Saturday Covfefe: Detained, Poisoned & Recorded

Your calls recorded. Toxic water unleashed. Totally normal stuff.

Last week was…a week.

In case you missed it, I posted about accompanying my best friend to an ICE detention facility to say goodbye to her husband before he was deported. Watching a four-year-old say goodbye to his father is something I won’t forget.

And last night, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Virginia Democrats’ emergency effort to reinstate the new congressional map, wiping out four Democratic-leaning districts and effectively nullifying the will of millions of Virginia voters in the process. Sadly, this officially puts my campaign for Congress on hold, since I was running in one of the new districts. I’ll have more to say about all of this next week, but I want to sincerely thank you all. Your support has meant more than you know.

On that note…grab your cafecito. Let’s get into this week’s Saturday Covfefe.

1. California Mayor Was Secretly Working for China

This sounds like the plot of a Netflix political thriller, except it’s real and it just happened in suburban Los Angeles. And honestly, while we’re all watching the President of the United States get completely played by Xi Jinping in real time, why not pour a little more salt in the wound?

The now-former mayor of Arcadia, California, Eileen Wang, agreed to plead guilty after federal prosecutors said she acted as an illegal foreign agent for the Chinese government. According to the Department of Justice, she helped push Chinese propaganda through a local news website while hiding ties to Beijing. Then she became mayor.

What makes this story matter isn’t just one compromised local official. It’s what intelligence experts warn is a long-term CCP strategy to cultivate influence at the local and state levels across the U.S., not just in Congress but also in school boards, city councils, community groups, and media ecosystems. China’s strategy often isn’t smash-and-grab espionage. It’s patience. Relationships. Influence. Slowly shaping narratives over time.

According to prosecutors, Wang communicated with Chinese officials, directing messaging around Xi Jinping propaganda and article edits. At one point, she reportedly responded: "Thank you, leader."

Not exactly subtle.

National security isn’t cable-news cosplay. Real influence operations often happen quietly, locally, and years before the public notices.

🕵️‍♀️🇨🇳 The Mayor, Beijing & the Influence Game (NPR)

2. Your iPhone Calls May Be Recorded

Apparently, Apple decided that "privacy" now means someone can record your phone call without you even realizing it. Since iOS 18.1, iPhones have had a built-in call recording feature. Sounds useful in theory, except that the person being recorded gets almost no meaningful warning or control. If someone starts recording, there’s a quick audio announcement at the beginning. That’s it.

Miss it because you’re putting in AirPods? Walking through an airport? Distracted for two seconds? Congrats. Your call may now be getting recorded while your screen shows absolutely nothing. No persistent notification. No flashing warning. Nothing. Meanwhile, the person recording gets full visual alerts and control over the recording.

Totally not creepy at all.

Even worse, Apple buried a setting called "Audio Call Recording" that sounds like it would stop people from recording you. It doesn’t. It only stops you from recording others.

For a company that built its brand on privacy, this feels wildly off-brand.

Like I always say, this is how privacy erosion actually happens: not all at once, but through convenience features, quiet defaults, and updates people never read. Then one day, you realize your phone, car, apps, TV, and half your appliances are basically collecting behavioral data on you 24/7.

📱 Your iPhone Is Listening (Fast Company)

3. Trump’s EPA: Pollute More Water

The Trump administration is once again doing that thing where it says "We have to choose between economic growth and public health." As if Americans can’t possibly have both electricity and drinking water without bonus mercury.

This week, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved to roll back rules requiring coal plants to clean up toxic wastewater leaking into groundwater, streams, and rivers. The justification? Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centers need more power, and environmental safeguards are apparently inconvenient.

Yes. AI is now being used as the rationale for easing pollution protections involving arsenic, mercury, selenium, and other toxic contaminants. Totally dystopian sentence to type in 2026.

The Biden-era rule required coal plants to monitor and treat contaminated groundwater before releasing it into waterways. Trump’s EPA now says those requirements are too expensive as electricity demand spikes from the AI boom.

Environmental groups warn these pollutants are linked to cancer, neurological damage, and long-term health risks, especially in lower-income communities already disproportionately exposed to pollution.

And this is the bigger story people should pay attention to:

• AI expansion

• Massive energy demand

• Regulatory rollback

• Public health risks shifted onto communities.

The future is arriving fast. And one proposed business model seems to be:
power the machines, deregulate the toxins, and let everyone else deal with the consequences later.

Amazing innovation strategy…

☠️ AI’s Power, Your Water (AP News)

4. Colorado’s Democratic Governor Just Freed an Election Denier

Well, this one is going to make everyone angry.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, just commuted the prison sentence of Tina Peters, one of the country’s most prominent 2020 election deniers.

Yes. That Tina Peters.

The former Colorado county clerk convicted for helping facilitate unauthorized access to voting machines in an attempt to prove Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theories. She was serving roughly nine years. Now she’s getting out early.

Polis says this wasn’t about appeasing Trump and insists Peters still committed a crime and remains a convicted felon. His argument is that the sentence itself was unusually harsh for a nonviolent first-time offender.

And honestly, this is where things get uncomfortable. Because two things can be true at once: What Tina Peters did was dangerous and damaging to democracy. And the judge in her case likely crossed lines by explicitly weighing her political beliefs during sentencing, something an appeals court had already flagged. However,

The bigger issue is what this signals politically.

Trumpworld has spent years reframing election conspiracy figures as "political prisoners." Every pardon, commutation, or softened consequence feeds that narrative. And as Trump continues trying to rewrite the history of 2020, people once treated as fringe actors are increasingly being repositioned as victims or martyrs.

Democracies don’t just erode through force. Sometimes they erode through exhaustion, normalization, and collective amnesia. And we are deep into the normalization phase.

🗳️🔓 The Election Denier Walks Free (NY Times)

5. An American Citizen Has Now Been Detained by ICE Three Times

At what point does "mistaken detention" stop being a mistake?

Leonardo Garcia Venegas is a U.S. citizen, born in Florida and he has a REAL ID. He testified before Congress after previous ICE detentions went viral. And agents still tackled, shackled, and detained him again anyway—for the third time. This time, agents reportedly followed him home and ignored the ID literally in his hand because the truck was registered to his undocumented brother. Meanwhile, senior ICE officials publicly claimed this month that there have been "zero" mistaken arrests of U.S. citizens. Zero. Even as videos keep surfacing of Americans being tackled, cuffed, bruised, and questioned.

Let’s be honest about another uncomfortable reality. Construction worker. Speaks Spanish. Latino. That’s the pattern.

As someone who worked inside DHS, I can tell you this: The public should never normalize American citizens repeatedly having to prove they belong in their own country while standing in handcuffs.

That is not strength. That is institutional failure.

🇺🇸 A Citizen, Detained Again (ProPublica)

❤️ One Thing for Your Soul

Sometimes the internet reminds you that people are still capable of extraordinary kindness. A disabled Iraq War veteran named Letouer Turner is facing foreclosure after a property tax error left him paying taxes he reportedly never should have owed. He served 15 months in Iraq, can no longer work, and says the stress has pushed him into deep depression and PTSD.

Then a stranger stepped in. An Australian influencer named Samuel Weidenhofer heard Turner’s story and launched a fundraiser to help save his home. What got me was this line from Turner: "I’m always helping other veterans, so to finally receive a blessing…I don’t even have words."

That’s the energy worth holding onto right now. People refusing to let others go through hard things alone.

🏡 Strangers Stepped Up (People)

And finally, I’m proud to continue supporting the No ICE in the Cup initiative. Some of you may remember when I covered the “No ICE in My Cup” protest live outside the Kennedy Center during the World Cup draw back in December 2025. I said then that the World Cup should be about community, joy, and global connection, not fear and intimidation. I still believe that. I’ve loved the incredible art submissions so far. Please consider participating! Art moves people. Culture matters.⚽🌎

See you soon,

Olivia