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washington post
‘What a Surprise’: Sanders Undeterred by Bezos-Owned Washington Post's Dismissal of AI Data Center Pause
“Jeff Bezos is spending $200 billion on AI and robotics. Jeff Bezos is replacing hundreds of thousands of his workers at Amazon with robots. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.”
Feb 12, 2026
The Washington Post editorial board went to the trouble of marking what it called "Bernie Sanders' worst idea yet" on Wednesday, but the progressive US senator shrugged at the label and didn't appear likely to end his push for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers.
The conservative-leaning editors wrote glowingly of the "mind-blowing amounts of information" that AI data centers can process and dismissively said that businesses that have invested billions of dollars in AI have erroneously been cast as the "villain in the socialist imagination."
They decried "AI doomerism" by politicians and accused lawmakers like Sanders (I-Vt.) of "fearmongering" about the data centers' water consumption and environmental harms—but neglected to mention that the rapid expansion of the massive centers has sparked grassroots outrage, with communities in states including Michigan and Wisconsin demanding that tech giants stay out of their towns, fearing skyrocketing electricity bills among other impacts.
Sanders emphasized that the Post and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have a vested interest in dismissing efforts to stop the AI build-out that President Donald Trump has demanded with his executive order aimed at stopping states from regulating the industry.
Bezos, one of the richest people on the planet, created an AI startup last year with $6.2 billion in funding, some of it from his personal fortune, and Amazon—where Bezos is still the primary shareholder—has announced plans to invest $200 billion in AI and robotics.
"What a surprise," said Sanders sardonically. "The Washington Post doesn't want a moratorium on AI data centers."
Ben Inskeep, a program director for Citizens Action Coalition in Indiana, suggested the editorial board couldn't express its opposition to Sanders' proposal for a moratorium without including "an admission that it is a paid attack dog for Jeff Bezos," pointing to its required disclosure that Bezos' company is in fact investing billions of dollars in AI.
On social media, Sanders followed his response to the Post's attack with a video in which he doubled down on his objections to AI, despite the editorial board's accusation that he and others "grandstand" on the issue and its insistence that he should "be ecstatic about how much AI can help workers."
Sanders said in the video that "AI and robotics are a huge threat to the working class of this country."
"We have got to be prepared to say as loud and clear as we can that this technology is not just going to benefit the billionaires who own it," he said, "but it's going to work for the working families of our country."
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Bar Complaint Filed Against Prosecutor Who Petitioned for Raid of Journalist's Home
"When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences," reads a filing.
Feb 09, 2026
Soon after the FBI raided Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home in Virginia last month, the Freedom of the Press Foundation said it suspected that the Trump administration was either "ignoring or distorting" federal law when it allowed the search and seizure of Natanson's electronic devices to go forward.
On Monday, the organization said that recently unsealed court documents had proven its suspicions were correct as it filed a formal disciplinary complaint against the federal prosecutor who signed the search warrant application: Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg had failed to disclose to the magistrate judge who approved the warrant the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which strictly limit search warrants for journalists' work products and materials.
That allegation led the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) to file a disciplinary complaint with the Virginia State Bar on Friday.
By not alerting Judge William B. Porter to the law, Kromberg "appears to have violated an ethical rule that requires lawyers to reveal relevant legal authority to the court, even if it undermines their arguments," said FPF.
Seth Stein, the chief of advocacy for FPF, filed the complaint nearly a month after the FBI executed the search warrant at Natanson's home and seized several devices.
The raid was completed as part of an Espionage Act investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor who's accused of leaking classified information to Natanson. The journalist has extensively covered the experiences of people in the federal workforce in the past year, as the Trump administration has fired or pushed out more than 350,000 employees.
The Privacy Protection Act prohibits searches of a journalist's materials unless there is probable cause to believe that the reporter themself has committed a crime related to their work materials. The law stipulates that the mere possession of materials by a journalist cannot trigger that exception unless the materials are child sexual abuse imagery or national security secrets.
As the New York Times reported last week, "It is disputed whether it is constitutionally permissible to apply the Espionage Act to ordinary news gathering activities by people without security clearances."
Prosecutors have never charged a traditional reporter with violating the Espionage Act for news gathering activities. The Department of Justice alarmed First Amendment advocates during President Donald Trump's first administration when it charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified files; Assange later struck a plea deal so the constitutionality of his charges were not tested in court.
Stein emphasized in the filing that Kromberg's omission of the Privacy Protection Act "could not have been a mere oversight—the warrant in question was, predictably, a subject of national news, given that raids of journalists’ homes during investigations of alleged leaks by government personnel are, according to experts, unprecedented."
"Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else."
"Under the Department of Justice’s own policies," reads the filing, "the search should have been discussed with and authorized by the highest levels of the DOJ, including the attorney general."
Several legal experts who specialize in ethics told the Times last week that if Kromberg knew about the Privacy Protection Act and didn't alert Porter that the search could violate the law, he violate an ethical statute called Rule 3.3, “Candor Toward the Tribunal."
New York University professor emeritus Stephen Gillers told the Times that Kromberg was required “to disclose the Privacy Protection Act because it is ‘controlling,’ which means the judge was required to consider it in his ruling on the government’s request, and because the act’s provisions are ‘adverse,’ which means its requirements could have the effect of denying the government’s request.”
Stein said in a statement that Kromberg and the federal government "omitted a federal law that should have prohibited the raid of Hannah Natanson’s home when applying for a search warrant."
Natanson and the Post filed a lawsuit demanding the return of her electronic devices and data, arguing that under the Privacy Protection Act, it is illegal for the government to review her reporting work that is unrelated to the investigation into Perez-Lugones.
In the filing on Friday, Stein warned that in addition to harming Natanson's ability to complete her work, the FBI has jeopardized the confidentiality of her sources, and "journalists and whistleblowers across the country are sure to think twice about drawing the ire of the current administration" in light of the reporter's ordeal.
"Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else," said Stein on Monday. "When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences.”
FPF called on the Virginia State Bar to take "appropriate disciplinary action, up to and including disbarment," against Kromberg.
The bar, said the group, should "expedite disciplinary proceedings due to the dire consequences for First Amendment freedoms if illegal newsroom raids and seizures of journalists’ work product are allowed to go unchecked."
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'Democracy Dies in Oligarchy,' Says Sanders of Mass Layoffs at Washington Post
"If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie," said the senator, "please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff."
Feb 05, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday added his voice to those who categorically rejected the notion that "financial challenges" were behind the Washington Post's decision to slash more than 300 jobs, considering the venerated newspaper is owned by the world's fourth-richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The tech mogul, Sanders (I-Vt.) noted, spent tens of millions of dollars last year on his wedding in Italy, and owns a $500 million yacht. Bezos has a net worth of at least $235 billion.
Most notably, the senator pointed to the $75 million Bezos just spent purchasing the rights to and promoting a documentary film about First Lady Melania Trump—one that critics have condemned as a clear "bribe," and whose premiere was followed by a visit to Bezos' space tech company Blue Origin by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the firm is likely to do “plenty of winning” as the Pentagon hands out new defense contracts.
In a grim play on the tagline Bezos emblazoned on the Post's masthead after he bought the paper in 2013 for $250 million, Sanders wrote, "Democracy dies in oligarchy."
Sanders spoke out as numerous Post journalists announced that they had been affected by the mass layoffs, which will hit all sections of the newspaper and entirely shut down its sports and book review pages.
The international news section was also heavily impacted by the layoffs, and Ukraine correspondent Lizzie Johnson announced on social media that she had been "laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a war zone."
Martin Weil, a longtime local reporter who joined the Post in 1965 and contributed to the paper's historic Watergate coverage, was also among those who were laid off.
Sanders has long criticized Bezos' decision to take over the Post and suggested that the mogul would not ensure fair coverage of issues impacting working Americans. In 2019, he said that the newspaper appeared biased against his progressive politics as he sought the Democratic nomination to run for president.
At the time, then-executive editor Martin Baron countered that "Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest."
Last year, months after Bezos pulled an endorsement for then-Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign and following an announcement that the opinion page would focus on “personal liberties and free markets," opinion editor David Shipley announced his resignation. Columnist Ruth Marcus also stepped down weeks later after CEO Will Lewis allegedly refused to run a column critiquing Bezos' changes to the opinion section.
On Wednesday, Baron said the gutting of the Post's newsroom marked one of "the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations" and took aim at Bezos, whom he accused of "betraying the values he was supposed to uphold."
"The Post's challenges... were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top," said Baron. "Bezos' sickening efforts to curry favor with President [Donald] Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own."
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