit Fox news paid out $740 million on saying that dominion voting machines had been rigged. We tracked that rumor as it happened. So we added up the most viral rumors, the rumors that everybody saw, everybody saw these rumors. We added them up at the end, um, in around March of 2021, when we were doing this final report. And, uh, and they came out to about 22 million tweets. There&#8217;ve been about 22 million tweets on those kind of top 10, most viral rumors. And we wrote that in a report that sat on the internet publicly, all the stuff was done publicly, um, for a little over a year. And then, you know, Jim Jordan and these crackpots got their hands on it. And they said that our, our, our addition, our act of addition of the most viral tweets was actually the number of tweets that we had censored. So, you know, and that&#8217;s, and this is what they do. Right. And, and so you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re in this, um, there&#8217;s a, another saying, like if you&#8217;re explaining you&#8217;re losing, right. So you find yourself in this, this, uh, bizarro world where they&#8217;re making these like insane accusations and every accusation, they just throw a barrage of accusations at you. And every single one takes, you know, six paragraphs of explanation. Um, and so it, it, whereas for them, they just say, you know, the, the woke ribs at Stanford university tried to steal the election from Donald Trump, uh, by censoring 22 million tweets. And that was the allegation that they made against us. Um, and, uh, that we ran a censorship, you know, a censorship cabal out of Stanford and university of Washington and a couple of other, um, couple of other institutions that were partners on this project. And then America first legal sued us, you know, and, uh, so that that&#8217;s still going on. I may sue you again to tie you up in paper and to shut you up, right. To make it so that you can&#8217;t talk. Um, and so that is, uh, that is how that all happened. Um, but in order to, in order to sell this story, um, they also had to turn us into like agents of the state. They tried to really make this into, you know, that we were somehow like agents of the government who were doing this because it&#8217;s a claim that we had violated people&#8217;s first amendment rights by doing this too. Um, so they began to allege things like, you know, that, that I had been a CIA agent and that, that the CIA had like tasked to me with doing this, just these, these absolutely insane allegations. Um, and so there, so then, so then the conspiracy theories about me became personally weird also. And, um, yeah. And so, you know, so I had the whole, the whole experience of basically having to start a sub stack just to, um, just kind of like put information out there into the world about the conversations I had actually had with these reporters versus what they wrote and stuff like that.</p>
  494. <p><strong>[00:33:41] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>Given how pervasive social media is, the growth of social media, the internet, and now AI layered on top of that and soon to be even deeper, to what extent is what we&#8217;re talking about, the, the, the fundamental thesis here, virtually inevitable given the reality of this world.</p>
  495. <p><strong>[00:34:03] Renée DiResta: </strong>The fundamental thesis in which sense?</p>
  496. <p><strong>[00:34:05] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>The, the fundamental thesis of propaganda and, and the three legged stool that you started out with, the way in which that is, is basically built into, to all that we have today.</p>
  497. <p><strong>[00:34:16] Renée DiResta: </strong>So the reason I mention the history of propaganda in the book and, and in the start of our chat that it&#8217;s always existed is because I think it is important to understand it. It has always existed and we derive mechanisms for responding to it in its, um, you know, in its various forms, in various medias, various media environments. And so I think that that provides some guidance for where we are today. I think it&#8217;s prolific today. I think we&#8217;re like swimming in it. You know, I think it&#8217;s everywhere. And that&#8217;s because I think that we all have the power to create it ourselves now, right. To serve as creators or more importantly, as, uh, inadvertent amplifiers, right. When we&#8217;re clicking the like and share button, when we&#8217;re really participating in the kind of factional political wars that, um, that many people get involved in, you know, myself included, you know, everybody gets sucked in, in some way. Um, but that also means though, that some of the ways in which in the past we taught people how to recognize it. There was a lot of curriculum in the United States around recognizing rhetoric in the 1930s, late 1930s. This was as the U.S. was heading into, uh, World War II. And, and that was because there was concern about rising fascism. Um, and there was, for example, I spend the last chapter in the book talking about Father Cawthorn, the radio priest, um, who had millions of listeners, tens of millions of listeners at a time when the population of the U.S. was only about 128 million people. So this was a wildly influential figure, um, uh, American Catholic priest who really became enamored with Mussolini and Hitler and began to use his weekly radio address to, um, to talk about the, you know, to, to praise and to, to kind of, um, deliver a message in support of fascism and, you know, eventually in support of what Hitler began to do, uh, to American audiences and saw the responses from the broadcasters, radio broadcasters, as they tried to figure out how to fact-check this, right? You would have somebody come on afterwards to fact-check him. They would gradually try to make him pre-clear his speeches, try to figure out how to, how do you respond to this? Eventually the Catholic church kind of yanked him and was like, that&#8217;s it, you&#8217;re done. Um, but there was this interesting, you know, I kind of relate the history of that, but one of the other things that happened was the rise of this, um, group called the Institute for Propaganda Analysis that really began to try to teach this rhetorical analysis. And they did it even in the middle and high schools, but they also had these pamphlets that they would give out at, you know, the, I think they said the Cracker Barrel, which is sort of funny to say today, given the current controversy about Cracker Barrel and its logos, but the, um, you know, the, the actual, uh, places, the community spots where people would meet. But, so that model of thinking about this in terms of propaganda, I think is the right way to think about it because for too long, I would argue we have thought about it in terms of facts and the idea that if you just gave people more facts, they would change their minds. And that&#8217;s just not where we are. Um, we have a crisis of trust. We have a significant divergence in what sources people consider legitimate. We have a real division along identity lines of where people get their information. And I think that when you think about things in terms of, um, trust and identity, and when you think about things in terms of rhetoric and propaganda, then a different set of responses become, you know, become more in the realm of the, things that we should be considering. How do we educate people and make them more aware? And what is a media literacy that looks at that as opposed to a media literacy that tells people, check your sources and consider your facts. And in my opinion, um, that would be an interesting place for us to be experimenting.</p>
  498. <p><strong>[00:38:27] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>And as we look around the world, we see that this problem is certainly a global problem, but it is definitely on steroids here in America. What can we learn from that?</p>
  499. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-136701703"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-1370458678" data-whowh-trackid="97784" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97784" data-cfpw="97784"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=champion" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="Champion-truth"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Champion-truth.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97784 );</script></div><p><strong>[00:38:38] Renée DiResta: </strong>Well, that&#8217;s a really interesting question. I think that, that the crisis of trust has not hit quite so badly in other places. So this is something that comes up quite a bit. Um, there are media literacy efforts that are conducted by governments that, uh, that seem to do better than ours have here, but those are often much more, uh, homogenous publics and they have higher degrees of trust in government. So I think again, when you come down to it, that trust piece is incredibly significant. And that I think, you know, it, it means that it&#8217;s not just a technological problem. And I think for too long, we have focused on the social media challenge from a tech perspective. It doesn&#8217;t mean there aren&#8217;t tech things to do. I spend a lot of time looking at middleware and user agencies or empowerment. Uh, but I think that it means that the trust thing has to really be foregrounded.</p>
  500. <p><strong>[00:39:30] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>Renée DiResta, her book is Invisible Rulers, The People Who Turned Lies Into Reality. Renée, I thank you so much for spending time with us here today on the <em>WhoWhatWhy</em> podcast.</p>
  501. <p><strong>[00:39:40] Renée DiResta: </strong>Thank you so much for having me.</p>
  502. <p><strong>[00:39:42] Jeff Schechtman: </strong>Thank you. And thank you for listening and joining us here on the <em>WhoWhatWhy</em> podcast. I hope you join us next week for another <em>WhoWhatWhy</em> podcast. I&#8217;m Jeff Schechtman. If you liked this podcast, please feel free to share and help others find it by rating and reviewing it on iTunes. You can also support this podcast and all the work we do by going to WhoWhatWhy.org/donate.</p>
  503. <hr />
  504. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/propaganda-2025-how-lies-became-the-new-currency-of-truth/">Propaganda 2025: How Lies Became the New Currency of Truth</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  505. ]]></content:encoded>
  509. </item>
  510. <item>
  511. <title>Scientists Stunned by Bright Orange Shark With White Eyes Found Near Costa Rica</title>
  512. <link>https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/scientists-stunned-by-bright-orange-shark-with-white-eyes-found-near-costa-rica/</link>
  514. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Whowhatwhy Editors]]></dc:creator>
  515. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 21:30:02 +0000</pubDate>
  516. <category><![CDATA[Editors' Picks]]></category>
  517. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://whowhatwhy.org/?p=101725</guid>
  518.  
  519. <description><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image1-12.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="nature, marine life, nurse sharks, pigment, new study, first xanthism verified" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[49,54]" /><p>PICKS are stories from many sources, selected by our editors or recommended by our readers because they are important, surprising, troubling, enlightening, inspiring, or amusing. They appear on our site and in our daily newsletter. Please send suggested articles, videos, podcasts, etc. to picks@whowhatwhy.org.</p>
  520. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/scientists-stunned-by-bright-orange-shark-with-white-eyes-found-near-costa-rica/">Scientists Stunned by Bright Orange Shark With White Eyes Found Near Costa Rica</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  521. ]]></description>
  522. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image1-12.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image wpsmartcrop-image" alt="nature, marine life, nurse sharks, pigment, new study, first xanthism verified" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%;" link_thumbnail="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-smartcrop-focus="[49,54]" /><h3><b>Just When We Think We Have Mother Nature Figured Out, She Throws Us a Bright Orange Shark (Maria)</b></h3>
  523. <p>The author <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/just-when-we-think-we-have-mother-nature-figured-out-she-throws-us-a-bright-orange-shark/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “A nurse shark caught and released off Costa Rica has stunned scientists with blazing orange skin and white eyes, signaling two rare pigment conditions in one animal. A new study formally documents the first case of xanthism in this species and notes signs of albinism. The adult, about 6.6 feet long, was hooked by sport fishers in 2024 and photographed at roughly 120 feet below the surface before being released. The research team describes the find as the first scientifically verified xanthic nurse shark.”</p>
  524. <h3><b>The Many Ways in Which the September 2 Caribbean Strike was Unlawful … and the Grave Line the Military Has Crossed (Dana)</b></h3>
  525. <p>The author <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/120296/many-ways-caribbean-strike-unlawful/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “Now that the President has submitted the required War Powers Resolution report to Congress, we can begin to take stock of just how extraordinary and significant last Tuesday’s lethal strike in the Caribbean Sea was. As I will try to explain below, it’s likely that the President lacked any affirmative domestic authority to order the strike, and the strike itself appears to have violated several legal prohibitions. Those legal transgressions, however, aren’t necessarily the most significant thing about the strike. As I’ll discuss at the end of this piece, regardless of which laws might have been broken, what’s more alarming, and of greater long-term concern, is that US military personnel crossed a fundamental line the Department of Defense has been resolutely committed to upholding for many decades — namely, that the military must not use lethal force against civilians.”</p>
  526. <h3><b>The Gaza Family Torn Apart by IDF Snipers From Chicago and Munich (Russ)</b></h3>
  527. <div class="whowh-story-middle" id="whowh-614236930"><div style="margin-bottom: 16px;" id="whowh-266764170" data-whowh-trackid="97784" data-whowh-trackbid="1" class="whowh-target" data-cfpa="97784" data-cfpw="97784"><a data-no-instant="1" href="https://whowhatwhy.org/donate/?utm_source=story&#038;utm_medium=donate-banner&#038;utm_campaign=champion" rel="noopener" class="a2t-link" aria-label="Champion-truth"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Champion-truth.png" alt="" width="970" height="250" /></a></div><script type="text/javascript">;new advadsCfpAd( 97784 );</script></div><p>From <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/09/the-gaza-family-torn-apart-by-idf-snipers-from-chicago-and-munich" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>The Guardian</i></a>: “Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in northern Gaza. ‘That was my first elimination,’ he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head. Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.”</p>
  528. <h3><b>Trump’s Chicago Occupation Could Cost Four Times More Than Housing City Homeless (Laura)</b></h3>
  529. <p>From <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/03/trump-military-occupy-dc-la-chicago/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>The Intercept</i></a>: “President Donald Trump’s plan to add Chicago to the list of American cities under US military occupation could cost almost $1.6 million per day, according to an expert estimate furnished exclusively to <i>The Intercept</i>. … An analysis by Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group, found that if Trump deployed 3,000 National Guard troops to Chicago it would cost taxpayers around $1,590,000 per day. It’s the latest runaway expense — expected to climb into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — connected to Trump’s efforts to turn the US into a genuine police state.”</p>
  530. <h3><b>Vile Grifters Are Taking Over Establishment Media (Sean)</b></h3>
  531. <p>From <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bari-weiss-free-press-cbs-news-paramount/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>The Nation</i></a>: “Bari Weiss has been making the world worse for a long time. Twenty years ago, as a student at Columbia, she led a racist smear campaign against Arab professors who had the audacity to criticize Israel. As a <i>New York Times</i> columnist, she constantly hawked right-wing bile while posing as a liberal who was just tired of all the extremism and censorship on the left—a tedious bait-and-switch that nevertheless sent her media profile soaring. And, as founder and editor of <i>The Free Press</i>, she has pushed genocide denial, transphobia, and the freedom to make Nazi salutes. If we lived in a less terrible time and place, Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot, and never heard from again. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. So instead Weiss is being rewarded with a prize that even she must think is kind of wild. That prize? CBS News.”</p>
  532. <h3><b>NASA Discovers ‘Clearest Sign of Life That We’ve Ever Found on Mars’ (Gerry)</b></h3>
  533. <p>The author <a href="https://wapo.st/4mapyHQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writes</a>, “Rolling across the rugged, rusty red terrain on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover came upon some rocks with peculiar green, blue, black, and white dots. After detailed image analysis, scientists have come to a potentially encouraging conclusion: If those speckled rocks were formed like they are on Earth, they might be evidence of past life on the dusty planet. … The rocks, or mudstones, are composed of finely packed sediment and covered in specks resembling poppy seeds and leopard spots. The colorful features, the study found, are minerals that — on Earth — have traditionally been created from microbial activity.”</p>
  534. <p><a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/editors-picks/scientists-stunned-by-bright-orange-shark-with-white-eyes-found-near-costa-rica/">Scientists Stunned by Bright Orange Shark With White Eyes Found Near Costa Rica</a> originally appeared on <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org">WhoWhatWhy</a></p>
  535. ]]></content:encoded>
  539. </item>
  540. </channel>
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