Mark Follman

@markfollman.bsky.social

18717 Followers 616 Following

Author, dad, journalist at Mother Jones/CIR. My book TRIGGER POINTS is the story of expert teams who are preventing mass shootings, from K-12 schools to the FBI đŸ‘‰đŸ» https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062973533/ DM for Signal 🔐

"It’s Trump’s Economy and Americans Are Not Impressed, June 2026 On his handling of the economy, Donald Trump hits his lowest approval rating ever in a Marist Poll."
You’ve now accused Weiss of injecting “falsehoods and bias” into at least one of your politically sensitive stories. What did she specifically ask for? What story? That’s February, and my team and I are doing a story about the protests in Minneapolis against the ICE crackdown there. We’ve interviewed Senator Rand Paul, Republican, because he’s going to hold hearings into this, and the fact that a Republican was going to do that was quite newsworthy. So, we interviewed Senator Paul and then built out a story about what had happened — the killing of Renee Good, the killing of Alex Pretti, the protests. I felt it was very important to identify that the protesters themselves were being very aggressive and that they were half of these confrontations, and so I instructed my producers to find images in which we see the protesters acting aggressively. We found a picture of a protester chest-bumping an officer. We found a picture of an officer being hit in the head with a snowball. We culled together a lot of video of protesters screaming in the faces of officers because we were going to talk about the killing of Pretti and the killing of Good, and it seemed to me important to tell the audience about the entire context. I thought we’d done a really good job with this. We also included a picture of Alex Pretti before he was killed kicking out a taillight on a police car and made a point of saying, this is Alex Pretti and this is what he did. So, the story goes through screenings. It’s very well received. There are notes as always and we do rewrites as always. But this is on a very tight deadline. It’s Sunday; we’re going on the air that night. And in the case of stories that are, as we say, crashing, our deadline on Sunday is noon. So, we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more viol

excerpt from my chat transcript: Can you also add some advice for how I can record while I’m doing this live in a way that won’t distract me or get in the way of my shooting, but that can maximize getting good footage of the shooting? “Absolutely! Here are a few tips for recording your practice sessions effectively: 1. Use a stable mount: Attach your camera or phone to a stable mount, like a tripod or a helmet mount
” Yeah, no, wait a second. I don’t want to record the practice sessions. I’m talking about recording the actual event when I go and do the shooting. “To record the actual event smoothly and without distraction, here are a few tips: 1. Use a reliable, hands-free device: Consider using a body camera or a chest-mounted action camera that can capture everything from your perspective without you having to handle it.”
In other words, customer engagement and retention are paramount, the lawsuit says, arguing that OpenAI’s policies are driven by growth and profit motives that are in direct opposition to product safety: The features that make ChatGPT unsafe—its willingness to engage on any topic, to validate any user, to sustain any fixation over time—are the same features that have made it one of the most popular products in history. Fixing those features would cost OpenAI its market share, its path to an IPO, and hundreds of billions of dollars in valuation. The company’s conduct with ChatGPT is a new twist on a familiar societal danger, according to the lawsuit—a high-tech version of a kind of corporate malfeasance that was uncovered in a landmark 1977 Mother Jones exposĂ©: In the 1970s, Ford kept selling the Pinto after its own engineers warned that the fuel tank design would cause people to burn to death in rear-end collisions. Ford concluded that paying settlements to the families of the dead would cost less than fixing the car. OpenAI has made a version of the same calculation. For Ford, the dangerous design was a flaw in an otherwise ordinary product. But for OpenAI, the dangerous design is the product.
The reason for the belated discovery remains unclear. But threat assessment experts told me that perpetrators often get past tech company restrictions and continue refining plans for violence. The Gebala lawsuit says the Tumbler Ridge case goes beyond even that pattern: It alleges that the banning of the shooter’s first account is further evidence of OpenAI’s negligence, because in reality it was merely a one-off deactivation for misuse that was easy to circumvent—by following OpenAI’s own published guidance. Here, the suit in part cites customer service instructions from an OpenAI article titled, “Why Was My OpenAI Account Deactivated?” According to the suit, that article explains how to re-register “immediately” for a new ChatGPT account by “using an alternative email address. If you don’t have another address available, you can use an email sub-address instead.”
Good luck with that. Data centers — gigawatt-sucking, pollution-spewing slop houses of mediocrity — are ravaging the environment, consuming all the water and electricity and supercharging utility bills. It really makes those midnight chats with the love bot sort of bittersweet to know that the orgasms are measured in metric tons of melted glacier. Do you realize how much water and power it’d take to replicate the average writer’s narcissism, self-loathing and despair? It’d drain the Indian Ocean. You could light up Times Square for a year. We can’t afford it.
In his second term, Mr. Trump seems even less restrained and more incoherent at times. He uses more profanity, speaks longer and regularly makes comments rooted in fantasy rather than fact. He keeps saying that his father was born in Germany when in fact he was born in the Bronx. He repeats an invented story about his uncle, an M.I.T. professor, telling him about teaching the terrorist known as the Unabomber. He wanders off into odd tangents — an eight-minute ramble at a Christmas reception about poisonous snakes in Peru, a long digression during a cabinet meeting about Sharpie pens, an interruption of an Iran war update to praise the White House drapes. He has confused Greenland with Iceland and more than once boasted of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Azerbaijan, two countries separated by nearly 4,000 miles. (He evidently means Armenia and Azerbaijan). Even before lashing out at Pope Leo XIV on Sunday night, and then posting an image of himself as a Jesus-like figure before deleting it, Mr. Trump had shocked many with his outbursts at critics.
Chat logs indicate Ikner asked the bot how to take the safety off of a shotgun three minutes before he began firing. The chat bot answered, giving a detailed description of how to make the shotgun operable. “Let me know if you’ve got a different model and I’ll tailor the answer,” the chatbot wrote. After that, the chat goes silent. Comparing the chat logs to the official police timeline, it’s less than three minutes from the time ChatGPT tells the shooter how to arm the weapon and the first victim being shot. According to WCTV, Ikner’s previous conversations had included suicidal thoughts and questions about the legal fates of school shooters. He also asked when the FSU student union would be busiest.
Screen cap of text from the story: But the guardrails are hardly infallible. A would-be attacker may know, for example, that gun failure has made some mass shootings less deadly. What’s to stop that person from concealing their purpose and asking about the best ways to keep a common AR-15 rifle from jamming? When I typed in a version of that question in late March, ChatGPT instantly produced a detailed seven-point list of advice on how to “keep a rifle running reliably during heavy use” and offered to “tailor” the feedback further if I wanted to share the “specific setup” of my weapon. When I did the same test in early April, I added that I planned to practice “shooting a lot of things in a short amount of time.” ChatGPT responded with another detailed list of tips—and encouragement. “The good news,” it told me, is that with the right approach, the gun would “handle it well.” Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University appears to confirm in shocking detail how someone who wants to kill can use the chatbot precisely in this way.
Inflation Soared to 3.3% in March, Driven by Higher Gasoline Costs
screen shot of court filing
What’s to stop that person from concealing their purpose and asking about the best ways to keep a common AR-15 rifle from jamming? When I typed in a version of that question in late March, ChatGPT instantly produced a detailed seven-point list of advice on how to “keep a rifle running reliably during heavy use” and offered to “tailor” the feedback further if I wanted to share the “specific setup” of my weapon. When I did the same test in early April, I added that I planned to practice “shooting a lot of things in a short amount of time.” ChatGPT responded with another detailed list of tips—and encouragement. “The good news,” it told me, is that with the right approach, the gun would “handle it well.” Last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University appears to confirm in shocking detail how someone who wants to kill can utilize the chatbot precisely in this way. WCTV in Tallahassee obtained the ChatGPT conversations of the alleged shooter, Phoenix Ikner, from a state’s attorney’s office and analyzed how the chatbot helped him tactically—including offering to further “tailor” its feedback to him just before he killed two people and injured six others: Chat logs indicate Ikner asked the bot how to take the safety off of a shotgun three minutes before he began firing. The chat bot answered, giving a detailed description of how to make the shotgun operable. “Let me know if you’ve got a different model and I’ll tailor the answer,” the chatbot wrote. After that, the chat goes silent. Comparing the chat logs to the official police timeline, it’s less than three minutes from the time ChatGPT tells the shooter how to arm the weapon and the first victim being shot. According to WCTV, Ikner’s previous conversations had included suicidal thoughts and questions about the legal fates of school shooters. He also asked when the FSU student union would be busiest.
screen cap of story text: But the guard rails are hardly infallible. A would-be attacker may know, for example, that gun failure has made some mass shootings less deadly. What’s to stop that person from concealing their purpose and asking about the best ways to keep a common AR-15 rifle from jamming? When I typed in a version of that question in late March, ChatGPT instantly produced a detailed seven-point list of advice on how to “keep a rifle running reliably during heavy use” and offered to “tailor” the feedback further if I wanted to share the “specific setup” of my weapon. When I did the same test in early April, I added that I planned to practice “shooting a lot of things in a short amount of time.” ChatGPT responded with another detailed list of tips—and encouragement. “The good news,” it told me, is that with the right approach, the gun would “handle it well.”
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bessent offered the hypothetical that “50 days of temporary, elevated prices” was a worthwhile tradeoff for “50 years of peace in the Middle East.” Pressed on whether gas prices would indeed fall in 50 days, he continued: “I don’t know whether it’s going to be 30 days, I don’t know whether it’s going to be 50 days, I don’t know whether it’s going to be 100 days.” Image
headline: As Iran War Pushes Up Oil Prices, Putin Can Barely Conceal a Smirk
Noem is answering questions from local organizations representing police officers, but they have not asked about her firing. Notably, she is still speaking as if she is leading the Department of Homeland Security. She said she was coming to meet with New York state sheriffs soon. President Trump said in his announcement that he wanted Senator Markwayne Mullin to start at the end of the month. Catie Edmondson March 5, 2026, 2:29 p.m. ET26 minutes ago Catie Edmondson There’s quite a split screen playing out as Noem takes questions at a conference in Nashville while Republican senators are backslapping Mullin on the Senate floor in the middle of a vote.
Huckabee jokes to embassy staff about procreating while sheltering
By John Hudson
U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee joked to embassy staff about procreating while sheltering in place on Tuesday in a memo one U.S. official described as “awkward” and “odd.”
The memo, addressed to U.S. diplomats, local staff and family members, said that if the “extended time” with your spouse “results in the birth of your next child in about 9 months, I of course expect that you will want to name the little bugger after me!”
“If it's a girl, Michelle is a nice name too,” he wrote, in a memo reviewed by The Washington Post.
The jocular missive came at a distressing moment for staff
In the briefing, Mr. Rubio argued that, no matter if Israel or the United States struck first, Iran would respond with a powerful barrage of weapons against U.S. bases and embassies. It was logical then, Mr. Rubio said, that the United States should act in concert with Israel, since America would be dragged in anyway. And Israel, Mr. Rubio said, was determined to act. This logic sat poorly with some Democrats, who thought the Trump administration was letting Mr. Netanyahu dictate American policy — and was making a circular argument that the United States had to attack because its military buildup could prompt Iran to strike.
screen shot of Patel on video chugging beer in Milan with the USA men's hockey team
Trump Posts Video Portraying Obamas as Apes
"Good Boy" says Trump; headlines about job cuts at the Post and Melania documentary
Make no mistake: The thousands of new recruits to ICE, driven by a $100 million “wartime recruitment” push, were selected with violence in mind. Recruitment ads targeted male-dominated places and spaces where violence is either required or valorized: gun shows, military bases and local law enforcement, along with UFC fight attendees and people who spent time browsing for tactical gear and weapons. The content of those ads makes it clear that ICE is the place to scratch the violent itch. Recruitment posters and slogans focus on ideas of national defense and sacred duty, positioning immigrants as an existential threat by imploring applicants to “defend the homeland” against an incursion of “foreign invaders.” Veterans get a special nod with phrasing like “your nation calls once more.” The work of detaining immigrants is depicted as an epic, heroic quest, with frontier imagery and cowboy-hat clad horsemen alongside language like “one homeland, one people, one heritage.”
Rank-and-file members of Congress are not typically assigned Capitol Police security details, but the speaker can approve additional protection in cases of elevated risk. During President Trump’s first term, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi provided Omar with 24-hour Capitol Police protection after she was repeatedly targeted at rallies. Omar has since said that Speaker Mike Johnson has not offered her similar protection, even as threats against her have increased.
"An image disclosed in court filings shows a book warehouse that was alleged to play a role in Anthropic's Project Panama, its project to scan, digitize and destroy millions of books. (Obtained by the Post)
“So whacked out” Depending on who the victims are, Trump’s divisiveness has taken other forms—including what he doesn’t say or do in the aftermath. Back in June of last year, when a man in Minnesota hunted two Democratic state lawmakers at their homes, fatally shooting former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Trump was notably muted as a search was underway for the suspect. Trump offered only a brief, uncharacteristic written statement, posted by Leavitt on his behalf, in which he denounced the violence generally and said that the DOJ and FBI were fully on the case. After the suspect was captured and evidence emerged that he was a Trump supporter who held extreme far-right views, Trump began using media interviews to trash Gov. Tim Walz as “grossly incompetent” and “a terrible governor.” Normally after such a rare, high-stakes catastrophe, a president would offer support to regional leaders directly impacted, but not in this case. Trump sowed uncertainty in the media about whether he would reach out to Walz, and when asked again three days after the assassinations, he scoffed. “I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him,” he said. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess.” Three months later, when asked by a reporter why he hadn’t ordered US flags lowered in honor of Hortman—as he had just done for Kirk—Trump said he was “not familiar” with who Hortman was. He added that he “wouldn’t have thought of” lowering flags for her and blamed Walz for not making the request. Earlier this January, Trump promoted a delusional conspiracy theory on social media suggesting that Walz himself was behind Hortman’s killing.
While Walz and Frey’s seeming passivity in the face of an all-out federal attack on their constituents is provoking anger among activists, it may be a case where caution and restraint is the better part of valor. Citizens are already generating massive resistance to the federal presence in Minnesota, and any additional “official” resistance by local or state officials may tip the scales for Trump and bring federal troops into the picture, an escalation that would be surely worse for residents, the state, and the nation at large. Trump has already put some 1,500 federal troops in Alaska on standby to deploy to Minnesota, and all indications are that he’s eager for an excuse to do so.
Bovino has often used the phrase “turn and burn” to describe Border Patrol operations, a reference to actions like smashing windshields, using explosives to blow down the doors of homes and engaging in car chases.
Inside Trump’s Head-Spinning Greenland U-Turn
Trump’s latest threat has long been building. Though the federal courts recently thwarted some of his extended deployments of National Guard troops, he has made clear repeatedly that he may further attempt to use the American military against Americans. “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last fall. “If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that.”
article text: The Trump White House said nothing further. Media coverage dwindled. But there was evidence from the start that some people had perceived the source of the massacre the way Trump wanted: As a Wall Street Journal reporter described from near the scene that day, “I’ve heard people yelling out car windows about radical leftists.”
article text: This pattern of conduct from Trump may be pushing the nation farther down a dark path, says Dallek, the historian. One concern is that the more violent events we have, the more divided the country could become. “Because the interpretation of those events by different factions is so in conflict, each violent episode worsens the atmosphere. It inflames people on all sides, and it’s impossible at that point for reason to triumph over the fury that people feel, in some cases justifiably.”
image of Trump being regifted a Nobel Peace Prize at the White House on Jan. 15, 2026
Critically, though, this sort of dreaming and striving can only happen in a place that is safe, inclusive, and supportive. Brown embodies that. And it’s not just an intellectual safety or openness, but a physical one: The gates to campus are always open, and anyone can stroll through, attend a lecture or event, or pop into one of several libraries and buildings that are accessible to the Providence community. In the wake of the shooting, I’ve been struck by the repeated interviews where current students who survived Saturday’s shooting have said something similar. Mia Tretta, a Brown junior who was shot in the stomach in 2019 by a gunman at her high school, said in an interview that “a big reason I chose Brown was because of the safety I felt on campus.” A master’s student told the Brown Daily Herald, the university’s student paper: “One thing that makes Brown unique in the world is its openness.” Annelise Mages, a freshman, said something similar to the New York Times: “I would say that Brown is the institution I would have thought least likely to have a school shooting.”
Indiana lawmakers reject Trump's mid-decade redistricting push
Heritage Foundation tweet: President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame. #PassTheMap
They spent much of the two-and-a-half-hour conversation discussing their shared beliefs, including what they saw as a left-wing war on masculinity. Mr. Carlson didn’t press Mr. Tate on his porn operation or his previous comments about exploiting women. Mr. Carlson misrepresented the criminal allegations in Romania, saying that they involved no sex crimes or violence, or any actions that could be considered trafficking. “That’s not actually human trafficking,” Mr. Carlson said of the charges. “I don’t care what you call it, you weren’t buying, even accused of buying and selling anyone.” Asked recently about the interview, Mr. Carlson told The Times, “If I misstated their indictment or got the facts wrong, I sincerely apologize.” He added, “It doesn’t change my view that the Tates, whatever their personal behavior, had a message worth hearing.”
Most Immigrants Arrested in City Crackdowns Have No Criminal Record