D.H.S. Pushes Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts, and U.S. Troops Land in Nigeria

0:00This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close, and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.

0:37Today's Monday, February 16th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45The Times has learned that in recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has been pushing social media sites to reveal the identities of people who criticize ICE online. According to government officials and tech employees, who are not authorized to speak publicly, DHS has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. It's asked for the names, emails, phone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that criticize the agency or post about the location of agents. According to government officials, Meta, Reddit, and Google have all complied with some of the requests.

1:26Some of the companies say they notified the account owners first and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court. In the past, these kind of subpoenas were issued only sparingly. Tech employees told The Times they were primarily used to uncover people behind accounts engaged in serious crimes, like child trafficking. But the Trump administration's been aggressively trying to tamp down criticism of ICE, partly by identifying Americans who've spoken out against the agency. ICE told protesters in Minneapolis and Chicago that they were being recorded and identified with facial recognition technology.

2:03And last month, the White House border czar said on Fox News that he was pushing to create a database of people who were arrested for, quote, interference, impeding, and assault. In court, DHS lawyers have argued that they're seeking this information to keep ICE agents safe in the field. In response to questions from the Times about the subpoenas, Meta, Reddit, and Discord declined to comment. A Google spokeswoman said, quote, we review every legal demand and push back against those that are overbroad.

2:37Now, a few other quick updates on the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. The acting head of ICE says that two agents have been suspended and are being investigated for making false statements related to a shooting in Minneapolis. In the incident last month, an immigration agent shot a man in the leg, and administration officials immediately rushed to justify the use of force, claiming three people had attacked the officer with a broom and a snow shovel and that he feared for his life. That narrative collapsed in court, however, when the U.S. attorney said that version of events was not true.

3:12The charges against the men accused of attacking the agent have now been dropped. The agents could be fired or face criminal prosecution. It's the latest example of the Department of Homeland Security providing an account of a shooting that later proved questionable or outright wrong. And... Nobody is illegal on stolen land! Across the country, students in more than three dozen states have walked out of class in recent weeks to protest the administration's deportation tactics. But in Texas, Republican officials are trying to tamp those demonstrations down. Governor Greg Abbott has suggested state funding could be stripped from school districts where there are protests and that students who are disorderly should be arrested.

4:02Abbott recently warned on social media that schools and staff who allow this behavior should be treated as co-conspirators. Despite the threats, the walkouts have continued. One 16-year-old in Dallas told The Times the protests are personal for her. Her cousin was deported this year, leaving his wife and five-year-old son to move in with her family.

4:31Late last year, President Trump caught some off guard when he threatened to send the U.S. military into Nigeria, quote, guns a-blazing, to protect Christians in the country. Now, the first wave of U.S. troops have arrived on the ground there, part of a non-combat deployment that's expected to include about 200 personnel. President Trump has picked up on the idea that has been pushed by a bunch of Republican lawmakers and others for months now, that there's what he calls an ongoing Christian genocide in Nigeria. And it's got to the point where, you know, on Christmas Day, he bombed north of the country saying that he was trying to protect Nigerian Christians.

5:18Ruth McLean is the Times West Africa bureau chief. The thing to understand about this narrative that President Trump is pushing is that it really oversimplifies what is actually a very complex situation in Africa's most populous country, so a very complex nation. You have jihadists, you have what people loosely term bandits, groups of people who often carry out mass kidnappings and killings. You have separatists, all sorts of different armed actors carrying out this violence on the ground. And the people being killed come from many different sorts of groups, and that comprises both Muslims and Christians and people practicing traditional religions in Nigeria.

6:02I think a lot of Nigerians are confused by this narrative and the fact that it's even led to things like airstrikes. I think a lot of people are worried that the Americans are getting the narrative wrong, and that can be a dangerous thing when the most powerful nation in the world is involved and is sending bombs to your country. But I do think that there are plenty of Nigerians as well who are so fed up with their own government and see American intervention as a positive thing if it can force their own government to act and stop the violence that's playing out across the whole country and is affecting practically everybody.

6:45In Los Angeles, the head of a powerhouse talent agency is bowing to backlash over his name showing up in the Epstein files. Casey Wasserman, who comes from a legendary Hollywood family, said he's starting the process of selling the Wasserman Group, which represents thousands of artists and athletes, from Coldplay to Brittany Griner. Over the last week or so, dozens of those clients, including Chapel Roan and the soccer star Abby Wambach, announced they were leaving the agency, saying they were outraged over flirtatious emails Wasserman had sent to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime companion and co-conspirator.

7:23The emails were from 2003, several years before Epstein was first arrested. In them, Wasserman wrote to Maxwell, quote, I think of you all the time. In a memo apologizing to his staff, Wasserman said he only had, quote, limited interactions with Maxwell and Epstein. And he has said that even as he steps back from the talent agency, he still intends to stay on in another high-profile role. He's the chair of the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympics in L.A.

8:01And finally Pets are family But every year, 10 million go missing Last week, the home security company Ring put out what was supposed to be a heartwarming Super Bowl ad showing how its cameras could help find a lost pet One post of a dog's photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match But the reaction was not all aww. Critics found the tech invasive, showing how a whole neighborhood's worth of cameras linked up to look for the dog. On social media, people asked if authorities would be able to use it, potentially tapping into thousands of cameras to track people's everyday movements.

8:40Now, amid that fresh wave of scrutiny of its products, Ring has announced that it's ending a partnership with another surveillance tech firm, one that provides tools like license plate readers to police departments across the country. The partnership would have linked Ring's tech with theirs and helped homeowners share footage with law enforcement during investigations. Ring, which is owned by Amazon, did not say that the breakup of the deal was because of the Super Bowl reaction, saying only that the partnership would have needed significantly more time and resources than anticipated. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who has long been critical of Ring's data privacy practices, called it an important step in, quote, guarding against the ever-expanding network of surveillance technologies in this country.

9:29Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, big data center projects are now being planned all over the country. But not everyone is buying into the promise of good jobs and an economic windfall. A look at one county in Indiana that's pushing back. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

9:59This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size.