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When Irene Breen got a notification in January 2025 that Instagram was removing adverts for her company’s pregnancy pillows, she was confused. What was so offensive about a pillow?

She was later told on a call with Meta that the problem was the word “pregnancy”.

“We had to scrub the word from our entire website… from the product name,” Breen said. “We had to remove all our URLs which had pregnancy in them and rename them all.”

The restrictions were eventually lifted but, she said, it took 10 months of conversations with Instagram’s parent company Meta – by which time her business had suffered a significant financial hit.

Meta, which also owns Facebook, declined to comment on specific cases, but told the BBC that while businesses can run adverts that promote wellness, sexual health and reproductive products and services, there are restrictions to avoid users across countries and cultures having a negative experience.

It’s not just businesses taking out paid adverts who claim their content has been unfairly restricted.

Women’s health creators and charities have told us their content has been removed, had sensitivity filters added, or had its reach suppressed – a practice known as “shadowbanning”.

The campaign group CensHERship monitors claims that women’s health content is being suppressed.

In a report last month, it surveyed nearly 200 creators, clinical providers, health brands, charities, and educators – 96% of whom said they had experienced restrictions in some form.

Two social media influencers who filed an ethics complaint against Tom Steyer’s California gubernatorial campaign have submitted new complaints to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission and the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, accusing Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign of paying influencers without proper disclosure.

Their complaints, it turns out, received a legal assist from the campaign of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

The metadata for a draft of their filings last week revealed that they had been created with the help of the law firm used by Bass’ election campaign.

Kaitlyn Hennessy, who filed the complaint with Beatrice Gomberg, acknowledged to The Times that the Bass campaign steered them to the Kaufman Legal Group, which helped prepare the complaint.

Bass’ campaign said it is picking up the tab for the legal work but wasn’t paying Hennessy and Gomberg for their efforts.

The complaint focused on posts by comedian and TV personality Adam Conover and influencer-turned-Raman staffer Eric Cheng, along with a host of so-called “meme” accounts, which repost content created by others, sometimes at the behest of political campaigns.

The Raman campaign said it has done nothing wrong and denied any wrongdoing on behalf of Cheng. Conover also denied any wrongdoing.

The Bass campaign’s decision to cover legal costs for the complaints is unlikely to pose ethics issues, according to legal experts consulted by The Times, provided the payments are reported by the campaign in its disclosure reports, which the campaign said it intends to do.

“As long as a campaign is transparent in reporting its expenditures, there’s nothing inherently wrong for a campaign to have its lawyers file an ethics complaint for the campaign or somebody else with their informed consent,” said Jeffrey Daar, a former president of the L.A. Ethics Commission.

Conover’s posts promoting Raman already attracted scrutiny in ethics complaints filed in May by former L.A. City Council candidate Dylan Kendall. The investigations into those complaints, to the FPPC and L.A. Ethics Commission, are ongoing.

Conover told The Times that payments made by the campaign to a company connected to him were not for his posts but for video work one of his staffers did for Raman’s campaign. They initially were described in Raman’s campaign filings as payments for online ads but later were amended to say they were for video production services.

A spokesperson for Raman’s campaign said Cheng is paid for work he does for the campaign, not for posts on his personal social media account, and that it had gotten guidance from L.A. Ethics Commission staff on Cheng’s disclosure requirements to ensure it was in compliance.

The spokesperson added that Cheng voluntarily posted on his social media account that he would be joining the campaign before his employment began.

The L.A. Ethics Commission and FPPC declined to comment on the status of the complaint or the prior one brought by Kendall.

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Marymount University’s law school who also previously served as the president of the ethics commission, said that because news of an ethics complaint can have a political impact before its merits have been evaluated, it is important to view filings late in an election cycle with greater scrutiny.

“Whenever I see that there’s an ethics complaint filed this close to the election, I always pause for a minute,” she said.

California is one of the few states in the country that require social media influencers to disclose if they have been paid by a political campaign to create content. L.A. rules are even more strict.

Political groups are required to notify paid creators of the requirement.

New state legislation signed into law last month gives the FPPC the power to refer alleged violators to law enforcement for possible misdemeanor charges, and violations can be penalized with a fine of up to $5,000 per instance. The L.A. Ethics Commission can levy fines of up to $15,000 or three times the amount of money at issue.

There are no such rules for paid social media content sponsored by a federal candidate or political committee.

The FPPC last month concluded its investigation into Steyer’s campaign and found that it had properly followed the rules, but it did say that several social media influencers, including Cheng, the Raman staffer, had not properly disclosed payments from the Steyer campaign.

Hennessy and Gomberg are continuing to investigate improperly disclosed social media posts in races across the country, including the L.A. mayoral race, because of their concerns about the corrosive impact this content can have on the electoral process, Hennessy said.

“It’s really disappointing to me, because you see how this impacts races,” Hennessy said. “When you have this undisclosed content, people don’t understand that what they’re watching is an ad.”

WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against President Trump, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and that he believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before.

Smith also told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he stands behind the criminal cases he brought against Trump, a Republican, and that he and his team acted without regard to politics.

“I made those decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith said. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans sought to cast the prosecution as a political fishing expedition, accusing Smith of bending ordinary procedures in an overzealous pursuit of the president.

“The Smith election case ultimately wasn’t just about Trump,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the committee. “It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, accused Republicans of spreading “baseless conspiracy theories” about Smith’s investigations as part of an effort to “whitewash” the history of Trump’s 2020 election loss and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

“President Trump demonstrated a wanton disdain for the laws of the United States, the will of the people and our national security,” Durbin said. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith, nonstop, are petty, personal and political. They are nothing but a smoke screen to distract from the president’s own clear, unlawful conduct.”

The hearing is expected to focus on subpoenas for phone records

Even as Smith defends his investigations, he is expected to be pressed anew by Republican senators about his team’s access to the phone records of GOP lawmakers as prosecutors investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In previous testimony, Smith has stood behind subpoenas that prosecutors issued for the phone records of Republican members of Congress who were in touch with Trump when violent supporters of the president rioted inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has said that such subpoenas are a “common practice” in investigations and were necessary in this instance to understand the “scope of the conspiracy” between Trump and his Republican allies.

Nonetheless, the revelation that Smith’s team secretly obtained the phone records during his investigation has animated some Republican lawmakers, who point to it as proof of overreach by the Biden administration Justice Department and a hard-charging prosecutor.

In July, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, referred Smith to the Justice Department for potential prosecution on allegations that he lied at a previous hearing about his collection of the records — something Smith’s attorneys have vigorously disputed.

“I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives,” Smith said. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.”

Grassley, the Senate committee chairman, first disclosed last year that Smith’s prosecutors had obtained what’s known as “toll records” — data that reveals the date, length and time of phone calls between two parties but not the content of the communications.

Smith has repeatedly justified the move as necessary to document any contact that Trump or surrogates may have had with lawmakers on Jan. 6, 2021, as the president beseeched his supporters to halt the certification of the election results.

“My office didn’t spy on anyone,” Smith said during a hearing in January.

Smith is the subject of a criminal referral from Republicans

Smith was appointed in 2022 by then-Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to take over investigations into Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Both investigations resulted in felony indictments, but Smith abandoned the cases after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing longstanding Justice Department opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be federally indicted.

Smith has remained a top target of retribution for Trump and his administration, which last year announced that it would revoke the security clearances of the lawyers representing the former special counsel. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees, also announced last year an investigation into Smith.

Jordan’s referral to the Justice Department centers on a December 2025 exchange in which Smith was asked about subpoenas that prosecutors had issued for the toll records.

Smith said the records he requested did not include the content of the communications. But Jordan maintains that answer was misleading in light of records released by Grassley showing that Smith had obtained the contents of 44 lawmakers’ text messages in a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration that sought the communications of various Trump advisers and aides.

In response, Smith’s lawyers called his answers “unimpeachably truthful” and noted that he was responding to questions explicitly about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

The NFL confirmed Monday that it has asked the Department of Homeland Security to remove a video featuring hard-hitting highlights of Hall of Fame safety Brian Dawkins from a social media post in reference to a report about a caravan of immigrants approaching the U.S. border.

On Sunday afternoon, the verified X account of the DHS reposted another account’s report of the purported caravan, along with the comment, “Our time has come,” and a 39-second clip of the former Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos star delivering one bruising hit after another.

“The league requested DHS take down the video,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told The Times in an email.

Dawkins told ESPN in a text that he had “very respectfully not given permission” for the DHS to use his video.

About two hours after the initial post went up, the DHS responded in the comment section with a still photo of Dawkins and the caption, “The Border Is Closed.” As of early Monday afternoon, both posts remained intact.

The Times reached out to the DHS by email and asked if it had initially sought the NFL’s permission to use the content, if it planned on taking down the content as the league requested and why it chose to use Dawkins’ imagery with the posts.

The department sent a statement in response that appears to refer to the nine-time Pro Bowl selection’s nickname “Weapon X.”

“DHS is playing lockdown defense at the border. We will use every Weapon at our disposal, from A to X, to keep Americans safe,” the department wrote.

“The United States Border Patrol is actively tracking a migrant caravan which departed San Pedro Sula, Honduras on September 20, 2026. USBP is closely engaged with its international partners to monitor their movement and any additional developments. USBP reminds migrants that under the leadership of President Trump and Homeland Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, the border has remained closed and secured for the last 16 months.

“Migrants considering making the dangerous journey to our country should also be aware that the days of ‘catch and release’ are over, and [former President] Biden’s disastrous open border policy has been SEALED SHUT. Anyone attempting to illegally enter the United States will be apprehended, prosecuted, and removed from the country.”