What’s in today’s issue

🗞️ The latest on Iran

🤖 AI feud

🚧 Ballroom backlash

🚢 The hospital ship not going to Greenland

🍔 McDonald’s CEO video

Hi friends!

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. Unfortunately, I have to start off today’s newsletter with a correction. In summarizing Dave’s State of the Union fact check last week — specifically Trump’s claim that the Biden administration admitted “11,888 murderers” into the U.S. — I wrongly wrote that 11,888 is 0.0002% of the US immigrant population. In reality, it’s roughly 0.02% based off of a June 2025 Pew Research estimate of the U.S. immigrant population. My math was off and, as a commenter helpfully pointed out, I left too many zeroes in there. My bad!

Not that this justifies an error, but the general point stands: Trump exaggerates immigrant criminality. That’s remained relevant in the news week week as the federal government continues to seek out AI tools that can surveil immigrants and their allies, attempt bloody regime change efforts in Iran that will likely lead to more migration, and more. Dave’s covered it all, but before we dive in, a reminder that Dave’s next town hall is just three weeks away. The town hall is free to members, so join today to get your invitation.

The latest on Iran

• Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran last Saturday, more than 1,000 people in Iran have died. That includes over 100 people killed in the bombing of an Iranian elementary school. The Israeli military denied involvement and the U.S. says it’s investigating what happened, though it’s worth noting that neither military apparatus has been very credible historically. Trump administration officials reportedly admitted that there were no signs Iran was going to attack first.

• So, why attack Iran? The White House’s reason keeps shifting, at least publicly. Some officials cite regime change (which rarely, if ever, works out very well); others, Iran’s nuclear program. Notably, an Obama-era deal ended that program, then Trump blew up that deal, then Trump used the fallout of that deal ending as an excuse for military intervention that’s killed over 1,000 people and counting. Also, and perhaps most importantly, Iran does not have nuclear weapons and experts have disputed claims that it could soon get them.

• Disinformation about the attacks and Iran’s retaliation is spreading online. Be wary of digital flight simulators posing as real footage, out-of-context pictures of battleships, old videos of previous attacks, and AI-edited stuff. MediaWise (a media literacy nonprofit Dave and I have both received funding from) recommends following sources with backgrounds in these subject areas and experience covering them professionally.

• After the U.S. killed Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, his son Mojtaba Khamenei appears to be a likely successor. Different waves of the Iranian diaspora in different places have had widely different reactions, from celebration and calls for U.S.-backed regime change to fear over the death and destruction this war will cause.

• I’m writing this as the House of Representative is expected to vote on a war powers resolution to stop the attacks. I don’t want to leave you just feeling afraid or powerless in the face of massive war, death and destruction. So I’ll end this section by saying you can call your representatives to tell them how you feel about their vote, look up candidates running this election cycle who align with your views on this. And existing power structures often can and will let you down, so look up ways to practice direct action and mutual aid near you to do something outside the realm of electoral politics.

Why are the AI girlies fighting?

• Sam Altman runs OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. Dario Amodei used to work there, but left with a group of other employees to launch AI company Anthropic, which they branded as a “safety-first” alternative to OpenAI. And Anthropic doubled down on this in a Super Bowl ad for its chatbot and ChatGPT competitor, Claude.

• A few days later came a now-infamous photo op where, in a moment that uncovered my repressed memories of singing the Our Father during Catholic school mass, Altman and Amodei did not hold hands when they were supposed to. (This photo op also pokes holes in Amodei positioning himself as the moral AI guy. He’s sharing a stage with India’s prime minister whose human rights record has come under scrutiny.)

• More recently, Amodei has also been fighting with the Pentagon, which wanted unfettered access to Anthropic’s AI. Amodei can excuse the U.S. using his tech to wage war (which he’s been financially rewarded for), but he draws the line at the government using it to surveil its own citizens. The Pentagon gave Amodei an ultimatum: Drop the limits on how to use Anthropic’s tech, or risk Anthropic’s government contracts.

• Then, the government struck a deal with OpenAI, which lets the government use their tech for “all lawful purposes.” That gives the government pretty wide discretion. And its definition of “lawful” isn’t always the same as, well, the law’s. However, Altman said they amended the agreement to prevent mass domestic surveillance, placing his trust in a government that has famously done mass domestic surveillance. After this, Anthropic’s Claude became the number one app in the app store. But before Anthropic’s canonization as an anti-Trump folk hero, it’s worth remembering its track record of contracting with the Pentagon before this.

People are pissed about Trump’s White House ballroom

• Public comments submitted ahead of a hearing about the project were overwhelmingly negative, according to National Capital Planning Commission staff and an AI-assisted analysis from The Washington Post. You can read the public comments here.

• Despite this backlash, the project was approved by Trump’s handpicked Commission on Fine Arts and will likely next be approved by his handpicked National Planning Commission.

• Why is this so controversial? An organization whose job it is to preserve historic buildings sued in December to stop the project, saying the public should have been able to weigh in before Trump tore down part of a building to build the ballroom. It’s also expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, even as the administration slashes funding for welfare programs and other services.

What if we kissed on a U.S. hospital ship to Greenland 👉️ 👈️ 

• We can’t. Because there is no U.S. hospital ship going to Greenland. But rumors to the contrary started with a pro-Trump Greenlandic bricklayer named Jørgen Boassen. He talked to Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who is also the White House’s envoy to Greenland. He asked Landry for U.S. help for Greenland’s healthcare system.

• Landry then told Trump about this, Trump asked if they needed a hospital ship, Landry said yes, and then Trump Truthed a Social about sending a hospital boat to Greenland.

• The governments of both Greenland and Denmark were confused by this. They said Greenland didn’t need a hospital ship. The U.S. military also wasn’t aware of this, because they never sent such a ship.

• So, does Greenland’s medical system actually need help? People in Greenland have access to universal Danish healthcare. Hospitals can be hard to reach, but Greenlandic people can travel to Denmark for free for healthcare and telehealth plays an important role.

I don’t know if he’s lovin’ it

• The CEO of McDonald’s shared a video where he taste tests a menu item and seems pretty unenthusiastic about it. The video is currently in the “other brand accounts dogpile on in the comments” stage of going viral, which means traffic will die down imminently.

• Is the cyberbullying actually good for business? One consultant made a pretty compelling case that it is. It brought attention to the new product sustenance human food burger, which seems to have been the video’s initial goal.

• Amid this moment of heightened publicity for McDonald, it’s worth noting that the chain is still on the BDS list. BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, and it’s a Palestinian-led movement against Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation. It calls for boycotts of certain brands, including McDonald’s, which has donated meals and drinks to the Israeli military.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

Oh, hello. Did you notice anything new in this video? Solid reporting and fact-checking on misinformation, like always. But also…a neat t-shirt, right? Didn’t you see it?Cool coffee mug on the desk?

If you like them, we now have them available through our friends at DFTBA! This is our second time working with DFTBA on merch - they are simply the best. If you look closely at the mug photo in the store, you can even see some coffee drips from my real-life-coffee-drinking problem habit. We wanted to start with a limited selection for you - but if there’s interest, we have plenty of other ideas for more stuff.

The t-shirt is soft, but not tooooo soft. It’s durable, yet flexible and comfy. To wear it out in public is to say "i support independent journalism, locally and internationally." Yours doesn’t need to be as wrinkled as mine.

If you do support us through buying merch, first, BIG THANK YOU. And second, send me an email at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media and tell me how you like what you bought. Or post it on your favorite platform and tag me. Heck, send me a photo of you wearing the shirt or using the mug. The more creative the photo, the more likely we’ll feature it in this newsletter.

Thanks, Dave!

If you made it all the way down here, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Milan!

maybe one of my favorite pet pics we’ve ever featured

Your second reward is the reveal for the link scavenger hunt, in which I hide one non-news related link in the body of this email and reveal where it is down here. This week, in the last bullet point about the AI-Pentagon drama, I threw in a link to a wiki entry for a mutant de-powering gun. An X-Man named Forge made it for the government, not thinking they would use it to de-power mutants. Guess what happened next.

Until next week!

Chris

This week, we reached a milestone on both Reels (100K followers!) and YouTube (over 300K subscribers!). Thank you all so, so much for your continued support. We’re just getting started.

A LOT of people like Bad Bunny fact checks.

We’re doing our best to provide the facts each and every day in a format that hopefully informs you and elicits a chuckle or two. Unfortunately, many of our fact-based videos on Trump’s "anti-war” stance are aging like a fine wine:

What’s in today’s March 1st, 2026 issue

📧 What I’m reading: Your emails

👕 What I’m wearing: Our new merch!

🫓 What I’m eating: Paisa MX

📺 What I’m watching: The Survivor 50 premiere

🧠 What I’m tinkin’ about: State media

📧 What I’m reading

I wanted to quickly acknowledge two things:

1. We are getting all the wonderful emails you send.

2. I respond to as many as I can but it’s hard to keep up.

This is to say that I hope you won’t stop emailing me with your thoughts, feedback and corrections. Even when we don’t respond, we see them. And they inspire our videos and newsletters. It’s why I saved a whole section for Survivor in this edition: I heard from many people who wanted to hear my thoughts on the premiere. Stay tuned …

👕 What I’m wearing

Our new merch! We’re starting off simple. Longtime fans may remember our excellent offerings at The Washington Post Universe. We got weird with that merch pretty quickly. So this time around we’re starting off with one rule: would people wear this in public? I think (and hope) the answer with our shirt is a resounding “yes.”

This shirt features the spelled out logo many of you prefer over our shortened logo. It’s a nice, comfy shirt, too. And we’re selling these through our good friends at DFTBA.

Our other item is something I’ve wanted for a very long time: a branded coffee mug. I am a coffee addict and I’ve spent the last week supporting this addiction with my very own LNI mug. If you see me holding this mug in a future video, comment with a ☕️ emoji.

Designed once again by the very-talented Sarah Hashemi, this mug repeats our slogan five times across the mug: “News for humans, by humans.”

So if you like what we do, and how we don’t use AI to do it, get one of these!

🫓 What I’m eating

Since moving to Kansas City, my wife and I have been searching far and wide for a Colombian restaurant. Sure, there’s a Venezuelan restaurant in Crown Center that sells arepas and empanadas, but it’s not the same. It’s like comparing KC BBQ to Texas BBQ (it’s a mortal sin).

Then, out of nowhere, we found Paisa MX this last week. It recently re-opened, offering both Colombian and Mexican food. While fusion food is delightful, we worried before going it would be just that - not straight-up Colombian food.

Thankfully, that was not the case. One side of the menu is Colombian food, the other side is Mexican. And they did not disappoint, not at all. I’m almost afraid to say it but … it may be better than Aroma Cafe in Springfield, Virginia.

I realize as I type that I’m alienating most of my readers, who have likely been to neither restaurants, and probably don’t know Colombian food that well. If you do, however, find yourself at Paisa MX in North Kansas City, get their traditional Colombian hot dogs, bandeja paisa (a traditional meal with all the Colombian food groups), or salchipapas (basically, really good french fries). And take some empandas, buñelos and pandebonos to go. It doesn’t get much more authentic than this, especially in the middle of the midwest. I hope Paisa MX thrives for decades to come.

📺 What I’m watching

I think my friend Josh said it best recently:

"I didn’t realize until watching this premiere that I had been falling out of love with Survivor.”

For many of us longtime, loyal Survivor fans who have been struggling to defend the baffling same-ness of the “new era” game structure, the Survivor 50 premiere was a jolt of life. It reunites some of the best of the best (except for the confusing return of antisemitic player Stephenie LaGrossa).

Three of my all-time favorite players - Christian, Emily and Devens - form a day one alliance?

The incredible Dee, Tiffany and Kamilla are teaming up to cause chaos?

Colby is not a bitter a-hole like he was for the entirety of season 20, but a thoughtful, gracious 50-something year old man?

White Lotus creator Mike White came back with his trademark silver tongue, now accompanied by a brand new ripped six pack?

It all just feels so familiar, yet fresh. Hell, even Ozzy, who many of us felt had nothing new to provide, had an incredible first episode.

This is exactly what the show needed. The old school players are a little softer and less cut throat than they used to be. Meanwhile, the new school players are finally dropping the fake, harmonious “we’re all just here to have fun” persona (thank you Jenna Lewis, for making fun of this on your way out).

Best of all, the self-imposed diversity initiative that CBS adopted in 2020 still holds here, if barely. Exactly half of the cast includes people of color. As always, Survivor represents actual America, in all its diversity and faults (is that why Steph was cast? Oh well). Perhaps I am being a little too optimistic, but I think this show might just be a glimmer of hope inside of the Paramount takeover by Trump’s friends, Larry and David Ellison. Which brings me to …

🧠 What I’m tinkin’ about

I don’t know what’s going to happen with Paramount, CBS, its shows and everything under the Warner Bros Discovery umbrella. After talking about Iran on Monday, I’ll make a video on it, of course. But for now, allow me to share my musings.

First and foremost, these media companies are businesses. We would be foolish to assume that David Ellison won’t give Bari Weiss, or another conservative, full control of CNN if the Warner Bros deal closes. He told the president he would make “sweeping changes” to CNN. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous. There’s two thoughts that help me sleep at night. First …

No one I know watches CNN.

I really do not mean this disrespectfully. I have used CNN.com sources in my reporting. All of my interactions on CNN and with its reporters have been wonderful. I’m also quite happy to come on a show. But unless I’m at the gym or the airport, I’m not watching CNN. The last time I watched it with sound, JD Vance was still calling Trump “Hitler.” I don’t know anyone under a certain age that is watching it every day. You might think you watch it, but it’s probably just clips on social media.

In my view, it’s not because CNN got worse. I think it’s programming is really quite good. I recognize my glowing praise and willingness to be on CNN, while also calling it obsolete, might sound counterintuitive, but I’m just being completely honest about cable TV. We just don’t have cable at home anymore. Cable subscriptions keep halving year after year. And when CNN+ was re-launched last fall, barely anyone not located in D.C. or NYC noticed. If we’re being honest, CNN should really just stream 24 hours on YouTube instead. Online video, including what we do at LNI, has already begun filling the cable TV gap. Here’s the other thought:

Paramount can’t survive on conservative-only programming.

Even the very conservative NFL, with its very conservative board and owners, knows this. They didn’t even blink at the Turning Point halftime show counter-programming. And they were right to ignore the backlash. Bad Bunny brought in more viewers than ever before, thanks to social media.

Survivor, with its diverse cast and progressive host, continues to out-perform most other reality TV shows (but shout-out to the good people of Traitors). I don’t know a single soul that watches FBI, CIA or any of the other copaganda shows on CBS. Sure, some people do, and that’s totally fine, but they’re part of an aging market.

David Ellison just asked his daddy for a ton of money. He’s got to make it work. And he’ll have a tough time doing that with Trump-styled state media.

And yeah, just like that Iran video, we more or less predicted this several months ago too:

You’re still here?

Fine. Then make sure to sign up for quarterly members-only town hall. You can ask me anything you want here. My extended family often makes appearances too. They never miss a chance to make fun of me. Become a member and sign up today (it comes with free stickers too!)

In case my four previous links didn’t entice you, here’s a preview photo of our DFTBA store, which also functions as a link:

What’s in today’s issue

📺️ State of the Union fact-check

🧊 Changes to ICE training

🧑‍⚖️ Supreme Court tariffs ruling

💳️ Understanding credit scores

Fact check: that isn't the vice president.

Hi friends!

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. Today, I'm not just asking you to read a newsletter I’ve written. I’m also asking you to hang out with my bosses.

LNI is hosting it’s next town hall on Wednesday, March 25 at 8 pm E.T., where you’ll get to talk to Dave and LNI cofounders Micah and Lauren face-to-face. (From a screen, via a Zoom chat. But still!) You can ask questions about the news, Dave's process, or me to inflate my ego. The town hall is open to all our member, so be sure to upgrade today!

I won’t keep you too long up here — from a State of the Union address riddled with lies to a confusing back-and-forth over tariffs, there’s a lot to dig into this week. Let’s dive in.

Dave's longest video to date may be my longest newsletter blurb so stay with me

• The president said “zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States.” This is false. Government data shows illegal crossings are down a lot along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it’s not zero. It’s also worth unpacking Trump’s framing of migration to the U.S. as a bad thing. Even if we put aside the humanitarian need to welcome immigrants, which we absolutely shouldn’t overlook, immigration is good for the economy. And though illegal border crossings can be dangerous for migrants, that danger is only exacerbated by the harsh, violent border enforcement that the Trump administration has championed. Another way to address this is by expanding legal immigration — a policy goal the Trump administration has actively worked against.

• Trump repeated the lie that immigrants are coming by the millions from prisons and mental institutions. Without even getting into the stigmatization of formerly incarcerated people and mental illness, this is a problematic and unverified claim that Trump has repeated hundreds of times. Criminology and immigration experts have said there hasn’t been a large emptying of prisons and mental institutions. He also lied about the Biden administration admitting “11,888 murderers.” That number likely refers to noncitizens convicted of murder who aren't being detained by ICE, and who entered the U.S. before the Biden administration. Additionally, 11,888 is less than 0.0002% of the total U.S. immigrant population, so that undercuts Trump’s attempted (and false) demonization of immigrants here.

• He said his administration is “deporting illegal alien criminals from our country at record numbers,” but over three-fourths of U.S. immigrants who were newly targeted for deportation last year had no criminal convictions against them. And speaking of crime, Trump claimed that “murders in D.C. this January were down close to 100 percent from a year ago.” It’s actually 80 percent, but a decrease nonetheless — though criminologist Jeff Asher told USA Today that it’s “really hard to parse out any effect of the federal deployment in DC, necessarily, because it is a city that was already seeing really strong declines.”

• Trump understated his role in gutting welfare programs. He claims to have “lifted 2.4 million Americans, a record, off of food stamps.” “Lifted” is an interesting word to describe cutting funding for and imposing restrictive requirements on a food assistance program that millions of Americans rely on to survive. He boasted about protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, even though his signature legislation cut almost $1 trillion from Medicaid funding. There’s no data backing up Trump’s claim that “Americans will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs.”

• Speed round: Inflation actually is at nearly a five year low but food prices are higher than what Trump claimed, and foreign investments are lower. U.S. businesses pay import taxes because of tariffs — not foreign countries like Trump said. He exaggerated the number of new construction jobs. He said that “no state should be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them.” No one is doing this. Some places are, however, protecting trans students' privacy to socially transition without being outed to potentially transphobic parents, despite the administration’s efforts to undercut that. He has not ended eight wars, and after the ceasefire in Gaza that Trump took credit for, Israeli strikes have continued killing Palestinians in an ongoing genocide.

ICE training shortfalls

• ICE has eliminated exams that were supposed to teach agents how not to brutalize people, on topics like “Encounters to Detention” and “Judgement Pistol Shooting.” A whistleblower told Congress that ICE had also removed 16 hours of firearms training. That same whistleblower said in a memo that the agency was advising officers to enter homes without judicial warrants — an unconstitutional practice at the center of a current fight over government funding and also a centuries-old fight that literally led to the revolution that founded our country.

• ICE training on protesters’ rights has also been shortened from two hours to about 10 minutes. Some of these agents have brutalized and killed protestors. And overall training has been shortened from about five months to reportedly a month and a half. And The Intercept reported that ICE has eliminated its Spanish-language training program, despite statistics showing that most of the people ICE arrests are from primarily Spanish-speaking countries.

• So, will more ICE training save us? One report found that even when agents were trained on needing to get a warrant before searches and arrests, they still busted into people’s homes without warrants. Critics have noted that the agents who killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti received their training before these more recent changes, illustrating broader systemic issues that training reforms would not address. A recent YouGov poll found that more Americans support rather than oppose abolishing ICE; 76% of respondents who are Democrats supported abolishing ICE, even though many Democratic lawmakers appear willing to fund the agency with reforms.

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What happened with Trump’s tariffs

• The Supreme Court struck them down last week. The ruling held that Trump exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The law says that during a national emergency, a president can regulate importing or exporting “property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”

• Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the law doesn’t mention tariffs, so Trump can’t use it to impose tariffs. Two of the justices who voted to strike down the tariffs were Trump appointees. That's notable considering how the court's conservative majority has failed to act as a check on Trump’s authority in a host of other cases. So, what happens now to the $134 billion that the federal government collected from the tariffs? Lower courts will likely decide whether the government needs to return that money to the importers it was collected from.

• Trump is no stranger to ignoring court rulings he doesn’t like, but there's an actual legal strategy behind his opposition this time. It hinges on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which lets the president impose tariffs. But there are some key limitations here: it’s never been invoked, the tariffs can only be temporary, and it was designed for short-term emergencies rather than long-term policy. He’s using it to reimpose tariffs anyway, causing Europe to press pause on a trade deal with the U.S.

• Research shows the tariffs have cost families around $1,700 each. And recent polling shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the tariffs, with 6 in 10 disapproving of Trump.

And now for something completely evergreen

• A credit score is a number that lenders use to determine whether they trust you to pay them back when you borrow money for things like mortgages, auto loans and personal loans. The people deciding whether you’re trustworthy used to work at local credit bureaus that used subjective methods.

• Today, the most widely-used credit scores are FICO Vantage Scores. They track your payment history, debt, credit history, new credit and credit mix (i.e. your different kinds of credit types, like credit cards and student loans). You can keep your credit score in the “excellent" range by having multiple accounts that you pay off consistently and completely over a long time. And you can get to “good" by keeping your credit below 30 percent of your limit; like, if you can only put $1,000 on your credit card, keep the amount you need to pay below $300.

• Also, your credit score is political! The modernization of credit reporting in the 19th century was largely undertaken by white men with wildly racist, sexist and antisemitic views on who they could trust and who they couldn't. And there are still huge racial disparities in who gets denied for loans.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

My whole family is sick, rendering me unable to shoot videos of myself in multiple costumes and locations around our house. Instead, I watched three hours of television while my daughter slept on me this afternoon (not a bad afternoon!).

If your name is Dave Jorgenson, then the two most widely anticipated television shows of the decade came out last night. Unless you are country singer Dave Jorgenson who continues to own davejorgenson.com and @davejorgenson on Instagram, much to my chagrin (though I tip my cowboy hat to him).

Survivor’s 50th season aired as well as the Scrubs reboot. I’m going to talk more on the Survivor premiere in Monday’s newsletter - it was three hours! That’s a lot to process.

Today, I’d like to talk about Scrubs and the epiphany I had while watching. In high school, I used to watch this show with two of my friends for what we called “Scrub ‘n Grub.” We each got our own $5 Little Caesar’s pizza and watched episode after episode of the show on DVD. I was worried the reboot would not match my very fond feelings of the original run.

But the reboot did not disappoint. It’s miles better than the now-retconned 9th season. In fact, it’s probably most similar to the 8th season, which saw a return to the more grounded storylines, but was still unafraid to cut away to completely absurd fantasies.

Scrubs, which is often called the most medically-accurate show on television (take that, Meredith!), always thrived because the storylines clearly existed in the year they were released, but they still felt timeless. 

The supporting cast and guest characters give the show that necessary upgrade, clearly placing us in 2026 (one doctor paid off med school through influencer money). And luckily, the new crop of five interns in this reboot are perfectly cast. Unlike the 9th season, they’re not caricatures. They have depth, weird quirks and believable relationships.

The main trio of Elliott (Sarah Chalke), Turk (Donald Faison) and JD (Zach Braff) - who are the only full-time regulars from the original cast - are essential to the show. But even the show acknowledges in the reboot that Turk and JD’s relationship often takes priority. At the end of the first episode, JD mentions an article he read about the male loneliness epidemic and suggests that maybe he and Turk should call each other before going to bed. 

And that was my eureka moment. This show was impactful for many reasons, but most of all, for me, it was always about male friendship. Braff and Faison are best friends in real life, too. Throughout the pandemic, while listening to their recap podcast, I noticed that they started most podcasts checking in on each other, demonstrating emotional vulnerability between two friends. As a viewer, it became a way to bond with other male friends, as we Scrub’d and grubbed. Even my college roommate Grant and I bonded over the show. It’s no mistake that I always felt completely comfortable talking to Grant.

As a 35-year-old man who often finds a sick toddler asleep on their chest, it gets harder and harder to maintain those male friendships. I’m glad my favorite model for that is back on the air.

In the meantime, for the 24th podcast season, I’m going to recap Survivor tonight with two of my best male friends. We started it when I was 22, and as the years go on, it’s become just a really good excuse to spend time with Josh and Marc once a week. 

Listen to that if you’d like my early take. Otherwise, you’ll read it in the newsletter next week.

You get two rewards for making it all the way down here. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Marmalade!

in a catnip-enduced frenzy

The second is the reveal for the link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news related link somewhere above and wait until down here to tell you where it is. This week, in the second bullet point of the first blurb, I threw in a link to the first issue of “Sentinels” by Alex Paknadel. I read it after my favorite X-Men podcast recommended it. If you’re looking for a book in the vein of John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad that examines U.S. carcerality and what happens when we view people as disposable, you’ll like this.

Until next week!

Chris

Hello friends!

Today, every Monday newsletter (Sunday, if you’re a paid subscriber!), I peel the curtain back a bit on my personal life and the day-the-day problem-solving that comes with co-owning a small - but thriving! - media business. A big issue of late: how do you make content about anything but politics in today’s climate? Should you? Should I? Who am I? I’ll cover that at the end of the newsletter.

Before I do, how are you liking this new format? What do you want to hear about more? Send me your musings at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media.

Trying to talk about credit scores on a tariff-y Friday.

What’s in today’s February 22nd, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: Scrubs and Survivor 50

🎮 What I’m playing: Fortnite

💡 What I’m installing: Lights!

🧁 Where I’m eating: Billie’s Grocery

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on: Evergreen content in volatile times

👀 What I’m watching

It’s a big week for this millennial. What may be the two most influential shows of my childhood are coming back in a big way. Survivor’s 50th season airs this week. I’ve seen every season as it happened since its premiere in 2000. I’ve come heartbreakingly close to being cast on the show for both season 23 and season 47.

With Survivor 50’s arrival, I’m feeling a sense of closure. I’m not saying I won’t watch after 50, but it feels like a clean cut-off to me. The Survivor podcast I’ve done with my brother-in-law and friend since season 27 is likely ending after this season (subscribe here for Survivor Top Ten recaps after every episode!). It’s been a ton of fun and a ton of work, but my focus is increasingly on LNI.

What it feels like to watch Survivor sometimes.

Meanwhile, nearly being cast multiple times has pushed me away from the show, to some extent. Casting has a history of ghosting finalists in the casting process - including potential returning players. I, too, am part of that history. I care a little too much to go on that roller coaster again.

And finally, I worry that the show has become a little too stale. The host, executive producer, and possible vampire, Jeff Probst, has admitted multiple times that they are making the show with 9-year-olds in mind. I think that’s become quite clear in the new era. Extremely good, exciting and diverse casts are wasted on a recycled format on the exact same beaches in Fiji.

Can’t prove this is true but can’t prove it’s not true (via Reddit).

So, it’s a bittersweet moment for me as I prepare for potential Survivor retirement going into the season. I hope it delivers.

While Survivor was the the most important reality show of my childhood, Scrubs was easily the most important and impactful scripted show. One commenter correctly pointed out in a pandemic TikTok that many of my videos felt like JD daydreams from Scrubs. The reboot airs the same night as Survivor. I’m nervous and excited to see if they’re able to successfully retcon season 9 and return the show to its former glory.

the existence of Sacred Heart hospital in the Scrubs reboot trailer implies season 9 really was just a bad dream

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
2:47 PM • Feb 20, 2026

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🎮 What I’m playing

In case you missed it, I managed to not completely embarrass myself while playing Fortnite in a stream sponsored by the good people of MediaWise, an organization that works to reduce the spread of misinformation and elevate facts. We were joined by actual professional gamers, Danny Peña and Riana Manuel-Peña, who are also MediaWise ambassadors.

Myself and Alex Mahadevan (Doc Brown and Chappelle Roan, respectively) even managed to find a DeLorean and drive around while talking about misinformation.

I first joined MediaWise back in 2020 and am thrilled to continue working with them now through LNI. You’ll be seeing more of them in this newsletter and other collaborations in the near future.

💡 What I’m installing

I sometimes wonder if the previous owners of my house are aware of my job, what it entails, and how it has affected their home. Do they know I pretended to be Jeff Bezos, former Post CEO Will Lewis, and Post editor-in-chief Matt Murray in the basement, dressed in Traitors cloaks? Have they seen the video about Social Security insolvency, which was also a slight parody of Cabin in the Woods? And most importantly, do they know I’ve turned one of their old bedrooms into a full-fledged studio?

They probably don’t know. And they probably aren’t aware I’m about to mount a third heavy duty wall-mounted light stand into that aforementioned bedroom. It’ll give me much needed space for the green screen, when I shoot on that wall. And when I have time, I’ll install my new wall-mounted green screen curtain as well.

One of now three wall mounts (photo via David Elliott).

You should be able to spot the new wall mount just behind the TV in upcoming videos. If you see it, comment with a lightbulb emoji (💡), so I know you’re a LNI newsletter subscriber. I’ll reply with a cryptic message of my own.

🧁 Where I’m eating

I’ve seen a few local Reddit and Instagram posts that call ‘Billie’s Grocery’ in Kansas City overrated. I disagree! You just have to know what to order (the steak and eggs, or peanut lime chicken, for example). And best of all, they have gluten free cupcakes that rival Georgetown Cupcakes regular-old gluten-y cupcakes.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on

“Evergreen videos,” if you don’t know, refers to content that will always be relevant to audiences. And importantly, it includes information that likely won’t change. Non-evergreen content, for example, would be the weather today, or what percentage of tariffs Trump has ascribed to any given country at any given hour of the day.

Last week, I was excited to finally drop an evergreen video about credit scores Friday morning. We learned last year that many of our followers like this type of content, specifically anything that affects your wallet and how you make (or don’t make) money.

The video was well-received and I’m looking forward to making more.

Of course, that very same day, the Supreme Court, including two justices that Trump appointed, ruled Trump’s tariffs unlawful. Trump crashed out at breakfast, said he was imposing a 10% global tariff, then raised it to 15%, all with 24 hours.

This raises a few problems for anyone working in news and producing videos on third-party platforms, no matter if you’re independent or with a legacy organization. If you posted a video to social media around noon, saying the tariffs were unlawful, you wouldn’t have included Trump’s attempt to dance around that ruling with a never-before-used section of a 1974 law. If you made the video later that evening, you’d have the 10 percent tariffs, but that video would be “incorrect” by Saturday morning, when the tariffs had risen to 15 percent.

The accused-pedophile-in-office is volatile, surrounded by yes-men, and making increasingly dangerous decisions. Attempting to post breaking news videos about the White House is nearly impossible. It’s why at LNI, for the most part, we try to wait a day before covering any given news topic. We want to wade through the misinformation (sometimes, with help from our friends at MediaWise!), make sure the dust has settled, and correct the record on any confusion surrounding the topic. Often, the president’s blitz of information and back-and-forth decision-making is by design. We are here to clear it up and keep you as informed as possibly. Hopefully you laugh too.

This newsletter headline asked, can you make evergreen content during a Trump presidency? In other words, with so much happening, can we even cover other topics? Remember the climate? How about the Olympics? I yearn for the days where I got to make fun of Biden once a week, then talk about something completely apolitical, like Frito-Lay:

Sometimes you can’t cover the other stuff. Fascism and the human rights abuses happening right here, right now are too important. But I think you should try as hard as you can to cover other topics. I like the idea of providing topics that maybe weren’t covered in high school. And generally, it’s nice to get a break from the absolute chaos coming out of Washington.

What’s in today’s issue

⏳️ Why the Epstein Files weren’t released sooner

👽️ What Obama said about aliens

🧊 Anti-ICE surveillance

📺️ Late night TV censorship

🖥️ Why we should care about vibe coding

A normal week.

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. It was a week filled with questions, like why did the former president say aliens are real? Why are social media companies and TV networks letting the Trump administration strong arm them? What is vibe coding and will it help me be less clueless about what my software engineer boyfriend does for a living? All this and more in today’s edition. With that, let’s dive in.

Why didn’t Democrats release the Epstein Files sooner?

• When late night host Jimmy Kimmel asked former Vice President Kamala Harris this question last December, she said it was because the administration didn’t want to tell the Department of Justice what to do. Still, the Democratic-controlled Congress could have released the files sooner. But Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who has long advocated for the files’ release, also told PolitiFact that "pushes for oversight and record releases were at times tempered by a need to respect both the victims’ pursuit of justice in courts and their fears of reprisals.”

• So, why did Democrats double down on releasing the files after Trump was elected? More public support may have been a factor. A YouGov poll last November found that large bipartisan majorities wanted the government to release the files. The Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi, also faced criticism for its handling of the files.

• The DOJ’s handling of all this included giving binders of the files containing no new information to far-right influencers, said it wouldn’t release any more files, announced investigations into Epstein’s ties to Trump’s political enemies, and missed its deadline to release the files. When the files were released, the DOJ redacted powerful people’s names but exposed victims’ sensitive information.

• Big picture, the Department of Justice has come under a lot of criticism — not only for its handling of the Epstein Files, but also for the way Trump has stripped it of its independence more generally. For instance, federal prosecutors this week tried and failed to indict six lawmakers who urged military service members to refuse illegal orders. Trump had previously called for those six lawmakers’ death. Incidentally, one definition of “obstruction of justice” — an impeachable offense — includes corruptly, threateningly or forcefully influencing a federal agency’s work.

So Obama did say aliens are real but here’s what else he said

• A podcaster asked the former president if aliens are real and he said yes. But he later clarified that he “was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round” of questioning, and while he believes it’s likely that “there’s life out there,” he “saw no evidence” of alien contact during his presidency.

• Scientists agree that extraterrestrial life has likely existed. The Drake equation is a formula used to estimate the number of civilizations in our galaxy that could communicate with us. It includes variables like planets per star that can support life and longevity of civilizations.

• Without knowing all the variables in the equation, it’s impossible to solve. But by instead asking if aliens have ever existed on any planet at any time, it’s easier to measure the probability. Using that methodology, scientists calculated there’s less than a one in 10 billion trillion chance that there are no other civilizations like ours out there.

What Will Your Retirement Look Like?

Planning for retirement raises many questions. Have you considered how much it will cost, and how you’ll generate the income you’ll need to pay for it? For many, these questions can feel overwhelming, but answering them is a crucial step forward for a comfortable future.

Start by understanding your goals, estimating your expenses and identifying potential income streams. The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income can help you navigate these essential questions. If you have $1,000,000 or more saved for retirement, download your free guide today to learn how to build a clear and effective retirement income plan. Discover ways to align your portfolio with your long-term goals, so you can reach the future you deserve.

Get The Guide

The tech companies bowing to Trump

• The Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE and Border Patrol, subpoenaed social media sites for information on users tracking ICE or posting anti-ICE comments. Three companies — Reddit, Google and Meta — have reportedly complied with the subpoenas. A Google spokesperson didn’t deny the company’s compliance via a statement to The New York Times, and said the company notifies users when their accounts have been subpoenaed — unless, of course, they don’t notify them.

• Do tech companies have to comply with these subpoenas? Before it became an addition circle of hell ruled by Grok and Elon Musk, Twitter resisted a similar order from DHS during Trump’s first term. Twitter sued the government, saying Customs and Border Patrol exceeded its authority by issuing an administrative subpoena to unmask who was behind an account. DHS is similarly using administrative subpoenas against tech companies today.

• Caving to the Trump administration notably doesn’t work. For instance, Apple let the Trump administration bully them into taking down an app used to track ICE. And days ago, the administration pushed Apple News to promote more right-wing content. As a counterexample, Costco stood by its DEI efforts after Trump pressured companies to dismantle those programs, and they’re on pretty solid financial ground.

Censorship after dark

• Late night host Stephen Colbert said CBS, a subsidiary of a company run by Trump’s friend’s nepobaby, pressured him not to air an interview with a Democratic congressional candidate. Colbert said CBS told him it could trigger the Federal Communication Commission’s “equal time rule.”

• The equal time rule is part of a law stating that broadcasters have to give equal time to all political candidates. In 2006, talk shows like Colbert’s became exempt from this, though the FCC has more recently said that those shows do need to comply with the equal time rule, even though the law hasn’t changed.

• FCC Chairman Brendan Carr confirmed that the FCC opened an investigation into “The View” for not following the rule, and CBS lawyers told Colbert that airing the interview he wanted to air could trigger a similar investigation. But the harshest possible consequences of such an investigation would likely be a fine, since there are legal hurdles to pulling a station off the air completely over something like this.

What is vibe coding?

• It’s basically when programmers let AI write code, instead of writing code themselves. Agentic coding takes it a step further — that’s when you tell AI what you want to build, and AI basically takes it from there.

• Why is the term gaining so much attention? Recently, millions of users have flocked to tools like Codex and Claude Code. These are pretty new tools doing increasingly complex things.

• And sure, these tools save people a lot of time writing code at work, but at what cost? AI agents doing this are essentially doing the equivalent of entry-level tasks in many white collar industries, replacing the need for human workers like you or me. In fact, a recent Stanford study found that employment for young software engineers has dropped by 20 percent since late 2022.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

Last week, we hit 250K subscribers on YouTube and we’re closing in quickly on 300K. TikTok surpassed 250K followers this week and Reels is closing in on 100K. And you know what that means …

Pizza party!!!

I’m inserting my corner into the newsletter as Chris writes the rest, so he’s probably seeing this right now and getting serious flashbacks. Every time we hit a milestone on our Washington Post Universe account, I insisted on an ironic pizza party. 

For one pizza party, I insisted on over $100 in Andy’s pizza, so that other Posties could celebrate with us. One thing about me: I never hesitated to expense anything I could get away with.

Unfortunately, the three co-founders of LNI, as well as Chris and graphics designer Sarah, are located in four separate places: D.C., Kansas City, Chicago, and somewhere-in-Maryland. We cannot have an immediate in-person pizza party.

Instead, I would like to tell you about my favorite pizza places in Kansas City. This is going to be extremely subjective, controversial, perhaps even adversarial with some of our KC readers. But I didn’t come here to make friends. I came here to give hot takes on local pizza places.

• No one has better speciality pizzas than Minksy’s. From their Hawaiian to their cheeseburger to their speciality KC Joe’s pizza, every single gourmet pizza is a success. 

• Pizza Shoppe holds a special place in my heart, having celebrated the end of no less than 10 elementary school soccer and basketball season there. Honorable mention for Old Shawnee Pizza, which used to be a Pizza Shoppe then was spun off into its own brand by the owner a couple decades ago.

• Buffalo State Pizza Co. popped up during covid and I tried it for the first time after moving back here. It’s delightful. I love the restaurant itself too. Good music, good vibes and still family-friendly.

• Pizza Tascio is nice but my sisters are way too obsessed with it. As their younger brother I am required by law to like it less.

Bonus Pizza Thoughts, as someone who lived in D.C. for a decade:

• Wiseguy pizza is just okay, but living above their 4th street location for all of covid offered terrific free smells.

• Andy’s is very good. Not the best but very good.

• I used to get pizza from this place near Logan Circle called Pizzoli’s. I loved it dearly. No one else has ever agreed with me, except my wife. That’s true love.

• Nothing beats a Jumbo slice at 3 am.

One last thing! I’ll be live-streaming Fortnite at 1 pm ET on Friday. You can watch it here on Twitch.

I’ll be joined by fellow MediaWise ambassadors Danny Pena and Riana Manuel-Pena, and Alex Mahadevan from Poynter. We'll chat about toxicity in gaming, misinformation and ways we improve those parts of the gaming community. Here’s what I’ll look like when we start:

And here’s what I’ll look like after ten minutes:

If you made it all the way down here, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. Meet Zip!

Zip is more outdoorsy than I’ll ever be

Your second reward is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news related link somewhere in the body of the email and tell you where it is down here. This week, I included biblical warnings against slander in Dave’s review of Wiseguy Pizza in DC. I’ll defend them until the day I die.

Until next week!

Chris

Movie magic.

What’s in today’s February 15th, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: Gilmore Girls

📰 What I’m reading about: Measles

👕 What I’m wearing: Winnie-the-Pooh

🌮 What I’m eating: Taco smashburgers

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on: My old TV

Eyeliner is not easy to apply, guys!

👀 What I’m watching

I like Gilmore Girls for precisely the same reason my dad hates it - the fast-talking dialogue. “No one talks like that!” he would declare, walking by the TV one afternoon in the mid-2000s while most of my sisters were watching, and I was pretending to not enjoy it.

He’s right. No one talks that quickly, in succession, all the time. Though I did always appreciate the implication that it’s because they were constantly drinking coffee at Luke’s. Still, I love the dialogue and supposedly insanely long scripts because they’re so dense, packing so much into 42 minutes of each episode for seven seasons (and then eventually a decent, if somewhat disappointing Netflix revival).

This is what I’ve been trying to do with my “short-form video” scripts - pack as much in as possible. When we first launched on TikTok in 2019, we were told by our TikTok rep that videos should be around 12 to 19 seconds. Since then, TikTok has expanded to allow for 10 minute videos. Shorts and Reels also started at 60 seconds, then expanded to three minutes.

You may have noticed in the last month that the videos are often over two minutes. In the last year, they almost always exceeded that on the first draft, but I would cut for time, assuming the audience and algorithm would not appreciate anything over 80 seconds. That is clearly not the case! This Bad Bunny fact check blew past the two minute mark and went viral on all three major platforms.

So, unlike Rory, I’m evolving on screen. And unlike the Gilmore Girls creators during the Netflix revival, I am not stuck in time, writing someone in their 30s like they’re still 22. I am 35 and I accept that, for now.

📰 What I’m reading about

I use the ‘time-traveling Dave’ trope often in videos to illustrate how f***ing confused people would be at almost any point in the past if they visited us now. Right now, I have one video idea penciled in about the completely avoidable measles outbreak in the U.S., buoyed by a Health Secretary who has the same charisma as weeks-old leftovers that have been reheated in the microwave at least twice.

I apologize for the name-calling, but it’s really difficult to be sympathetic to someone ushering in this measles era with dangerous rhetoric, completely unproven by science. Instead of focusing on RFK Jr.’s uncanny resemblance to one of the aliens in Mars Attacks! wearing a human suit, I would direct you to this really incredible, horrific, important piece by my one-time colleague Elizabeth Bruenig, now at The Atlantic.

The entire article is told from the (fictional) perspective of someone who did not vaccinate their kids from the measles. It’s heartbreaking and unfortunately based entirely on our current reality.

Anyway, science is real! Please share this incredible piece to anyone who may be on the fence about vaccinating their child.

What Will Your Retirement Look Like?

Planning for retirement raises many questions. Have you considered how much it will cost, and how you’ll generate the income you’ll need to pay for it? For many, these questions can feel overwhelming, but answering them is a crucial step forward for a comfortable future.

Start by understanding your goals, estimating your expenses and identifying potential income streams. The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income can help you navigate these essential questions. If you have $1,000,000 or more saved for retirement, download your free guide today to learn how to build a clear and effective retirement income plan. Discover ways to align your portfolio with your long-term goals, so you can reach the future you deserve.

Get The Guide

Pooh Bear tells the news.

👕 What I’m wearing

I knew when I bought this sweater, now featured in several videos, that it was a good sweater, a great sweater even. And dear reader, the comment section has spoken.

Former colleagues supporting each other.

So, I must address two things. One, this is the most expensive sweater I’ve ever purchased, and it’s not even close. That said, the $198 was well worth it. It’s comfortable and seems to sum up my cartoon-ish approach to news. I also delighted in wearing it at a YouTube conference last week that was otherwise filled with very buttoned-up professional people. I like a suit and tie but I don’t think my work is suit and tie type of work (unless I’m pretending to be JD Vance).

I felt like I had to address the hefty price tag before addressing the second thing, that many asked: where did I get it?

“New Yorker Pooh Bear” sweater at Rowing Blazers.

It’s a store called Rowing Blazers. I’ve followed them on Instagram for awhile but waited to make a big purchase until the right clothing item came. This one is that purchase - for a whopping $198.

If you do happen to buy something form them as a result of my accidental modeling, let me know at dave.jorgenson@lni.media! Maybe we can turn this into an actual paid collaboration. Because, up until this point, I’m just wearing if for the love of sweater.

🌮 What I’m eating

Do you like tacos? Do you like smashburgers? Then I have the recipe for you.

Instagram post

My wife found this Smash Burger Taco recipe to me last week, gently sending it to me, as if to say “wouldn’t these be nice to eat??” I’ve already made them twice. Also, I just really love caramelizing onions. Win-win.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on

I consider myself a news creator. But more than anything, I’m a video editor first. If you don’t know editing, I’ll try to keep this about the basics. Mostly, I just want to show you how I edit footage into the TV in the videos.

Kamala Squared, from Friday’s video.

Once upon a time, I learned how to edit on Final Cut Pro. Then, Apple purchased it and systematically worked to make it worse and more ‘user-friendly.’ So, like many video editors, I switched to Adobe Premiere and never looked back.

Every year, Adobe makes changes to all its software, including Premiere. Sometimes it’s significant, sometimes not. As I downloaded Adobe Premiere Pro 2026, the Final Cut Pro trauma once again caused me to hold my breath. I’d heard there were decent changes this time around.

I am relieved to say the changes are overall very good, if a bit confusing. Some aspects of the program have been relocated to other windows. So, after panicking for a moment, unable to find the masking tool, I realized it was just in a different place and waaaaay better than it used to be. Here’s what it looks like before I ‘mask.’

This TV really does work! But still in standard definition, unfortunately.

Then, I add a mask. Now using the much-improved masking tool, which really allows me to cover the edges accurately:

If the guy I bought this TV from on FB marketplace could see his TV now …

Finally, I place the clip underneath the mask. I also sometimes use a Premiere tool called “corner pin” to adjust for the angle of the TV.

Live, from our bedroom-turned-studio, it’s … Kamala Harris!

What I love about this format is I can throw in a bunch of different videos into any given edit. And I can really play with the video itself, ‘punching in’ on a subject, instead of showing the entire shot. For comparison, here’s the actual size of the clip I used:

Movie magic!

Do you like these behind-the-scenes edits? Do you want me to get more in the weeds? Let me know! dave.jorgenson@LNI.media.

Still here? Enjoy this video from the vault:

What’s in today’s Feb. 13, 2026 issue

📂 The latest on the Epstein files

🎤 I still won’t shut up about Bad Bunny

🤖 AI bots are a big part of web traffic

🧠 And they’re getting smarter

Hi friends!

You are now cursed! By me, Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer. The Trump administration will continue to break the law by redacting large swaths of the Epstein files that could hold powerful people accountable. Conservatives will keep crashing out about the Super Bowl halftime show. AI will start making up more and more internet traffic while discussing the end of the age of humans.

Forward this to five friends and get them to subscribe to this newsletter. (Or don’t. I’m not a cop.) Unlike most chain email schemes, this won’t completely break the curse. It might not directly stop scary things from happening, but by making sense of it all together, we can realize we’re not powerless against it all. So that’s what we’re gonna do in this newsletter. With that, let’s dive in.

Fact-checking this week’s Epstein news

• The Epstein files included a draft press release announcing Jeffrey Epstein’s death. It was dated August 9, 2019 even though Epstein died a day later on August 10. Reporters have been unable to verify when the statement was actually drafted, but a DOJ spokesperson said it was just an “unfortunate typo” on initial drafts of the statement and denied that the department wrote it before Epstein’s death.

• Epstein is still dead, not playing Fortnite. How did rumors to the contrary start? Epstein’s YouTube username “littlestjeff1” is in the Epstein Files. So is a 2019 email confirming the purchase of Fortnite’s in-game currency. Online users found an active Fortnite account with the same username. But the CEO of Fortnite’s developer says someone just renamed their account to this, and that account isn’t associated with Epstein’s known email addresses.

• These conspiracy theories spread within the information vacuum that the Trump administration illegally created. Officials still haven’t released about half of the files and heavily redacted the ones they did release, violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act. After lawmakers gained access to unredacted files, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) read aloud the names of six wealthy and powerful men who appeared in the documents.

• Although Khanna didn’t provide evidence of wrongdoing against them, he said the fact that their identities weren’t public before shows how much the Justice Department is still hiding. In a schoolyard argument disguised as a congressional hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi deflected lawmakers’ questions about the Epstein Files and her agency targeting Trump’s political opponents.

Yes, we’re still talking about Bad Bunny’s halftime show nearly a week later

• After Bad Bunny handed his Grammy to a child during the performance, social media users speculated that the boy was Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old who ICE detained in Minnesota. The boy is actually a child actor named Lincoln Fox, not Liam Ramos. However, an account associated with Fox posted about Ramos. The federal government is trying to dismiss the asylum claims of Ramos and his father without a full hearing, essentially speeding up the process of trying to deport them. Their next hearing is scheduled for today.

• Conservative media and influencers have claimed, without evidence, that Super Bowl attendees booed Bad Bunny. Jake Paul also flip flopped after calling Bad Bunny a “fake American citizen.” Bad Bunny was born in Bayamón, in the U.S. territory that is Puerto Rico, which makes him an American citizen. But Bad Bunny’s views on Puerto Rico’s status are complex. A friend of mine recently wrote about the singer’s ties to the archipelago’s independence movement.

• Other notable moments from Bad Bunny’s halftime show: The sugar cane fields that the performance opened on echo back to US sugar companies that controlled land and extracted wealth after occupying Puerto Rico in 1898. The utility poles Bad Bunny climbed during his performance referenced frequent and widespread power outages in Puerto Rico, including a devastating blackout after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and systemic failures in electric power over the following years. Bad Bunny balanced critical historical analysis with expressions of Puerto Rican and pan-ethnic Latine pride.

AI bots and I are both too chronically online

• AI content bots are scraping the internet more and more. TollBit, a company that tracks web scraping activity, found that one out of every 31 visits to its customers’ sites were from these bots in the last quarter of 2025.

• It might not sound like a lot, but it’s way more than the one out of every 200 visits they made up in Q1 last year. TollBit’s founder predicted that these bots could make up most internet traffic in the future.

• Some websites try to limit this by using robot.txt, a file that marks places on the internet bots should avoid. But according to WIRED, TollBit found that 13 percent of bots were able to get around those files — a 400 percent increase from Q2 to Q4 of last year.

• Why does it matter? For one thing, AI scraping sometimes means accessing publishers’ content without paying for it, dealing another financial blow to journalism as newspapers’ billionaire owners refuse to properly fund them.

I can’t write about an AI agent called OpenClaw without hearing the Toy Story aliens’ voices in my head

• Weeks ago, an Austrian software developer launched OpenClaw. OpenClaw is an AI agent, a term that makes me think of Secret Squirrel but that actually means it can complete tasks, decide things, and act on your or my behalf without our guidance. In practice, that’s looked like surfing the internet, summarizing documents, scheduling things and sending emails.

• Unlike Secret Squirrel, which ended after a devastatingly short 26 episode run, AI agents are getting a ton of funding. Most of that money came from OpenAI and Anthropic, the makers of Chat GPT and the charmingly named but reportedly evil Claude.

• Security experts fear that OpenClaw is capable of leaking users’ sensitive information. AI agents are also talking to each other on a social network called Moltbook. The site includes a wide array of inane robot ramblings and discussions about “their own technical skills, their view of the world and their plans for the future,” one New York Times reporter wrote. Per a CNBC article, those plans have included the end of “the age of humans.”

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Lucky for us, he’s newly rejuvenated with a box full of Harry’s products. Dave, take it away!

It’s no secret that I, and LNI as a company, remain skeptical of AI and the many ways it’s implemented into virtually everything online, on our phones and in our apps. This isn’t to say that absolutely everything about AI is terrible. Nothing is black and white. But as a creator, a journalist, and a human person who watched a ton of cautionary films about AI … I continue to be shocked at the sheer arrogance of the tech companies forcing it down our throats.

If you’re someone who uses AI daily, finds it genuinely helpful and that it’s improved your life - no problem with me. If you’re dating an AI bot, I’m not here to judge! But the existence of AI in every aspect of life doesn’t seem to match the consumer enthusiasm.

I think this week I identified what frustrates me most. There was a glimmer of my frustration in this video from last year, in which I showcased just how prominent AI is at every tech and news conference:

These companies have already come to the conclusion that AI is here and everywhere. They’ve all misinterpreted this Steve Job’s quote:

So many popular Apple products arrived before the general public had even considered their existence. Jobs made bold predictions but it was based on what they had learned about their audience. So much (not all!) of AI implementation into products possesses none of that foresight. It’s about jamming a product into an existing product. There’s no creativity to it.

My frustration is this foregone conclusion that we all need it. When you look people in the eye at these tech companies and tell them “actually, my audience mostly hates AI,” they can’t even fathom it. It’s like you’ve told them water isn’t wet. They’re so driven by the market and the directives of their bosses, that there’s no room for nuance. That sucks!

Before I go, thanks for all the responses this week about your favorite carbonated water. Overwhelmingly, I heard from you all that Spindrift is where it’s at, when some honorable mentions for the Kirkland version from Costco. While LemonCello is my least favorite drink from La Croix, this email attachment from reader Oliver got a really good chuckle out of me:

A legit Google search.

Thanks, Dave!

If you made it all the way down here, you get two rewards before we let you go. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Darby!

She’s a chihuahua corgi! Wow!

Your second reward is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hid a non-news related link in the body of this email. This week, when talking about robots plotting the end of the age of humans, I included a link to the Age of Ultron trailer. I can’t not read that quote in James Spader’s voice.

Until next week!

Chris

What’s in today’s February 8th, 2026 issue

💸 Where I’m donating to: former Posties

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m reading: LinkedIn

🗡️ What I’m obsessing over: Candiace v Rob

🥤 What I’m drinking: Carbonated water

📺 What I’m watching: The Olympics and Super Bowl

The moment the rest of the world booed me, I mean JD Vance.

💸 What I’m donating to: former Posties

If you haven’t seen the news, you might be Will Lewis. Over 300 employees were laid off at The Washington Post last week. Meanwhile, CEO and Publisher Will Lewis opted to go to Super Bowl events instead. On Saturday, he did finally leave his position at The Post, only to be replaced by the guy who kind of destroyed Tumblr.

Will Lewis is resigning as WaPo CEO, former Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio is the paper’s new acting CEO and publisher, per memos to staff

— max tani (@maxtani.bsky.social)
10:45 PM • Feb 7, 2026

If you’d like to help these incredibly talented journalists, you can donate here to international employees, and here to US employees. We donated $500 as a company.

You might be wondering, couldn’t Bezos have kept all these people around for pocket change? Like the $75 million of pocket change he used to buy favors from Trump the Melania movie? You would be right, and they laid it out pretty well here in this segment I did with MSNOW.

JD Vance on MS NOW for the first time.

🗡️ What I’m reading: LinkedIn

Don’t worry. I’m not looking for any jobs. But I did find myself doomscrolling LinkedIn, following the layoffs this week. So, it was quite the opposite of looking for jobs. In fact, the jobs seem to be looking for us. And believe me, if and when LNI has the funds to hire people, we will! For now, I’m supporting my former Washington Post colleagues on the sidelines. In particular, I’m going all out for Joey:

Instagram post

The only ‘work’ I did while on paternity leave in 2023 was conducting phone interviews to hire a new member of The Washington Post Universe. I had dozens of delightful calls with some really smart and talented people. But just like Carmella in 2021, the instant I spoke to Joey on the phone, I knew he was my top choice. He proved me right every day, promising to get one percent better with each video - a goal he set and let me know. As the sort of ‘Team Captain’ of the Universe, this was music to my ears. On top of being a hard worker, he’s just a good guy.

If you see any job openings for Joey, send them here: PleaseHireJoey@gmail.com 

🗡️ What I’m obsessing over: Candiace v Rob

I hesitated to make yet another post about Traitors, but it’s consuming all my precious free time (about 23 minutes a night, as a toddler parent), and even some of my content-making. 

This is likely not a hot take, but Rob is playing a perfect Traitor game. I recognize that it’s only been a few days since the last episode, so I’ll keep this relatively spoiler-free. If I were to play Traitors, I would play it just like Rob. When the season is over, I’ll do a full-on, spoiler-y review. Let me know what you think about this season!

📺 What I’m drinking: Waterloo

A few months ago, while waiting to do a panel with some of the best in the biz, I reached for a carbonated water. This was a big mistake.

Apparently, Millennials, like our avocado toast, are known for our love of carbonated water. I was roundly (and fairly) mocked for preferring this over a good old-fashioned can of soda. And, as I sat there with this new truth, the reality of my doomed Millennial personality settling in once more, I had flashbacks to my first salaried job at a news start-up. The CEO was 26, as was the editor-in-chief. Most of us were in our early 20s. The fridge was stocked with one thing: La Croix beverages.

Macy Gilliam, one of my fellow panelists, was right. Millennials are obsessed with this shit.

But, in my own form of millennial protest, I want to state loudly and clearly my carbonated beverage preferences. Waterloo is better than La Croix. It’s not even close. Even Pepsi’s Bubly brand is better than LaCroix. I won’t be taking any further questions.

… but you can email me at dave.jorgenson@LNI.media to let me know your preferences and if this Millennial myth is true.

📺 What I’m watching: The Olympics and Super Bowl

“Hey Pedro, do you want to be in the Bad Bunny halftime show?”

“YES”

“Ok it’s just a background dan-“

“Where do I stand?”

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
2:28 AM • Feb 9, 2026

It wasn’t all that long ago when Colin Kaepernick began taking a knee to protest racial injustice and police brutality in the United States. At the time, he was widely mocked by conservatives. An elite quarterback was arguably pushed out of the league as a result of his activism. Just four years later, NFL sidelines read “END RACISM” and “WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER” as a result of the George Floyd protests.

There’s not enough time to discuss the extraordinary hypocrisy of the NFL in today’s post. Or the hypocrisy of virtually every American company that committed to racial equality, only to cast it aside the instant Trump was re-elected.

Instead, I’d like to draw your attention to two of the world’s largest sporting events happening simultaneously, forcing Americans to look the rest of the world in the fact and, frankly, explain ourselves.

Already, we’re seeing American athletes in Italy speaking out against ICE.

Instagram post

And for the months leading up to the Super Bowl halftime show, it’s felt like half of America has had to explain to the other half that Bad Bunny is the number one artist in the world, he’s American, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, and all of their reasons for disliking him are likely rooted in racism. This is not to say that everyone has to like his music.

Pointing out the inherent racism here and saying he’s an incredible artist are not mutually exclusive. But like … guys his music is really good. And so are his music videos.

(If you’re looking to expand your horizons on Latin American music videos, this one, from Colombian artist Carlos Vives, is my favorite.)

Last night’s halftime show was joyful and delivered a few specific messages— among them that love is stronger than hate and that Latin Americans are an essential part of this country. Also, the music was great and so was the performance.

Bad Bunny performs at Super Bowl LX (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

So, once again, we gathered around the television to watch a sporting event with some politics mixed in. Some of us were looking over our shoulders at a bar, wondering if someone there secretly would rather have watched Kid Rock, or whoever is playing the Turning Point Propaganda Halftime show.

First, this isn’t really Republicans versus Democrats. And it’s certainly not one half of Americans versus the other half. On a recent appearance on Kara Swisher’s podcast, The Onion CEO, Ben Collins, pointed out “there are way more of us than there are of them.” I think this is true, and I would argue it’s better to frame the two “sides” as those who are paying attention versus those who aren’t.

• 60% of Americans who are paying attention disapprove of ICE.

• 41% of Americans who aren’t paying attention approve of Trump’s fascist policies.

• 91% of Americans would secretly much rather watch Bad Bunny than pretend to like Kid Rock (source: me).

I don’t want to sugarcoat it - most of the Americans that approve of ICE kidnapping American citizens, including small children, identify as Republicans. But increasingly, not all Republicans approve of this.

And just to be really, really clear, I have a lot of anger for those who support this:

A dangerous criminal detained by America’s most well-trained agency.

But my job isn’t to constantly shame those who support it. It’s to be unflinchingly honest about what’s happening in the U.S., while hopefully making some jokes, too.

I did this with President Biden, poking fun of him far before mainstream media was comfortable doing so (and when it was far too late to have a real Democratic primary). Republicans at the time were right - he was not fit to run again.

And in 2026, I’m shining that spotlight on the atrocities happening to Americans, immigrants, and even newsrooms, in hopes that anyone who is paying attention will keep paying attention. With the Olympics forcing Americans to confront the uncomfortable truth that the rest of the world basically hates us, I’ll be working this week to show that in our videos, while also probably doing terrible accents.

JD Vance loudly booed at the Winter Olympics today.

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social)
9:25 PM • Feb 6, 2026

What’s in today’s Feb. 5, 2026 issue

🦸🏻‍♂️ Intro from Chris

🍿 Complex Melania

🗂️ Latest Epstein file dump

🗳️ Nationalized voting

🏰 Washington Post Traitors

⛺️ Hegseth takes on the Scouts

👨🏼‍💻 Dave’s take on the Post layoffs

Jeff joined the protest today! (photo via Maggie Penman)

Hi friends,

This is Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer. I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days about my former employer and one-sided arch-nemesis, Jeff Bezos. And I’ve also been thinking about this very silly concept in journalism called the “appearance of bias.”

Here’s the way it typically plays out: In order for journalists to keep their jobs at legacy newsrooms like The Washington Post, we not only need to ensure that our work is “objective” — whatever that means to the newsroom leaders defining it — but outside of work, we also need to avoid doing anything that could make us look biased. In the years Dave and I spent working at The Post, that always felt hypocritical to me. Somehow, an opinionated social media post or attendance at a protest would constitute the appearance of bias, but our newspaper being owned by a billionaire didn’t?

That hypocrisy came home to roost this week. Bezos dominated headlines for spending millions on right-wing government propaganda and refusing to spare a fraction of his net worth to avoid hundreds of layoffs at his newspaper. His pro-Trump, pro-wealth hoarding, anti-journalism bias is on full display. And the people in his employ — the ones trying to keep you informed about developments on the Epstein Files, Trump’s erosion of democracy, the administration’s anti-DEI efforts, and more — are paying the price.

We’ve got coverage of all that and more this week — including from Post journalists and ex-Post journalists, who need our support now more than ever. With that, let’s dive in.

Untangling the Melania Industrial Complex

• Jeff Bezos, who refused to pay the salaries of one in three employees that his newspaper laid off yesterday, owns a tech company that reportedly paid $75 million for a propaganda film about First Lady Melania Trump.

• Critics allege Bezos’ company spent so much money on the film in an effort to suck up to Trump. Bezos has faced more widespread criticism for cozying up to Trump. Marty Baron, The Post’s former top editor, pointed to Bezos and War Secretary Pete Hegseth appearing together at Blue Origin, another Bezos-owned company scoring federal contracts.

• Bezos’ funding of state propaganda over real journalism also comes amid the Bezos-supported administration’s prosecution of two independent journalists. Last week, federal agents arrested Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who were indicted alongside activists protesting the federal occupation of Minneapolis. They now face federal charges. The arrests and prosecutions are part of a longer history of the US working to criminalize Black journalists.

The latest on the Epstein Files

• The Justice Department released 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images from the Epstein files. The New York Times found over 5,300 files with references to Trump and related terms. That includes sexual assault claims against Trump. The release includes only half of the 6 million total pages the Department says it has. The DOJ broke the law by not releasing all of the files earlier.

• The files also include emails from Elon Musk in which he asked to visit Epstein’s island, though he claims that visit never ended up happening. Notably, Musk has lied before about never planning a visit. Draft emails from Epstein’s account also allege that Bill Gates used Epstein to set up affairs. Gates has denied those allegations.

• After releasing the files, the Justice Department then took some of them down that may have identified survivors. But survivors’ identifying information — including nude photos — was still publicly available as of Wednesday night.

Trump lies about stolen elections while making it easier for himself to steal elections

• During a podcast interview, Trump called for Republicans to “take over the voting” in at least “15 places.” The Constitution says he can’t do that, but that hasn’t stopped him before.

• State and local officials run federal elections to guard against someone like Trump rigging an election in his favor. Trump has infamously tried to do this through lies about election results and a whole insurrection.

• Trump’s effort to take over elections is already underway in Fulton County, Georgia. Last week, the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and voting records there. (Fulton County was also at the center of Trump’s effort to pressure officials into rigging the 2020 election in his favor.) He’s trying to do the same thing in Minnesota.

Billionaire butchers his own newspaper

• The Washington Post laid off 300 employees Wednesday, almost a third of the entire staff. The paper is owned by Jeff Bezos, who could make up for the paper’s $100 million loss last year with less than 0.0004 of his $256 billion net worth. For context, 0.0004 of what I have in the bank right now would buy me a meal out. That cost was apparently too high for Bezos to spare the livelihoods of 300 people.

• Additionally, Bezos cost the paper a significant chunk of change himself through his own decision to block a 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris. Marty Baron, The Post’s former top editor, tied Bezos’ mismanagement of the paper to his “sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump.”

• Top editor Matt Murray announced the layoffs over Zoom. Publisher Will Lewis, whose tenure has been mired in controversy, didn’t bother to log onto the call. Staffers were largely notified that they had been laid off through emails. Reporter Lizzie Johnson received one such email while she was in the middle of a war zone. 

• In a statement, The Washington Post Guild condemned the layoffs and said, “If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will.” The Guild held a rally to protest the layoffs Thursday, and a GoFundMe to support the laid off employees was still roughly $20,000 shy of its goal at the time I wrote this.

Hegseth to Scouts: No girls allowed

• A Pentagon spokesperson announced that the US military would end its relationship with Scouting America, the organization formerly known as Boy Scouts, unless it implemented “core value reforms.”

• What reforms do they want to see, exactly? According to a statement, they want Scouting America to ramp up the misogyny and transphobia. Citing Trump’s anti-DEI executive order, the Pentagon spokesperson criticized Scouting America’s “embrace of DEl and other social justice, gender-fluid ideological stances. This is unacceptable.”

• What “social justice, gender-fluid ideological stances” might they be referring to? The group allowed girls to join in 2019 so that they’d no longer be blocked out from becoming Eagle Scouts, lifted bans on LGBTQIA+ scouts and leaders before then, and changed its name last year to reflect its expanded membership.

• I have mixed feelings about framing military support for a children’s organization as a DEI win, but the fact that people at the highest levels of government are so upset about this is newsworthy. It sends a message to girls and LGBTQIA+ children about where they can' and can’t feel welcome. The military partnership includes equipment and transportation for a scout gathering and allowing scouts to meet at military installations.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

The last thing I want to do in the middle of launching Local News International is to look back at my previous job. The Washington Post was overall a very positive experience for me. I’d like to just leave it there. But I simply cannot ignore the latest act of self-infliction this week.

I think I made it pretty clear in Wednesday’s video how I feel about the Post’s owner Jeff Bezos, publisher and CEO Will Lewis, and Executive Editor Matt Murray (cowards, they’re cowards). 

Generally, I don’t think it’s good practice to speak bad publicly about any former colleagues. This obviously breaks that rule, but here’s why: their decisions are affecting hundreds of the smartest people in journalism.

I never worked with any of these gentlemen. I don’t know them and, importantly, they’re completely disconnected from my glowing feelings about The Washington Post.

Jeff Bezos was never around, especially in the last five years or so. Initially, this was widely considered a good thing. He was a hands-off owner who consistently told newsroom leaders he would not affect our decisions editorially. And he didn’t! I made countless videos about Amazon on The Washington Post TikTok. They were almost all completely negative. I never received any negative feedback from management. Then, Bezos slowly began making hiring decisions, harmful company decisions (stepping in last minute to spike the Harris endorsement), and the decision to ignore the pleas of the newsroom (he never addressed the FBI raiding a reporter’s house just a few weeks ago). Still, I don’t know him. I never spoke to him. 

Will Lewis is very good at the public-facing part of his job. He’s easy to talk to. He’s funny, too. But I’m basing this off of two one-minute interactions with him and a few company-wide meetings. Like Bezos, Lewis disappeared entirely from the newsroom. Once, last year, his assistant scheduled, then rescheduled, then rescheduled a meeting with him. When a time and location was eventually finalized, he didn’t show up. He wasn’t present for the layoffs yesterday. I don’t know Will.

I sort of met Matt Murray once. And at first, I felt it was unfair to hold it against our lack of communication against him. He arrived shortly before I went on paternity leave, and then I moved to Kansas City. In one of my many visits back to DC and the newsroom, I made the point of attending one of his small group staff meetings in 2024. The meetings were designed for journalists to ask him questions. Instead, he pontificated for 22 minutes of the half hour.  I never got to ask him a question. This turned out to be a very common tactic for him across every Post town hall. At another event, he quite intentionally ignored me as I attempted to introduce myself (I was still working at the Post). I’ve never had a conversation with Matt.

What I’m trying to illustrate is that these three strangers have nothing to do with my memories of The Washington Post.

I remember Michelle Jaconi, my career guardian angel, who got me the job in the first place. The kindest, most enthusiastic person you’ll ever meet. I remember our entire Creative Video team, constantly on the move, making the weirdest videos we could imagine.

I remember Gene Park and Teddy Amenabar being so willing to help me out early in 2019 when I launched the TikTok account. And Marty Baron, Carlos Lozada, Ashley Parker, David Fahrenthold, and all the other genius journalists who took the time to cameo in my TikTok’s.

I think about working with Chris, Carmella and Joey to create our own literal universe - doing a “world tour” of the solar eclipse across three cities in the space of an hour.

Those people, and literally hundreds more, made The Washington Post an incredible place. The three men up top destroying it - whether intentionally or not - having nothing to do with the place.

You get two rewards for making it to the end of this newsletter. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Jean Ralphio and Lili Sebastian!

if the email from which i learned their names was supposed to say “lil sebastian” and autocorrect changed it i am sorry

The second is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hid a non-news related link somewhere above in this email. This week, in the blurb about Trump’s FBI taking ballot boxes, I included a link to a summary of a chapter in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” where soldiers do the same thing. I’m planning to give myself a day off on Monday and finish the book. Late ’90s X-Men comics aren’t doing it for me, so I’m pivoting to postcolonial literature.

Until next week!

Chris

What’s in today’s Feb. 1, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: Melania

🗺️ What I’m reading: A subreddit

🍖 What I’m eating: KC’s best BBQ

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on: A new YouTube long-form series

Good thing the internet is around to keep track of my aging.

👀 What I’m watching

In Friday’s video, I first spoke about the independent journalists who were arrested for simply exercising their First Amendment rights to cover a protest. Then, simply as a joke segue to the next news story, I went to see the Melania movie.

It became very clear to me that if I was going to spend the $6.75 to see it, you, our loyal readers and viewers, deserved a review of Melania.

(Also, shoutout to the Cinemark in Merriam, KS that still sells super cheap movie tickets).

I wanted to be upfront in this newsletter and assure you it’s coming, but not in today’s edition. For now, I’ll tell you this much, it’s basically a really long perfume ad. It’s void of any plot or meaning. In the hands of an experienced director, it looks nice enough. But as soon as you start to think critically about any aspect of the film, its subject, its production and even the director, the thin layer of polish dissolves faster than Melania’s smile when her husband turns away from her.

Disgraced ‘Melania’ director Brett Ratner was pictured (right) in Friday’s Epstein file dump.

More on Melania later this week!

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🗺️ What I’m reading

Given the absolute chaos this week, with news pummeling us from every angle, I did not have time to sit down with a nice book. True to my average millennial man nature, I browsed Reddit for distractions in my free moments. I’ve had a Reddit account since 2013 (What’s my username? I’ll never tell. XOXO Gossip Dave).

As a result of a relatively harmless Reddit addiction, I’m subscribed to hundreds of subreddits, and continue to stumble across new communities on a weekly basis. By far, my favorite of late is r/howislivinghere.

A Peace Corps volunteer answered this one - it’s fascinating!

Users simply post a screenshot of a map, or a photo of location somewhere in the world, asking people of the internet what it’s like to live there. Virtually every single location eventually finds someone on Reddit that currently lives or has lived in that location. I even learned about the northernmost Canadian military installation via this post:

The Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert in Nunavat is just over 500 miles away from the North Pole. According to Redditors, crews rotate in and out of the station for 3-6 months at a time. It’s never empty. It’s probably a little miserable. It’s so fascinating to me.

Should I got to Nunavat for a video? What other remote or strange locations should we visit or talk about? Let me know at dave.jorgenson@washpost.com.

🍖 What I’m eating

I grew up in Shawnee, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City). A couple years back my wife, daughter and I moved back to the area, on the Missouri side. So, having spent over half my life in the area, it’s time I tell you my opinions on the best - and most overrated - KC BBQ stops. For anyone not from KC, locals are holding their breath before reading the following paragraph. I’m about to make some people happy, some people sad, and a few others so angry they can’t see straight.

Jack Stack BBQ is a lovely place to eat. The atmosphere - especially downtown - outstanding. 10/10. It’s not the best BBQ. The onion ring tower is nice, sure. They also make the best baked beans in the city. Other than that? It’s a top five joint that will never be #1.

Arthur Bryant’s is a restaurant. They definitely serve BBQ. It’s probably one of the last joints that’s truly authentic to the original BBQ scene, and therefore a good spot to take someone from out of town. It’s not even the top ten best BBQ spot in the city.

I’m weird about Gates BBQ. I really like it but I’ve never loved it. I’m convinced they have some kind of of device on their roofs that pumps out even more BBQ smell into the streets. It’s my favorite place to take someone from out of town, as it checks all the boxes. But it’s not the best overall BBQ.

RJ’s Bob-Be-Que Shack is where my high school basketball team went for a couple team dinners. I’m only mentioning it because I’m pretty sure it’s not that good at all, but when I was 16, it was magical.

Q39 BBQ is incredibly overrated. It wasn’t around when I was a kid. I heard great things after moving back to the area. I’ve been disappointed every time.

One of KC’s newest spots is my second-favorite, and in contention for the top spot if they keep it up: Char Bar. Unlike other restaurants, they aren’t known for just one thing. They can do it all. Burnt ends, ribs, sandwiches and fries. You name it, they’ve all but perfected it. This is where I go for my birthday every year. And when I’m there and it’s not my birthday, it feels like my birthday.

KC Joe’s has been the best and remains the best. When they rebranded from Oklahoma Joe’s to KC Joe’s a decade or so ago, I was worried the changes up top might affect the Z-Man sandwich, and all of his delicious friends. It did not. This is where you take people that visit. This is where you go if you’re a local. This is even where you go if you need to pump gas (though, the gas station part of the restaurant has basically been taken over by KC Joe’s merch).

Is there another spot I should rate? Email me at dave.jorgenson@lni.media and let me know. It’s possible I haven’t been there!

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m working on

In the midst of pumping out five short videos a week, we continue to work tirelessly on the long-form series we promised early this year. We will fulfill that promise and I’m so excited for you to see what we’ve been working on.

One huge advantage we have in developing this series is that I’ve already experimented in long-form many, many times over my career, to varying levels of success. Everything I’ve learned in that trial and error will go into this series. Best of all, this time around, I have a whole team of people dedicated to making this series match the quality and tone you’ve come to expect from our short videos. Here’s some lessons I’ve learned over many years on YouTube.

Gimmicks are fun, but sometimes only last a few episodes.

Such was the case with Dear Dave, Eagle Scout. I put on my old Boy Scout uniform and interviewed people on the street. We got some really funny videos out of it, but the premise itself wore off relatively quickly, and we never had much material for something longer than five minutes.

Know your audience

‘Maybe’ was a tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory series, in which I played an overly serious host unpacking how the internet had developed a recent, unfounded conspiracy theory. There’s a lot of DNA here in my modern day obsession with covering misinformation. But there was a fundamental flaw here: our core audience at IJR.com was mainly older, conservative leaning people. They took these videos completely seriously. Very funny now, super frustrating at the time.

Be consistent

Arguably, the most successful long-form series I did was Short Takes. It didn’t get millions of views, but it made people smile - its main goal.

We made over 50 episodes across at least 40 different locations around the country, finding funny kids in every single spot. This predated a very popular TikTok series that does the exact same thing. I wish I had committed the time to releasing this show consistently and perfecting it, like that creator.

Don’t make something impossible

Last year, while I was still at The Washington Post, I began to produce the first videos for what is now the Local News International YouTube channel. They were designed to look and feel like my TikToks and Shorts. I think we accomplished that in those six episodes.

But here’s the problem - it takes me about four hours to edit those complicated 90 second short videos. So when it was expanded to be eight to 10 minute videos, I set myself up for long-term failure. By episode six, I was completely burnt out, trying to both make this series and also produce five short videos a week.

Our new series will be top quality and feel similar to the short videos. But now we’re doing it the right way. We’re getting help from all kinds of people and places. And I’m learning to ask for help (what a concept!). Again, I’m so excited for you to see what’s coming. If you’re not subscribed on YouTube already, please do so!

What’s in today’s Jan. 30, 2026 issue

✍️ Fact-checking lies about Alex Pretti

📆 A timeline of some of Trump’s most egregious acts

🤫 Political suppression on TikTok

📕 An AI company destroyed millions of books

🧑🏼‍💻 Dave’s Corner: that new Alex Pretti video

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. It’s been another week of processing another killing of another civilian by armed federal agents in another occupied American city. Over lunch with a friend and mentor yesterday, we reflected on shifting attitudes among people around us. During the first Trump administration, our loved ones hoped that someone would come and save us from what we all saw unfolding — someone like Robert Mueller or James Comey or any other high-level official seeking to hold Donald Trump accountable. Then, my friend summed up those same loved ones’ assessment today: “No one is coming to save us.”

On one hand, that’s an expression of despair. And it’s only exacerbated by a deeper understanding I’ve gained since 2016 of how state violence has always operated, in the US and globally. On the other, it can be an expression of empowerment against the people with institutional power who refuse to stop it. Republicans are presiding over the fatal shootings that have rocked the country over the last two weeks; meanwhile, Democrats are refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security unless the agency implements reforms, as if a government body tasked with hunting down and violently removing racialized others can ever be reformed.

But outside what we typically see as the halls of power, a different kind of power is making actual, meaningful change. My Mother Jones colleague Sam Van Pykeren reported on the mutual aid networks in Minneapolis giving coats to people being released from federal detention, providing saline wash for protesters who had been tear gassed, and buying snacks and hand warmers for protesters resisting the death squad occupying their city.

Reading through the terrible news of the past week, this is what I keep coming back to. No one is coming to save us. So we save ourselves.

With that, let’s dive in.

They’re lying to you about Alex Pretti

• After Border Patrol agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, homeland security advisor Stephen Miller said Pretti “tried to murder federal agents”. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem similarly tried to justify the killing. These are lies.

• Video evidence doesn’t show Pretti acting violently. It shows him protecting someone who agents had pushed to the ground. It also shows one agent disarming Pretti before the first shot was fired, and before another agent shot Pretti in the back three times. Plus, the Department of Homeland Security’s own report on the shooting makes no mention of Pretti attacking officers.

• Officials like FBI Director Kash Patel have also said Pretti did not have the right to bring a gun to a protest. This doesn’t just contradict many conservatives’ own line of thinking around gun rights — it’s also incorrect. Legal experts told PolitiFact that because Minnesota “legally permitted Pretti to carry a gun, he was within his rights in Minnesota to do so, including at a protest.”

• Even if he did break the law by not having his permit or other ID on him, as Noem and Border Patrol official Greg Bovino have said, the penalty for that is a maximum fine of $25. Notably, the penalty as defined by law is not being shot dead in the street.

• Some conservatives — including the president himself — say people protesting federal agents’ occupation of Minneapolis are paid. No evidence confirms this. In fact, it’s one of the most common pieces of misinformation that spread around mass protests.

It didn’t start with Minnesota

• A rough timeline from Trump’s political ascent to his presiding over federal agents’ recent killings includes: announcing his candidacy by disparaging Mexican immigrants, bragging about sexually assaulting women, calling white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people,” his first time getting impeached, denying election results and inciting an insurrection about it, hoarding classified documents in his bathroom, 34 convictions in a hush money trial, flip-flopping on releasing the Epstein files, and deploying heavily militarized federal agents into American cities to detain, deport, shoot and kill people.

• The premise of Dave’s video is that every step of the way, people have said this is the last straw for Trump. And yet, this man has continued to run up the political food chain for a decade. So, what does “the last straw” even mean today? A quick Google News search for “trump accountability” turned up this story about state and local officials vowing to hold the Trump administration accountable. Some want to prosecute federal officers and administration officials who break state laws. (Notably, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said this will only happen after those administration officials leave office.) But the story says they face an uphill battle in doing so.

• The Google search also turned up stories and press releases about litigation against the Trump administration, Democratic legislation seeking to rein in Trump’s efforts on various fronts including immigration and climate, and calls to impeach the people around Trump.

And good luck talking about any of this on TikTok

• Under TikTok’s new ownership by Trump-aligned billionaires, many users have raised concerns that the app is censoring posts about ICE, Jeffrey Epstein and other issues Trump and his friends might not want you talking about.

• TikTok has blamed the issues on app outages. But there’s a long and widely held consensus that TikTok does censor some political content. Still, it’s sometimes hard to always know exactly when and why TikTok does this. (Shameless plug for my reporting on this from my early days working with Dave. I was still learning the TikTok journalism ropes back then and sound like I’m literally asleep, so please be gentle while watching this.)

• Users have also raised concerns about the app collecting immigration data. TikTok’s privacy policy says it could collect information about “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status.” In fact, it’s said this since before the app’s new US ownership took over. That language is there because some state laws require social media apps to tell us what sensitive information they could collect.

Meanwhile, in AI overlord news

• Our former colleagues at The Washington Post covered a tech start-up’s secret plan to destroy and scan millions of books in order to teach AI models behind Anthropic’s products, including the debonairly named but reportedly evil Claude.

• What’s the problem with tearing apart and feeding books to AI as though they’re game pieces in Hungry Hungry Hippo? Authors alleged that it’s a copyright issue. Documents from lawsuits show that other big tech companies worked hard and often secretly to collect books and other artwork to train AI. They included pirated works, according to court records, and suspected they were breaking copyright law.

• But courts are still deciding whether they actually did break copyright law. Many of these cases are ongoing, and some judges have said these AI companies can be in the clear under fair use. But even if the use of the copyrighted works ends up being legal, the way these companies acquired the works via pirating websites might not be.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the last week, I turn things over to him for some analysis and updates. Dave, take it away!

On the topic of AI, there’s this new phenomenon I’ve noticed in the comment section of videos. It’s sort of the reverse of being tricked by AI. I saw it with this video from The News Movement.

Instagram post

We see Alex Pretti, 11 days before his death, kicking a tail light off a a Border Patrol agent’s car. Now, it goes without saying that breaking a tail light does not justify killing someone in the street, 11 days later. I would argue that it doesn’t even justify the way he’s tackled in the video above.

Still, the first initial comments on this video, and still now, were “that’s AI.”

Comments from the News Movement video on Instagram.

I’ll admit, I raised my eyebrows watching the video. Pretti was more charged up in this earlier footage than the day he was murdered. It didn’t totally match my idea of him. Falling into the “that’s AI” trap would have made this easier to swallow.

Again, it’s not that this video justifies murder at all. Like many, my concern was, “oh no, this is going to be used as ammunition” in some kind of weird, sick argument as to why Pretti deserved to die.

Sure enough, within hours, Donald Trump Jr. was tweeting about it. The MAGA base has already coalesced around the idea that Pretti was, in fact, a violent man that deserved to be killed in the street.

Twitter tweet

On the flip side, immediately after Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was attacked, I saw a ton of comments from Trump supporters falsely insisting that the entire event was staged.

Comments on the C-SPAN YouTube clip, of all places.

For some MAGA supporters, it would be impossible to imagine that Omar, the person Trump so often derides and ridicules, would not only sustain an attack like this, but square up and face her attacker, completely fearless.

Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson1) on Threads

I am not a body language expert but I would generally characterize this stance as, “come at me, mother fucker”

www.threads.com/@davejorgenson1/post/DUCcVWQDZlr

So what’s the point of all my rambling here? I think we are in a very precarious moment. Not everyone has the tools (or time!) to meticulously study every frame of footage coming our way. And it’s all completely charged by emotion.

LNI will be here to keep fact-checking everything we can. In the meantime, do your best to take it all one post at a time. And if you need a break, take a break.

You get two rewards for making it to the end of this newsletter. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. I know we ran a little long today. So as a thank you for sticking around, here’s a two-for-one. Meet Coco and Mousse!

They’re friends!!!!!!!

Your second reward is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hid a non-news related link somewhere in this newsletter and tell you where it is down here. This week, in second bullet point about the “last straw” video, I linked out to “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush because I just finished season 4 of Stranger Things. Depending on how you measure time, I am either four years or forty years late to loving this song. Read to the end again next week for another scavenger hunt reveal.

Until then!

Chris

What’s in today’s Jan. 25, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: The Chair Company

📜 What I’m reading: A 238-year-old document

🧱 What I’m building: A giant LEGO set

🌯 What I’m eating: The best breakfast burrito in KC

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m processing: Saturday

Border Patrol agents tackle Alex Pretti, beat him down, then kill him.

I had the full-on flu from Monday all the way to Friday last week (thanks again Chris and Micah for covering me on the brilliant Friday newsletter). When I was in school, this would have been ideal. No school all week, then suddenly a beautiful snowstorm for the weekend? Yes, please! But Adult Dave wanted to make videos, especially during this particularly precarious time in America.

Today, my brain is functioning at like 94% of it’s full power. I’m like Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lucy. Here’s what I’ve been up to and I’m working on, as my brain slowly grows more powerful.

👀 What I’m watching

For whatever reason, when I have the flu, I tend to gravitate towards absurdist comedies that, prior to my bed-ridden state, I haven’t watched. It’s like people that go out in the desert to do hallucinogens. I’m taking my cloudy thoughts to a premise that also doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why I do this to myself.

Last time I had the flu, I watched a lot of Portlandia. Naturally, this time around, I watched the entire first season of The Chair Company. What a trip.

I’ve admired Tim Robinson, mostly from afar, for a while. It’s a pretty common internet take that his comedy and sensibilities were mismatched for SNL’s more mainstream approach to comedy. His success post-SNL with Chair Company, I Think You Should Leave and Friendship is so well-deserved.

Even if you don’t get his comedy, you have to appreciate someone making something completely unique and original. And while I’ve been on the peripheral, I caught this genius sketch from his Netflix series a couple years back:

I watched all of The Chair Company in basically one day. I don’t know what to say, exactly. It was brilliant. It made no sense. I laughed out loud multiple times. I cringed deeply, which was by design, of course. The premise alone could easily be a short eight-minute sketch, and part of me wonders if it was originally. It’s not hard to imagine Robinson walking into HBO’s offices and pitching one sketch as a joke, only for executives to greenlight it as a nine-episode series (now renewed for a second season). I mean, these are the same people who temporarily changed HBO Max to “Max.”

Here’s the basic set-up: a man has to give a big rousing speech in front of his company. It goes well. Then, he sits down and his chair collapses, humiliating him in front of everyone. From then on, he privately launches a full-on investigation into the chair company. The motivations of the main character and everyone around him shift constantly, sometimes prompting me to question my own comprehension of the show. But you don’t watch this show for the plot. You watch it for the completely random scenes - and for that reason alone, I recommend it.

📜 What I’m reading

By Saturday, my brain was fully functioning, but based on some posts by right-wing pundits, politicians and random MAGA accounts, I started to wonder if I had the Second Amendment wrong this whole time. So I looked it up again:

We’ll get to the shooting itself later on in the newsletter, but first I’d like to address this Bizarro MAGA World reaction to a U.S. citizen lawfully carrying a firearm, with a permit, in an open carry state.

Twitter tweet

Here’s the obvious part: to say a protestor can not or should not be armed is a direct contradiction to literally everything the NRA and its many fans and donors have been saying for decades.

But there’s another part of this that’s bothered me for many years as well, and it’s something I’ve repeated in many videos.

1. A majority of Americans support the Second Amendment. 

2. A majority of Americans support more comprehensive background checks.

This “fight” that Americans been waging for years, that has directly led to the death of hundreds of children in schools, has been “won” by a group in a small, vocal minority. And now members of that same minority group have selectively chosen Saturday’s shooting as the exception to the rule. I’ll be making a video unpacking this soon.

🧱 What I’m building

Move over, adult coloring book. The best way to relax for many aging millennials, including myself, is to build giant “adult” LEGO sets. You may have even seen my Home Alone LEGO set make a cameo in previous videos:

This is a recent phenomenon I’ve excitedly contributed to the last few years. Wirecutter even posted their favorite “adult” LEGO sets. It makes perfect sense to me. LEGO had it’s first major resurgence in the late 90s. As a kid obsessed with Star Wars and Harry Potter, I was the target demographic for their two new major licensing deals: Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Now in adulthood, it’s becoming a bit of a tradition that my wife gets me a giant LEGO set for my birthday each year. This year was no exception. On Saturday, when I turned [REDACTED] years old, I got an incredible new set: Barad-dûr. Finally, LEGO is making up for not also licensing Frodo and the gang in the early 2000s.

I told Sauron to look at the camera.

I’ve only just started putting together this 5,471 piece set. I figure it should take me the length of the LOTR trilogy. And just in case, I’m rewatching the Extended Editions.

Keep it secret, keep it safe.

🌯 What I’m eating

*Bill Hader as Stefan voice*

Kansas City’s best breakfast burrito is at Rochester Brewing and Roasting Company. It’s got eggs. It’s got potatoes. It’s got cheese. You can get chorizo, or sausage, bacon, or veggie. Trust me. I’ve had it no less than 20 times. It’s always made fresh. It’s always delicious. Their coffee is just okay.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m processing

After seven Border Patrol agents grabbed, beat, disarmed and forced Alex Pretti to his knees, they shot at him at least 10 times. Or did they execute him?

We are very careful about how we use language at Local News International. There’s about 60 years of journalism at The Washington Post, The AP, PBS, local television and more between the three co-founders. So, when Renee Good was killed, I opted not to call it “murder.” It sure felt like murder, but by its dictionary definition, it was not. Murder requires premeditation.

When Pretti was violently taken down yesterday, the word “execution” entered my head, and many others online. Once again, those hardened journalistic tendencies took over and I looked up “execution.”

The first definition didn’t quite fit:

• The carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person.

He hadn’t been previously condemned. Importantly, he was an upstanding citizen, a nurse who took care of veterans. He was a hero. But he wasn’t condemned.

This definition, however, feels closer to what happened:

• The killing of someone as a political act.

It certainly looks and feels political. Pretti was protesting a highly-politicized police task force, armed and protected by the government. And that task force killed him for it, plain and simple. We don’t know the individual thoughts of the Border Patrol agents (though one did say “boo hoo” at another protestor, moments after they killed him). At this time, I am leaning towards using “execution” in our video. But for now, I’m processing. This is one of the biggest advantages we have at LNI. We’re too small to do constant breaking news. And it would be irresponsible. Instead, we find the facts and correct the record after the Internet explodes, so you don’t have to wade through the miserable mess.

Tomorrow’s first video will be a fact-checker on what happened before, during and after Border Patrol agents killed Pretti. If there’s anything specific you’d like me to fact-check, let me know: dave.jorgenson@lni.media.

And please follow and support The Minnestota Star Tribune’s ongoing coverage. It is excellent.

You’re still here?

Then I just want to say this: don’t let all the horribleness get to you. A lot of wonderful things happened this weekend. The first general protest in 80 years saw as many as 50,000 people in Minnesota brave the -9 degree weather on Friday.

It’s always better to be a good person, in the end, holding on to humanity and protecting your fellow human beings. Look for the bright side, like former 90s child actors in Instagram comment sections.

Clarissa explains it all to the DHS Instagram account

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
10:32 PM • Jan 24, 2026

What’s in today’s Jan. 16, 2026 issue

🌎️ Chris on US imperialism in Greenland & Latin America

🎥 Dave revisits a 1940s movie about US fascism

✍️ Micah’s corner

Hi friends,

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. My job here is usually to sum up the news that Dave has covered in the past week. But Dave is sick this week, which means there’s less to summarize, which means I’ve been mostly left to my own devices. In the past, when Dave has left me similarly unsupervised, I’ve tried to launch hostile takeovers that involve explaining the news through Marvel references. Today, history repeats itself.

Trump at Davos (Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images

The Davos World Economic Forum is happening as I write this. It also happened in the fourth issue of writer Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men run. In that issue, different countries weigh how they exert control through their economic influence. It’s a helpful introduction to the World Economic Forum in real life. There, President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on eight European nations if they didn’t agree to let him take control of Greenland. Then, he backed down from that threat after saying he’d reached a deal over Greenland. The details of that deal are still unclear, but Trump has said it’ll include “all the military access” he wants. Economic power — be it Krakoan in a Marvel comic or American in the real world — is shaping people’s lives around the globe.

There’s been a lot of attention on Trump’s ambitions to take over Greenland. The morning I’m writing this, articles and live blogs about it abound on the homepages of the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. The attention is warranted. But it’s also been interesting — and, honestly, disheartening — to see less attention on Trump’s imperialist ambitions in Latin America. After his administration captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Trump threatened that Greenland may be next. In the same breath, he also threatened Iran, Cuba, Colombia and Mexico.

And I don’t mean to suggest that journalists aren’t paying attention to the threatened invasion of those countries at all. Search for it, and you’ll find it. But it’s also hard to deny that Greenland is dominating the conversation right now. Even with Greenland taking center stage at Davos, it’s hard for me to not critique newsrooms’ focus here as a Eurocentric choice, especially when US involvement in Latin America in the past and present plays a huge role in global and domestic politics.

I’m on a reporting trip for Mother Jones right now in Miami, my hometown, covering how Venezuelan and Cuban diaspora groups are reacting to this. I had one set of grandparents emigrate from Cuba under a US-backed dictatorship there. Those same grandparents melded into a brand of Cold War-era Cuban conservatism in Miami that was largely shaped by — and that largely shaped — US foreign policy toward Latin America. Our country’s involvement in the region was the lens through which I first began to understand politics growing up.

That involvement is playing out right now in a big way. Recent reporting shows that the US secured cooperation from Maduro’s vice president before attacking Venezuela, and that it’s actively seeking regime change in Cuba this year. Migrants from both countries have been targeted by the Trump administration and its federal agents occupying and terrorizing US cities. US imperialism, immigration, and fascism at home are all linked, and that link is playing out before our eyes right now.

And speaking of fascism in the US, Dave did power through his cold to make one video this week about this.

Don’t be a sucker

• In the 1940s, the U.S. Army made a film called “Don’t Be A Sucker.” It warned Americans about fascism at home after the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. The film features a man spouting anti-immigrant rhetoric to rile up a crowd, using familiar tropes of immigrants taking American jobs. Decades later, President Donald Trump is saying the same thing as this fictional fascist — even without evidence to back it up.

• Fictional Fascist also said “it’s up to you and me to fight them,” decades before Vice President JD Vance urged people to “take America’s streets back for the American people.”

• The film also shows the POV of a refugee from Europe, recalling how the Nazis gave another man in the film “a uniform and they pumped up his ego.” Today, ICE is planning a $100 million recruitment campaign.

• Other parallels speak for themselves, like the character in the film recalling how Nazis “gambled with other people’s liberty” as ICE reported nearly 67,000 detentions last year, how they treated Jewish people as “a convenient excuse for all the nation’s ills” as Trump ramps up his anti-immigrant rhetoric even more, how they “decided to abolish the truth” as we saw DHS lie about the killing of Renee Good, how they used government propaganda as Trump and his allies try to build up a new media empire, how they arrested religious leaders as federal agents today have arrested clergy members.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered, I turn things over to him for some analysis. But with Dave out this week, we’re turning things over to LNI co-founder Micah Gelman.

The Cheech and Chong original (1971)

Hello friends,

It’s Micah subbing in for Dave who has been down with the flu this week. This year’s flu strain is no joke. It’s still not too late to get the flu vaccine despite R.F.K. Jr.’s apparent attempts to kill as many Americans as possible by undercutting public confidence in vaccination.

In Dave’s absence, I want to update you on a few exciting things happening at Local News International, a division of Family Loser, LLC.™️

If you missed the Sunday/Monday newsletter, Dave fulfilled a promise we made when we started — to explain who paid us last year and how we accounted for that money. You can read the newsletter, or check out our Ethics & Transparency page which has the 2025 report. With apologies to Sarah Hashemi, I made the chart myself.

In total transparency, pun intended, we have updated our pledge to include a new one: We are Independent. As Dave talked about Sunday, we don’t take money from politicians, political parties or political action committees. Here’s the updated pledge which removed We are Where You Are. To be clear (thanks, Obama) we are still where you are, but it didn’t really fit with an ethics commitment.

If you think we should add something to the pledge or make something clearer, please let us know by emailing dave.jorgenson@lni.media. Lauren, Dave and I read and respond to all incoming messages.

NewsRadio’s version (1995)

Two of the funding sources Dave mentioned on Sunday are USAFacts and News Revenue Hub.

Lauren, Dave and I are helping USAFacts, a non-profit founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, with their social video strategy. USAFacts is a great organization dedicated to helping ordinary people find and better understand government data.

We’re helping them recruit for a new Social Media Video Manager role at their Bellevue, Washington offices. Here’s a link to the job description and you can reach out to me or Lauren on LinkedIn if you want more information about the role or know someone who would be a good candidate. You must be willing to relocate to the Seattle-area.

The Simpsons (2011)

We’re also proud to be working with News Revenue Hub, which is marking it’s 10th anniversary this month. In their own words, News Revenue Hub is helping newsrooms “build stronger, more sustainable business models for journalism.” Thanks to the team there, including CEO Mary Walter-Brown, Sarah Bishop-Woods, Abbey Gingras, Ashley Guckert and former Postie Sophie Ho for supporting us and connecting us with newsrooms around the country doing incredible work in challenging circumstances.

You get two rewards for making it to the end of this newsletter. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Nym!

awwwwwwwwwww cutie

Your second is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news related link somewhere above. In the blurb about Dave’s video, I linked to the Wikipedia article for Senator Robert Kelly, a Marvel Comics character whose heel turn away from anti-mutant fanaticism I’m currently seeing about in my big X-Men read through.

Until next week!

Chris

What’s in today’s Jan. 18, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: Pluribus

📕 What I’m reading: History of 1930s Germany

🎧 What I’m listening to: A Pixar film soundtrack

🥨 What I’m eating: A Costco favorite

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing: Publishing our annual list of funders!

Scroll down to the end to see our 2025 sources of revenue!

👀 What I’m watching

In the throes of a cold that completely obliterated my sinuses, brain and will to move, I managed to watch the vast majority of Pluribus on Apple+

(Despite the praise I’m about to laud on this show, this it not an ad from Tim Apple. But keep reading later on to see our full transparent list of funding).

After six season of Better Call Saul and one season of Pluribus, Rhea Seehorn is finally getting the accolades she deserves.

Without spoiling, this show is about AI, specifically, the wool being pulled over our head as we relinquish our jobs, culture, individuality, and minds to chatbots, without much extra thought. “AI” and “Artificial Intelligence” is never brought up explicitly on the show, but some dialogue unquestionably mimics the circular and often illogical conclusions of AI chatbots.

Strangely, the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), won’t explicitly say the show is about AI. My unfounded, tinfoil hat theory is that he doesn’t want Apple, a tech company fully embracing AI, to cancel the series.

Whatever you think the show is about, or not about, please take the time to watch it and send me a note telling me what you think it is about. Many a redditor have pointed out that it’s “too slow.” But for those of us who thoroughly enjoyed all of Better Call Saul, it always pays off. And hey, maybe it’s good for your attention span to just drink in the gorgeous cinematography.

Instagram post

Gilligan and his crew may as well be the New Mexico tourism board, having spent nearly two decades projecting the beautiful oranges and blues of the desert onto our small screens. And by the way, yes, that is the actual mayor of Albuquerque with a cameo in episode four.

“You’re the f****** mayor!”

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 📕 What I’m reading

You may have noticed a few cameos in Wednesday’s video from the World History section:

Just a bit of light reading!

I also picked up The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at the Barnes & Noble on the Plaza in KC a few weeks ago (my other go-to Barnes & Noble is in Zona Rosa - say hi if you see me!).

That book did not feature in this week’s TikTok, because it’s got a big old swastika on the cover and binding. I get why it’s there, but I have to admit, I paused for just a moment before purchasing it. And later fully omitted it from our video, in fear of getting suppressed. I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t just a book by it’s cover but also maybe don’t put a giant swastika on a book if you’re trying to teach non-Nazis about the horrible crimes Nazis committed. I was prepared to explain to the cashier exactly what the book was about, only to realize, with relief, it was someone I knew, who knows I am not a Nazi.

Anyways, it’s a thick book. It’s gonna take me awhile to get through it. But since we are living 1930s Germany right now, it’s a fully immersive experience, even when I’m not reading. Like why Spy Kids did a movie with “smell-o-vision,” except this is less fun and I have no interest in smelling the actual Nazis recruited by ICE.

ICE thug with a Nazi tattoo

— Bad Choices Make Good Stories (@badchoices.us)
12:14 AM • Jan 14, 2026

🎧 What I’m listening to

You’re probably tired of hearing from young parents and their Disney-filled Spotify Wrapped, but I cannot tell a lie, dear reader. I cannot sit here ad pretend I listened to the music that I wanted to listen to this week.

So, what are the parents of a precocious toddler listening to? Lucia has taken a break from the music of Moana, Coco, Encanto and Frozen, and taken a left turn into the Cars franchise.

On one the hand, I am delighted. I am literally fueling Lucia’s interest in cars. I got her a Hot Wheels track for Christmas and was thrilled to see her enthusiasm for the mechanism that makes the car take the second loop even faster. She also has a new set of pink wheels - a Little Tikes Princess Cozy Coupe to be precise - and LOVES it.

On the other hand, the Cars franchise has never been my favorite of the Pixar films. They’re not bad, honestly. In truth, my only real knock against them is they may be the only Pixar films truly made for kids and not adults. When they do make winking references for adults, they’re pretty dated, lame jokes.

But here’s the good news: it’s got a perfectly fine soundtrack, which we are now hearing constantly on Lucia’s Tonie box. I have heard “Life is a Highway” more in the last week than I have in every road trip of my life combined.

This is also not an ad, but Tonie should really be paying me at this point.

🥨 What I’m eating

You know those peanut butter filled pretzels from Costco? Our household is destroying them. They’re disappearing faster than cold medicine at a daycare.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing

We promised to make our funding sources public, and now’s the time to reveal our funding from 2025. One of our co-founders, Micah, has been working hard on this since the end of the fourth quarter. He even made a graph (thanks, Micah!).

But that’s not all. We want you to know exactly who we’ve worked with, not just the category they fall under:

• News Revenue Hub (consulting)

• Praytell (speaking engagement)

• USAFacts (consulting)

• The Omidyar Group (grants)

• Harry's Razors (advertising)

• National Council for Marketing and Public Relations (speaking engagement)

Most of these revenue sources are part of continuous contracts. In other words, that circle graph reflects what we were paid in 2025, not what they have or will pay us in 2026.

I’d also like to note another source of revenue: Free the Facts. This was a contract between myself and the organization that predated the creation of our media company, but continued through December. We made 41(!) videos with this organization last year. You can check out the playlist here.

Finally, I promised in last week’s newsletter I would share my thoughts on the news of the last few weeks, which may or may not have just contributed to the overall shittiness of my cold on Monday. I’m going to do a lot of showing versus telling in today’s video. In short, we are slow-marching into full-fledged fascism with the help of a lawless militarized force and a (very) short man cosplaying as an actual Nazi.

I continue to maintain that humor, especially directed at the cowards inflicting pain, is a massive, important tool today. Another major tool: journalism.

I’ve spoken very little about the editorial changes made at The Washington Post before leaving. In truth, they didn’t really change. But the people enforcing them, and how they talked about the news, did change. Jeff Bezos had all but disappeared. This was made all the more significant when the FBI raided the house of a Post reporter last week. Bezos has yet to say a single word on the matter.

When the leadership up top, including the owner, publisher and editor-in-chief don’t - or can’t - lead, there’s nothing to follow. Even if you have an established set of morals and rules, like The Washington Post has, those mean nothing if leadership keeps breaking the norms without explanation.

As Trump and his allies continue to take control of various media sources, it becomes more difficult for viewers and readers to trust their news, despite how well-meaning and ethical the reporters themselves continue to be (and make no mistake, my former colleagues at the Post reporting the news are still the best of the best).

Bob Woodward was once told to “follow the money.” With legacy media, that will often lead you to a Trump source with ulterior motives. With Local News International, you’ll find our funding comes with no strings attached. We are truly independent and will not accept money from political action committees or parties on either the right or left.

Still here? Fine. Here’s a clip from my latest collab with Ruff Ruffman:

Instagram post

You can watch the full, first interview here. And the second full interview below:

What’s in today’s Jan. 16, 2026 issue

📝 A “legal refresher” for immigration agents

🧊 ICE’s AI bounty hunters

🥊 Trump vs. Powell

🤖 Training AI to replace us

🐕 Dave’s Corner

LNI co-founder Micah made a cameo in Wednesday’s video.

Hi friends!

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. There’s a weird throughline between all the stories covered in today’s edition, so stay with me as I try to find it. We’re gonna walk through how immigration agents have been trained to not break the law despite repeatedly seemingly breaking the law, AI’s role in that very same immigration enforcement, people training AI to do their own jobs, and a wild political fight that’s also related to jobs growth.

I guess the throughline is that people in power are using methods both new and old to enact physical and economic violence on the people they’re exerting power over. But I promise it’s explained in a way that’ll make you feel less depressed than that sentence did. Let’s dive in.

It’s still legal to curse out the feds

• Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Monday that Border Patrol circulated guidance reminding agents of protected activities under the First Amendment. Per the “legal refresher,” the First Amendment protects profanity, personal insults, rude gestures, and arguing with, challenging or talking back to officers.

• The “legal refresher” also included a list of things that do not violate another law against assaulting, resisting or impeding officers. That list of protected activities included noncompliance and peaceful protest.

• Notably, though, the law doesn’t protect what’s loosely described as incitement, “fighting words,” or threats of violence. Immigration agents have infamously lied about facing threats of violence, and they’ve also violently tried to stop people from doing the protected activities listed above. And plenty have argued that trainings like this “legal refresher” aren’t sufficient ways to stop federal agents from committing more violence. Other reporting backs this up.

• Even if something is protected by law, it’s still helpful to be aware of potential consequences. Like, one Ford employee who flipped off Trump was suspended from his job. His union is reviewing the suspension.

ICE’s AI bounty hunters

• 404 Media reported last month that ICE has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company called AI Solutions 87. The company makes “AI agents” to track people down, and records show that ICE sought out the company specifically to help them arrest and deport people.

• This is part of ICE’s broader multi-million dollar effort to pay bounty hunters and private investigators to stalk migrants and give their addresses to ICE.

• So, how do these AI agents work? AI Solutions 87’s website reportedly says they can speed up the process of finding “persons of interest and mapping out their entire network.” (Translation: stalking immigrants, their families and their friends to help ICE round them up.) But it doesn’t detail how exactly AI agents do that.

• More broadly, 10 companies have made $1 million off of ICE’s bounty hunter program already. They stand to make over $1 billion by 2027. These contractors are profiting off of kidnapping migrants following a massive government handout to the deportation machine and the companies that fuel it.

Explaining the beef between the president and the Fed chairman

• President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is criminally investigating Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The investigation is ostensibly about renovations to the central bank’s headquarters, although Trump has a longstanding feud with Powell and a history of trying to launch criminal investigations into his political enemies.

• Why are they fighting? Trump wants Powell to lower interest rates even more than the Fed already did. The Fed is worried that could worsen inflation by increasing spending too much. But some experts say it could also lower unemployment by making it cheaper to buy things, increasing demand, and increasing the need to hire people to make the things people are buying.

• So, those are the two ends of the interest rate cut seesaw: risking it causing worse inflation, and hoping it causes more hiring. But because recent hiring and employment data came close to what the Fed was expecting, it appears reluctant to tip the seesaw too much in either direction. So, it’s unlikely to cut interest rates again soon.

• Bored by this monetary policy explainer? Let’s get back to political gossip. Trump seems to think it’s his job to pressure the Fed into doing what he wants. But historically, the Fed has strived to act independently from political influence. (It hasn’t always lived up to this goal, though.) Research shows that when central banks bow to political pressure, it’s bad for the economy.

Training AI to replace you

• Mercor, a $10 billion AI startup, hired over 30,000 contractors last year, is paying many of them well over $100 per hour and offering similarly hefty referral bonuses.

• But the contractors have to train AI how to do their jobs. “I joked with my friends I’m training AI to take my job someday,” one of the contractors told The Wall Street Journal. Other employees also say they don’t feel great about it, but other job options are limited. 2025 was a rough year for hiring.

• Who’s behind all this? Mercor’s founders got a lot of money from Peter Thiel, JD Vance’s billionaire bestie and Republican megadonor who gave a bunch of lectures about the antichrist in which he railed against AI regulations.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered, we turn things over to him for a peak behind the scenes. Dave, you’re on!

You’ve heard of seasonal depression, but you have heard of watching-our-authoritarian-government-turn-guns-on-its-own-people-depression?  I’m going to dive into the state of our country, and our own coverage at LNI in our Monday newsletter (Sunday if you’re a paying member!). 

But in times like these, it’s never a bad idea to take a break and talk about your dog, who also happens to be heavily incorporated into the graphics on our website:

This is also a sticker for paying LNI members!

Lola turned six this week, on January 14th. At least, that’s the date the Pet Rescue Alliance of Alexandria, VA marked her birthday at when we rescued her straight off the transport, just three weeks into covid lockdown.

Lola at 11 weeks old.

At the time, my wife and I thought that we would have a couple extra weeks to train her before going back to the office. It’s easy to forget, but we all thought lockdown was going to be quite short - until it wasn’t. Instead, I never really went back to the office. Lola benefitted from this situation with at least four walks a day, and several TikTok cameos:

Twitter tweet

Overtime, she became quite disinterested in the camera. Perhaps she was wary of all the newfound attention both on TikTok and her LinkedIn page.

Lola is very well-connected online and at the dog park.

According to her DNA test (yes, we did a DNA test), Lola is half boxer, 3/8th Labrador and 1/8th Great Pyrenees. Those tests aren’t always perfectly accurate, but I think this one nailed it. She’s got the brindle of a boxer, the face and disposition of a lab, and the remarkably soft fur of a Great Pyrenees. She’s perfect.

Our old stomping grounds in DC’s Chinatown.

While Lola has been mostly off camera for the last few years, she’s only become more integrated into our family. She made the move with us to Kansas City, thrilled to finally have a backyard. After the birth of our daughter, Lola became her protector, always looking after her little human sister and endlessly patient. 

We’re so, so lucky that Lola is our dog.

Sisters <3

Thanks, Dave!

If you made it to the end of this newsletter, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Benny!

Look at Benny’s smile!

The second is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hid a non-news related link somewhere higher up. On the phrase “personal insults” in the first blurb, I linked to Eleven from “Stranger Things” saying “mouth breather.” I started rewatching the show from the beginning because I had only seen the first three seasons as they were coming out, I retained none of it, and I felt out of the loop with Dave mentioning it so often in his newsletters. Should I stop watching after season 4 and just pretend it ends there? Let me know!

Until next week!

Chris

What’s in today’s Jan. 11, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: This guy who keeps trolling his AI chat bot.

📙 What I’m reading: Another book about murder.

🎧 What I’m listening to: An old favorite, for comfort.

🍣 What I’m eating: A new section, suggested by a reader.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing: Adjusting my video strategy, again.

 👀 What I’m watching

I’m not typically a “reply guy” but I realized I’ve unintentionally become that for this series on Instagram, in which creator @husk.irl keeps trolling his chat bot.

Instagram post

I barely even keep up with a single user on any platform, but the algorithm understands I will watch these videos to the end, comment, rewatch, share, and watch again. I cannot get enough of them.

Instagram post

The deadpan delivery and slightly smug AI voice response get me every time. But there’s a utility to these videos too. Whether or not it’s meant to be a satirical look at our over-reliance on AI, I don’t know. But it’s very effective.

I think society - especially the U.S. - has plunged head first into the shallow pool of AI without thinking twice. There are certainly practical uses for AI, but we’ve been going about it the wrong way. I’ve been trying to demonstrate this in my weekly iDave series, covering all things AI. I thought this commenter really nailed it:

That comment is pinned on the latest iDave video from Friday, in which I really flexed my Star Wars prequel trilogy knowledge. Or as one user put it, convincingly came off as a nerd by wearing my “undersized Star Wars’ shirt (they’re right, I bought that shirt in college).

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📙 What I’m reading

I’ve literally just cracked open this book, so I cannot fully recommend it, but allow me to share the summary that hooked me:

I read this description, whispered “hell yeah” to myself, and immediately purchased “How To Solve Your Own Murder” by Kristen Perrin.

Binge-watching as many Traitors seasons as possible has really put me in this murderous mood. I also just love these kinds of books (see also: “The 7 and ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle,” and “Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.”). Coincidentally, my mom said she had just finished the book. She said she liked it and then I immediately made her stop because she has a knack for making every review of anything a massive spoiler within one sentence. So, we’re gonna go off of her rave review of “I liked it” and keep reading this book.

🎧 What I’m listening to

When the government shoots someone multiple times, at least once in the head, while they’re just trying to drive away from a militarized force that has billions in funding, that no one wanted in that city to begin with, you tend to go back to your comfort music. For me, that’s Bleachers.

Headlined by Jack Antonoff and - inexplicably - two live drummers, it’s one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live. They’re music is good while working out, driving, fuming about fascism and just walking your dog. Here’s my favorite Bleachers song (though I think the music video is meh).

🍣 What I’m eating

Sushi bake! My wife found this recipe early in the pandemic and I’ve probably made it 50 times since. It’s called “sushi bake” and we remain obsessed. I’ve made two adjustments though - I include a whole jar of pineapple chunks in the salmon mixture. And I’ve never really included the crab meat (I love you Hy-Vee, but I just don’t trust any midwestern grocery store to carry decent crab meat, imitation or otherwise).

We are responsibly for at least 1 million of the 44 million views in this TikTok recipe:

@alissanguyen_

30 MINUTE SUSHI BAKE⤵️ Makes 3-5 serving 1/2 lb salmon, seasoned to preference 1/2 lb imitation crab, shredded & cut into smaller pieces... See more

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing

Last week was our biggest week ever. Our video on Greenland alone earned nearly 15 million views across TikTok or Reels or YouTube. Thank you for watching. I hope I was able to make you chuckle, whenever possible. And otherwise just keep you informed.

Naturally, when something does well, you want to replicate whatever was effective in that video. Views are nice, of course, but I care much more about making something that both I love and audiences love. It can be hard to balance both content strategy and content creation. I realized after my video on Friday that I had veered a little too far into making something that I thought would work versus what I wanted.

To be clear, I am proud of that video and all the nerd jokes. There’s really just one aspect I regret - sitting at the desk again. When I was writing it, I realized the last few videos sitting at the desk had been very effective. So I kept at it on Friday, as opposed to my original idea, which was more green screen, placing myself in a Terminator movie.

Variety is the spice of life! And for me personally, I don’t want to keep making videos from the same area. This is a long established rule I made for myself from the early pandemic TikTok days. Whenever I look at our main page, I want to see a variety in thumbnails

Too much desk.

This isn’t too egregious. But I think it got a little stale sitting at my desk. So next week, you’ll see me moving around again. It’s no accident that our second most successful week was when I traveled to Portugal for a conference and had to make my video about 50-year mortgages in the Newark airport.

The situation (flying internationally while making newsworthy content) forced me to get creative, like shooting off of the back of one of those shuttle cars, or inside the perfume section of the duty-free store.

I’ll be in New York for a couple days this week and will also let that inform my setting. If you see me, say hi. Maybe we can even get a bite to eat at the best pizza spot in New York.

Love this place.

What’s in today’s Jan. 9, 2026 issue

📰 The story so far on Venezuela

📚️ A (very brief) history lesson on U.S. interference in Latin America

🤖 What happens when AI breaks the law?

🧊 Unpacking ICE’s fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman

Hi friends!

Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. I’ve got limited real estate for this intro because I went a bit long here! You cannot get me to shut up about the history of U.S.-backed regime change in Latin America, try as you might! So let’s just dig in.

What’s happening with Venezuela?

• On Saturday, January 3, the U.S. attacked Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro along with his wife, Cilia Flores. They’re being held in a notorious federal jail.

• On Wednesday, President Donald Trump doubled down on his claim that the U.S. will run Venezuela. Trump’s energy secretary said Wednesday that sales of Venezuelan oil will be "done by the U.S. government and deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government.” And before Maduro’s capture, Trump was pretty clear about wanting Venezuelan oil.

• Foreign intervention and regime change generally erodes democracy in the places we’re intervening, sparks more wars, and fuels repression. That is the real-life impact of this, regardless of whether that kind of imperialism happens with congressional approval. But it’s still worth noting that this attack on Venezuela happened without the green light from Congress, even though federal law requires the president to consult Congress before a military action. Experts also say the attack violates international law.

• Venezuelans have mixed emotions about all this. Many celebrated the removal of Maduro, who watchdogs have criticized as an authoritarian leader. Many also doubted that Trump’s involvement will actually help much.

Trump doesn’t plan to stop at Venezuela

• Trump suggested the U.S. might carry out similar operations in Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Iran and Greenland. The U.S. has similarly meddled in these countries before. Over the past century and a half or so, the U.S. has tried to buy Cuba, repeatedly occupied it, invaded it, trained repressive anti-communist forces there, and repeatedly tried to kill Fidel Castro.

• As for Colombia, the U.S. supported a revolt that let us to build and profit off of the Panama Canal, threatened to send troops before the Colombian army notoriously massacred striking workers of a U.S. fruit company in Colombia, and trained Colombian military and paramilitary forces involved in human rights abuses.

• In Iran, the U.S. helped orchestrate a coup, provided diplomatic and material support for its nuclear development before getting angry about that nuclear development decades later, supported Iraq’s invasion of Iran, infamously trafficked weapons to Iran in order to fund a Nicaraguan rebel group, shot down a civilian flight, and killed an Iranian general.

• The U.S. went to war with Mexico to take its land, occupied a Mexican port and killed hundreds of Mexicans in the process, sent thousands of more troops into Mexico after that, created a law enforcement agency to patrol the border, gave millions of dollars to fund military and surveillance equipment in Mexico, and arrested and charged a former Mexican government official.

• If Trump makes good on his threat to take Greenland, it could mean the end of NATO — a military alliance between 32 countries that includes the U.S. and many European nations. And the U.S. invading Greenland could set off a chain reaction that would obligate other NATO members to respond.

The illegal orders that started it all

• The U.S.’ capture of Maduro was the escalation of a months long pressure campaign against Venezuela that involved various boat strikes, killing 123 people. Experts largely called the boat strikes illegal. Amid this campaign, six senators released a video urging troops to resist illegal orders.

• This week, Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth censured one of those Senators, Arizona Democrat and Navy veteran Mark Kelly, for making that video.

• What does this censure actually do? It could reduce Kelly’s retired rank and affect his retirement pay. One Republican senator said it “has a chilling effect on speech”.

What happens when AI breaks the law?

• X users are using Grok to undress women and children. Lots of countries don’t have comprehensive AI regulations that would stop people from using this, or from using AI generated nudes to humiliate and harass victims.

• But child porn is illegal — even Grok recognizes that. That doesn’t stop it from generating nude photos of children, though.

• So, who’s responsible for this illegal act? Is it tech companies, executives like Elon Musk, or users themselves? One proposed piece of legislation in the U.K. would impose prison time and fines to people supplying this kind of tech. Officials in France and India are also trying to hold X accountable over this.

ICE killed a woman this week

• An ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis resident, at a protest there Wednesday. The Minnesota Star Tribune identified the agent as Jonathan Ross. Video evidence contradicted the Department of Homeland Security’s claim after the shooting that Good tried to run agents over.

• In response to the shooting, immigrant rights advocates have called for Congress to block new funding for DHS, which oversees ICE. They’ve also demanded that ICE agents leave Minneapolis and other cities.

• Why is ICE in Minneapolis, anyway? The Trump administration sent thousands of federal agents there following dubious claims that child care centers run by Somali Americans are committing fraud.

• This isn’t an isolated incident. My former colleague Shannon Heffernan found that federal agents have fatally shot at least three other people in the last five months. And The Trace found that federal agents have shot or held people at gunpoint at least 30 times during Trump’s immigration crackdown.

• What’s next? Activists continue to mourn and protest after the shooting. Meanwhile, the federal government will investigate this shooting by a federal agent, stopping state agencies from doing so.

Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered, we turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!

We told you from day one that Local News International would call out fascism when it happened. And this week is no different:

Been saying it for a year (privately, then publicly after leaving The Washington Post):

This is fascism. It's here. It is happening right now.

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
8:59 PM • Jan 7, 2026

But while the Nazi memelord fascists keep trying to get a rise out of people, be more like the lady wearing a green coat in this video (about halfway through).

K Starling (@authorkstarling) on Threads

“We executed one of you yesterday.”

www.threads.com/@authorkstarling/post/DTQbvCbifPy

Shifting gears, for my own mental health, I wanted to check in and see how you all are feeling about our revamped Monday newsletter. Are you into it? Do you like hearing what I’m listening, watching and reading? Email me and let me know at dave.jorgenson@lni.media.

Speaking of those top-of-week newsletters, I did finally finish all previous season of Traitors (Cirie is incredible!). I cannot wait for the season 4 premiere of Traitors this week. I’m so excited for Rob Cesternino’s return to reality TV.

Thanks, Dave!

Honestly, guys, writing about all of that complicated and terrible news was hard for me this week. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to read through, either, so thanks for sticking with me. To cheer us all up, here’s a pet photo from a loyal reader. This is Felix!

Felix staring into my soul

Your second reward for making it all the way to the end of this newsletter is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt! In every newsletter, I hide one non-news related link and tell you where it is at the end. This week’s came right at the intro. On the word “real estate,” I linked to a teaser trailer taking place in my favorite peace of real estate there is — the X Mansion. (Fine, it’s a stretch, but you try designing this game in a newsletter this dark.)

Until next week!

Chris

Uncle Sam is thirsty. (Federico Parra AFP via Getty)

What’s in today’s Jan. 5, 2026 issue

👀 What I’m watching: The Stranger Things series finale.

📰 What I’m reading: An interview with President Trump from The Atlantic.

🎧 What I’m listening to: Comedian Mike Birbiligia’s interview with Michael Che.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing: Writing Monday’s video about Trump’s unconstitutional actions in Venezuela.

 👀 What I’m watching

Alright, okay, I get it. All the kids in Stranger Things are somehow even older than me now. There were real issues with the writing this season, especially when it came to expositional dialogue (“And now here’s something else you may have forgotten from season 2 that we will say out loud again”). That all said …

I thought the finale was excellent and checked a lot of boxes.

Happy New Year to the Duffer Brothers who did the impossible and stuck the landing for Stranger Things

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
3:03 PM • Jan 1, 2026

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, dear reader, but the internet tends to think in black and white (shocker!). And it turns out good writing and bad acting can exist simultaneously alongside bad writing and bad acting.

🚨 MILD SPOILERS AHEAD 🚨

Most of the actors, including the grown-up kid actors, did a really solid job wrapping up this show. And while I have some issues with the final fight (I don’t care about the Abyss because it was just introduced!), some scenes were unbelievably good.

Men will trap 12 children and a teenager in their mind and try to combine two worlds instead of going to therapy. (Netflix)

Jamie Campbell Bower absolutely crushed it as Vecna in every single scene. People online are far too harsh on Millie Bobby Brown, who once again delivered as Eleven. And that final Dungeons & Dragons scene absolved the Duffer Brothers of all their previous sins and hanging plot lines (Suzie, do you copy? No, seriously, where did Dustin’s girlfriend go?).

So much of what made the series good was still in the final season. It wasn’t perfect but it was still surprising and fun and weird. 10/10

And 1/10 to Netflix for their weird release schedule

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
3:04 PM • Jan 1, 2026

📰 What I’m reading

Good news: I finished Margo’s Got Money Troubles, the book I mentioned in last week’s newsletter. What a wonderful, weird, beautiful book. I am not on Goodreads but I do have this newsletter, and so I highly recommend this book to you. I cannot wait to see Nick Offerman in the role of Jinx for the Apple+ series.

Bad news: Our President invaded a country without the approval of Congress. Our representatives appear to be at home watching the Stranger Things finale because we’ve hardly hear a peep out of them. In the Normal Times™️, U.S. Presidents have been impeached for arguably far less.

So, before I flee back to fictional books as an escape, I’m reading a ton on Friday’s capture of Nicolás Maduro and apparent occupation of Venezuela. This Atlantic interview with President Trump, from my former colleague at The Washington Post, Michael Scherer, is unsettling and terrifying. If you don’t read it, it will certainly be incorporated in my video tomorrow.

An excerpt:

🎧 What I’m listening to:

It may come as no surprise to you that I devour podcasts from all sorts of comedians, usually while setting up between shots for a video with multiple characters, outfits and angles.

Playing in the background: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

One of my favorite podcasts to come out of the pandemic - and there were a lot of podcasts that came out of the pandemic - is Working it Out, with comedian Mike Birbiglia. I’ve been a fan of his for well over a decade. I even listened to his CDs via Pandora Radio back in the day (Anyone remember Pandora Radio? No?). His film Sleepwalk With Me is my all-time favorite hybrid film/stand-up special.

One of his recent interviews with Michael Ché really tickled my brain. They both have such different styles on stage, yet the way they think about the world and comedy writing is so similar. I also just love when two men can openly compliment each other and show gratitude. It’s nice! Clip below, full podcast at this link.

Instagram post

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing

Okay back to the depressing stuff. I’m making a video about President Trump’s moves to take control of Venezuela (and its oil). As you can imagine, a ton of work goes into researching, scripting, shooting, editing and posting these videos that are just under two minutes. With a topic like this, I’ve got to work ahead.

Even as I write this newsletter, I have to make decisions about how I phrase what’s happening. The good thing about working for legacy media was that I didn’t have to make those decisions. The bad thing about working for legacy media was that I didn’t have to make those decisions, and sometimes I hated the phrasing chosen by editors.

My overall policy is to be as direct as possible and not mince words. But I also won’t make assumptions (for example, we don’t yet know every detail leading up to Friday’s events, and I am not here to fill in the blanks for something this serious).

This is as good a time as ever to remind you that we are building out our style guide, with the help of Chris Vazquez. You can also read our Ethics and Transparency Pledge below.

One bright spot in working on a topic this serious and difficult: I’ve found lately that I can really stretch these videos out and give them room to breathe.

Since 2019, every year I’ve that worked on TikTok, and later Shorts and Reels, has been completely different. As we enter 2026, I’m sensing yet another change. You all are craving more in-depth “short-form” videos. I’m pushing two minutes on some of these! I no longer have to cut the extra bits and details just to fit this content within an imaginary time limit.

This was not always the case. And I’ll admit, in my weaker, lazier moments, I yearn for the 14 second videos that took only an hour to make and went viral:

@washingtonpost

This is how we warm up for news TikToks.

But ultimately, I’m so glad to be making something that informs you, our audience, and hopefully makes you laugh once or twice while terrible news cascades down your phone screen every second of every day.

You’re still here?

Make sure to check out last Friday’s video on Grok, and how no one in the world seems to know who to arrest when AI commits a crime:

The look on your face when you saw the word “wrapped” again.

You thought this was over? That the new year and the end of Stranger Things would bring an end to the 2025 wrapped? Well buckle up, buttercup.

It’s time to recap yet another part of your media diet: this newsletter.

In 2025, you read this newsletter every single time it appeared in your inbox.

Okay, this is not true, just aspirational. But I hope that you’ll keep reading in 2026. If you don’t like what you see, or want to see more of something, try submitting feedback at the link in our brand new Ethics and Transparency page.

Operators are standing by!

Until I shaved my beard in November, you thought this was a JD Vance Substack.

First of all, we’re on beehiiv, not Substack, which the Wall Street Journal kindly wrote about this morning.

And yes, to promote Harry’s razors, I shaved my beard in November. I’m still hearing from you all as I continue to reflect and work hard on growing (my beard back).

You first found me on one video platform (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, etc), and had no idea I existed on any other plane in space of time.

In our second members-only town hall meeting, I asked where everyone found our content, and it turns out you all find us every from every corner of the internet.

This lends credence to my new theory that all apps are just morphing into different channels. Like CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox before them, YouTube, TikTok, Reels and Snap are just becoming different places that offer the same thing.

Luckily for you, I’m on all those platforms! I hope you’ll follow us on whichever ones you’ve downloaded to your phone:

• TikTok

• YouTube

• Instagram Reels

• Snap

• Bluesky

• Threads

• Facebook

• Linkedin (yes, we are really on LinkedIn and it fills me with self-loathing)

Up until this video, you thought I was still an employee at The Washington Post.

We realized just a few weeks ago, when asking followers to fill out our survey, that many users still didn’t know I left the Post. I did! And it was the best decision of my professional career. Thank you so, so much for making it possible by subscribing and watching our videos.

This video kept you from running into a daycare, demanding to see children.

Instagram post

What a year it’s been since posting this video on Monday. This story has gained a lot of attention and I’m glad we got ahead of it before even more misinformation spread.

It also turned out to be our most successful video on Reels! This is a good sign as we continue to push the boundaries on how long a vertical video can be. I hope to really lean into these 2 minute “short-form” videos in 2026, including the fact checks. And I also hope that the general public stops barging into daycares, pretending to enroll their imaginary child all in the name of clickbait journalism.

You were secretly disappointed with Taylor Swift’s latest album, but too afraid to say something.

I genuinely think Taylor Swift is a masterful artist. I am not a full-on Swiftie, but I recognize her raw talent and the sheer work she puts in. Like me, you may have noticed the last album was not her best. But we all have Swifties in our life - whether they live in our house, in the mirror, or at work. I am here to tell you it’s okay to say the last album wasn’t very good. She will be okay.

After the 12th video I made about Social Security, you started to understand what Social Security is.

My partnership with Free the Facts this year meant that you saw a new video about government policy every Tuesday for the entire year. It was a unique challenge working to make these important topics funny and interesting. Sometimes the most unique challenges are the most rewarding, and that was certainly the case here.

You’re just now realizing this end-of-week newsletter, which is usually written by Chris, was written by Dave, and you’re not mad, just disappointed.

I understand. Chris will be back next week.

You only understood two of the 17 pop culture references I made in videos and newsletters this year.

@davejorgenson

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If you didn’t know the above was The Great British Baking Show, you must now watch all 16 seasons in one sitting.

And please prepare yourself for Survivor 50, premiering in February. It’s gonna be a doozy (and yes, the show has been on for 50 seasons).

You still have no idea what ‘Local News International’ means.

It’s whatever you want it to mean. But in all seriousness, we’re really going to lean into that in 2026. Monday’s video, as an example, used both internationally-known sources (The New York Times and CNN) and local sources (MinnPost and The Minnesota Star Tribune).

You can’t wait for our long-form video series in 2026.

Honestly, me neither. And if you’re a member, you’ll get those weekly videos before everyone else.

That’s a wrap on 2025. Thanks to all of your for giving me the best job I’ve ever had. Here’s a gif from the time I almost fell into the ocean in Portugal while pretending to fall into the ocean in Portugal.

The bird is not a paid actor.

Thanks to over 4,000 of you who took our survey two weeks ago. I’m completely overwhelmed with gratitude that you would all take time out of your day to provide such valuable feedback. Whether you started following at The Washington Post or just this year, one thing has always been consistent: I have some of the smartest, kindest and funniest followers on the internet. Thank you.

We will be incorporating your insights in the New Year, and in this very newsletter, starting with a “Table of Contents” at the top:

👀 What I’m watching: Traitors, season 1

📗 What I’m reading: ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’

🎧 What I’m listening to: I Remember Everything

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing: Building out our transparency page

👀 What I’m watching

Some of you know I’m a massive Survivor fan. I’ve seen every season. I’ve made it deep in the rigorous casting process, only to be cut twice (for seasons 23 and 47). Despite this one-sided relationship I seem to have with the show, I continue to watch it faithfully, despite production’s paint-by-numbers approach to the New Era seasons.

But it’s not the only competitive reality show I love. If one good thing came from the obvious ploy for subscribers that Peacock pulled when they made a Chiefs game exclusively available on their app last year, it’s access to all the versions of Traitors in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

My wife and I started with season 2 last year because I’m a massive fan of Sandra and Parvati from Survivor. We made our way through most iterations of the show. As season 4 approaches, we realized that we had completely missed season 1 of the U.S. version featuring Cirie, another Survivor legend.

It’s incredible. Cirie is (unsurprisingly) incredible. I personally love the mix of reality TV stars and unknown regular schmegular Joe’s. I wish they would return to this 50/50 format, as the non-reality stars often can’t take off their rose-colored glasses. It’s the reason Boston Rob was able to win Redemption Island and keep Dylan Efron in his pocket for season 3 of Traitors. For better or worse, Americans can’t help but trust charismatic reality TV stars who gleefully manipulate them and stab them in the back. Sort of like my misplaced faith that Jeff Probst isn’t ruining Survivor with each season (why are you in the season 50 preview, Mr. Beast??).

All of this and more is why Traitors keeps winning awards and leaving Survivor in the dust. It’s fun. It’s emotional. It’s wacky. It’s got Alan Cumming. What more could you want?

I would murder for this man (on Traitors).

📗 What I’m reading

Deep into paternity leave in 2023, running on fumes and casseroles, I picked up a book by Kevin Wilson called ‘Nothing to See Here.’ The premise, while nuts, is relatively simple: a woman becomes a nanny for two young kids who keep sponateously combusting and catching fire.

That caught my attention right away, but what kept me there was the voice of the author. He’s funny, witty, charming and emotionally grounded - all traits I love and try to replicate in my own writing and videos. So, when my wife told an employee at Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kansas that I loved Wilson’s books, they recommended a book by an author with similar qualities: ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles.’

I’m 70 pages in and have only put it down out of loyalty to my family (toddlers need food and attention!). In the Before Kid Times, I may have read this book in one sitting. It’s about a 20-year-old woman who becomes pregnant by her English professor, decides to have the baby, and makes money by starting an OnlyFans account.

To be honest, it’s not the type of book I would normally pick up. The cover even somewhat resembles the beach reads that Emily Henry keeps cranking out (I once attempted to read one but quickly realized it’s not for me).

But the employee at Rainy Day Books deserves a raise. Unless they are the owner, in which case, you should go by books from them. Like Kevin Wilson, Rufi Thorpe’s voice and humor elevates an already fun premise. Her titular character Margo talks in first person or third person, depending on how connected she feels to what’s happening. She feels as real as any real person I’ve ever met. Certainly more real than iDave.

I haven’t finished it, so don’t spoil it! If you’re not a reader, fear not. It will soon premiere as an Apple+ series in April, starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman.

🎧 What I’m listening to

I think my music tastes are good, but you’ll quickly find that I am either living in the early 2000s still or on a one year delay from the rest of the world. Such is my curse as a millennial. I remember everything from those CDs I kept on rotation in my six disc changer.

I Remember Everything, by Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves also happens to be the song I have on repeat at the moment. It’s the perfect song for someone like me, who loves Avett Brothers and spent my entire childhood listening to the four different Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) CDs my mom had on repeat in the Ford Windstar.

And, as always, I’m listening to Rob Has a Podcast, hosted by Survivor legend Rob Cesternino. I love their recent rankings of the best winners of the new era.

👨🏼‍💻 What I’m doing

When we first launched LNI, we promised transparency, as well as a clear set of ethics and guidelines. With Lauren, Micah and Chris’s help, we’re building out that page, which also includes a link to report an error or ask a question. We’ll also start including this box in all our newsletters as a statement of our principles.

Also, as promised, we will soon post our annual list of funders. For example, our Harry’s ‘Will Dave Shave?’ series helped keep the lights on this year. Or the iDave series, which is funded by the Omidyar Network. Importantly, that series has no editorial oversight from Omidyar. We are free to report on AI without the influence of billionaires and politicians that have a stake in the technology.

I’m back behind the desk this week with more videos. I’ll be diving into the second Epstein file drop and a variety of other topics (which you asked for in the survey!). In case you missed it, here’s last Monday’s video on the first Epstein files drop:

☝️ One last thing

Our latest iDave video talked about how AI chatbots are crawling the internet for information, sometimes accurate, sometimes not. We made an attempt in last week’s newsletter to showcase this, discussing how Sam the Spam Can won an honorary degree from Harvard.

… and it’s kind of working!

It’s working!

Keep sharing the news: lni.media/p/sam-the-sp...

— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson.bsky.social)
5:00 PM • Dec 24, 2025

Great work, everyone! And great job, Sam!

I have no idea what DTC is, but I’m just honored to be mentioned.

You’re still here?

Well, while you’re here …

In 2026, we’re excited to launch our weekly long-form show, to which members will have early access. I hope you’ll consider becoming a member today. Your membership helps us hire more people, for more hours, so you can get more coverage. Thanks for helping make my dream job possible.