News

When we just discussed the two recent deaths in Pennsylvania that came as a result of measles infections, we noted that there was very little information about the deceased. Some additional information has since been released, in particular the fact that one of those that died was a newborn child. This is the sort of fact that is heartbreaking to those of us with normal, functional brains.

Or, if you’re RFK Jr., it’s the kind of fact that causes you to drop the whole facade and go full on anti-vaxxer conspiracy clown.

On Tuesday, as news of the two deaths was breaking, Kennedy took to his personal X account to rail against the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and posted a link to The HighWire, a hardline anti-vaccine and conspiracy site run by Del Bigtree, a prominent anti-vaccine propagandist and Kennedy ally.

Kennedy’s post also assailed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who has criticized Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric and activism. Kennedy went on to blame national declines in vaccination rates on the Biden administration.

On Wednesday, as news broke that one of the deaths in Pennsylvania was in a newborn, Kennedy turned to his official X account as US health secretary to allege that “the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.” He cited a tweet from Josh Parsons, a Republican commissioner of Lancaster County, who claimed there had been “zero measles deaths” reported in the county. The claims appear to be another old play from the anti-vaccine handbook.

Okay, deep breath, folks. Let’s start that reacting to two bodies that haven’t even gone fully cold yet by spinning out on a conspiracy theory rant about the very damned thing that could have saved them is roughly as reprehensible a thing as I could think up in my head. It’s mean. It’s heartless. It’s evil. There are people suffering right now, including people that recently lost a newborn child, and there is no quarter given by Kennedy to express sympathy for any of them. Instead, it’s right back to the pet conspiracy theories that have been debunked over and over again. I don’t need to hear from anyone ever again that Kennedy is somehow not an anti-vaxxer, or that he actually promotes the use of the MMR vaccine.

But now let’s hone in on the claim that the reported deaths may have been “altogether fabricated.” Due to the coroner’s statement that they had measles deaths in the county, you may have read that as a claim that nobody actually died here and somehow state officials were just making the whole story up. That’s not the case. The game of confusion that Kennedy is playing is much more subtle and, ultimately, stupid.

If you recall back during COVID, there were plenty of misinformation acts out there on the internet claiming that COVID death counts were inflated. Much of that was based on what the cause of death listing was on death certificates. “No, this wasn’t a death from COVID,” the bad actor would claim. “This person is listed as having died from pneumonia.” The spoiler here is that COVID causes pneumonia that wouldn’t have occurred but not for COVID.

The same trick is at play here and it’s a trick Kennedy damned well knows is bullshit. The newborn in this case died from a ruptured spleen. That was the listed cause of death. But the cause of the ruptured spleen in a newborn that was also infected with measles is, well, measles.

Paul Offit, a vaccine and pediatric infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, clarified that the measles virus can be passed on in the womb or shortly after birth. The virus can cause the spleen to enlarge and rupture at birth. Offit urged that if measles wasn’t the cause of the baby’s ruptured spleen, the coroner should provide an alternative explanation.

Unlike Diamantoni, Offit said he had been in touch with state officials regarding the deaths and, based on the information he had received, he concluded that “these patients would not have died were it not for measles.”

You can think of it this way. A death certificate or doctor’s report is going to list an acute cause of death, but that may not be originating and overall cause that led to the death. This is also how AIDS works. Nobody dies acutely from AIDS. They die from illnesses that wouldn’t normally have killed them if their immune systems weren’t severely compromised from AIDS.

Would it make sense to downplay the significance of AIDS? Of course not! AIDS is still the root cause of the death, even if it doesn’t make sense to list that on a death certificate.

Again, Kennedy knows all of this. He’s playing misinformation games on top of the graves of two Americans he helped into their caskets, including an infant. There’s a level of callousness at play here that is at best near-sociopathic.

From, mind you, the person that has the American people’s health as his charge.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In April 2026, a federal grand jury returned indictments charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The indictment alleges the SPLC, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, secretly funneled more than US$3 million in donated funds to people associated with violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations.

Prosecutors allege that the SPLC secretly paid members of those groups to act as confidential informants without telling donors. Eight informants received the money between 2014 and 2023, according to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The SPLC has denied the charges and seeks their dismissal, with lawyers for the group adding that the charges constitute “vindictive prosecution.” The SPLC’s interim president, Bryan Fair, has stated that the informant program “saved lives” and reflected decades of dangerous civil rights work.

Critics of the prosecution at Lawfare, a media site focused on the U.S. legal system, argued that the indictment is among “the most cynical criminal cases ever brought by the Department of Justice.” They noted that the SPLC had no legal duty to disclose the confidential nature of its informant program to donors.

Within hours of the Justice Department’s indictment, I found that white supremacist influencers on Telegram, Gab and other social platforms were celebrating the arraignment. They portrayed the charges as proof that journalists and civil rights groups documenting extremist movements could no longer be trusted.

The indictment became a rallying point to discredit not only the SPLC but the wider body of research on hate groups and political extremism. I believe that these narratives will be used to help justify increasingly radical and, in some cases, violent responses.

Ideological ammunition

Some conservative advocacy groups and right-wing media outlets – including Moms for Liberty and the Daily Signal – immediately stripped the indictment of its legal context. In online posts, they recast it as established proof that the SPLC had been deliberately creating extremist activity rather than investigating it.

A Telegram search I conducted on May 6 identified 22 posts mentioning the SPLC across at least six white nationalist channels. Most appeared within 72 hours of the indictment. The posts did not engage in sustained discussion. They repeated a small set of claims.

The Super Sincere Alpha GOONMAXXING Aryan Sigma Patriot channel wrote: “The SPLC is a hate group.”

Other channels cited the indictment as proof that the SPLC had been paying sources to manufacture the very extremism it claimed to fight. In the White Lives Matter Official Telegram channel, users were urged to “become an activist for your race” while referencing the SPLC as an opposing force.

The similarity across channels and social media is notable. The same framing appeared repeatedly within a short time window. This suggests rapid circulation of a shared narrative across networks rather than independent commentary.

The neo-Nazi, neo-fascist layer

Comments on the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment by members of the Commander George Lincoln Rockwell channel – named for the founder of the American Nazi Party – demonstrate how antisemitic conspiracy theories work, not as explicit rhetoric but as a broader narrative.

Internet discussions portrayed the SPLC as a politically motivated or illegitimate actor. Posts in Patriot Front Updates, for example, circulated allegations of fraud and money laundering while criticizing the SPLC and its efforts to identify and challenge white nationalist activity.

I found that this criticism of the SPLC also became connected to a broader antisemitic conspiracy narrative – one that portrays the organization as operating on behalf of purported Jewish interests rather than simply as an advocacy organization with political and ideological commitments.

These narratives circulated alongside the “great replacement theory,” which falsely claims that shadowy elites are encouraging immigration and demographic change to replace the white population and diminish its political and cultural influence. It’s a conspiracy theory that the SPLC and others have documented as central to contemporary white nationalism.

In this logic, the indictment is not an isolated fraud case – it is evidence that a coordinated network of institutions has been systematically suppressing white identity.

Victimhood as recruitment

Scholars of white nationalism have long identified victimhood narratives as central to that movement’s appeal. By portraying white people as under attack or unfairly displaced, these narratives transform social change into a story of persecution and provide a powerful justification for political mobilization.

My research on white nationalism shows how contemporary extremist movements rely less on formal membership and more on decentralized digital spaces. It is there that narratives, grievances and identities are continuously reinforced.

In these environments, major news events like the SPLC indictment become opportunities.

Why this pattern repeats

Extremist movements have long used mainstream controversies as recruitment opportunities.

Participants often interpret external events through narratives of threat, injustice and persecution. In doing so, they transform moments of controversy into evidence that their worldview is correct.

In the 1990s, for instance, the deadly standoffs between federal officers and the Branch Davidians religious sect near Waco, Texas, and survivalist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, became foundational persecution narratives for militia and Christian Identity movements. These groups saw the sieges as proof that the federal government was hunting gun owners and religious dissenters.

In online extremist communities, these events can become powerful tools for reinforcing group identity and attracting individuals who are searching for explanations or belonging.

With a real-world legal event like the SPLC indictment, extremists can point to government action as evidence that their worldview is being validated. The result is a narrative that appears responsive to current events, even when the connection is shallow or distorted.

Redirected domestic terrorism policy

Legal scholars have noted that the Justice Department indictment fits within the Trump administration’s broader pattern of redirecting domestic terrorism policy away from white supremacist groups.

The Trump White House’s 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy does not mention violent far-right groups as a domestic terrorism threat at all.

That context matters for understanding how the SPLC case landed in extremist spaces: not as an isolated fraud allegation but as institutional permission. The indictment has become a symbol before the evidence has been weighed.

In today’s fragmented digital media environment, symbols travel faster than facts, especially when they confirm what a radicalized audience already wants to believe. I believe the real danger is not that white supremacists believe the SPLC is guilty. It is that the controversy, whatever its legal outcome, has already done its work.

Art Jipson is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

I can’t assume the Trump administration hoped this would happen. But I can’t believe no one in the administration (Trump, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan) isn’t secretly thrilled that this has happened.

The administration managed to revoke temporary protected status for Haitian refugees in America, a decision that affects nearly 350,000 people. The revocation of this status (which involved a protracted court battle) comes with the implication that these refugees are no longer in danger and can safely return to the country they fled.

No one in the administration actually appears to believe this is true about Haiti. When questioned about it, “Immigration Czar” Tom Homan couldn’t actually form a coherent sentence in defense of sending thousands of refugees to their doom.

“Why is the Trump administration knowingly sending Haitians, including many who’ve lived in the U.S. legally under Temporary Protected Status, into the danger that they describe?” [CNN’s Dana] Bash asked Homan.

“We’re returning deportees to their home country,” Homan replied. “I’m not in the loop on this specific incident … but when people are deported, they can’t stay here, they’re gonna go home.”

At best, this is what is known as a conclusory statement. It’s the equivalent of using the word you’re defining in the definition. Of course people being deported can’t stay in the US. That’s how deportation works. But that doesn’t answer the question that was asked: how can this administration justify the deportation of Haitians to a country the State Department says is so dangerous it has issued a “No Travel Advisory?”

This doesn’t either, although it does make it clear every Trump administration official will simply feign ignorance when confronted with their own awfulness:

“Look, the bottom line is they’ve been ordered removed,” Homan replied. “I don’t know the conditions in Haiti. I’ve never been to Haiti. I don’t know if you have. But look, the judge made a decision … and they need to go home.”

Yep, there’s literally no way to tell how things are in Haiti without actually going there yourself. But you won’t because the State Department is pretty fucking clear that Haiti is a bad place where bad things happen.

Here’s the exact wording used by the State Department, which, I must remind you, is headed by Trump stan Marco Rubio (emphasis in the original):

Do not travel to Haiti due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care. 

This has been true of Haiti for decades. Multiple rounds of plundering by foreign nations (including our own) destabilized the nation to the point where it’s just been a succession of coups and dictatorships for most of the past 150 years. It hasn’t been a safe place to live for more than a century. And now, because a bunch of bigots are running our country, it’s only safe enough for deported Haitians, even if it definitely isn’t safe enough for US citizens.

That’s because this administration — or at least a handful of the people involved in running it — don’t consider Haitians to be people. At best, they’re maybe two-thirds of a white American, which is why the State Department tells US citizens not to go there, even as this same government is escalating deportations of Haitian refugees.

Oh, did we mention it’s not safe for US citizens? Why, then, are we deporting literal US citizens to Haiti?

The Department of Homeland Security sent a second deportation flight in a week to Haiti on Thursday, returning 57 Haitians to the unstable Caribbean country, including several children born in the U.S. and Brazil.

You do know what people born in the US are, right? They’re US citizens. Trump may be trying to undo birthright citizenship, but the law of the land (and a recent rejection of Trump’s racist overtures by the Supreme Court) still makes these kids US citizens. And who knows why we’re flying Brazilian kids to Haiti other than just because we can.

Of course, this all traces back to Trump himself. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified and repeated racist claims that Haitian refugees were stealing neighbors’ pets and eating them. Prior to that — during his first term in office — he referred to Haiti (along with the entire continent of Africa) as a “shithole country.”

And that’s why what has just happened in Haiti — a country that has already seen 3,000 killings in the first six months of this year — is more likely to make Trump (and a bunch of his enablers) pleased, rather than horrified:

At least 47 people were killed and more than 50 others kidnapped when armed men attacked a once-peaceful community near Haiti’s capital earlier this week, the United Nations said Tuesday.

It is believed to be one of the largest mass kidnappings in Haiti in recent years, and one gang leader is threatening to kill the hostages if authorities kill any gang members as they try to secure the community nestled in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

If you don’t think the hostages are going to be killed in the near future, you’re hopelessly optimistic. The gang has made it clear that any attempt to free hostages will result in their death. And the gang really doesn’t need the hostages because there are still plenty of other people to kill and/or kidnap in the area they’re trying to control. Government officials aren’t exactly sounding confident that they’ll be able to do anything to limit the final murder total, which clearly demonstrates Haiti is not a safe place to exist, much less seek to eke out a living.

And there are more victims of violent crime arriving every day, thanks to the Trump administration. Some of those potential crime victims were born in the US. The youngest deportee born in the US on the most recent flight is only three years old.

But this is all fine with Trump and his MAGA faithful. People who aren’t white get what they get, especially if they’re from third-world countries where residents are just expected to eat shit and die, rather than grab their piece of the American Dream these faux patriots continue to claim makes us the best country in the world.

Earlier this year, one of the smartest internet rights people around, Heather Burns, suggested the “Darnella Test” regarding any kind of “kid safety” rule online. It’s named after Darnella Frazier. You might not recognize her name, but you’ve seen her work. She was the 17-year-old who was walking to the corner shop when she happened to see Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, in the process of murdering him. She got out her phone and filmed it, enabling the world to see that the initial statement from the Minneapolis police — the one headlined “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction” — was bullshit.

She won a Pulitzer Prize for the video.

But she was a teen. On social media. So Burns came up with the Darnella test, to explore whether any particular internet regulation would have prevented Darnella from documenting the murder of George Floyd:

For any young person who is just going to be walking along the street for a snack and ends up witnessing something that nobody should ever see because it should not be happening. For that young person whose only recourse, at that moment in time, is to document and report.

And as that future Darnella pulls out their phone to document the event:

1. Would they be allowed to have that phone, at all, under xyz regulation?
2. Would they be allowed to have that social media account, at all, under xyz regulation?
3. Would they be allowed to upload video, or livestream content, under xyz regulation?
4. Would the video, because of their age-verified account information, be instantly flagged and/or taken down for violent content?
5. Would the video, as urgent journalistic content in the public interest, be suppressed and censored based not on the content within it but on the age of the person who filmed it?

That’s your Darnella test. Run through it as if your life depends on it. Because it just might.

Thankfully, unlike the various outright bans of social media for teens, the newly announced Meta settlement with most state AGs does not actually ban kids from social media. But that doesn’t mean it passes the Darnella test. At the very least, the settlement will make it much harder for the next Darnella to document and distribute things that need to be documented and distributed.

Let’s start by running the settlement’s terms through the Darnella Test, question by question, to see what a future Darnella would actually be able to do. Especially since the goal of the settlement is that it become the industry norm across all of social media.

The first question doesn’t really apply here, since it has nothing to do with kids having phones directly, so that passes the Darnella test.

You could argue that the second question regarding whether or not the next Darnella would have a social media account also passes, since nothing in the settlement officially bars teens from having an account. But it certainly could impact them indirectly. The age assurance requirements make signing up more of a hassle, so the next Darnella might not bother creating an account at all. And if she does, that verification is precisely what marks her account as a teen account — which is what triggers everything that follows.

We can lump the next three questions together, because they’re all about the content itself. And here is where it seems clear that the settlement agreement fails the Darnella test. The “age-appropriate content restrictions” and the “content restrictions” for teen users would almost certainly create real problems for a teenager documenting a murder like George Floyd’s. A video of a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck until he stops moving is graphic violence by any classifier’s reckoning — and the entire point of a verified teen account is that graphic violence doesn’t stay on it.

And on that last item in the test — whether or not “urgent journalistic content in the public interest” would be suppressed — there are serious problems, even if the video somehow slipped past the content restrictions. The settlement imposes a default two-hour daily time limit on teen accounts — which means the answer might depend on how much time the next Darnella had already burned scrolling before she happened to walk past a murder in progress. Considering that George Floyd was murdered in the evening (around 8:30pm) there’s a good chance a teen user would have already used up their allotted time.

Yes, it’s possible that the next Darnella might have more time due to a parent or guardian bypassing the two hour restriction, but we don’t know that ahead of time. And a teenager watching a man die on the pavement in front of her does not have time to go find a parent and ask them to unlock the app.

Also, crime — and other things worth documenting — doesn’t happen only during your waking hours. The settlement includes “night mode” restrictions that say that teens will not be able to post content between midnight and 6am. If Darnella happened to witness Floyd’s murder past midnight, she might be out of luck. Or, at least, the police would have extra hours to lock in their false narrative.

And this is the problem with so much of the discourse regarding child safety online. It starts from the position that the internet is inherently unsafe for kids, and that the only remaining question is how thoroughly to block them from it.

But reality is more complicated than that. A kid with a phone and a social media account might also be the only thing standing between the official story and the actual truth. A teenager may be the one livestreaming a school shooting from a locked classroom. Or be a bystander filming ICE violating the rights of people across America. They might be the person documenting police violently attacking protestors.

Yet, under a framework built around “protecting teens from the dangerous internet,” such things will face multiple hurdles. A verified minor uploading graphic, unmoderated content in real time will violate all sorts of rules.

Run the actual Darnella video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd against the “industry wide” standard Meta just paid $17 billion to create. It doesn’t pass. It’s graphic violence, filmed by a verified teen account late in the evening, perhaps after she’s used up all her allotted time. If it were after midnight she’d be barred entirely from posting. The next Darnella video might not exist. But at least 52 Attorneys General get to pretend they “protected kids.”

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The Trump administration has been working steadily to remove protected status for asylum seekers that even Trump admits are deadly “shitholes.” Trump makes claims about countries that seem to indicate they’re too dangerous to live in, but then insists there’s no reason we shouldn’t be allowed to deport migrants to places where they’re likely to be tortured, killed, or just maybe starve to death.

When justifying his war with Iran (which he still won’t officially state is a “war” because that means he’d have to start seeking permission from Congress to engage in future military action), Trump often pointed out how poorly the radical Islamist government treated its own citizens. In fact, he borrowed language from multiple presidential executive orders (including ones not composed by his second presidential administration) to justify doing whatever the fuck he wanted in terms of military attacks on Iran.

For example, Executive Order 13553 of September 28, 2010 (Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to Serious Human Rights Abuses by the Government of Iran and Taking Certain Other Actions), took additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12957, including authorizing the blocking of property to address serious human rights abuses against persons in Iran. 

That was included in Trump’s February 2026 Executive Order, which introduced tariffs to long-standing sanctions against the country of Iran.

These statements were delivered a few weeks earlier:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Iranians to keep protesting and remember the names of those abusing them, saying help is on the way, as Iran’s clerical establishment pressed its crackdown against the biggest demonstrations in years.

[…]

[Trump] said he had canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the “senseless killing” of protesters stopped and in a later speech told Iranians to “save the name of the killers and the abusers … because they’ll pay a very big price.”

So, Trump knew things were dangerous for Iranian citizens who opposed the same government he was now threatening to wage war on. And for years, the United States government (no matter who’s been running it) has opened its doors to dissidents and others facing persecution and death by the hardline Islamic government.

But Trump no longer cares about Iranian refugees, even as he continues to wage war on their former homeland. Now that’s he’s fully engaged in a conflict he can’t seem to win, Trump’s government is working directly with the enemy to allow the Iranian government to pick and choose which asylum seekers will be sent back to face almost certain punishment.

Hundreds of emails spanning from May to November of last year show ICE officials, operating under the orders of then-Acting Director Todd Lyons, scrambling to put together plans for three controversial charter flights to Iran in the clearest picture yet of the Trump administration’s behind-the-scenes planning for the trips.

The flights delivered more than 100 people to an uncertain fate in Tehran just months or weeks before the U.S. and Israel launched their current devastating war, which has to date killed thousands of Iranians. 

To say the fate of those being ejected from the US was “uncertain” is The Intercept being about as diplomatic as it can be, given the circumstances.

The fate was clear for most, who had already seen the Trump administration decide former Iranian citizens were no longer deserving of seeking to better their lives, much less simply given the chance to stay alive, by fleeing Iran.

Each flight arrived in Tehran carrying at least a dozen deportees, including political activists and ethnic and religious minorities who had good reason to fear persecution upon arrival. Many of the people flown to Tehran were transported against their will, including one man who later told the New York Times that he attempted suicide before the flight and ICE agents physically forced him onto the plane.

That would be cruelly gruesome enough if it was just the Trump administration doing its casually racist white nationalist thing. But, as the emails shared with The Intercept make clear, ICE was allowing the Iranian government to guide this specific deportation program, presumably in hopes of forcing refugees and dissidents to return to Iran where they could be punished.

The emails show steady escalation since Trump’s return to office, even as he was composing Executive Orders condemning Iran for its constant human rights violations and telling Iranian protesters to keep the faith because the US was riding to rescue. Meanwhile, on ICE back channels, the administration was letting the Iranian government generate packing slips (so to speak) for ICE deportation flights to Iran.

This disturbing program that deliberately allowed Iran to “reclaim” people the government wanted to punish was brokered by Qatar. And the Qatari government’s only concern appeared to be that deportation flights to Iran weren’t quite as packed as it had been told they would be.

For reasons that are not made clear in the emails, the Iranian deportees numbered fewer than half the 120 Iranian nationals that Qatar and Iran were expecting. The Qataris were not happy.

“We would like clarification on why the number of passengers has been reduced from 120 to 54, as this directly affects our internal operations,” wrote a representative of the Qatari Ministry of the Interior in an email to ICE officials. “Last-minute changes are not welcome, especially since we are an intermediary with the Iranians.”

The only reason we aren’t deporting more Iranians now is because the Trump administration blew that all up by deciding to start bombing Iran. That doesn’t mean ICE and the DHS are still scooping up Iranians and getting them prepped for a return to a country that only wants them back so it can kill or torture them. It’s pretty difficult to talk anyone into doing anything when you’ve violently severed anything that might resemble diplomatic communication lines.

But what’s most disturbing is that the Trump administration was doing this at all. For nearly 50 years, Iran has been cut off from the US and considered to be dangerously untrustworthy. But when this administration decided it wanted to get as many brown people as possible out of the US, it approached a government no one else in the world trusts and asked known (and acknowledged!) human rights abusers which humans they’d like back first. That’s fucked up. And no amount of war is going to change that nasty fact.

Back in June I wrote a feature for The Verge about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos had convinced Republicans to redirect billions in taxpayer money away from future-proof fiber optic upgrades, and toward their low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband networks they’d already planned to deploy. Curious behavior for two extremely-rich gentlemen who both repeatedly claim to loathe subsidies and corporate welfare.

But wait! It gets dumber and more corrupt!

Originally, Congress set aside $42.5 billion in taxpayer money in the infrastructure bill to spend on broadband upgrades. But after shoveling a large chunk of that money to two billionaires for slower satellite networks they already planned to build without subsidization, Trump Republicans claimed they’d “saved” taxpayers $21.5 billion dollars in “non-deployment funds” that appear to have mysteriously fallen into a deep hole in the federal government.

Obviously states are pissed off, and have been waiting for much of the last year for the Trump administration to green light that money for the purpose Congress earmarked it for. But wary of upsetting the Trump administration, many haven’t been willing to publicly comment on how stupid this all is for fear of losing out on their promised money. But they’re getting increasingly pissed all the same.

That includes Texas, which was slated to get the most “BEAD” (Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment) funds ($3.3 billion) of any state in the country.

Over the last month or two there’s been a growing, bipartisan annoyance in the Lone Star state at the fact that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos appeared to have hijacked billions of dollars originally slated for fiber optics for their satellite ventures. That’s forced the Texas Broadband Deployment Office (BDO) to put all grant awards on hold while the state investigates questions of cronyism and favoritism at the agency:

“When Texas was awarded more than $3 billion to expand broadband services to every corner of the Lone Star state, broadband advocates celebrated.

Fast-forward four years, and that same pool of money has become the subject of tense speculation. Lawmakers have lobbed allegations of favoritism to companies — namely Elon Musk’s Starlink — that are set to receive federal money from an official state office.”

I predicted this would happen, and warned repeatedly as it was happening, for whatever good it did. But as belated awareness dawns, anger in Texas appears to be quite bipartisan and the fingers are very much starting to be pointed:

“I have my eye on y’all regarding the way y’all are conducting your business,” [Republican Texas State Senator Charles Schwertner, told BDO director Bryant Clayton]. “I don’t care who’s messing with your business, but we, as an oversight committee, are going to oversee it regarding fairness and transparency.”

This is all going to get worse. Billions directed to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service is money directed away from local area businesses that deploy faster, more reliable, and more future-proof fiber optics. There’s also the fact that as customers get shoveled toward Starlink by the government, the network’s congestion and capacity problems are only going to get worse.

Starlink is great for folks in the middle of nowhere with no other options, but the nature of satellite physics means it simply can’t scale to meaningfully cover U.S. broadband needs in any serious way, regardless of what Musk’s fraud-riddled IPO prospectus claims. And that’s bad for a company notable for not really having any notable customer service.

To be clear, many Republicans helped Musk here simply because they’re corrupt. But many others, enamored with Musk’s crumbling reputation as an innovative tech genius, genuinely appear to believe that Starlink is some sort of magic pixie dust they could just sprinkle over U.S. broadband woes, then run off with the “savings” they’d magically created by being so forward thinking.

The problem for them is that congressional law dictated that the entire $42.5 billion in infrastructure bill grants was supposed to be spent on broadband. The other problem is that as constituents in states across America get congested, expensive Starlink service (which again, they could have already gotten without subsidizing it) instead of gigabit fiber, the backlash is only going to grow.

It’s important to remember that Republicans spent all last election season complaining that this BEAD program was a bureaucratic hellscape they were going to immediately fix once in office.

Instead they redirected billions to billionaires, eliminated any provisions requiring the broadband be equitably deployed and affordable, hijacked $21. billion for what they clearly hope will be their own personal use, and created years of additional delays due to corruption and bureaucracy. Folks like Ezra Klein, who helped Republicans parrot BEAD concerns in 2024, have been nowhere to be found since.

I’m not so naive as to think Musk will face any serious penalties for hijacking billions in taxpayer money for projects he’d already planned to build. But as the public and political awareness dawns of what a gargantuan mess Republicans made out of this program, I do think more than a few heads (belonging to bodies in lower tax brackets) will roll.

This week, MrWilson scores another double-win with both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a piece-by-piece response to a commenter who defended ICE’s failed illegal raid on an immigration law office:

“Immigration lawyers are aiding abetting criminals.”

Yeah, sure. Except, you know, you have to be convicted of a crime for it to be determined if you’re actually a criminal and that requires due process…which includes access to a lawyer.

“They all have to go.”

Cite the specific law that demands this. I’m sure there are videos of the law you’ve seen all over that you’re just itching to copy and paste links like all the other evidence you’ve ever shared here.

“We have to enforce laws consistently, especially those that treat people differently based on accident of birth and the personal discretion of government officials.”

The Trump administration is enforcing laws inconsistently with the entire previous legal history of the country. You might as well scream, “shut up, I’m trying to defend free speech but you keep talking!”

“Your precious “Constitutional rights” just get in the way of the government enforcing the law.”

“Your precious [laws] just get in the way of the government enforcing the law.”

Constitutional rights are the law.

Now we know who ate all those lead paint chips as a kid.

In second place, it’s a comment about the first two measles deaths of 2026:

Then: “Nobody has died. It’s not a big deal!”

Now: “It’s only two people. Still not a big deal!”

Later: “So a few more. Who cares, right?”

Even later: “Okay, here’s why all these deaths are Biden’s fault…”

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about ICE’s threats following its failed raid:

So ICE threatened to come back and kick off a night of broken glass, huh? Can’t imagine why anyone compares these assholes to Nazis.

Next, it’s Bloof with a comment about the Washington Post rehiring the columnist they fired for quoting Charlie Kirk:

They really, really wanted Charlie Kirk to be a martyr for their cause, but the problem with him being a prolific user of social media, the man’s character was out there for the whole world to see in numerous embarrassing videos, and the man’s own words when it came to things like empathy and the victims of political violence were out there to see, and to quote.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about the growing opposition to banning kids from social media:

We need a ban on impressionable politicians seeing anything that was penned by Haidt.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone quipping in response to another commenter’s question about teens who express support for social media bans:

“What kind of an idiot begs please to be handcuffed, locked into a padded playpen, and spoonfed so that they don’t go places and do things that they don’t like?”

A religious conservative in the United States.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about Meta’s payout to settle with the states suing it:

Surely the states will spend this ~$18bn for clearly needed help foe children and only under the best stewardship.

Finally, it’s Cathay with one more comment about ICE’s illegal raid:

law offices … tend to be filled with people who actually know the law

ICE may not have been aware of that. If they’re used to the “lawyers” employed by ICE, they wouldn’t expect any legal knowledge.

That’s all for this week, folks!