John Chu

Trump aides declared 16 DHS shootings since July justified before probes completed The Trump administration’s rush to defend the officers and accuse the victims of attacking them has sparked widespread outrage and demands for accountability. January 27, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. ESTToday at 6:00 a.m. EST 10 min Summary 1,026 Make us preferred on Google Federal immigration agents work in Minneapolis on Sunday. (Adam Gray/AP) By David Nakamura and Olivia George

Just in time for a new funding fight, WaPo reports that DHS has not really investigated ANY of 16 shooting incidents.

Dems should demand real investigations for all of these (maybe get Robert Storch, fired DOD IG to do it) AND ALSO LaMonica McIver event.

www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

The Oval Office meeting also included several of Mr. Trump’s top aides, including Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, Karoline Leavitt, his press secretary, and Steven Cheung, his communications director. *Stephen Miller, a top aide to Mr. Trump who oversees the administration’s immigration strategy, was not part of the meeting.*

There are a lot of versions of the "Trump pivot" being published, with varying degrees of propaganda about what actually happened in MN.

This is the most interesting line of any of them, IMO.

I in no way consider that a GOOD sign. Probably sign it's all fluff.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...

People who use chatbots for news consider them unbiased and “good enough,” new study finds Frequent users in the U.S. and India say they trust chatbots despite factual errors and outdated information.

And yeah, most people who use these chatbots view them as basically unbiased even though they're being pushed to the right. This is going to be a big problem. www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/peop...

In any case, if someone wants to throw a bunch of money at the cause of trying to prevent the coming rewriting of reality by overt fascists, hit me up I guess?

Anyway, I'm going to continue banging pots and pans together trying to draw some attention to this problem in hopes that groups on the left will pay attention to this and invest in a response. Otherwise, the right-wing BS claims about "liberal bias" will successfully be used to reshape reality.

The newsroom’s AI has an agenda "What's coming will be subtle — the algorithmic equivalent of editors who've internalized which stories are 'too political' and which framings are 'balanced.'"

And here www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/the-...

Meta's Right Turn: When "Fixing Bias" Means Embracing It How Llama 4's political rebalancing threatens to normalize misinformation under the guise of fairness

And here www.readtpa.com/p/metas-righ...

How Trump Plans to Weaponize AI's "Superhuman Persuasion" A new government plan would mandate that AI systems reflect the administration's worldview — or lose access to federal contracts.

And here www.readtpa.com/p/how-trump-...

The Grok 'White Genocide' Incident Shows How AI Can Become a Propaganda Machine When Musk's chatbot started injecting "white genocide" conspiracy theories into unrelated conversations, it revealed the dangerous power of AI to reshape reality.

I've been writing about this problem for a bit! One example: www.readtpa.com/p/the-grok-w...

(There's already at least one "just stop using AI" response to this thread, which... *sigh* again, is not the problem. The problem is that this stuff will absolutely shape what society will come to accept as truth. There needs to be more pushback to the rightward shift of these companies.)

And I get the impulse of people on the left to go, "So what? It's just the plagiarism machine. I simply won't use it," as though that's the real problem. No, the problem is that these models will shape public opinion and society's understanding of the world.

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers

The truth is that the right wants to use the same playbook it used against the press, whining about "liberal bias," but for LLM chatbots. And it's working! All the AI companies are responding to this by injecting right-wing bias into their models www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The big picture: Trump wants a peace-with-honor withdrawal from Minnesota that doesn't look like his immigration surge was a loss driven by botched law enforcement efforts under Bovino, and plummeting poll numbers. The administration wants Minnesota law enforcement to help with traffic and crowd control so that DHS can make immigration arrests without interference from the well-organized protesters in the Twin Cities. Walz and local officials want an end to the heavy-handed federal immigration tactics that became a hallmark of Bovino's time there. Three demonstrators have been shot by federal agents this month, including two fatally — Pretti and Renee Good. Reality check: Trump has made friendly calls and peace offerings to Minnesota officials, but he's not going to pack up and leave the state. "We can't lose Minneapolis because if we do, we lose Chicago and Los Angeles," an administration adviser said. "We're not going to let the people who lost the presidential election over immigration dictate to us on immigration," the official said, referring to Democrats.

There's an enormous amount of bullshit in this Marc Caputo gloss of Trump's alleged pivot on Minnesota.

But it's worth reviewing NOT JUST to count the uncontested error, but for the Vietnam analogy.

www.axios.com/2026/01/27/t...

"CBP stays at the border" might sound like a win, but keep in mind that this is what "the border" means to them www.aclumaine.org/know-your-ri...

“[CBS News] is the best capitalized media start-up in the world.”

The reason why Bari Weiss says things like this is because she is COMPLETELY out of her depth, and too dim to realize it.

“Breaking news: Renowned composer Philip Glass…”
*Oh no…*
“…withdraws from Kennedy Center.”
*Fuck yeah*

Five Ways You Can Oppose the Trump Regime Right Now Let’s go fight fascism together.

"We’re not helpless, even if it feels that way. It’s not hopeless, even though the Trump Regime wants us to believe their agenda is inevitable."

COURIER's @melissaryan.bsky.social breaks down 5 ways you can oppose the Trump regime and fight fascism in this week's Ctrl Alt Right Delete.

Scaring righteous people doesn’t make them stop

oh the story? you're going to put the story first? it's going to be multimedia? wow, what a bold new vision!

imagining listening to this combination of bluster and tedium, from somebody who has never actually reported news and whose only talent is sucking up to power, and knowing that your colleagues or you were about to be laid off so she could bring another Substack chud on board.

Alex Pretti was in earlier confrontation with federal agents who tackled him, broke his rib, sources say | CNN Federal immigration officials have been collecting information on protesters and agitators, sources told CNN.

The frame of this story sucks.

The actual story appears to be that Pretti was tackled by a gang of ICE officers who broke his rib -- then he continued to stand by his community as an ICE Watcher.

Instead we get throat-clearing about "agitators" and ICE crocodile tears. www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/u...

🧵

Latinas for Trump co-founder criticizes president’s immigration arrests: ‘Unacceptable and inhumane’ Florida state senator joins US House member in expressing alarm over ‘arbitrary measures to hunt down people’

Many Such Instances, Etc.

And! If you DO try it hurts you in two ways. You fail to give people what they want (because that's impossible!) AND you reinforce the impression that you're a party of glib empty suits who believe in absolutely nothing and will say whatever a poll tells them is popular. Lose-lose. Not great.

It is hard to grasp but large masses of Americans are both racist/xenophobic AND not racist/xenophobic enough to applaud what Trump is doing. It's goldilocks shit, they want a level of racism/xenophobia calibrated exactly to their personal preferences, and you just can't make that policy. Don't try.

So by the time center-left parties fully commit to chasing the far right by "getting tough" on immigration, the backlash has already begun to build and they walk right into it.

"I thought you people wanted this!" No, they want something impossible and convinced themselves they'd get it.

horrifies some of the same people who cheered when Trump promised to do it. There are true sociopaths who love this, but "No, I meant only the BAD people!" is as likely a reaction as enthusiasm. You cannot do immigration policy that satisfies these people because what they want is nonsensical.

The basic fallacy in chasing votes by being "tough on immigration" is that the modal American's position on the issue is "Deport the Bad ones and keep the Good ones," and they alone know who is which, and that simply does not translate into workable policy. So this kind of gestapo stuff (1/2)

Greg Ketter, founder/owner of DreamHaven Books & Comics, Winner of the Will Eisner Spirit of Retail Award, 1999.

As Greg has said here, the store's site has crashed from the traffic/flood of orders. But a GofundMe is still live to help with the store's renovation.

www.gofundme.com/f/dreamhaven...

Yes the higher courts have stopped the lower courts many times. But would you say that a group of ICE Watch observers are pointless if they are unable to stop a specific abduction? Of course not. Because it's a larger battle of many small pieces and you never know which piece will turn the tide.