Tips for Investigating Right-Wing Influencers and Podcasters Journalists have found popular right-wing podcasters hard to cover, but expert journalists at the 2026 NICAR conference shared techniques for digging into this cohort's global influence.

Tips to investigate right-wing influencers from @gijn.org. Many points from a recent NICAR talk of 3 recent Bloomberg investigations. gijn.org/stories/tips...

The Math Behind Drake’s Lucky Spins YouTube video by Bloomberg Television

@adrjeffries.bsky.social produced a short documentary with @cecianasta.bsky.social about Stake's use of influencers to promote gambling.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQMI...

To do this we needed to audit each streamer's Stake gameplay. We used an LLM to capture balance, bet and game played every 4s of stream. We manually verified each streamer's balance over time and calculated their spins to wins. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

We analyzed +500hrs of livestreams from 25 streamers and found Drake and Adin Ross win big 4x more frequently than the average when playing games owned by the Stake's parent co.
Read our methodology with @suryamattu.com and @cecianasta.bsky.social
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Unlikely Wins and Comped Spins: Inside Stake’s Empire Crypto casino Stake pays Drake and other stars to bet, spreading clips of big wins to impressionable gamblers. The numbers show unusual luck is at work.

NEW @bloomberg.com feature on Stake: the world's largest crypto casino. Our year-long piece dives into Stake employing superstar influencers such as Drake and Adin Ross to livestream gambling. By @cecianasta.bsky.social @oliviasolon.bsky.social and myself: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

I’m a UMAP truther, but it’s all pretty similar

YouTube’s Right-Wing Stars Fuel Boom in Politically Charged Ads By Davey Alba Priyanjana Bengani Leon Yin Ashley Carman Julia Love Rachael Dottle Elena Mejía Technology Big Tech November 20, 2025 On YouTube’s conservative airwaves, podcast hosts tout products that let people buy into the MAGA crowd: Republican Red Winery vintages for toasting the “silent majority;” Black Rifle Coffee for caffeinating gun owners; XX-XY Athletics for workout clothes symbolizing opposition to the “lunacy of the left social agenda.”

The popularity of YouTube podcasts among conservatives is driving a boom in small businesses tailoring ads to their millions of listeners, paying hosts like Joe Rogan and Candace Owens to read out promotions in the hope that fans will place orders. The phenomenon has enriched both the hosts and YouTube, supporting further growth of the businesses using ideology to sell. A Bloomberg analysis of host-read ads across nearly 1,000 videos from eight of the platform’s top right-leaning podcasters found that advertisers on the shows routinely tapped into political identity in marketing. At least one host-read ad with a political message appeared in 91% of videos reviewed.

NEW: For months, my colleagues and I dug into YouTube's conservative airwaves and found a flourishing network of host-read ads on right-leaning podcasts. This phenomenon has enriched hosts, YouTube, and businesses that use ideology to sell. bloom.bg/3Kaio9w

No, I don’t think it’s being maintained! Kind of a miracle it lasted as long as it did.

Friday was my last day at WIRED. Today I started a new job at Bloomberg on a dream desk with @suryamattu.com and @jeffykao.bsky.social.

Got a tip? A dataset? Something we should look at? Find me on Signal at dmehro.89

In no particular order, here’s some stuff I’d like to continue to dig in to:

IRE 2025 schedule | June 19-22, 2025 | New Orleans Welcome to the #IRE25 conference schedule!

Headed to New Orleans or my first @ire.org Conference. I'll be on a panel Friday morning (11:30) on crowdsourcing data for your next investigation w/ Cassandra Garibay and Sergio Olmos. schedules.ire.org/ire-2025/ind...

Good "missing data" story

Tried "vibe coding" ...
hated it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database Customs and Border Protection has swabbed the DNA of migrant children as young as 4, whose genetic data is uploaded to an FBI-run database that can track them if they commit crimes in the future.

NEW: The US government has collected DNA samples from 133,000+ migrant children and teenagers and uploaded them into CODIS, a national criminal database originally built for convicted sex offenders and violent criminals, according to documents reviewed by WIRED.

I see your point! I was just using the domain term to contrast from arrests at or along the Southern border. But yeah the North, (also Midwest) and elsewhere in the country, too. Thanks for tuning it!

Sounds like a cool project! Thanks for reading

Thank you for reading, I'll share that feedback with the team!

This is a great story, the kind of great story you can do through using the data released by The Deportation Data Project: deportationdata.org

Every data reporter covering immigration should get familiar with the data here

100%, such a rich dataset. Thanks for sharing Will!

Our analysis uses records from the Data Deportation Project. They FOIA'd ICE for arrest and detention records of over 3.5 immigrants spanning Obama's second term to the first four weeks of Trump's second term. This data is available for anyone to use:
deportationdata.org/data.html

This trend is partially due to historic lows in border arrests (freeing up space in the largest ICE facilities), and an increase in interior arrests. However, interior arrests aren't at a historic high, and the NE's largest detention center in had over 400 beds open. bloom.bg/43am95w

When immigrants are transferred across state lines they often need to get new legal counsel. ICE detention facilities in the South and SW are remote, with immigration lawyers few and far between. The avg distance to the closest immigration lawyer in Louisiana is over 100 miles.
bloom.bg/43am95w

The Rising Cost of ICE Flying Immigrants to Far-Flung Detention Centers The increase in long-distance transfers makes it harder to fight deportation and boosts taxpayer expense.

In prior years few immigrants detained by ICE in the Northeast were sent to the South & SW. Virtually nobody sent to New Mexico, and less than 1% of ppl sent to Texas or Arizona. In Trump's first month, 12% of ppl detained in the NE were sent to Texas, 4% to NM and 3% to AZ.
bloom.bg/43am95w

The Rising Cost of ICE Flying Immigrants to Far-Flung Detention Centers The increase in long-distance transfers makes it harder to fight deportation and boosts taxpayer expense.

Getting transferred to the South and SW reduce detained immigrants' chances at staying in the country. 70% of people detained in Louisiana and New Mexico end up deported, which is double that of the Northeast and the Nat'l Avg, which is about 50%.
bloom.bg/43am95w

NEW: @bloomberg.com analysis of +13 years of ICE detentions shows immigrants transferred to the South and SW from interior US at unprecedented rates. Reducing the odds of winning their cases. w/ @elenamejia.bsky.social @racheladhe.bsky.social
@pollymosendz.bsky.social
bloom.bg/43am95w

IRS acting commissioner is resigning over deal to send immigrants' tax data to ICE, AP sources say The Internal Revenue Service’s acting commissioner is resigning over a deal to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people i...

ICE will be working with IRS now.

New data-sharing document signed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will allow ICE to use IRS data. Acting Commissioner resigns over it.

apnews.com/article/irs-...

Can’t wait to read, thank you for sharing

How Popular YouTubers Pushed Young Male Voters Toward Trump How podcasters like Joe Rogan and Logan Paul turned young men, a once apolitical demographic, into a massively powerful voting bloc

New gift link (3/22 - 3/29):
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

How Popular YouTubers Pushed Young Male Voters Toward Trump How podcasters like Joe Rogan and Logan Paul turned young men, a once apolitical demographic, into a massively powerful voting bloc

They expire every 7 days, here's a new gift link to our investigation on political podcasters/streamers on YT:
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

An announcement for the "Finding and using undocumented APIs" tutorial at NICAR 2025, Friday, March 7 at 3:30-4:30pm. Located at Gray's Bay, 8th floor. Images of Leon Yin and Piotr Sapiezynski.

This Friday at @ire-nicar.bsky.social myself and @leonyin.org will be teaching how to can find and use undocumented API and build your own datasets. Come say hi and learn something new!

After a big story we (reporters) go back to zero. It's a lifeless and cold wasteland. Sometimes we shine a light down a new rabbit hole and see new potential to start digging again.