Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that was another executive order that came out. I think it was literally titled something around eliminating data silos. Another thing that on its surface sounds good: data silos, inefficient, sounds bad, but there’s a really good reason to keep a lot of this information separate. You don’t necessarily want the federal government to be able to knit all of that together to track you across any platform to know your financial data, your health data, your whereabouts, all of that.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. I mean, the Trump administration now wants to vet, what is it, five years of social media if you’re coming into the country just to see what you’ve been saying. And also they’re looking to strip more foreign-born Americans of citizenship. They’re moving towards denaturalization. The predictions for 2026 and immigration aren’t great. It’s that it’s going to get worse and more. Or let’s say if you were an engineer born in a different country and you had an option of going to the US or Canada or China or somewhere else in Europe, it’s a lot harder question to answer now than it was before all this happened, I think.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And we’re going to have, I think, some really good reporting on that in 2026. So we’re nearing the end of our 2025 recap, and we would be remiss not to mention the Jeffrey Epstein saga. So this is a story that has had so many lives across many, many years, but it felt like it really came to a boiling point this year, politically speaking. So Brian, I guess, can you just refresh our memory on what even happened this year?
Brian Barrett: I get the easy job. Without going into the whole Jeffrey Epstein everything for so many reasons. Obviously he’s a disgraced financier, convicted sex offender, also the locus of so many conspiracy theories from QAnon up to the White House and its supporters. What we saw this year was a real movement towards releasing the so-called Epstein files, which Donald Trump basically ran on. He said, “Look, if I get in that office, I’m going to release the Epstein files. You’re going to have them right as soon as I get there.” And then we got to that point and he got there and he said, “You know what? Never mind.” And there was people saying there are no Epstein files. Actually, the Epstein files are a hoax. Actually, no, they are here. It has been a mess.
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