Watch Immigration Cops? They'll Call You a Terrorist. Also: Waymo Hits 10 Cities, the FCC Wants to Program Your TV, DeepSeek Got Banned Chips Anyway, and the Feds Are Punishing a Nonprofit for Bad Press.
February 25, 2026
1. Film a Cop, Get Called a Terrorist and Added to a “Nice Little Database”
A federal class action lawsuit alleges DHS agents are retaliating against people who lawfully observe immigration enforcement by scanning their faces, recording their plates, and branding them “domestic terrorists.”
Colleen Fagan, a social worker in Portland, Maine, was watching an enforcement operation in January when a masked agent scanned her face with a smartphone. She recorded what happened next. “We have a nice little database,” the agent told her. “And now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
Agents used Motorola’s Mobile Companion app for real-time facial recognition and plate scanning. In Minnesota, observers were led to their own homes to prove agents knew where they lived. DHS flatly denied any “domestic terrorist database” exists. Either the database doesn’t exist and agents are freelancing the label, or it does exist and DHS is lying. Pick one.
Sources: NPR, Politico, Newsmax
2. Waymo Hits 10 Cities. No Driver, No Permission Slip, No Slowing Down.
Waymo launched robotaxi services in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando today, bringing its total to 10 US cities. A year ago it was in three. It now provides over 400,000 rides per week across a fleet of roughly 3,000 vehicles, valued at $126 billion after a $16 billion raise earlier this month.
Waymo’s San Francisco service now stretches to San Jose, covers three airports, and runs on freeways. Next up: Denver, D.C., London, and Tokyo.
The liberty angle: Waymo is routing around one of the most regulated industries on the planet. No medallion cartels. No licensing boards. No union negotiations over staffing ratios. Just a car that shows up when you call it. The taxi commissions that spent decades protecting incumbents are watching an Alphabet subsidiary make them irrelevant, one city at a time.
Sources: TechCrunch, CNBC
3. The FCC Wants Broadcasters to Air “Pro-America” Content. Totally Voluntary.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launched a “Pledge America Campaign” urging broadcasters to air “patriotic, pro-America programming.” His suggestions: start each broadcast day with the Pledge of Allegiance, run “civic education” segments, and play music by “America’s greatest composers.”
The FCC describes participation as “voluntary.” Same document, next paragraph: broadcasters can meet their public interest obligations by taking the pledge. This is the same Carr who has repeatedly threatened to punish stations for violating the public interest standard. “Voluntary” is doing Olympic-level lifting in that sentence.
When the head of the agency that controls your broadcast license “invites” you to air specific content, the invitation carries weight. This is the same administration that threatened to revoke a network’s license after a late-night host’s on-air comments. State media doesn’t always arrive with a press conference. Sometimes it arrives with a “voluntary pledge.”
Sources: Ars Technica, FCC Release, NYT
4. Export Controls Are Working Great: DeepSeek Trained on Banned Chips Anyway
Reuters reported that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek trained its upcoming model on Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, the most advanced AI processors in existence, banned from export to China. A senior Trump official confirmed it but couldn’t explain how the chips got there.
The Blackwells are “likely clustered at a data center in Inner Mongolia.” Nvidia declined to comment. Commerce didn’t respond. DeepSeek didn’t respond. Nobody can explain how the chips got there.
The real lesson: export controls are theater. The US government spent years building restrictions and end-user agreements. The result: the hottest AI startup in China is training on the exact hardware it was never supposed to touch. Paperwork doesn’t stop physics.
5. Criticize the President’s Allies? The FTC Will Investigate You.
Seventeen nonprofits, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief urging a federal appeals court to block the FTC’s retaliatory investigation into Media Matters for America. The FTC opened the probe after Media Matters published research critical of Trump administration allies.
The coalition includes the EFF, Reporters Without Borders, and Freedom of the Press Foundation. Their argument: this is a weapon, not regulation. The brief describes agencies that “launch pretextual investigations, keep them open as a way to coerce compliance, and resist any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions.”
It fits a pattern: journalists arrested in Minnesota, a reporter’s phone seized and biometrically unlocked in D.C. You don’t have to like Media Matters to understand the principle: if a federal regulator can investigate every time someone publishes unflattering research, the investigation itself becomes the punishment.
Sources: The Intercept, Free Press, NYT
Don't get mad at Carr for enforcing FCC standards that have been on the books for decades. If the pro censorship Democrats are so concerned about tnis, they should "lobby" Congress to change it.
You're also concerned about George Soros' Media Matters, but did you do anything to fight back against doctors, nurses, and private citizens who were banned en-masse for challenging Covid propaganda or George Floyd's death by overdose rather than police violence?