When news broke that some in TikTok's new ownership group would have ties to Trump-world, progressives sounded the alarm. "I would turn Trump allies' dreams of control into reality," some argued.

📊 NEW: Progressives feared that TikTok's new ownership would suppress their views or skew content on the platform to the Right. Data shows that in the 6 months since the company's deal closed, there has been no significant shift in reach or engagement on political content 🧵

💡 FYI, here were the fastest growing partisan-ish political adjacent channels on YouTube last quarter www.chaoticera.news/p/liberals-a...

Last night's results in #NY12 are inversely related to the number of social media followers the candidates have.

💡 I built a dashboard categorizing the largest U.S. Politics and News publications on Substack by total subscribers and partisan lean. Check it out: www.chaoticera.news/substack-data

NEW: Fox News (and other conservative outlets) were never really a thing on TikTok. But over the past year, the conservative media giant has surged on the platform, adding millions of followers and getting 1B views/month.

💡 FYI, here were the 50 most-viewed political adjacent, partisan-leaning YouTube channels last month. (From today's Chaotic Era newsletter)

💡 Voters care about corruption a lot! With that in mind, Democrats should ask themselves whether choosing *Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer* as their leaders is putting their best foot forward on that front🙃 Just a thought: www.chaoticera.news/p/is-anti-co...

As a result of the right-wing media onslaught, Google Search interest in California’s First Partner has skyrocketed, reaching its peak on April 7th.

👀 NEW: Over the past two weeks, right-wing outlets and personalities have published dozens of stories, clips, segments, and pod episodes criticizing California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom 🧵

The biggest partisan-leaning political YouTube channels in Q1 👀 📈 Fastest growing: TPUSA, More Perfect Union, Nick Shirley, Tucker Carlson, Shawn Ryan 📺 Most viewed: FOX, MSNOW, MeidasTouch, Brian Tyler Cohen 📊 Biggest: Rogan, FOX, Daily Show, Vox

So what should Democrats do about it? 🤔 Engage on the platform that may be rigged against them, or leave altogether, only to reach a smaller, more homogenous audience of liberals?

NEW: Data shows out of the top 100 most-viewed X accounts posting about politics in February 2026, 74 were conservative-leaning and 26 were liberal-leaning. 📉 Keep reading for why...

NEW: Takeaways from Democrats' 2024 organizing autopsy in today's newsletter, via Greta Carnes 👇🚪☎️ www.chaoticera.news/p/the-organi...

Espina has been traveling the state at his own expense, appearing at events from Dallas to the Rio Grande Valley and creating videos to boost Talarico. Last night, he introduced the candidate at the campaign’s final pre-election rally in Houston.

Re: meeting Talarico for the first time:

📉 With more than 14 million followers and over a billion total post likes on TikTok alone, the Houston-based twenty-something is one of the largest independent news creators in the U.S—and one of the most influential sources of civic information for Latino audiences online.

This week I blew past 1️⃣5️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ subscribers to Chaotic Era. Thanks to all of you for reading, clicking, sharing, and dropping it in your group chats, I'm just getting started.

👀 @captmarkkelly.bsky.social has seen a surge in growth for his social media accounts as Pete Hegseth investigates him in an act of political retribution. Over 1.1 million new followers added since November 👇

NEW: In 2024, right-wing donors gave over $260 million in tax-deductible contributions to nonprofit conservative media outlets. Recipients included orgs running "pink slime" sites and fake news pages on Facebook. Link to report in reply below 👇

Both parties’ electoral coalitions consume their news and information in 1,000 different places and have to be reached in 1,000 different ways. Read my end-of-year interview with @theguardian.com on this ~chaotic~ political era: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

ICYMI: Right-wing “dark money ATM” Donors Trust gave over $26 million to media efforts in 2024 👀

Democrats’ repeated podcast outreach in 2025 has also shone a light on a new cohort of media power brokers on the Left, with some podcasts hosting multiple elected officials over and over again. 👇

💡 NEW: 21 leading Democrats who are widely mentioned as possible 2028 presidential contenders sat down for more than 430 podcast interviews in 2025, according to @jesselehrich.bsky.social, who has listened to almost all of them...

Thanks for the recap, @beehiiv.com

Trumpworld figures are trying to dislodge WinRed as the GOP's key fundraising platform. It matters because WinRed was set up specifically to help fund + share donor data with the party's data operation, The Data Trust.

According to Resonate's data, these were the political topics that received the most-engagement (likes, shares, comments) on social media in 2025. Posts about Immigration/ICE got over 2.2 billion engagements, followed by Israel/Gaza, Protests, Shutdown, Charlie Kirk, Musk/DOGE.

📉 NEW: The online political conversation in 2025 was ~chaotic~ as ever, but which topics and moments really broke through? I worked with the team at Resonate to analyze data from thousands of social media accounts across platforms. Read here: www.chaoticera.news/p/the-bigges...

ICYMI, read this week's newsletter here: 🔗 www.chaoticera.news/p/liberal-me...

Newsom's online rise really took off around a key moment in early June, when he told the Trump administration to arrest him during a MSNBC hit. "I remember the moment that it happened," one progressive YouTuber told me. "I posted a video about it...and immediately it exploded."