Wednesday, July 01, 2020

Conservative Teens On TikTok Are Going Through Some Growing Pains

TikTok has given pro-Trump teens a platform to make memes — and get attention. But what happens when the news isn't funny anymore?
Posted on July 1, 2020,
BuzzFeed News; Alamy
At first glanceElicia Drew’s TikTok account looks like standard teenage girl fare. The 18-year-old is tall with straight brown hair, and she often dots the inside corners of her eyes with a frosted shadow. Unsurprisingly, she’s popular on the app, with 64,000 followers and 1.4 million likes. About half of her TikToks are of her dancing and lip-synching, as is now customary for the platform. In one popular video, she does the “Cannibal” dance; in another, she and a friend do the ZaeHD and CEO “Cookie Shop” dance challenge together — pretty benign, uncontroversial content. But then there are her other videos.
In a TikTok from February, Drew wraps herself in a giant Trump 2020 flag, lip-synching the president’s words: “If you hate our country, if you’re not happy here, you can leave.” In another, also from February, she mouths the title lyrics to Lizzo’s “Exactly How I Feel” as she points to the text overlaid on the video: “2 genders,” “any race can be racist,” “stop antagonizing straight white men.” (I do not know how Lizzo would feel about her music appearing in this video, but I have a few guesses.)
Amid the dance routines and the Vine-indebted comedy on TikTok are a sizable number of conservative TikToks made by teens like Drew. In this TikTok universe, teens confess their love for Donald Trump, post dance videos about how “abortion is murder,” and compare injecting cows with hormones to gender-affirming hormone therapy. Tagged with hashtags like #MAGA or #Trump2020, these videos are both outreach tools and entertainment. They use the popular memes of the moment to make a case for electing Trump to a second term and to generally remind (or convince) liberals of their own shortsighted stupidity.
In this TikTok universe, teens post dance videos about how “abortion is murder.” 
“In terms of youth political expression, while there’s a dynamic and influential liberal activist community on TikTok, there’s actually plenty of conservative political expression, and pro-Trump voices definitely find an audience on the platform,” Ioana Literat, assistant professor of communication and media at Columbia University, told the New York Times this week. There are enough of these conservative TikTok teens to sustain more than a few group chats — some on Instagram, others on Snapchat. One is called “Super Secret Conservative Groupchat,” where members discuss current events, the greatness of the president, and who else on TikTok they might want to invite into their chat. They also discuss people like me. Back in February, when I initially DM’d and emailed interview requests to a few of the group chat’s members, they talked it out among themselves first.
“I sent this to the group chat and they were like, ‘Lance, I don’t know if you should do it,’” Lance Johnston, an 18-year-old high school senior living in Sherman, Texas, who now has more than 106,000 TikTok followers, told me in a phone interview in February. He seemed OK making an exception, saying, “I trust you. I think you'll be fine.”
In addition to these chats, there’s the Republican Hype House, a group account maintained by and featuring a collective of conservative TikTok users, similar to the Hype House that hosts semi-famous TikTok stars like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae. The Republican Hype House doesn’t have a corresponding physical location, unlike its namesake — but it certainly is influential, with nearly 700,000 followers.
Nick Lowenberg, a 17-year-old who goes by @nickvideos on TikTok, was one of the founding members of the Republican Hype House, though he’s no longer affiliated. His own account has just more than 333,000 followers (a number that has dipped quite a bit in the last few weeks), and more than 16 million likes. In late 2019 and for the first few months of 2020, he regularly posted videos of himself mugging for the camera, mocking liberals, and showing off his bedroom adorned with Trump memorabilia. Lowenberg spent most of his final year of high school spreading the Trump gospel.
But since late May, Lowenberg has had a significant change of heart. This month, he posted multiple videos about how he no longer supports Trump and “will no longer be making political content on [his] TikTok”; many of his old videos have been deleted. “He’s just an idiot,” he said about Trump in a TikTok last week. “Guys. Come on. Trump just ain’t it.”
He has criticized Trump’s business acumen, his divisive rhetoric, and called conservatives “hypocrites” (while also reassuring his viewers he is not a Democrat). It’s a significant reversal, especially for a teen who is one of the most-followed Republican boosters on TikTok, who once referred to himself in his account bio as the “CEO of Politics.”
“The political community on TikTok is just so toxic,” Lowenberg told me last week. “I want to get away from that.”
The first interviews for this story were done in a very different version of the world — before Joe Biden effectively won the Democratic primary, before the coronavirus pandemic devastated the US, and before Black Lives Matter protests made a powerful resurgence around the country and throughout the world. In that time, a few of the pro-Trump teens I spoke to, like Lowenberg, have also taken a step back from posting political content on TikTok altogether.
It’s hard to give wry political commentary on news that is fundamentally depressing. And perhaps it’s harder than it was a few months ago to score points and make cool friends online by supporting a president who seems unconcerned by the deaths of Black people in police custody, or the more than 127,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19. So we don’t necessarily know how much any teenager’s cooling enthusiasm for making pro-Trump, own-the-libs TikToks reflects a true shift in their opinions as much as it is demonstrative of a confused young person reacting to an audience who suddenly isn’t laughing at their jokes.
As Johnston told me when I spoke to him in February, “Who’s gonna wanna be on your side if you’re not having fun?”

The last few years have seemingly been a watershed moment for young people becoming politically involved — or rather, young people have effectively harnessed the internet to amplify their voices and ideas, and forced old people to recognize how politically aware and active they really are. Teenagers of every generation have always been political in their own ways. But maybe what is unique about this moment is that, in addition to protesting in old-fashioned ways, a large number of them are using memes and thirst videos to get their messages to the masses.
Before the last few months of global turmoil, TikTok wasn’t known for its political discourse, at least not in the way that Twitter or Facebook are. TikTok is, in many ways, an expected response to the death of Vine: It features funny, short, digestible videos, where the medium is also the message. But the Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19 have given ample material to Gen Z kids on TikTok, often to criticize Republicans. Teenagers on TikTok post about how capitalism is inherently brokenICEElijah McClain, and their ideological opposition to Trump.
“Who’s gonna wanna be on your side if you’re not having fun?”
But while teens like Greta Thunberg and Emma González are asking for radical change in how we tackle things like climate change and gun control, Lance Johnston and Elicia Drew think the status quo is just fine. The conservative TikTok teens I talked to first joined the app to follow their friends. Johnston made a TikTok about being Christian that went semi-viral, which prompted him to make more political content. (That said, he hasn’t made a staunchly conservative TikTok since June 11.)
“You see a lot of people say, ‘Oh, don’t bring politics to TikTok,’” Drew told me in February. “But what apps are most young, impressionable people on nowadays? Where is the biggest platform to reach out to especially younger people, but I mean, people of all ages? And it’s TikTok.”
Most of these teens range from 15 to 18, and the November 2020 election will be the first election they’re old enough to pay close attention to, and perhaps even participate in. The teens of pro-Trump TikTok are absolutely pumped to cast their first ballot, and they’re working hard to convince their online peers to be more politically engaged. “Most of the people at my school don’t know anything about politics,” said Johnston. “I think by me doing this on TikTok, it’s really opening their eyes to see Oh, politics looks kind of fun; politics can be cool. I want them to think for themselves, but if I can influence and say, ‘Here’s my side of things,’ that’s what we’re really trying to do on TikTok.”
Kiah King, an 18-year-old high school senior living in Michigan, originally had an account on Musical.ly, the lip-synching app that later became TikTok. “I started getting a lot of political videos into my feed and so I was like, I support Trump and I'm not afraid to show it, so why not post about it?” King told me in February. “And all of a sudden I'm just, like, going through my phone, and it's just blowing up out of nowhere and I was like, holy crap, maybe I could make something out of this.”
These teens’ political beliefs are pretty typical of modern Republicans. Most of them claim to be just fine with marriage for same-sex couples, but their own statements and videos express a clear anxiety about trans people. “I don’t personally feel safe with a transgender using the women’s bathroom,” King told me in February. “There are creepy men out there who will dress up as women and go into bathrooms. This world has changed so much.”
These teens are determined to show that being a hard-right Republican isn’t just for boomers.
Many of them say they believe in an unregulated economy and think healthcare for all is an expensive, unrealistic, socialist program that will bankrupt the country. They are generally against abortion. They think (or in some cases, used to think) Trump is the greatest president to ever be elected in the United States of America. They don’t like open borders. What they’re saying isn’t much different from what you might hear on Fox News. But the kids on TikTok are less fire and brimstone and more good lighting and clever editing, a smart way to repackage beliefs that have been cornerstones of the Republican ideology for decades.
These teens are determined to show that being a hard-right Republican isn’t just for boomers. “I think there’s a whole, like, you know, ‘Let’s let the boomers die off because they’re all conservative,’” Drew said in February. “It’s just surprising that a party that people think is dying off is still strong and alive today.”
It makes sense that conservative Gen Z teens, who have grown up online with dark humor, would love Trump — a president whom history, at best, might remember as a mudslinger who said whatever he wanted. (At worst, he will be remembered as a racist, a sexist, and an alleged abuser.) Though he’s 74, Trump has a way of communicating that is perfectly suited to the contemporary internet — full of owns and trolling.
“Trump makes it fun,” Johnston said. “He’s like America’s dad. He doesn’t care what anyone says, and he roasts people. Trump is the only one who really posts memes and goes at it from that angle, and a lot of people love that because they're like, ‘Trump's a savage. He's hilarious. I love him.’”
The tone in these teens’ TikToks often resonates on the same frequency: They’re sometimes harsh and sneering, but often funny. “What I see is funny videos appeal more to the left and to the right,” Johnston said. “It can change your viewpoint.”
These teens started making TikToks because they sincerely wanted to get Trump elected to a second term — and maybe, in that pursuit, make liberals upset. A few of them might even want to become a voice for their people, a Thunberg for the other side. “People are starting to open their eyes and see the Democrats aren’t doing anything for America right now,” Johnston said in February. “It’s like, wait, why are they trying to stop Trump if he’s trying to make [America] great? Do they not like America or something?”

When we initially spoke in February, most of the teens said they had little conflict in their day-to-day life due to their politics. They mostly live in states that Trump won in 2016 — Florida, Texas, Michigan — and are being raised in conservative Christian families. “I have a lot of liberal friends at school, and we’ll talk — but me and them, we always tend to find common ground,” Drew said. “If you actually have a conversation with me, you’ll realize I’m a very understanding and rational person.”
But as with a lot of political discourse on the internet, what teens say in these videos is a lot harsher than what they might say when being interviewed over the phone after a long school day — and that, in turn, can draw heated responses. One functionality of TikTok that’s markedly different from Instagram or Twitter is the “duet” feature, which lets you appear right next to someone else’s video. Users typically sing or lip-synch with someone else, react to a prank video, or just stare emotionlessly at the camera while something bonkers happens on the split screen. In Digital Trump Country, the teens use this function to debate their liberal and socialist peers.
That duet function in particular has, according to King, forced her to take a break from posting pro-Trump videos in the last few months. Her most recent TikTok is from June 28th, about her boyfriend’s glow-up; before that, she hadn’t posted since late April. A video she posted at the end of March, however, ended up being duetted by someone else (the duet has since been deleted), and elicited a flood of comments on her TikTok and Instagram pages. In the video, she lip-synchs with Trump insisting it’s not racist to call COVID-19 “the Chinese virus.” (Drew also posted a near-identical version.)
“All these people were commenting, like, ‘racist pig’ and a bunch of stuff like that,” King told me when I spoke to her again in June. “They were telling me to kill myself; they were calling me orange, ‘just like Trump,’ saying, ‘of course she’s white.’ Just nasty things.” King has since made her account private.
The toxicity of political TikTok has overwhelmed King, so much so that she’s largely stopped posting for the time being, despite the fact that she’s still a fervent Trump supporter who thinks he’s done a “great” job handling the coronavirus outbreak. She’s also upset with the “thugs” causing riots at Black Lives Matter protests. Her avatar is currently a fist made up of different skin tones, a nod to the All Lives Matter maxim.
“I’m a young kid,” he said. “I’m still learning. I’m not set in my ways.”
King is not the only TikToker second-guessing their political posts. In the last few months, Lowenberg’s affection for Trump’s antics has waned; he’s become vocal on TikTok about no longer supporting him. After seeing his anti-Trump videos, I spoke to him again last week. Although he has walked back his previously full-throated support of Donald Trump, he’s still conservative. He refers to himself as a Libertarian. The proverbial final straw was Trump’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
“I live in Houston,” Lowenberg said. “Our mayor, Sylvester Turner, he said that we’re being forced to shut down four of our testing locations because of the funding that Trump withdrew.” This is somewhat ironic since earlier this month, he rented a house near Houston with 17 other TikTokers — in the middle of COVID’s second wave — where they all hung out together making content. Johnston was also there. Lowenberg said he is not worried about getting sick with the coronavirus.
Otherwise, his ideologies remain the same as before — he still opposes abortion, doesn’t think white privilege exists, and is opposed to too much government intervention. But despite all the government regulation that Lowenberg does want, including a vetting process for allowing immigrants into the country and more federal funding for COVID testing centers, his biggest issue with Trump as of late is his governmental interference. “I like the free market,” he told me last week. “All the bailout stimulus packages and all that crap, I don’t agree with any of that. It’s just cronyism.”
In a month, Lowenberg will turn 18. And this November, he will vote for the first time. Even though he’s pissing off his TikTok base — including Johnston, who left a comment on one of Lowenberg’s no-more-Trump videos, saying, “Not a vibe” — he will still be voting for Trump, though with far less enthusiasm.
“Biden would cause more collateral damage,” he said. But maybe there’s a future where Lowenberg will be even more liberal than he is now, a future he concedes is possible. “I’m a young kid,” he said. “I’m still learning. I’m not set in my ways.”

COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests seem like two unavoidable topics that are forcing the hands of more than a few prolific pro-Trump TikTokers. For teens like Lowenberg, Trump’s failure to adequately respond to the coronavirus crisis has made him impossible to defend so vocally. And weeks of nationwide protests have turned a statement like “Black lives matter” from something perceived as a peripheral ideology to something nearly every company has posted to their corporate Instagram account. Systemic problems like racism, police brutality, and a broken healthcare system aren’t new to anyone who grew up in the United States, but they have been magnified in the past few months to a degree most people didn’t anticipate.
There’s been very little actual commentary or defense of Trump on any of these topics from these teenagers. They’re all mostly memeing the same Trump comment on the “Chinese virus” because, according to King, it’s “funny.” Drew, though still clearly conservative, has also eased up on overtly pro-Trump content in the last few months, and has posted nothing about Black Lives Matter. Mostly, she wants to remind you that, while she may be a Trump supporter, she’s cute.
But it seems like some of the proverbial “haters” have gotten to these kids. In the beginning of April, Drew posted a TikTok defending Lowenberg, who was apparently being doxed and harassed on the app. “You have every right to have our opinion. So do I,” she said. “You guys took this way too fucking far. I hope you’re happy with what you did. This is embarrassing for you guys.” Drew has since ceased contact with me since we spoke in February. Johnston, too, has posted less and less political content on his TikTok, with the exception of mocking the quarantine. He hasn’t said anything about BLM either. He has also stopped communicating with me since we talked in February.
They don’t have a clear, easily articulated opinion on what’s happening in the news right now.
It’s clear these young adults don’t agree with the protests, nor do they like that they have to stay home because of the coronavirus. But it also seems like they don’t really know how to communicate these feelings effectively. Unlike their anti-abortion videos or their vague screeds against Sen. Bernie Sanders, they don’t have a clear, easily articulated opinion on what’s happening in the news right now.
“I think that all of the ‘Lives Matter’ organizations are just kind of regressive,” Lowenberg told me last week. “Black people definitely have it worse when it comes to, like, not necessarily getting killed by the police, but when it comes to getting arrested, being beat by the police, they definitely have it worse.” This is a clunky ideology; Lowenberg believes Black people “have it worse,” but when I asked if he thought Black people are disproportionately targeted by police more so than white people are, he gave an unequivocal no.
How do you even make a video about this? How do you articulate your own nuance or work through deeply complicated realities if your brand is built on aggressive and gleeful support of a fundamentally and thoroughly unsubtle president? And while Lowenberg believes federal funding to ensure coronavirus testing is important, he still went on a trip to hang out in a house with a bunch of people he hadn’t met before — including some who, as Johnston put it, “don’t agree on political stuff” — while COVID-19 cases in Texas skyrocketed. These contradictions are typical for a young person still sorting through their politics, but confusion and nuance don’t necessarily make for viral content.
Confusion and nuance don’t necessarily make for viral content.
A clear, core trait of Trump’s that so many of these teens like is that he’s a troll, and he makes his base laugh. “I thought it was so funny the way he was talking to the reporter,” King told me last week in reference to the “Chinese virus” meme that conservative TikTokers keep replicating. But the teens know that people dying from the coronavirus is bad, and that people being killed by the police is bad — not fun, or funny, or cute — which makes it hard to troll people about this stuff and maintain a conscience. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, it’s not clever to laugh at human suffering, whatever form it takes. So what do you do when the gag stops being funny?
There are still plenty of teens making pro-Trump, conservative, Democrat-mocking, media-hating TikToks (many of which aren’t funny and aren’t trying to be). As Lowenberg’s @nickvideos account becomes more and more dedicated to explaining why he’s not a Trump supporter (and videos of his car), Johnston seems poised and ready to take the crown: He left a few comments on his videos, gently chastising him for criticizing the president, and he also duetted this video of another TikToker calling Lowenberg “a clown” and praising Johnston.
But for now, Lowenberg at least seems to have learned an important life lesson: The guy who makes you laugh might not be the guy you want in a crisis. “You know, [Trump’s] really funny. And I'll admit that I really like that, you know, like, when the country's doing good, you can be funny,” he told me. “But right now, we don't need a comedian.” ●
Everlane Employees Are Calling For A Boycott After Speaking Out About Workplace Racism

"A white man finally saying that a racist and white supremacist workplace culture starts with him is nothing to congratulate. Nor is it a radical statement."

Stephanie K. Baer BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 30, 2020,

Alamy Stock Photo
Former employees of Everlane are calling for a boycott of the clothing retailer after speaking out about a culture of workplace racism amid a nationwide reckoning on the treatment of Black people and communities of color.

In response to an apology issued late Sunday by founder and CEO Michael Preysman, the former employees, who call themselves the Ex-Wives Club, posted a new statement with the #BoycottEverlane hashtag. They said the company's response doesn't go nearly far enough to correct the anti-Black behavior they experienced while working there.


"A white man finally saying that a racist and white supremacist workplace culture starts with him is nothing to congratulate," the club said in an Instagram post on Monday night. "Nor is it a radical statement."

Instagram: @ex

Last week, members of the group — which includes Black, POC, and "white allied" employees who worked across all departments from 2012 until recently — described their experiences and outlined a set of demands in a public Google Doc titled "Everlane's Convenient Transparency," a nod to the company's "radical transparency" tagline.

From being paid less than their white counterparts to having their ideas dismissed — or even stolen — and being berated for calling out the brand's lack of diversity, the former employees said the San Francisco–based company is rife with racist behaviors.

"Everlane broke us," the document read. "Our spirit, our bodies, and our ideas were considered for their cache and cultural value. Our psyche was manipulated to fall in line with a greenwashed version of sustainability as we ourselves worked unsustainably just to be seen and acknowledged for our contributions while watching our white counterparts advance."

Among a detailed list of steps, the group asked that the company issue public apologies acknowledging how the brand "has benefited from systemic racism," hire Black executives, implement anti-racism training, and outline steps to retain BIPOC employees and create spaces for them to voice their concerns.

The company initially responded by posting an apology to its Instagram stories, saying it would be "bringing in independent third parties to both investigate each issue and ensure [it's] building an actively diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment in the future."

Then, on Sunday night, the company posted a note from Preysman, who said Everlane was implementing anti-racism training starting this week with the leadership team, reviewing employees' pay to ensure people are paid equally, and developing a code of conduct that includes anti-racism, among other things.

Instagram: @everlane

Founded in 2010, Everlane was for many years an online-only fashion retailer known for its minimal aesthetic and "radical transparency" about its manufacturing process. The company opened a few physical stores in recent years to reach more customers.

Last year, the retailer came under fire for not stocking extended sizes in its stores. A few months ago, the company laid off dozens of consumer experience employees days after workers asked Preysman to voluntarily recognize their union — a move that they said was retaliation for organizing.

Ben Gabbe / Getty Images
Michael Preysman attends the 71st annual Parsons Benefit, May 20, 2019.

The Ex-Wives Club said it isn't affiliated with the union; however, the group supports the union's efforts.

In an email to BuzzFeed News, the group said that working at Everlane "sharpened our eyes for evaluating racial, environmental, and social ethics of current and future employers."

"We want to work for and shape companies who continuously ask questions, learn from mistakes and are fully invested in the values they espouse, not just a return on investment or surface level engagement," the club said, adding that working for Everlane was traumatizing and made them feel "deeply undervalued."

The group added in the email, "Being underpaid has had financial repercussions on our careers—we had so many set-backs including taking years to actually catch up to the rates we deserve to be paid."

In its call to boycott the retailer, the group also cast doubt over the efficacy of the company's plans to root out racism without any changes in leadership.

"Without change on the leadership level, who can you trust to enforce the Code of Conduct," the group wrote in its Instagram post. "How can problematic leadership authentically create retention guides? Without dedication to hiring diverse leaders, there is no incentive for Everlane to follow through."


MORE ON THIS
I’m Skeptical Of All These White People ResigningTomi Obaro · June 11, 2020
Women Are Criticizing Everlane For Not Stocking Extended Sizes In Stores
Clarissa-Jan Lim · Sept. 18, 2019
Leticia Miranda · Dec. 1, 2017



Stephanie Baer is a reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Ange
USA IS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

The Immigration System Is Set To Come To A Near Halt, And No One Is Paying Attention

"It essentially will shut down the immigration system — sort of the final nail in the coffin."


Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on June 30, 2020

Rebecca Blackwell / AP
A young man, sitting with other immigrants inside a holding cell, cries as he says he will be killed if he gets sent back to Honduras, June 16, 2019.


The US agency that oversees and administers key facets of the immigration system, including the processing of citizenship, green cards, and asylum applications, has taken its first steps to dramatically roll back its capabilities by issuing furlough notices to more than 13,000 employees.

If Congress does not provide US Citizenship and Immigration Services with emergency funding before Aug. 3, the employees, who make up more than 60% of all staffers, will be furloughed for up to three months due to the budget crisis. USCIS is a fee-funded agency that receives most of its money through applications for immigration benefits.

While the reasons for the funding shortage are debated — agency officials cite a massive decline in immigration applications due to the pandemic, while immigrant advocates and experts argue that the Trump administration’s policies have played a part in the budget issues — the impact to the immigration system is not.

“Backlogs will grow longer. People will wait longer to become citizens, get green cards. Asylum will grind to a halt,” said Amanda Baran, a former immigration policy official at the Department of Homeland Security who is now a consultant. The number of furloughed employees, she said, would lead to “devastating consequences for people trying to enter and for those living here.”

"It essentially will shut down the immigration system — sort of the final nail in the coffin,” said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a former agency official. “The anticipated agency furloughs will not only result in the loss of employment for thousands of US workers, it will also bring halt the US immigration system to a grinding halt, negatively impacting families, US businesses, educational institutions, medical facilities, and churches throughout the United States.”

In recent days, USCIS employees have been waiting nervously to receive notices. Some have been spared, while others have not. Of the 2,200 staffers in the division that runs the refugee and asylum work, 1,500 received furlough notices. There’s worry among some that the Trump administration isn’t concerned about immigration and asylum officers being out of work. Overall, the mood within the agency has grown dour as many expect the furloughs to be executed.
USCIS employees, according to one agency source, are “freaking out.” Some employees are even making efforts to secure work elsewhere to make ends meet if it comes to it.

Joseph Edlow, the acting head of USCIS, told employees in an email that he was continuing to meet and brief congressional members and that he was working to avoid “a furlough entirely.” The agency is seeking $1.2 billion to make up its budget shortfall. Multiple congressional sources with knowledge of the funding debate are hopeful that the money is provided to avoid the mass furloughs, though advocates are pushing for concessions in return.

“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, USCIS has seen a 50% drop in receipts and incoming fees starting in March and estimates that application and petition receipts will stay well below plan through the end of Fiscal Year 2020,” an agency spokesperson said. “This dramatic drop in revenue has made it impossible for our agency to operate at full capacity. Without additional funding from Congress before August 3, USCIS has no choice but to administratively furlough a substantial portion of our workforce.”

Edlow told Roll Call last week that he hopes Congress will include the funding in a pandemic aid bill next month. “Putting something for USCIS into that package is what we’re hearing is probably where it’s being considered right now,” he said.

He also acknowledged the impact of the furlough cut: “In terms of anyone applying for a green card, for adjustment of status, or applying for naturalization, the wait times are going to increase substantially to be adjudicated. For non-immigrant visas, any sort of requests for employment authorization, any requests … to change or extend a visitor status of some sort — all of those, the wait times are going to increase.”

USCIS officials declined to make Edlow available for an interview with BuzzFeed News.

The agency’s place in the immigration system is integral: USCIS officers provide work permits, conduct initial asylum screenings that determine whether immigrants can make their case for protection in the US, and issue green cards and naturalizations, among other tasks.

USCIS has, however, undergone a radical transformation under the Trump administration as its officers have been forced to implement policies that have restricted asylum at the southern border and made it tougher to apply for certain visas.

In November, USCIS officials pushed a proposal to increase fees for those applying for citizenship and other benefits, while also charging for asylum applications as a way to collect more funds. At the time, the agency proposal explained that the increase in fees was necessary because it projected “operating costs to exceed projected total revenue.”

Some experts and advocates pointed part of the blame for the lack of necessary funds to policies implemented under the Trump administration that have led to more onerous processing and additional interviews for certain visas. The administration also pushed through a policy that allowed the government to deny permanent residency or restrict certain visas to immigrants who officials believe are likely to use public benefits.



Hamed Aleaziz is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.
WHY THE FACEBOOK AD BOYCOTT
Facebook Has Been Profiting From Boogaloo Ads Promoting Civil War And Unrest

Facebook said on Tuesday it was banning content associated with the "Boogaloo" extremist group. BuzzFeed News found the company has been running Boogaloo ads advocating for violence for months.

Caroline HaskinsBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on June 30, 2020

Jeff Kowalsky / Getty Images
Armed protesters outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, May 20. Their aloha shirts are a kind of uniform for members of the Boogaloo extremist groups.
ITS THEIR SATIRE ON BEING DRESSED AS CIVILIANS SINCE EVERYONE COMPLAINED THE MILITIAS LOOKED LIKE THE NATIONAL GUARD

On Sunday, the @docscustomknives Instagram account placed an ad on the popular photo-sharing social network advocating that people “join the militia, fight the state.” As clips from action movies play, showing police officers being shot and killed, music blares with lyrics proclaiming, "We ain't scared of no police / We got guns too."


As of Tuesday afternoon, the ad was still online.

Several hashtags in the ad — including #Boogaloo, #BoogalooBois, and #BoogalooMemes — connect the ad to “Boogaloos,” a catchphrase for anti-government extremists who have called for violence against the police and state officials and advocated for another Civil War in the US.




BuzzFeed nEWS / Via Facebook: ads


A current ad on Instagram advocated that people "join the militia" and "fight the state," while using hashtags associated with the extremist Boogaloo movement.

This ad is just one of several pieces of paid content related to the Boogaloo movement on Facebook and Instagram that were uncovered by BuzzFeed News; this is despite claims by Facebook that it was doing more to take action against the group.

The @docscustomknives may be the most recent, but it is far from the only Boogaloo ad that has run on Facebook or its photo-sharing site, Instagram. As right-wing extremists have used the company’s tools to organize, the world’s largest social network has also profited from ads pushing for white supremacy.

On Tuesday, Facebook said it would designate the Boogaloo movement as "a dangerous organization," banning it from the platform and Instagram. The company removed 220 Facebook accounts, 28 pages, and 106 groups, as well as 95 Instagram accounts, which made up what it called a “violent US-based anti-government network.” Facebook also removed 400 additional groups and more than 100 pages that shared similar content.

The account that ran the Instagram ad was not among those that the company removed. A person associated with @docscustomknives did not return a request for comment.

“That does not sound good,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News when a reporter described the content of the Boogaloo ads. They noted that the ads would be sent to a team for further review and that Tuesday’s enforcement was “just the start of the impact” on Boogaloo groups.

“We will continue to monitor for symbols and content that the violent network uses and update police and enforcement,” the spokesperson said. “If it’s organic content, it will certainly come down, as well as in ads.”

“That does not sound good.”

That may not be enough to mollify some of Facebook's critics. Tech Transparency Project Director Katie Paul told BuzzFeed News that when Facebook accepted money from Boogaloo supporters and sympathizers, it amplified the movement.

“The company is not just failing to address the fact that its platform is really feeding this echo chamber of supporters, but also the fact that it’s profiting off that movement that is predicated on violence,” she said.

Derived from the name of a 1984 movie, the term “Boogaloo” covers a range of extremists, including some believed to be violent. Earlier this month, Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant and suspected Boogaloo member, was charged with killing a federal security officer and a police deputy in California.

The Anti-Defamation League has called Boogaloo "an old joke [that evolved] into a catchphrase for mass violence." The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that it "emerged concurrently in antigovernment and white power online spaces in the early 2010s. In both of these communities, 'boogaloo' was frequently associated with racist violence and, in many cases, was an explicit call for race war."

Facebook’s enforcement came after watchdog groups warned about right-wing extremist organizations organizing online under the Boogaloo moniker. In April, the Tech Transparency Project found 125 Facebook Groups with an aggregate of "tens of thousands of members" tied to the word “Boogaloo,” more than 60% of which had been created in the last three months.

And ads featuring Boogaloo keywords have been running on Facebook and Instagram for months.


BuzzFeed News / Via Facebook: ads



Facebook's Ad Library shows that Hoplite Armor, a body armor company, was able to advertise on the social network last year using hashtags including #Boogaloo and #CivilWar.



Body armor company Hoplite Armor ran an ad for an “Aloha Combat Shirt and Plate Carrier GIVEAWAY” from Sept. 29 to Oct. 31 last year with the hashtags “#Boogaloo” and “#CivilWar.” (Some Boogaloo members have attempted to appropriate Hawaiian shirts because “Boogaloo” is a homophone for “big luau,” another popular phrase in the movement.)

According to Facebook’s analytics, that ad garnered between 1,000 and 2,000 impressions and was mainly shown to men between the ages of 25 and 34 in California, Texas, and New York. Hoplite Armor’s page spent $517 between May 2018 and today on political or social ads, according to the social network’s Ad Library, and continues to sell the body armor on Facebook. The combination aloha shirt and plate carrier retails for $249 through Facebook’s commerce tool.

Hoplite Armor did not return BuzzFeed News’ request for comment.

In February, another Facebook page, “Boogaloo II,” advertised a "2A Strong" sweatshirt. The ad appeared to call for political gun violence: "Let's Keep Virginia 2A Strong,” it said. “Let's Keep Liberty, UnPerverted, By Bullet, Or Ballot, Shall Not Be Infringed."

That ad isn't active currently, but it reached more than 2,000 people, targeting residents of Virginia, where there had been a pro-gun rally at the state’s capitol the month before.

Throughout the spring, the Boogaloo movement has continued to gain momentum. Paul told BuzzFeed News that members have used recent police killings of Black Americans to recruit people who may sympathize with their anti-government views. The @docscustomknives ad, for instance, used the hashtags #BreonnaTaylor and #GeorgeFloyd.

“It makes clear that these individuals are really trying to co-opt these movements to recruit supporters who may have issues with the government and authority,” she said. “It’s really signaling to that recruiting aspect that we’ve seen discussed in these private groups among Boogaloo supporters and organizers.

Facebook said earlier this month that it would take steps to limit the spread of Boogaloo on the platform by limiting recommendations for related Facebook Groups.

People who identify with the group claim the company is discriminating against them. An Instagram post on Monday from @docscustomknives — which ran the ad showing the dramatized killings of police — included screenshots appearing to show that Facebook had removed three of its posts for violating community guidelines and took down a version of the violent video ad.

One person commenting on the post called Facebook's actions a "crackdown.”

The @docscustomknives account remains online, but its owner appears to have a backup plan should Facebook take it down: Someone set up @docscustomknives2 on Instagram, listing it as a “shopping & retail” account.

“If I’m posting here that means I got Waco’d or Instagram fucked me again,” the account’s bio reads.


MORE ON THIS
A Suspected Boogaloo Extremist Has Been Charged With Killing A Federal Officer In Oakland Last Month
Salvador Hernandez · June 16, 2020


Ryan Mac is a senior tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.


Caroline Haskins is a technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
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