Within the hours and days after information and movies unfold of the ICE taking pictures of Renee Good in Minneapolis final week, a small military of right-wing, pro-Trump creators, journalists, and influencers descended on town and flooded social media.
They filmed protests; rode together with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Safety; documented — and at instances seemingly instigated — confrontations with protesters; and labored a competing, ICE- and Trump-friendly narrative out of what was taking place in Minneapolis. From the bottom, they churned out content material portray protesters as lawless, demonstrations as riots, and anti-ICE activists as extremists or criminals. Outdoors of the state, right-wing influencers and enormous social media accounts amplified these movies, posts, and descriptions to succeed in a lot wider audiences.
- Proper-wing content material creators, influencers, and journalists have descended on Minneapolis within the wake of the demise of Renee Good by an ICE officer.
- Social media monitoring exhibits that the correct has quickly tried to flood web platforms with pro-ICE, Trump-friendly protection. Their content material has largely acquired extra views than left-leaning content material.
- These traits present how efficient right-leaning content material creators have been in muddying on-line discourse.
- Left-leaning creators and critics are at an obstacle on-line in competing with this flood of content material.
To this point, this effort seems to have muddied the dialog round Good’s killing and Minneapolis residents’ response to President Donald Trump’s ICE surge — at the very least amongst right-leaning audiences. (Polling this week exhibits the movies and taking pictures have damaged by to an overwhelming share of Individuals, and majorities of Individuals don’t consider the taking pictures was justified, or suppose the ICE agent who shot Good must be criminally charged.)
However social media analytics present that these right-wing influencers have been efficient in flooding the zone — producing massive volumes of content material and drawing viewers.
To log onto social media platforms now could be to not solely see the movies and outrage, but in addition fixed counter-narratives, makes an attempt to justify Good’s killing, and arguments that ICE’s presence in Minneapolis is warranted.
And that reveals a deeper imbalance in American politics and media in 2026: Whereas witness video, mainstream and conventional information, and liberal commentators have formed a part of the controversy over ICE and Trump’s home immigration agenda, these vital voices and activists lack the identical sort of distribution machine to push their narrative that these on the correct have used to some impact.
In that sense, the Minneapolis taking pictures’s disjointed on-line realities match into a well-known drawback for liberals, the American left, and the broader anti-Trump coalition since 2020 — simply as they lacked their very own model of a Joe Rogan or Charlie Kirk to succeed in the plenty or compete for hearts and minds, additionally they lack the influencer and social media infrastructure that has been churning out ICE-friendly content material since at the very least the summer season of 2025.
There are a number of the explanation why.
What right-wing content material creators have been in a position to do
To grasp what’s taking place on-line and measure how efficient right-wing creators have been since January 7, the day of Good’s taking pictures, I turned to information researchers at Magnitude Media, a communications and digital media agency that tracks the unfold of proper, impartial, and left-leaning posts and movies on-line. Their findings complicate what many customers could also be seeing in their very own feeds.
Over the final week, left-leaning, ICE-critical posts have made up the most important share of all posts on immigration or ICE as a subject. They’ve acquired extra engagement from social media customers (about 110 million interactions in comparison with 76 million for right-leaning posts) and have dominated on TikTok, Instagram, and Bluesky.
“Left-leaning pages have acquired 29 million extra engagements than right-leaning pages on posts associated to immigration or ICE in line with our monitoring, and 37 million extra engagements on posts that immediately point out Renee Good, Jonathan Ross, or Minneapolis,” Carly Evans, the director of analytics at Magnitude Media, informed me. “Proper-leaning pages started to shut this hole over the weekend and even led on Friday and Saturday, however as of Monday, left-leaning pages have been nonetheless producing 37 p.c extra engagement on immigration-related posts than right-leaning pages.”
In different phrases, the narrative promoted by the Trump administration and its allies— and bolstered by some algorithms — doesn’t absolutely match actuality.
In the event you have a look at traits, you start to grasp why that’s so. This left-leaning domination on-line solely lasted for roughly a day and a half earlier than right-wing content material creation started to ramp up. Magnitude’s monitoring exhibits that by January 9, engagements by right-leaning content material started to shut the hole, whereas views of right-leaning content material started to surge previous left-leaning content material (Magnitude defines “engagement” as whole clicks, likes, or shares, whereas “views” are the variety of instances a bit of content material was seen, and will not be “distinctive views”).
Earlier than Good’s demise, some right-wing creators have been already lively in Minnesota, for instance, by “investigating” instances of alleged fraud within the state that had already attracted media consideration earlier than the killing of Good. However many extra have arrived over the past week, interviewing ICE brokers, boosting the Trump administration’s protection of ICE’s techniques, and documenting intense moments as town grapples with the federal authorities’s presence within the area.
The result’s a disproportionate quantity of content material produced and shared throughout social media by the largest right-leaning content material creators, even when engagement with their content material isn’t essentially preserving tempo with that quantity.
Vox analyzed the highest 20 manufacturers or usernames driving this dynamic. A handful of right-leaning customers dominate the highest of this chart, and their content material performs effectively: The best of those are Nick Sortor, one of many right-wing influencers on the bottom in Minneapolis; and Eric Daugherty, a Trump-friendly journalist whose accounts recurrently enhance Republican or conservative media clips, social media posts, or uncooked video from Minneapolis from influencers like Sortor.
Extra just lately, the hole between proper and left has narrowed for each engagement and views of immigration- and ICE-related content material. However the right-wing equipment continues to be absolutely operational, and extra superior than the way it was working throughout ICE operations in different American cities final yr.
Why liberals and the left are at such an obstacle
What the previous few months of viral ICE movies and content material manufacturing reinforces is the uphill battle critics of the administration nonetheless face when attempting to match the correct’s social media presence. You’ll be able to broadly clarify this in two methods: particular person incentives and structural benefits.
Individually, right-wing content material creators have extra expertise exhibiting up wherever motion is going down or is about to happen. They might have monetary incentives or ideological motivations, they usually have a willingness to take dangers and put themselves in excessive depth conditions — as Sortor, right-wing journalist Cam Higby, and influencer Nick Shirley have accomplished and broadcast. With allies within the administration, they might not be as open to bodily harm or authorized threat as ICE critics, conventional or unbiased journalists, or protesters themselves. As an alternative of being vilified by the vp, the secretary of Homeland Safety and her spokespeople, or by different right-wing influencers, these content material creators get ethical assist and boosts on-line.
However the structural disadvantages are additionally extreme, specialists informed me. These right-wing influencers, creators, and journalists profit from not simply being companions with the administration, however from the administration itself encouraging ICE brokers to operate as content material producers, or dedicating cash to be spent on partnerships with pro-ICE creators.
Then there’s entry. In Minneapolis, DHS brokers have supplied the identical sort of ride-along privileges to pleasant or allied creators that they’ve supplied on the border or in different American cities final yr. The identical sort of entry has not been prolonged to different reporters in Minneapolis, so unbiased or left-leaning journalists have as a substitute countered with ride-along model reporting with neighborhood activists, as Zeteo Information’ Prem Thakker did this week.
Past this, there’s additionally a much bigger, monetary and community asymmetry at work right here: funding for this type of protection and attain on social media and unbiased shops isn’t comparable on the left to what exists on the correct.
“The proper is simply means higher funded,” Ryan Broderick, the founding father of Rubbish Media, an unbiased new media firm that makes a speciality of masking politics and the web, informed me. He was on the bottom final week after the ICE killing of Good, masking ICE brokers, protests, and the right-wing journalists and influencers who descended on town. “They’re creating wealth both on their very own or they’re creating wealth from highly effective donors,” Broderick mentioned. “The far-right groyper sort of reside streamers that I used to be following round, they have been there for at the very least per week they usually’re nonetheless there. They’ve much more assets in that means.”
Positive sufficient, a have a look at X, YouTube, Threads, or TikTok nonetheless exhibits contemporary, newly up to date content material from the Higbys, Sortors, or Shirleys of the web.
“There’s additionally not likely a fantastic place for ‘leftist’ or ‘anti-ICE’ content material creators to really share their footage and make cash,” Broderick informed me.
He talked about just a few shops which are doing on-the-ground protection in a mode much like what right-wing content material creators are doing, like Minnesota-based Mercado Media or unbiased journalist Amanda Moore. However these sorts of creators and journalists are restricted of their scope or attain on social media platforms, he mentioned.
“In the event you’re going to movie something, you might be placing it on YouTube, you’re placing it on TikTok, you’re placing on X, and people platforms are simply not hospitable to that sort of content material,” Broderick mentioned. “We have been in a position to go, as a result of we’re in a partnership for our podcast with Courier Information they usually have extra assets than we do, however I don’t suppose I may have bankrolled this myself. It’s not like we’re going to make cash off of it the way in which {that a} right-wing YouTuber can instantly monetize it.”
Broderick additionally famous that one different drawback is the brazenness and willingness of right-wing social media accounts to take impartial or uncooked video footage from avenue scenes and edit or reshare it in a means that “makes folks look loopy. So even if you’re only a journalist and also you’re sharing what’s taking place on the bottom, your stuff goes to go essentially the most viral when it’s weaponized by the correct.”
Extra broadly, this phenomenon suits right into a broader problem for the left. As was proven by the affect of podcasters in 2024 and Charlie Kirk and conservative youth organizations over the previous few years, the left and liberals in America lack plenty of the identical assets and attain that the American proper has. In moments like this, within the aftermath of Good’s killing, the dearth of this type of social media equipment makes it tougher to contest the narratives that Trump and his allies are attempting to drive on the nation.
So, newsrooms, unbiased creators, and activists have the deck stacked towards them in attempting to remain on this story, sustain consideration, and push for accountability. However till the anti-Trump coalition is ready to muster the assets and brokers to compete with the correct’s personal equipment, political debates and discussions will proceed to be clouded by mess, right-wing slop, and propaganda.
“Nothing on the left that’s the similar in measurement on-line as the correct,” Broderick mentioned. “There’s simply not a means proper now anymore to create the identical quantity of content material that the correct wing can create on the similar degree and get the identical eyeballs as a result of this has been a years within the making course of. There are clearly leftist streamers, however even Hasan Piker just isn’t that huge in comparison with anybody of his measurement or notoriety on the correct. You’ll be able to’t actually evaluate.”
