Pentagon Refuses to Identify Staffer Tracking Democratic Socialists

An internet troll on the Pentagon’s payroll has made a database to track Americans based on their political affiliation.

Jennica Pounds, the Utah woman behind the prominent right-wing account DataRepublican, launched a public tool Friday called DSA Explorer, which she described as an “interactive map of the Democratic Socialists of America and the wider anti-imperialist solidarity network.”

The project is a disgusting attempt to target Americans for their political affiliations, but it’s a particularly inappropriate project for a federal worker. Pounds has been listed as a “special government employee” of the Defense Department since July, The Bulwark reported Thursday.

The truth came to light after Pounds falsely accused Sarah B. Rogers, the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, of attempting to get her to leak sensitive information. The DOD later confirmed that Pounds, who was posing as an independent journalist, was actually on the government’s payroll, but refused to explain what her job was or what office she worked in.

The release of the evidently government-funded DSA Explorer comes amid a broader effort to label left-wing activists and organizers as domestic terrorists.

In a lengthy disclaimer on the database website, Pounds warned that her data may not be 100 percent accurate. “Inferred, ideological, and patron/sphere associations are analytical interpretations, not statements of fact, and nothing here alleges unlawful conduct by any named person or organization,” the disclaimer states. “Do not rely on this material without independent verification.”

President Donald Trump is so desperate to cash in on the love for Dolly Parton that he posted a fake picture of the two of them together. 

In a post on Truth Social Thursday evening, Trump shared an artificial intelligence–generated image of the late country singer walking through the White House arm in arm with him.  

Ever since her sudden passing earlier this week, Trump has gone out of his way to link himself to Parton. 

Shortly after her death was announced Tuesday, Trump posted a statement calling her “one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER,” and announced that American flags should be flown at half-mast for one week.  

Speaking on the Glenn Beck Program Wednesday morning, Trump claimed that the late country singer actually “really liked” him. He suggested she never publicly supported him because she’d lose “20 percent of her fans.” 

It’s true that Parton never expressed any political affiliation, but her lengthy record as a humanitarian shows us exactly what she stood for—and it wasn’t Trump’s agenda of hate. To make matters worse, over the last year, Republicans quietly cut funding for Parton’s children’s book-gifting charity.

Dolly Parton’s sister, Stella, however, was an outspoken critic of the president, calling his behavior “deranged, ugly, and nasty.” 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s myriad lies are finally catching up to him.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden called for a criminal investigation Thursday into the health secretary’s conduct, citing new evidence that directly connected Kennedy and his anti-vaccine messaging to the deadly 2019 measles epidemic in Samoa.

“RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake,” Wyden told The Guardian. “There are consequences for lying to Congress.”

Wyden added that he intended to press the Senate’s Republican majority to issue a criminal referral for Kennedy to the Justice Department.

“When Democrats retake the majority in the Senate, RFK will be at the top of the list of Trump officials the Finance Committee will hold accountable for endangering American families,” Wyden, who currently serves as the top Democrat on the committee, told the outlet.

During two separate confirmation hearings last year, Kennedy claimed that his trek to the Polynesian island country had “nothing to do with vaccines.”

Yet letters obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press revealed that the virulent anti-vaxxer explicitly informed the Samoan prime minister ahead of his trip that he intended to study the efficacy of the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine.

In one such letter dated January 20, 2019, Kennedy unambiguously argued that he believed two infant deaths on the island were “temporally associated with MMR vaccines.”

Kennedy’s visit immediately preceded a deadly measles outbreak on the island. At the time, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout Samoa, tanking the island’s vaccination rate from a 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones.

Up until that point, Samoa had not experienced a severe measles outbreak since 1985, when 1,095 confirmed cases were reported to the World Health Organization. But in 2019, after Kennedy’s visit, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.

Unfortunately for the American public, the conspiratorial rhetoric of the anti-vax movement has had similarly deleterious effects on local inoculation rates, spurring a regional measles health crisis that has so far killed two people and infected more than 2,777 people this year alone, far exceeding the tally for 2025 by hundreds of cases.

According to CDC data, vaccination coverage for U.S. kindergartners fell by nearly 3 percent—from 95.2 percent to 92.4 percent—between the 2019–2020 school year and the 2025–2026 school year. The dip is more significant than it seems at face value: The lowered figures place the age groups below the threshold for herd immunity that would protect even unvaccinated members of a community (95 percent).

Other Democratic officials have similarly called for Kennedy to be removed from his post since the letters emerged.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said in a statement that Kennedy “cannot be trusted to run HHS for even one more day,” while Hawaii Governor Josh Green—who personally witnessed the Samoan outbreak—said Kennedy needed to immediately resign “for the safety and health of our country.”

Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks told CNN that America’s current measles outbreak could be “tied directly to the horrific leadership of Secretary Kennedy.”

Kennedy was not under oath at the time of his confirmation hearing, but that doesn’t mean he had free license to lie to America’s lawmakers about his qualifications to lead U.S. health policy. It’s a felony to make false statements to or conceal facts from the federal government, as detailed by U.S. Code.

President Trump wants to give part of Yosemite National Park to a private developer.

NOTUS reports that the Trump administration is trying to give a parcel of the park, about 0.25 miles long, to Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a real estate developer in Nevada. The government’s proposal has the National Park Service either giving up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, in exchange for land elsewhere in California that is equal in value.

The reason the company wants the land is because it already owns 83 acres just outside of the national park’s boundaries, five miles away from Yosemite’s iconic sequoia trees. It wants to build a road connecting its property to one of the main roads inside the park. If built, the road would give unprecedented private access to federally protected forests.

Currently, the developer’s property has an access road over 10 miles away from one of the park’s entrances, and further away from the popular parts of the park. It’s not known whether the company wants to build a private residence, a hotel, a resort, or something else with its 83 acres—but it would be a 90-minute drive to the Yosemite Valley without another road.

The company’s proposal is fully backed by the Department of the Interior and its political leadership, which is putting pressure on the National Park Service, according to four people who spoke with NOTUS.

“They want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” one anonymous source told the publication. Another said to NOTUS that the “political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual.”

The deal would break a 150-year record of the government protecting national parks and safeguarding them from private interests.

“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” Cicely Muldoon, who served as superintendent of the park for five years and a National Park Service employee for 40, told NOTUS. “Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit.”

President Trump hasn’t given much respect to public lands, opening up some for fossil fuel extraction and reducing the size of national monuments. He’s making a mockery of the legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Stephen Miller has figured out a way to use President Donald Trump’s new favorite aide to push his own agenda.

It seems the White House’s resident ghoul is well aware that Natalie Harp has become the true gatekeeper of Trump. As his “human printer,” she has taken up the task of printing out flattering news coverage and positive social media posts to show the president for his approval to share on his social media accounts.

Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has realized that he can use Harp’s role to his advantage. Two sources told Zeteo that on multiple occasions, Miller showed Harp anti-immigration content with directions to get it posted quickly.

Miller has overseen Trump’s aggressive law enforcement crackdown on immigrants and attacks on birthright citizenship. After his soft ethnic cleansing efforts in Minnesota left two U.S. citizens dead, Miller was forced to take a step away from the spotlight. But that doesn’t mean he can’t influence policies from behind the scenes.

With Harp at the helm, the president’s social media posts have only gotten more outrageous and divisive. When Trump publishes unhinged posts about immigrants, it shapes public sentiment and can elevate any right-wing poster to a policymaker.