Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Senator pushes for Verizon punishment
Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, one of several Republicans to publicly complain about federal investigators accessing their call logs while probing the Jan. 6 insurrection, is now pushing for telecommunications giant Verizon to be punished for obeying the law. Hagerty announced Monday that he filed an official complaint with the Federal Communications Commission over Verizon’s decision to comply with a federal subpoena “without a fight,” a press release from his office explains. My colleague Steve Benen has done an excellent job documenting Republicans’ absurd complaints and demands for recompense of some sort as a result of their call logs being lawfully obtained by the feds.
Read Hagerty’s press release here.
Epstein emails expose ironic 4chan ties
The latest Jeffrey Epstein files document dump shines light on the notorious sex offender’s relationship with Christopher Poole, the controversial founder of message board website 4chan, which incubated pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theories accusing popular figures of sex crimes.
Read my blog on Epstein’s ties to Poole here.
In other epstein news …
I also wrote about how the Epstein emails introduced some awkwardness into the NFL’s Super Bowl celebration, as executives tied to the league were forced to respond to a couple of its team owners’ ties to Epstein being exposed in a recent document dump.
Check out my blog on the NFL’s Epstein files response here.
State Department’s social media erasure
The State Department confirmed its plans to delete all of its social media posts on X published before Donald Trump returned to office last year as part of what it’s calling the “One Voice” policy.
Read more at NPR here. Dems push probes of AI deals Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut issued a call last week for federal regulators to probe and potentially reverse artificial-intelligence-related business arrangements by several major tech companies they’ve accused of launching deals that allow them to invest in other companies while avoiding adequate regulation. Read more at CNBC here. Dubious data claims The Trump administration ramped up its war on young voters when it lobbed baseless allegations that a program run out of Tufts University, which uses publicly available voter data to improve student voter turnout, has been used as part of an election interference scheme. Read my blog on the Trump administration’s newly announced probe here.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
