ICE's next boss, Iran misinfo & more

President Donald Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. During her short and turbulent tenure, she oversaw ICE and Border Patrol as they occupied American cities, brutalized citizens and undocumented neighbors alike, and killed Silverio Villegas González, Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, and many others. The president tapped Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin to replace her. His confirmation hearing is scheduled for March 18.

There aren’t many indicators that his leadership will be meaningfully different than Noem’s. He’s sided with immigration enforcement agents after they fatally shot Pretti and Good, talked about wanting to end birthright citizenship, and said people should carry proof of citizenship. Research shows that compulsory identification carries “profound risks for democracy.” He’s also an election denier.

This 2019 piece in High Country News helps make sense of Mullin’s Cherokee citizenship. Graham Lee Brewer explains that “the Cherokee Nation has never required a minimum blood quantum for tribal membership,” making it the tribe with “the widest spectrum of political, cultural and racial identities.”

What’s next for Noem? She’ll be special envoy for “The Shield of the Americas,” a role that is both extremely made up and a blatant new arm for U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Shield of the Americas is made up of the U.S. and 12 Latin American countries. Its stated goal: to uphold what Trump calls the “Donroe Doctrine,” his take on a U.S. foreign policy principle that sought to justify U.S. intervention in Latin America. Those interventions have led to “large declines in democracy scores, rule of law, freedom of speech, and civil liberties.”

A new Pentagon report found that the U.S. military was responsible for bombing a school where a blast killed at least 175 people, including dozens of children. That directly contradicts Trump’s claim that Iran struck its own school. One U.S. official told The Intercept that the military mistook the school for a naval base. Even before the Pentagon report, mounting evidence pointed to the U.S. That evidence included video of a Tomahawk missile hitting a naval base near the school. The U.S. is the only country in this conflict known to have Tomahawk missiles.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about a draft amid Trump’s war on Iran, said “it’s not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.” In other words, she didn’t rule it out. But, can Trump actually send my asthmatic a** to Iran? Not without Congress amending a law called the Military Selective Service Act. But Trump has infamously tried to exceed his legal authority when it comes to military action.

Did military commanders say this war would usher in the return of Jesus Christ? The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation wrote that 200 troops had heard this from commanders. We haven’t found any other source independently verifying this, but we also haven’t found anything disproving it. Watchdogs have also warned of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Christian nationalism, and how that may be guiding the U.S.’ war on Iran.

People made money by betting that the U.S. would strike Iran. Six people alone made $1.2 million collectively through Polymarket, a platform that lets users bet on foreign policy events. A crypto-analytics firm called these six people “suspected insiders.” Two Democratic senators introduced legislation that would make it illegal for the president, vice president and members of Congress to partake in this kind of betting. And there’s also the good old fashioned stock market. Remember Markwayne Mullin from earlier in this newsletter? He bought stocks in defense contractors days before the U.S. attacked Iran, making up to $35,050 from the investments. He’s also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which gets classified briefings on military operations.

A package of bipartisan bills seeks to set greater protections for kids and teens online. One of the bills would make platforms implement policies that protect young users from threats of violence, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol sales, and financial harm. House Republicans’ version of the bill weakened some of these protections that were present in the Senate version. One House Democrat said Republicans’ version of the bill creates a “giant loophole for Big Tech” by letting them collect kids’ data by saying they don’t know whether kids are using their platforms.

The bills also include rules for AI chatbots. They’d have to remind young users to take breaks, say that they are “not a natural person,” and point them to suicide and crisis prevention hotlines when a minor gives a prompt related to suicide or self-harm. This follows critiques that AI chatbots encouraged some young users to take their own lives.

The package would also establish national age verification requirements, including age verification to access sexual content online, age verification in app stores, and parental consent for minors to download apps. This might mean uploading your ID to the app store to prove your age, raising privacy concerns.

Depositions were recently released from a lawsuit over DOGE eliminating grants, government programs and jobs. In them, a former DOGE staffer struggles to define his understanding of DEI, even though he cancelled funding for projects engaged in DEI work. After a ton of fishing for a concrete answer, the staffer said it was “inherently discriminatory” for a documentary to focus on “females during the Holocaust.”

Why might the guys in charge of attacking DEI not understand DEI? They asked ChatGPT to take in descriptions of National Endowments for the Humanities grants, assess whether the grant project was engaged in DEI work, and include a “DEI rationale.”

Among the other grant projects that ChatGPT told these guys to cut: an effort to digitize Black newspapers, a scholarly series on the history of American music, and over 1,400 others.

Voting for this year’s Oscars ended on March 6, but how do voters select the winners? Awards leading up to the Oscars, like the BAFTA Awards and the Golden Globes, often indicate who might win.

In the past, Oscar voters didn’t actually have to prove that they watched all the nominees. That changed this year. But much like big tech saying they don’t know people’s ages when they collect their data, Academy voters have a loophole: they can check a box saying they watched a movie outside of the Academy’s platform.

So, lots of factors besides the quality of a movie could impact who wins. One example: Timothée Chalamet’s controversial comments about ballet and opera were recorded before voting closed, and the backlash may have affected his chances. Best actress nominee Jessie Buckley also faced scrutiny for her comments about cats.

Campaigning has taken many forms in the past. Sally Kirkland, who starred in “Anna” (1987), secured her nomination after hiring press agents with her own money, attending events, seeking out journalists, and writing letters to Academy members. Melissa Leo paid for trade ads, fearing her age would exclude her from glitzy cover shoots that would reach voters. Lady Gaga lived and breathed her character in press interviews.