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Facebook Must Answer For Dangerous Embrace of Anti-Semitism, Racist Targeting of Color Of Change
Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, released the following statement in response to the New York Times report of Facebook's attacks against Color Of Change:
"Facebook is violating its most fundamental mission of building human connection, as well as the trust placed in it by billions of people, by advancing extremist far-right conspiracy theories that are aimed at denigrating Jews and belittling people of color. It is reprehensible, it is dangerous, and they should be ashamed.
WASHINGTON
Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, released the following statement in response to the New York Times report of Facebook's attacks against Color Of Change:
"Facebook is violating its most fundamental mission of building human connection, as well as the trust placed in it by billions of people, by advancing extremist far-right conspiracy theories that are aimed at denigrating Jews and belittling people of color. It is reprehensible, it is dangerous, and they should be ashamed.
"Facebook's response to our campaign, which challenged them to improve their platform and create safe conditions for Black people and other marginalized groups, was to fan the flames of anti-Semitism. By suggesting to reporters that Color Of Change is acting as the puppet of Mr. Soros merely because he is one of our many funders, they have given oxygen to the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the white nationalist Trump base. Those theories aim to not only dehumanize Jews, but also seek to deny legitimacy to progressive social movements led by people of color, by suggesting we have no agenda of our own. They are an attempt to divert attention from the conservative movement's real attacks on our community's vote, our health care, our liberty, and our jobs. And they breed violence. Facebook has become part of the same ecosystem that fed the fever dreams of Cesar Sayoc, accused of targeting Soros and others with pipe bombs, and Robert Bowers, the man who massacred 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue.
"Our work with Facebook began after the murder of Korryn Gaines by police. We've sat across the negotiating table with Facebook for years, focusing on the goal of ensuring the safety of its Black users. The recent New York Times story shows that while we were operating in good faith trying to protect our communities, they were stooping lower than we'd ever imagined, using anti-Semitism as a crowbar to kneecap a Black-led organization working to hold them accountable.
"Facebook now must make amends. It must apologize. And it must:
- Immediately fire Joel Kaplan for his role in this scheme and the PR firms Facebook worked with to delegitimize Color Of Change and our partners.
- Release all of the opposition research documents they compiled on Color Of Change and our allies so that we can understand the full extent Facebook went to undermine civil rights work.
- Release the data on voter suppression attempts on the platform. In an October 15th statement, Facebook announced changes about voter suppression and voter manipulation. Given the revelations about how the company handled 2016 election interference, a full and public disclosure is required. If the company does not comply, House Democrats should subpoena the records.
- Commit to a public release of the civil rights audit including meaningful steps to address the harms raised."
Color Of Change is the nation's largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by over one million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.
LATEST NEWS
Trump DOJ Plotting to Parachute In Prosecutors Across US to Bring Cases Against Anti-ICE Protesters
"Feel like this isn't gonna work out well," one legal expert said in response to the leaked DOJ plan.
Feb 03, 2026
The US Department of Justice is reportedly setting up a new program that would create a team of prosecutors who can parachute into different areas throughout the country to bring charges against protesters who have allegedly assaulted or obstructed law enforcement officers.
As reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday, a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo mandates that US attorney's offices designate some of their staff members to serve on "emergency jump teams" that can surge into areas on short notice to prosecute cases.
"A senior official instructed leaders of the nation's 93 US attorney’s offices... that they have until February 6 to designate one or two assistant US attorneys," reported Bloomberg, "who’d be available for short-term surges in unspecified areas needing 'urgent assistance due to emergent or critical situations.'"
The effort to create "jump teams" of lawyers comes as the US Attorney's Office in Minnesota has been hit with a wave of resignations in the wake of the federal government's surge of federal immigration enforcement agents into the state.
According to a Monday report from the Minnesota Star Tribune, 14 lawyers at the Minnesota US Attorney's Office have either already resigned or announced their intention to resign in just the last month, an unprecedented number of departures in such a short period of time.
Bloomberg writes that the "jump team" plan "signals the Trump administration’s attempt to offset career prosecutor attrition... with a nationwide pool of reinforcements on standby."
The plan was potentially telegraphed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Saturday, when he put out a call on social media for more attorneys to come work for the Trump administration.
"If you want to combat fraud, crime and illegal immigration, reach out," Miller wrote. "Patriots needed."
Attorney Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, speculated on Sunday that Miller's call reflected "real internal problems" at the DOJ, and he predicted that one solution the administration could try would be to create a mobile legal strike force much like the one outlined in the leaked DOJ memo.
However, White argued that this approach would be far from a magic bullet to solve the administration's staffing woes.
"The impediments will be these: They will get dregs who will do a bad job," White wrote. "Federal prosecution is not rocket science but federal judges do have notably higher standards than state judges and if you MAGA your way around federal court you will get your ass handed to you."
Jonathan Booth, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, also predicted that the administration's strike force plan would run into some major speed bumps.
"Imagine, you're a federal prosecutor in San Diego," he wrote in a social media post. "It's sunny, warm, you have a whole set of important cases. Then suddenly 'we need you to go to Buffalo and prosecute extremely weak misdemeanor cases.' Feel like this isn't gonna work out well."
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Seeking Pentagon Contracts, Bezos Rolls Out Red Carpet After Dropping $40 Million on ‘Melania’
"Trump gets paid. Taxpayers get screwed," said one congressman.
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The $40 million film Melania, a biography of the first lady that was purchased by Amazon, has been panned as a "bribe disguised as a documentary," an "expensive propaganda doc," and a "journey into the void."
But despite the reviews, the tech firm has poured an unprecedented $35 million into a marketing campaign for the documentary, and one government watchdog group suggested Monday that the investment by the third-richest person in the world, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is already paying off.
Bezos welcomed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to his Blue Origin facilities in Florida on Monday as part of Hegseth's "Arsenal of Freedom" speaking tour, which is aimed at overhauling the Pentagon's relationship with defense tech companies.
"Blue Origin is committed to supporting national security to, through, and from space," said Bezos at the event.
Speaking during Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “Arsenal of Freedom” tour at Cape Canaveral, Jeff Bezos says U.S. national security now hinges on industrial speed, scale, and space-based capability.
READ MORE: https://t.co/cOUQii31TJ#amazon #jeffbezos #nationalnews #florida pic.twitter.com/uaFGaoMhnI
— KRCR News Channel 7 (@KRCR7) February 3, 2026
Blue Origin, Bezos' space exploration firm, has received billions of dollars in defense contracts to build technology that uses space lasers, nuclear-powered spacecraft, and a processing facility for satellites.
Hegseth said during his tour that Blue Origin is likely to do "plenty of winning" as the Pentagon hands out additional contracts.
Late last month, Amazon Web Services was also awarded a $581 million contract to support the US Air Force's Cloud One program.
Greg Williams, director of the Project on Government Oversight's Center for Defense Information, told USA Today that on its face, Hegseth's visits to Blue Origin as well as SpaceX, the space technology firm owned by Trump administration associate and Republican megadonor Elon Musk, were not "particularly novel."
But considering Bezos' purchase and promotion of the documentary spotlighting President Donald Trump's wife, said Williams, Hegseth's hobnobbing with the tech mogul raises new questions about Bezos' desire to curry favor with the White House.
"By spending a tiny amount of money to buy the rights," said Williams, Bezos "potentially gets a much larger return."
As such, Hegseth's visit to Blue Origin called attention to a situation of "unprecedented conflict of interest," Williams added.
US Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) summarized the apparent transaction involving the documentary rights and the government contracts: "Trump gets paid. Taxpayers get screwed."
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US Warship Downs Iranian Drone, Heightening Risk of 'Illegal and Catastrophic War'
One expert said that "this is exactly the kind of miscalculation—or intentional escalation, by hawkish bureaucrats aiming to scuttle talks—that can drag us into" war.
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Amid recent reports that war is "imminent," the US military shot down an Iranian drone on Tuesday as it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, according to a US official who spoke with Reuters.
Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told the Associated Press that the drone “aggressively approached” the Lincoln with “unclear intent," and kept flying toward the aircraft carrier “despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters."
It came after another tense encounter earlier in the day, during which the US military said Iranian forces "harassed" a US merchant vessel sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Lincoln is part of an "armada" that President Donald Trump on Friday said he'd deployed to the region in advance of a possible strike against Iran, which he said would be "far worse" than the one the US conducted in June, when it bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
After initially stating his goal of protecting protesters from a government crackdown, Trump has pivoted to express his intentions of using the threat of military force to coerce Iran into negotiating a new nuclear agreement that would severely limit its ability to pursue nuclear enrichment, which it has the right to do for peaceful means.
"Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted," Paul R. Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University, said in a piece published by Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday.
Other international relations scholars have said the US has no grounds, either strategically or legally, to pursue a war, even to stop Iran's nuclear development.
For one thing, said Dylan Williams, vice president of the Center for International Policy, Trump himself is responsible for ripping up the old agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which required Iran to limit its enrichment of uranium well below the levels required to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief from crippling US sanctions.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was tasked with regularly inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities, the country was cooperating with all aspects of the deal until Trump withdrew from it, after which Iran began to once again accelerate its nuclear enrichment.
"There was 24/7 monitoring and no [highly enriched uranium] in Iran before Trump broke the JCPOA," Williams said. "Iran’s missile program and human rights abuses surged after he broke the deal."
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, marveled that "there is an amazing amount of folks who still think bombing Iran's nuclear program every eight months or so is a better result for the United States than the JCPOA, which capped Tehran's nuclear progress by 15-20 years."
With the Lincoln ominously looming off his nation's shores, Iran's embattled supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned on Sunday that "the Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war."
Trump responded to the ayatollah by saying that if “we don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right.”
Despite stating their unwillingness to give up their nuclear energy program, which they say is legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iranian envoys have expressed an openness to a meeting with US diplomats mediated by other Middle Eastern nations in Turkey this week.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on social media that he had instructed diplomats "to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency."
Trump is also pushing other demands—including that Iran must also limit its long-range ballistic missile program and stop arming its allies in the region, such as the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and the Yemeni group Ansar Allah, often referred to as the "Houthis."
Pillar pointed out that Iran's missile program and its arming of so-called "proxies" have primarily been used as deterrents against other nations in the region—namely, US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. With these demands, he said, "Iran is being told it cannot have a full regional policy while others do. It is unrealistic to expect any Iranian leader to agree to that."
That said, Pillar wrote that "President Trump is correct when he says that Iran wants a deal, given that Iran’s bad economic situation is an incentive to negotiate agreements that would provide at least partial relief from sanctions," which played a notable role in heightening the economic instability that fueled Iran's protests in the first place.
But any optimism that appeared to have arisen may have been dashed by Tuesday's exchange of fire. According to Axios, Iran is now asking to move the talks from Turkey to Oman and has called for a meeting with the US alone rather than with other nations present.
Eric Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, said: "This is exactly the kind of miscalculation—or intentional escalation, by hawkish bureaucrats aiming to scuttle talks—that can drag us into an illegal and catastrophic war in Iran."
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