Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-02-19 Thursday

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Democracy Now! Thursday, February 19, 2026

New York, this is Democracy Now. They're making billions and billions of dollars, putting profits over our kids' lives. Big Tech on trial, a landmark trial about the harms of youth, social media addiction is taking place in Los Angeles. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified on Wednesday. Parents of children harmed by social media have gathered for the trial. Let's give one big cheer for those, for guys or the kids that will never be, forgot. I'll go to Los Angeles to speak with a mother whose 18-year-old daughter died by suicide.

We'll also talk to an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center and Facebook whistleblower Francis Hogan. Then 4,400. That's the number of times judges around the country have ruled the Trump administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully. We'll speak to a Reuters reporter who broke. the story. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The U.S. military is preparing to strike Iran as soon as this

weekend, but President Trump still has to make the final decision. That's according to CNN, which cited a White House source, who said Trump is, quote, spending a lot of time thinking about this, unquote. On Tuesday, U.S. and Iranian negotiators held indirect talks in Geneva and left without a clear resolution. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is expected to travel to Israel and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later this month to discuss Iran's nuclear program. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending a second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to the Middle East, to join the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Persian Gulf. The USS Gerald Ford. Carrier Strike Group has been stationed in the Caribbean when the U.S. attacked Venezuela and

abducted its president, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife. Iran has long maintained its nuclear program as solely for civilian purposes. This is Iranian President Massoud Pazashkian. We have stated this many times. My own statements are not important. What matters from an ideological standpoint is the policy and the fatwa of the Supreme Leader. We are in a no way seeking nuclear weapons. Whatever form of verification they want to carry out, we are ready for that verification to take place. In the United Kingdom, police have arrested Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor, the former prince and King Charles' brother on suspicion of misconduct and public office. Authorities say they're investigating a complaint over allegations that the former prince

shared confidential material with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The former prince was the UK's trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. Back in November, King Charles stripped his brother of his title as Prince and Duke of York and evicted him from his royal residence over his relationship with Epstein. It comes as Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor, shut down six companies after the Epstein files revealed Ferguson's close ties to the late convicted sex offender. The documents reveal Ferguson brought her daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, to visit Epstein in Miami in 2009 just five days after he completed a prison sentence on sex crime charges involving a minor.

While Ferguson publicly disowned Epstein in 2011, calling their relationship a gigantic error of judgment and stating she abhors pedophilia, emails reveal she privately apologizing she privately apologizing. to Epstein for her public condemnations, calling him a steadfast, generous, and supreme friend, unquote. Here in the U.S., Les Wexner, the billionaire former CEO of Victoria's Secret, testified about his relationship to Epstein in a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight committee at his home in Ohio. This is Democratic Congressmember Robert Garcia.

There would be no Epstein Island. there'd be no Epsine plane. There'd be no money to traffic women and girls. Mr. Epsine would not be the wealthy man he was without the support of Les Wexter. Meanwhile, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council is calling for an independent and impartial investigation into alleged sex crimes contained in the Epstein files. The UN panel says, quote, so grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls that a number of them may reasonably meet the

legal threshold of crimes against humanity, unquote. The Trump administration's planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza sprawling more than 350 acres. That's according to contracting records. reviewed by the Guardian newspaper, which reports the site is meant to host a future international stabilization force, part of the so-called Board of Peace chaired by President Trump. Today, dozens of world leaders and high-ranking diplomats are gathering in Washington, D.C., as the Board of Peace holds its inaugural meeting.

Ahead of the summit, European allies declined to join. Country sending delegations are largely led by authoritarian governments. The list includes Argentina. Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. The Pope has refused to join the Board of Peace. This comes as Palestinians left homeless by Israel's bombardments say they have yet to receive any assistance rebuilding their shattered neighborhoods. As Palestinians living in displacement, we first hope for the reconstructed. of Ravha's city. And secondly, the infrastructure. We have destruction in hospitals and health

and education and infrastructure and electricity and water and housing, in the environment, in diseases, in the spread of diseases, and in the spread of things like that. So we hope for reconstruction in a very quick way. A new study finds Israel's assault on Gaza killed far more Palestinians than initially reported, writing in the Lancet Medical Journal. Researchers found there were over 75,000 violent deaths in the first six. 16 months of Israel's assault, that compares to the roughly 49,000 deaths reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry over that period. More than half of those killed in the Israeli strikes were women, seniors, or children. Palestinian photographer Mariam Daga has won a 26

George Polk Award for photojournalism for her work documenting Israel's starvation campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Daga was awarded the prize posthumously after she was killed last August when Israel's military bombed Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunus. She died in a second strike on the hospital alongside Palestinian journalists, Moaz Abutaha, and Mohamed Salama,

after they rushed to the scene of Israel's initial attack. In Moscow, Cuba's foreign minister met Wednesday with top Russian officials including Russian President Vladimir Putin, who pledged his support to the island nation. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, urged the U.S. to end its blockade and oil embargo, which has left Cuba facing blackouts and severe fuel shortages. This is Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez. We share a great concern about the deterioration of the international order,

which was already unjust and precarious, but which today is, being replaced by the practices of the United States government through operations of plunder in occupation of natural resources, total transgression of international law and ignorance of the United Nations, which threatens not only the current order, multilateralism, the United Nations and others, but also the sovereignty and security of all states without exception. The Department of Homeland Security is launching a nationwide campaign to investigate and prosecute naturalized citizens who registered to vote or voted illegally prior to becoming citizens. That's according to documents reviewed by MS Now.

The initiative reportedly requires DHS investigators to submit reports to the White House detailing each case in which they declined to bring charges. Two current and former DHS officials told MS Now that the White House directive is, quote, not normal. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is reportedly the driving force behind the DHS investigation. The Trump administration is preparing to rollback limits on levels of toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants. The New York Times reports top EPA officials will announce the rollback during a visit to Louisville, Kentucky on Friday. The World Health Organization considers mercury one of its top ten chemicals,

of major public health concern, and even small amounts can cause serious health problems, especially in utero and in children. Meanwhile, a coalition of public health and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday seeking to block President Trump's rollback of the 2009 endangerment finding, which enabled the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In a separate petition, 18 children and young adults also sued the EPA. arguing the burning of fossil fuels is denying them their constitutional rights to life and liberty. Lead petitioner, Ellen Avenner, wrote, quote,

My Catholic faith teaches me to care for all life and protect the most vulnerable, and it teaches that children are a gift. I now struggle to imagine bringing a child into a world where the air is unsafe and the climate is increasingly unstable, she said. In New York, NYU Langone Health has a lot of announced it will close its trans youth health program, forcing transgender teens who are currently receiving gender-affirming care at the hospital system to seek treatment elsewhere. This comes as the Trump administration's threatened to cut federal funding from hospitals that provide

hormone treatments or puberty blockers to minors. New York State Senator Eric Botcher said, quote, health care decisions should be made by doctors, patients, and families. not by politicians weaponizing funding to push an extreme ideological agenda, unquote. According to Statt News, more than 40 hospitals nationwide have paused or ceased to offer some type of gender-affirming care to trans youth since President Trump returned to office. South Korea's former president, Yun Sukyo, has been sentenced to life in prison with hard labor, after a court and soul found him guilty of leading an insurrection during a failed attempt to declare martial law last December, 24. In a verdict broadcast on live TV, a judge found Yun unlawfully tried to send troops into South Korea's National Assembly to arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders.

Yun had faced a possible death sentence. And in California, eight backcountry skiers have been found dead after an avalanche near Lake Tahoe. A ninth skier is still missing, but is also presumed to be dead. It's the deadliest avalanche in California history. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, DemocracyNow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Nadmien Sheikh.

Welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. We begin today's show looking at youth social media addiction and a landmark case that's put big tech on trial. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a Los Angeles courtroom and was grilled by defense attorneys about Instagram's practices. The trial stems from a lawsuit brought against Meta and Google by a 20-year-old from California named Kaylee, who says she became hooked on YouTube at the age of six, and then by the age of nine, turned to Instagram. On one day, she spent 16 hours on the platform. She says the social media apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts. Kaylee's attorney told jurors, quote,

these companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children, and they did it on purpose. He likened the platforms to quote, digital casinos that profited off addictive behavior. Last week, the head of Instagram described Kaylee's use of the platform as problematic, but he said the app was not clinically addictive. TikTok and Snap were previously named in the case, but the companies reached a settlement before the trial. Parents of children harmed by social media have gathered in Los Angeles for the trial. This is Juliana Arnold of the group Parents Rise. Her 17-year-old daughter died of fentanyl poisoning after receiving laced drugs from someone she met on Instagram.

Ironically, this court case is happening during her birthday. next week, she would be 21 years old. And I'm going to be in this courtroom representing her and all the other kids that have been harmed and died due to social media platforms. And they're dangerous, dangerous products and algorithms that they have created purposefully to addict these kids and keep them, you know, get them hooked. They're children. Children hooked so they can raise their engagement levels. which in turn, as you know, is for advertising, and that's their business model. And they're making billions and billions of dollars when kids are being harmed.

They're putting profits over our kids' lives. And that's why this trial is so important, because it's the first time the public and legislators are going to get the truth. And this is Todd Minor. His son Matthew died at the age of 12 while participating in a social media challenge known as the choking or blackout. challenge. Matthew specifically passed from the choking challenge or the blackout challenge. And it was we, when I found him, I had to try to do CPR and everything because I'm retired military. So I tried doing CPR, but ultimately when we got to the hospital, he ended up passing away. But the detective was the one that told us about the blackout challenge on the social media app.

the dangerous algorithms, and he saw a dangerous rise in children passing because of these dangerous algorithms. We're a family brought together by tragedy and pain, and we are here to speak our truth, to say our children's lives matter, the other families that are in the courthouse, their families matter, and the kids that have yet to be harmed, but have a potential to be harmed, their lives matter. We're joined now by guests who have been tending the trial. Laurie Schott's 18-year-old daughter, Annala, died by suicide in 2020.

From the body image issues, Lori believes, were exacerbated by social media. Lennon Torres is senior manager of programs and campaigns at the Heed Initiative, which focuses on applying strategic pressure to big tech companies around the negligence of child sexual abuse online. She's also an LGBTQ-plus advocate. And here in New York, we're joined by Laura Marquez Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center based in Seattle. Laura has filed more than 1,200 complaints against tech companies in state and federal courts across the country. They were just named to the Time 100 list of most influential people in health and are featured in the documentary, Can't Look Away. Laura Marcus, Garrett, let's begin with you.

You were just with our other guests in California at the trial, but you've flown into New York overnight. Thank you for joining us after the Red Eye, because you're being honored tonight by Time Magazine. Can you start off by talking about the significance of this, what you've called a landmark trial? Yes, so, I mean, this trial is something that these parents have worked for for years, trying to get accountability.

You know, the significance here, it's not about a verdict. It's not about who's right. It's not about a win. It's about our system working the way it's supposed to. It's about transparency. It's about truth. And that's what we're seeing right now, right?

We're seeing these documents come out. We're seeing testimony. Mark Zuckerberg testified yesterday. We're seeing these parents standing outside the courthouse telling their stories so that other parents know what's happening. And that's really the significance here. It's the American legal system doing what it's supposed to do. And frankly, what it should have done 10 years ago,

there would be far fewer dead children if it had. Well, Lori Short, you're one of the parents who's attending this trial to seek accountability for what happened with your daughter. If you could explain what exactly happened with Anna Lee when she went online and with the time that she spent on social media. Yes, my beautiful daughter, Annalie, was 18 years old when she took her life. but from about her senior year in high school or her sophomore year in high school and on, we could just see a change in her personality. You know, we always built our children up with confidence and clarity. And you could just see that what we thought was just a teenage girl growing up,

the significant impact looking back now of how social media defined who she was, not who she actually was in her heart, but what they told her she was. And what are you hoping to see? comes out of this trial, Lori? You know, I think justice comes in many forms. Nothing is going to bring my child back or any of these other children, but I want the world to know and parents around the world to know what the internal operations were targeting with these big tech corporations. It's really not big tech. It's predatory tech. You know, the predators always blame victims, and we were the victims of this. And I want the messages to be heard loud and clear and around the

world that we've had enough hands off our kids. We are going to show the internal documents. I don't care if it's here or in Washington, D.C. or around the world that shows the harms that they knew internally that they were doing. For me as a parent to sit in that courtroom and hear 18 out of 18 researchers, internal researchers for META knew that body dysmorphia filters were harming children and they did nothing is unacceptable and we need justice for that. We need change. Lori, what is your response to what Zuckerberg, what Zuckerberg said yesterday in court? And how did that compare to when he testified before Congress? It was two different things. You know, you sit there and you look at them trying to readjust their wording just because they walk through those courthouse

doors. You can't take away what was on file and what we have documented that he said when we were in Congress that day. And to try and twist that around is just unacceptable. But I am thankful that he was put on that stand in front of that jury, the judge, and just basically having to be accountable for what he did. He knew. And I think he never thought that he would have to cross those courthouse steps. But yesterday was basically a justice day for our children. And Lennon, Lori just mentioned the concept of predatory tech. You yourself were subject to this when you started using social media at the age of 13. If you could describe your experience and in particular the attempted sexual extortion that you faced.

When I think about my time on social media, I think about all of the, the individual decisions that led to my lived experience on the platform, it mirrored a lot of what I saw in Onalee. And that is something I don't take lightly. I'm here by happenstance. I'm here on behalf of children who cannot be here. In my experience, as a young trans person, as a young trans kid, was that my immediate environment was not providing me with the support I needed. And so I looked to digital communities and big tech or predatory tech really took the meaning of digital community away from LGBTQ plus people because when we turn to online experiences, we are three times more likely to experience unwanted or risky interactions online. That is the research.

LGBTQ people are at a higher risk of these harms. And so when I went to Instagram, when I was on these platforms, especially as a public-facing child who was on reality TV shows such as dance moms, I had hundreds of thousands of followers with access to me and some of my most intimate moments. And what's hard to admit but is important is for so long I thought my experience was something I should be ashamed of. I never told anyone that I was receiving hundreds of messages from grown adult men trying to groom me online because they understood I was vulnerable. I never talked about the fact that I was able to bypass age-gating, age assurance online because I would join these, you know, Omega-type platforms.

I would be off-platform from Instagram because there at the time was no FaceTime or video chat and messages because they knew that I was vulnerable and was looking for connection and they were pros at exploiting that. That is by design. The social media platforms could easily stop strangers from being able to contact kids. They'll say they do it, but they don't. And until we have third-party independent verification of their safety features, we're at a standstill. So if you could talk about what, you got your first iPhone in seventh grade,

if you could talk about what attracted you to Instagram. And when you talk about age gating, explain exactly what you mean. When companies say, oh, you know, people under this age can't be on Instagram or whatever, but how you got around it. Well, when I joined Instagram, they didn't ask me my age. And they fill their terms and conditions with a bunch of rules. But they're not enforcing them. And they're also expecting young children to be reading their terms and conditions. I can't remember the last adult I talked to that even read cover to cover, the term.

terms and conditions. And that is why the system is broken. We're expecting too much from the consumer, and these big businesses have a duty to protect their consumers and create products that do not cause harm at an exponential scale. For me, what brought me to these platforms was community and connection. I wanted to express myself. I wanted to be able to connect with friends from all over the world. And we as a generation were brainwashed into thinking that in order to have all of that good, all that connection, all of that community, support, resources, we had to take all of the bad that comes with it. And when I look at big tech leadership, I just see lazy. I see a lack of innovation. I see a lack of accountability. And I see a lack of motivation to create digital

community that young people, like Anna, like myself, deserved. And if they're not going to build the platforms that I know young people can thrive on and get community and get support, then they must move out of the way because we have young innovators out there and other companies that are doing the work because they know that we can have all of the good without the bad. And Lori, could you talk about the fact the particular complicity of TikTok in what happened to your daughter and the fact that both TikTok and Snapchat reached a settlement shortly before the trial was set to begin. And the terms of the settlement are unknown. I mean, TikTok is a platform that doesn't have as many regular users as Facebook, which is $3 billion in the case of Facebook, $2 billion, and growing in the case of TikTok.

What is your response to the fact that a settlement was reached? Well, I think it's very telling. I think it's telling that TikTok and Snap did not want to be put on that world stage alongside with meta. But I think it also has to focus on that was an individual plaintiff case. And looking at that from the legal context, there had to be some discussion on to come to a settlement term. But with my daughter, I did not even know she was on TikTok. She hid the app underneath a calculator icon. And sadly, we found out after she died from a friend that she actually saw. live suicide on TikTok, which added to her spiral of mental health struggles.

We're going to break. I also want to comment that Laurie Schott is wearing a big pin with a picture of her beautiful daughter, Anna. Lori Schott is with us as well as Lenin Torres. They're in Los Angeles. They're attending the trial. Mark Zuckerberg just spoke yesterday in the trial. He testified. Laura Marquez-Garrett was also there at the trial, She's come here to New York to be celebrated as one of the Time 100 at a big event tonight. Coming up, we'll also be joined by Facebook whistleblower Francis Howigan. Stay with us. The center of your skin, the color of your eyes, the kindness in your voice and the truth in your words.

The softness of your hair, the brightness of your mind. In your grace with which you mazes me The justice in your actions The goodness of your heart The wisdom in your choices In the warmth of your touch The grace of your body Charm of your smiles

In Every Way by Miguel Samoa's and Catherine Esther Morrow This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now, Democracy Now dot org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermyn Shea. We're continuing to look at the landmark trial about the harms of youth social media addiction is taking place in Los Angeles. Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified on Wednesday. Meta is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. We're also joined by Facebook whistleblower Francis Howgan. In 2021, she turned over tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents to U.S. regulators and the Wall Street Journal, which became the basis of a damning series of reports called the Facebook

papers. Her memoir is titled The Power of One, How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and why I blew the whistle on Facebook. Francis, yesterday, yes, meta-CEO, billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, was grilled about Instagram's effect on the mental health of young users. What struck you most about what he had to say? What was true? And do you believe he told the truth? I don't know if you've noticed over the last couple of years that he's shown up on a number of podcasts where he often gets tossed pretty softballs. What was remarkable about reading the coverage of Mark's testimony yesterday was how different it is when the person sitting across from him asking the questions gets to ask hard follow-up questions. You know, things like,

Like, you know, he's bragged before on other podcasts about not fearing ever being fired because he could, because of his stock ownership in the company, he owns the majority of voting chairs or the majority of the votes. He could just put in a new board if they tried to fire him. You know, having to actually have a meaningful conversation about what is the implication of that level of extreme control. You know, he's never had to sit there and squirm while being asked questions like that. And Francis, just tell us you were, you're a former Facebook whistleblower, an advocate for social media transparency. What did you learn being within Facebook? What did the companies know about the addictive potential of their algorithms and content? So within the child safety space, you could say there's kind of two major areas.

One is the well-being of kids. And I would say that's where it work on addiction falls. And then I would say child safety, like dealing with predators, dealing with people who distribute child abuse material. I worked within threat intelligence, which was the, you know, very the nitty gritty hands-on investigators going in there and hunting individual people who were running scams, running terrorist organizations. My team worked on counter espionage. So the closest I saw firsthand to how Facebook underinvested in the safety of children was that the team that was responsible for finding people who were distrable. beating child abuse material or looking for adults that preyed on children or or finding, you know, there are these marketplaces where adults solicit nude photos of children from the children directly.

That team was so strapped for resources that if you'd given them a single engineer more, they probably would have accomplished 10 times as much, right? That's the attitude that I saw repeated at Facebook firsthand. The documents I brought out, though, painted an even broader picture. So while I saw things that made me uncomfortable when it came to kids, what the documents that Facebook showed was that Facebook viewed them very instrumentally. They cared about the role of teenagers in bringing in their younger siblings, bringing their parents onto the platform. They worried about public perception, not the actual health of the kids, but the perception

that these products might be addictive. And what we know now that these documents have been brought for because of the court cases is that there were lots and lots of things. experiments being run to make these products safer. They knew that the kids said these changes, things like don't send me an alert in the middle of the night, made kids less stressed, let them sleep better. And yet they didn't launch them because it also made them use, you know, Instagram 1% less.

So what did these companies know and when did they know it? I mean, you have Zuckerberg testifying this is under oath. Last week after Instagram CEO Adam Massari spoke on the witness stand. He pushed back on the science behind social media addiction by denying users could be clinically addicted. Can you talk about that? And the case that's at the heart of the trial, the 20-year-old woman known as KGM, who says her addiction to using YouTube and Instagram worsened her depression and suicidal thoughts. So this is one of these little turns of phrase that I think is a wonderful illustration of how meta, Facebook, Instagram, have gone very, very good at speaking in a very precise style where factually

you can defend what they say. So addiction is a medical term. So if I get addicted to painkillers, if I get addicted to cigarettes, like going off of cigarettes because your nervous system, has become dependent on nicotine, you go through very intense physiological symptoms, where you go off painkillers. You're going to literally be vomiting, right? When kids stop using social media, if you isolate that child, you do see things that are indicative of their brain chemistry is changing. They're used to tons and tons of dopamine.

Now they don't have that stimulation. Like I think any parent who gives their kids a lot of screen time and then tries to have them sit still for dinner or like makes them go on family vacation and leave their fun. behind sees that behavior change. But from a medical standpoint, that behavioral dependence is not considered medically to be addiction. But when you come in there and downplay what happens with compulsive use, which is the scientific term of art around these things, it really downplays how having a generation of children who get hooked at 7, 8, 9. Because remember, 30% of 7 to 9-year-olds we're on social media as recently as 2022. Imagine what it is today. When you have kids whose brains

are being just bathed in dopamine from, you know, scrolling all day at such a young age, it changes how their ability to sit still in class, to interact meaningfully face-to-face to their family or friends. And you see this from a growing number of reports from teachers who say, I've taught for 20 years and I don't understand what's going on. The kids who come into my seventh grade class have never behaved like this before. So that's, That's kind of the consequences that we're living with of having, as the court documents show, they've been getting warned about this for 10 plus years, and yet they continue to optimize for spending more and more time on these platforms.

As we said, we're also still joined by Laurie Schott, who lost her daughter Anna and is attending the trial, Lenin Torres as well, and Laura Marquez Garrett. Rameen? So, Lori, let's go back to you. You said about your daughter because it's not just concerns about what these children, young people are putting online, but also what they're receiving in response. You said about your daughter. I was so worried about what my child was putting out online. I didn't realize what she was receiving.

So could you tell us what precisely she was receiving and how you came to see it? Well, with Anna Lee, she, after she passed away, we were able to gain access into her platforms. And from what I saw at first, opening that as a parent who lost a child and trying to understand this world of social media, it brought me to my knees. This child was pushed content about anxiety and depression. And it wasn't just one or two screenshot images. It was pushed to her constantly. And it was just time and time again the same theme that pulled her down that rabbit hole. It hooked her into this world that just destroyed her mental health.

It told her she wasn't good enough. That told her she was broken. My daughter was not broken. These platforms are broken. Mark Zuckerberg is broken. And we're here to fight for change on that because no child should be exposed to what my daughter, you know, saw. And we tried tirelessly as parents to guide her. And she was a beautiful person.

And they took that person away from us. Laura Marcus, Garrett, you were just with both Lori and with Lennon. You were attending the trail. You're here in New York. As you were getting ready for the show, I saw your tattoo on your forearm. Can you pull back your jacket and show us the significance of this tattoo? Sure. So I have two, and these are my children's names, and each of the raise of son is a child that's been lost to a social media and or AI product.

And these are patterns. How many? That's not all of them. That's just the ones that we've either drafted and filed their complaints, or we've met their parents and come to love these kids. And what does it mean when you file 1,200 complaints? Complaints to who? What happens? There's unlimited.

So we filed them in state and federal courts. Look, we're filing them. This is one of many cases. We have the federal, the MDL, where you have the attorney generals, you have school districts. We have one-off state court cases in Delaware, in New York, and we had Vermont, Connecticut. Essentially with these companies, I mean, these are the best resource companies in the world. And so it is a fight. It is a battle.

And we are trying to find those points where they need to be held accountable, where we can break through and where we can hold them accountable. So, Laura, you, as you mentioned, of course, you're an attorney for the social media victims law center. if you could give us an example of what it would mean to place restrictions on social media use that would protect children. We just heard earlier in our introduction about a child who died while participating in a blackout or choking challenge. So just explain what kinds of restrictions are we hoping for. Sure. So these are design defects, right? So think of the Pinto. It's not a restriction as much as fixing it and fixing a defective part, a part that is exploding. It's not, you know, someone asked me the other day, well, Meta's saying they're fixing it, they're doing this. And my answer was that's kind of like sticking a fire extinguisher in a Fort Pinto and saying, there you go.

We fixed it. It's still a defective part. And so ultimately fixing it, and they know this, it's in their documents that are becoming public. They could remove the addictive mechanisms. They could, it's as simple as think of your television set at home, we have this remote control, we got to turn the volume down, up, change the channels. They've kept those controls on the back end, right? they could give you the option to slow down the algorithm. And explain the algorithm.

For people who aren't familiar with social media, what does it mean when Lori Schott said that her daughter and Lee kept being fed with the same thing going down a rabbit hole? Sure. So these are social media algorithms specifically because there are many types of algorithms. And these companies have programmed them for engagement first. So, you know, we have instances where children and we have the data, children will look for uplifting speeches, inspirational quotes, and they will get breakup and suicide. Right? You have, and we have this over and over. We literally have images we can provide where a child looked for this and got the opposite, not because they wanted it, but because TikTok determined this is what will keep this kid hooked.

Now, if a child is going through a breakup, and this is Mason Eden specifically, he looks for, I believe it was inspirational quotes. If TikTok had shown him what he sought out, what would he have done? Well, potentially. he would have put it down and he would have talked to someone. They don't want that, right? So they're programming for engagement above all else. That is a programming choice. It is frankly a form of profiling, right? They're taking thousands of data points that are children. We as consumers, we're not consenting to that. We're not saying yes. I mean, they can tell you the kind of car you drive, your education, all of these pieces that they can then use to profile and target. And in the case of vulnerable children, it's deadly. So you mean that, I mean, literally in this case, a child is

looking for inspiration and instead gets, in fact, quite the opposite. I mean, the way that we're as adults familiar with the way that algorithms work is that, for example, on a news site, you look at the same news site, you keep getting fed the same news site, this is extraordinary that the child is receiving something that is exactly the opposite, and you're saying that's because it's more addictive? No, that's the defect. So you're thinking of like search engine algorithms, right? If I go into a typical search engine, it's programmed differently. It's designed. It's designed differently. If I search for Chinese food restaurant, I will get

here are some Chinese food restaurants within a five mile radius. If I go on to Instagram I may end up with a beheading video in China, right? Something that, actually, and I'll use an LGBTQ instance because I had a young person say to me once, you know, when I would look up gay pride on

Instagram, I would get half gay pride and half Westboro Baptist Church, you're going to hell. That is what these algorithms are doing. They're not showing our children what children are asking to see their program to show them what they think they cannot look away from, which are car accidents, extremes, outrage, all of these things, and that is what is causing harm. Facebook whistleblower Francis Howgan, as we wrap up, you see at the Trump inauguration,

the billionaire brotherhood that includes Mark Zuckerberg, how does that influence the lack of regulation that we're seeing today? Before I do that, I want to put one tiny little thing into a chair on top of what Laura said. There's a lot of really basic things that you can do even to make the current system safer. For example, they know they've asked users before and said, does this content make you feel bad? And if they saw people beginning to look at more and more and more content that people say, when I see this, it makes me feel bad, if they just gave people a choice and said, hey, we notice you're looking at more and more depressing content, do you want to keep doing this?

You can do very simple things like this. But when we look at the oligarchs that run these tech companies, we've set a norm that we are supposed to just trust them, that they've given us these wonderful, quote, free gifts, even though the price of these gifts is ourselves, our kids, our data. We've been told you've been given such great gifts. We know so much just trust us. And that age of just trust us needs to end. We need real accountability, real transparency, so that people who build better things get rewarded from bringing us social media. that actually is good for us. Lennon, we just have 30 seconds.

You're with the Heed Initiative, which focuses on applying strategic pressure to big tech companies, but I want to ask you as a young person, your advice to young people on social media now. My advice is to demand better and to force Mark Zuckerberg and the other lazy lack of innovative CEOs

to step to the side and let true innovators show you what digital community and connection can actually look like. Lenin Torres, Senior Manager of Programs and Campaigns at the Heed Initiative, Facebook whistleblower Francis Howgen, Lori Schott, her 18-year-old daughter, Annalie, died by suicide in 2020, and Laura Marquez-Garrett, attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center based in Seattle.

Laura was just named to the time 100 list of most influential people in health and are featured in the documentary, Can't Look Away. Laura will be honored tonight by time. Coming up, we look at the breaking news. The brother of the king, Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor, has been arrested because of the Epstein files. And we'll look at the number 4,400. That's a number of times judges around the country have ruled the Trump administration is

detaining immigrants unlawfully. Stay with us. To the misanthropic, misbegotten merchants of gloom Who look into their crystal balls and prophesy our doom Let the death knell shine It's the end of time Let the cynics put their blinkers on and toast our decline Don't become demoralized by this chorus of complaint

It's a sure sign that the old world is terminally quaint, and tomorrow's going to be a better day. No matter what the siren voices say, tomorrow's going to be a better day, we're going to make it that way. Billy Bragg singing tomorrow is going to be a better day in our Democracy Now studio. Coming up, we're going to look at the breaking news. Andrew, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has been arrested on a 66th birthday. This is Democracy Now, DemocracyNow. DemocracyNow.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermyn Sheikh, but first this. A major investigation by Reuters has found hundreds of judges around the U.S.

have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that, President Trump's administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully. Reuters reports, quote, the decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump's immigration crackdown. But the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely, even after courts ruled the policy was illegal. This comes as the number of people in ICE detention has reached about 68,000 this month. That's a 75% increase from when Trump took office last year. We're joined now by Brad He, Enterprise Reporter for Reuters. He co-wrote the article, Courts have ruled 4,400 times ICE jail people illegally. It hasn't stopped. Brad, lay out this exquisite. Sure. We've been looking at cases in which people detained by the

government during the immigration crackdown have come to court and said, I am being held illegally. You know, you are required to give me at least an opportunity to be out on bond while the government is trying to deport me. And that's something that for almost 30 years, the government has done pretty consistently, but starting last summer, the Trump administration made a big push to try to keep everybody locked up while these cases were going on. And we found, you know, 4,421 cases involving more than 400 judges who said these detentions are illegal. You know, the government can't just deny people bond and hold them indefinitely in this way. And so, Brad, what's been the, uh, response to this expose?

Well, I mean, things have kind of kept on as they're keeping on, and the number of lawsuits coming into the federal courts is just piling up and up. And it's a pretty striking number. You know, there were 20,000 when last I looked, and I think the pace is actually accelerating. Now, there's been some action. There was a federal judge in California yesterday who tried to block the administration's policy of just denying people bond. globally. We'll see what effect that has. But, you know, so far, these court orders saying this

policy is illegal have not caused the administration to change it. Tell us about 18-year-old high school student Joseph Thomas from Venezuela. What happened to him? What did the judge rule? Yeah, he was a Venezuelan. He and his father were both asylum seekers. They've been in the country since 2023. They were arrested after a traffic stop. They both had work authorizations. They were doing like a delivery run for Walmart, I think. And the government denied both of them the opportunity to be released.

So they filed lawsuits along with tens of thousands of others at this point. And two separate judges ruled that the government had to release them. So both have since gone home. But to get there, they had to go through this process of like obtaining a lawyer and going to a federal court, which is not how it used to work. And, Brad, could you talk about the impact of this flood of lawsuits on the functioning of the overall judicial system? Yeah, it's really been quite striking. And we saw, like, a little bit of it crack into the public view a couple weeks ago when a DOJ attorney just complained to a judge, you know, about how bad the system was and how she wished she could be held in contempt so she could get 24 hours of rest.

But the pile up of these cases is like nothing the Justice Department was equipped to handle. We've found 700 DOJ lawyers who've been assigned to these cases, including people who've been pulled off of criminal prosecutions. There are some lawyers whose name has ended up on more than a thousand civil lawsuits just since October. That's a really hard caseload to keep up with. And one of the upshots of the government being so swamped with this is when courts are actually ordering, you know, that this detainee be released, the government's having a hard time making that happen. So if you can talk also about the droves of lawyers who have left the Justice Department and also talk about the lawyer who recently said in court,

lost her job, but she just said, this job sucks. Right. She doesn't have the job anymore. You know, this would be a challenge, I think, for DOJ at any time, even with a fully staffed Justice Department. We saw some records last year that about 2,900 attorneys left the Justice Department through mid-November 2025. Some people taking the kind of fork in the road, early retirement. A lot of people just resigning, pretty impressive, you know, hundreds just being fired, I think.

So the civil division in Minneapolis, for example, that would normally take on these cases where hundreds and hundreds have been filed is down 50 percent. And the U.S. attorney went to court and said, we cannot keep up. We are every day responding not just to habeas lawsuits, but to orders from the judge saying show cause why you haven't released this person yet. And the chief judge in Minneapolis has faulted the government there for not complying with dozens and dozens of orders that people be freed. Brad Heath, we want to thank you for being with us. We're going to link to your articles for Reuters.

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn't stopped. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmine Sheikh. We end today's show with breaking news. In the United Kingdom, police have arrested former Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Authorities say they're investigating a complaint over allegations

that the former prince had shared confidential material with the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. The former prince was the UK's trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. Back in November, King Charles stripped his brother of his title as prince in Duke of York and evicted him from his royal residence over his relationship with Epstein. We're joined now by Michael Walker. contributing editor at Navarra Media, where he hosts the organization's flagship live news program, Navarra Live. Today is, I was going to say Prince Andrews, but it's Andrew Mountbatten Windsor,

and he has been arrested on his 66th birthday. Talk about the significance of this. Yeah, I have to say on our show, we're still calling him Prince Andrew, because I don't think the royal family can get out of this so easily, just saying we're taking the title off him. It's got nothing to do with us, Gov. They obviously knew he had a relationship for a long time before they stripped his title of that. In terms of this particular case, it's actually remarkably similar to the row. Well, it's more than a row, isn't it? The investigation into Peter Mandelson, which is that what these emails appeared to have revealed

is that when there were powerful men in positions of responsibility and influence, they used that influence, they used that access that they had to forward on confidential information that should have been kept secret to Jeffrey Epstein. In the case of Mandelson, that involved what was going on in number 10 Downing Street when it comes to Prince Andrew. This seems to be what was discussed on trade trip. So emails indicate Andrew forwarded official confidential trip reports from Singapore, Vietnam and China to Epstein shortly after receiving them.

So that seems to be what the police are currently investigating. And their job is to judge whether this reaches the threshold of Ms. conduct in public office. Yeah, and it's clear that a misconduct is a really complicated offence, a misconduct in public office. This is I'm reading from the BBC quoting the legal correspondent. It essentially boils down to an allegation that someone who was doing a job on behalf of the British public did something seriously wrong, knowing it to be wrong.

But there are four elements or factors that the police must investigate. If you could elaborate on that and also tell us where has he gone and what comes next. Where was he taken? Well, so he was taken to a police station for questioning. Now, people think that's significant because he wouldn't have known he was going to be arraigned. So often when it comes to crimes which were committed, well, I should say alleged crimes, investigations into alleged crimes committed in the past, you might get forewarning, you might get invited to speak to the police. Now, it seems they didn't want to give him forewarning. I suppose there is an understanding that Andrew is someone who likes to prepare for interviews. And I suppose they wanted him

potentially to be a bit more candid to not have his lines prepared. When it comes to the actual crime, which, I mean, he's being investigated for, political journalists are sort of desperately trying to catch up on this because it's not something which has appeared in sort of political debate very often. It's the sort of crime, which as far as I understand, tends to be leveled at people like prison officers. So it might be someone who's working in a prison office or working in a prison, I should say, in a position of responsibility.

and they help a prison officer, sorry, a prisoner speak to a gang member outside and potentially arrange for some sort of crime to be committed. So I think normally you have a very high threshold and it's a bit more open and shut. What's interesting here is that, you know, I'm not sure what they'll be investigating because we've all seen the emails. The question is just whether or not this meets this threshold. I suppose they'll be discussing with Andrew whether or not he knew that what he did was a breach of his responsibility. in that role. You know, it's astounding, Michael, is you have Andrew being arrested. And here in the United States, we have not seen as much fallout. In fact, I think President Trump just said that the millions of pages of documents have exonerated him, though he was named over a thousand times.

Next up could be, is that right? The former British ambassador to the U.S. Mandelson, who also, interestingly, was a trade envoy. And there are questions about, revealing information that was given over to Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting here, and what's disappointing to some people actually is, obviously this is a story about sex trafficking, about the abuse of numerous women. And it seems like where justice might be brought, it's on a different charge, which is sharing confidential information with a powerful person. In both cases, Mandelson and Prince Andrew, there are suggestions.

that maybe there were quid pro quos here. So when it came to Mandelson, he was sharing this information, which was market sensitive and which would have been useful to Epstein. And it seems that in return, what he was getting was Epstein's help in helping his lobbying firm after he left government or getting a job with J.P. Morgan. These seemed to be what he was considering. He didn't end up getting a job with J.P. Morgan,

but he was clearly from the emails angling for one. With Andrew, we know that... We're going to have to leave it there, but we thank you so much for being with us with Novera Media in London. And today marks Democracy Now's 30th anniversary on the air. Our first show, February 19th, 1996. We've got a show Nermaine as well here in this image. On Monday, we'll be celebrating Riverside Church in New York.

Guests will include Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Maria Ressa, Michael Steep, Winton Marsalis, Masab, Bhuttoja, V. Hooray for the Riff, Ref, and more. We'll be streaming the event live at DemocracyNow.org. Happy anniversary, everyone. Happy anniversary. Nervine.