How ICE Is Tracking Down its Online Critics

Luke Vargas (0:00)

With Instagram Teen Accounts, protections are turned on by default.

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

Yo, look at this reel.

Luke Vargas (0:05)

Okay, the secret is in the timing. Don't rush it. Built-in content settings limit what teens can see.

Hannah Critchfield (0:10)

Messages from strangers just don't show up.

Luke Vargas (0:12)

And automatic nudges tell them when it's time to get off their phone.

SPEAKER_2 (0:18)

Mom, dad, heading out back.

Luke Vargas (0:22)

Sometimes the best way to think about safety is to not have to think about it at all.

Hannah Critchfield (0:26)

Instagram Teen Accounts.

SPEAKER_4 (0:27)

Nothing to turn on.

SPEAKER_5 (0:28)

Safer from the start.

Luke Vargas (0:32)

It's election day in Michigan. As a high stakes Democratic primary tests whether a progressive and socialist groundswell is spreading to the heartland. Plus, investors await the first earnings report from SpaceX as a public company.

And a journal investigation reveals how ICE is weaponizing social media against its critics.

Hannah Critchfield (0:53)

They showed up at her workplace to deliver this letter to her telling her that she may have broken the law with an Instagram post that she made in January about an agent.

Luke Vargas (1:03)

It's Tuesday, August 4th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

President Trump has told his advisors that he's angry with DC. US attorney Jeanine Pirro and has discussed ousting her. We report that comes after her office on Friday contradicted Trump's contention that the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial was damaged by vandals. Instead, her office wrote in a court filing that problems were caused by a botched installation and dropped a case against an Olympian that it had charged with damaging the pool. Nevertheless, Trump doubled down on his vandalism claims yesterday and singled out Pirro for criticism.

SPEAKER_4 (1:48)

I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. She folded like an umbrella.

Luke Vargas (1:56)

A Pirro spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to comment, pointing to Trump's public comments about her.

Twenty-five US states are banning together to sue the Trump administration over new tariffs imposed last month on more than 80 countries. The administration claimed those duties were designed to combat forced labor, something the states contend was little more than a pretext to continue tariffs that the Supreme Court had ruled in February were illegal. A White House spokesman said that the tariffs, which are based on a section of 1974's Trade Act instead of Trump's emergency economic powers, are legal.

Voters in five states are heading to the polls today, including in Battlegrounds, Michigan and Missouri, where congressional primaries are set to pit democratic socialists against incumbent Democrats. Michigan is home to one of the fiercest such contests as progressive Abdel Al Sayed squares off with four-time congresswoman Haley Stevens for an open Senate seat. Al Sayed has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers Union, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who lent her voice to this ad highlighting the $30 million in counting that the pro-Israel, American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has spent to back Stevens.

SPEAKER_6 (3:14)

Billionaires in AIPAC are spending $50 million to stop Abdul, but they can't stop a movement.

SPEAKER_2 (3:20)

Money out of? Money in your?

Luke Vargas (3:25)

Despite enjoying support from the Democratic Socialists of America movement, Al Sayed told the journal that he's, quote, not technically or practically DSA, but that hasn't stopped Stevens, who's declined to engage on questions about APAC's support from dinging Al Sayed as an extremist, and she's used her ads to emphasize her centrist appeal.

SPEAKER_6 (3:44)

I know things are tough right now and that Washington is a complete mess. Some people just want to yell about it. I'm fighting to fix it.

Luke Vargas (3:52)

The journal's Terell Wright has been taking the pulse of Democratic primary voters in Michigan and beyond, and he explained how their opinions are shifting.

Terell Wright (4:00)

What I noticed most was the desire for change.

And this discomfort with the Democratic leadership currently in power in Washington, that they were not doing enough to fight back against President Trump. They were not doing enough to address the economic needs of Americans and just kind of broadly not really fighting for their communities.

Luke Vargas (4:22)

That anti-incumbent trend has propelled Democratic socialists to upset victories this year in Colorado, New York and Pennsylvania, led by candidates that Terell said are touting policies outside of the mainstream.

Terell Wright (4:34)

So obviously Medicare for all is one of the top issues. It's something that Bernie Sanders has made popular. But what we're also seeing is kind of a suite of other policies that are new to the conversation. For example, I talked to Isaiah Passas in Ferndale, Michigan, an independent who says he's more supportive of Democratic socialism because they are the only people who are willing to talk about the construction of data centers for artificial intelligence and fighting back against it. Now, other people had concerns about the ongoing war in Iran. I talked to Christine McClellan of Detroit, who said that she is supporting Donovan McKinney, a socialist running in Wayne County, Michigan, because he wants to end American wars abroad. I talked to Tamara Ocha in New York, who decided to join the Democratic Socialist Party of America last year, after Mayor Zoran Mamdani won his primary.