The Independent Has a Good Day at the CV Journalism Foundation’s Hall of Fame Lunch; Recalls of Cottage Cheese and BBQ Brushes–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Feb. 26, 2026

Indy Digest: Feb. 26, 2026

The Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation‘s Media Hall of Fame lunch was on Tuesday—and it was an excellent day for journalism in the Coachella Valley, and for the Independent in particular.

About 300 people attended the fundraising lunch at the Omni Rancho Las Palmas, where CVJF board president Randy Lovely said the nonprofit had raised about a quarter-million dollars over the last year. After the awards and the fundraising pitch, former Desert Sun executive editor Julie Makinen interviewed special guest Tonya Mosley, the co-host of NPR’s Fresh Air.

The lunch was especially excellent for the Independent for several reasons. First (chronologically), I was inducted into the Coachella Valley Media Hall of Fame—a tremendous honor that, as I mentioned during my speech, doesn’t make sense to me, because I still think of the Independent as a startup. I guess I need to get over that, since we’re now in our 14th year of existence, and have published nearly 10,000 articles at this point.

Another reason the lunch was so special: Kevin Fitzgerald, our staff writer, was named the CVJF’s Journalist of the Year. When his win was announced, Kevin was stunned—and I was delighted. It was an acknowledgement that many of the longform journalism pieces he does are complex, difficult—and important.

Thank you, to Randy, Julie and CVJF co-founder Ricardo Loretta for all of their work to support local journalism. Congratulations to my fellow Hall of Fame inductees: Larry Bohannan of The Desert Sun; Lina Robles of La Poderosa 96.7 (and extra congrats on your impending retirement!); the family of Ric and Rozene Supple (who were inducted posthumously); and Ricardo Loretta, who was a surprise inductee.

Also, congrats to KESQ’s Shay Lawson, winner of the Rising Star award (for journalists under 30 or with less than five years of experience), and the Rising Star finalists: KESQ’s Luis Avila, El Informador del Valle’s Xochitl Diaz, and Univision’s Antonio Marquez. Finally, congrats to the finalists for Journalist of the Year: Tom Coulter and Ema Sasic of The Desert Sun; Peter Daut of KESQ; and Thalia Hayden of NBC Palm Springs.

Finally … thanks to all of you, dear readers, who have supported the Independent over these last 13-plus years. You’re why we do what we do.

Yeah, Tuesday was a good day. As my colleague Melissa Daniels commented on Facebook, “It is so exciting that we get to have a critical mass of people supporting local journalism in the desert. A rare thing.”

Onward!

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The state of Kansas just launched a vile attack on trans residents. The Kansas City Star reports: “Transgender Kansans are being informed on the eve of a new state law going into effect that their driver’s licenses will be considered invalid as of Thursday. ‘Please note that the Legislature did not include a grace period for updating credentials. That means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credentials will be invalid immediately, and you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential,’ read letters mailed by the Kansas Department of Revenue’s vehicles division and dated Monday. … Iridescent Riffel, a transgender woman with a Kansas driver’s license who lives in Grandview and commutes to work in Lawrence, said she hasn’t received a letter yet. ‘I don’t want to get a misdemeanor just trying to go to work,’ said Riffel, who changed the letter on her license from ‘M’ to ‘F’ in 2023, shortly before Attorney General Kris Kobach’s legal intervention forced KDOR to stop accommodating such requests for more than two years. … ‘Pursuant to the new law, if the gender/sex indication on the face of your current credential does not match your sex assigned at birth, you are directed to surrender your current credential to the Kansas Division of Vehicles,’ reads the letter, which The Star reviewed multiple copies of.” Cruel.

• Paramount—you know, the company that handed Bari Weiss CBS News—appears to have won the battle to acquire Warner Bros., which includes HBO and CNN. Bleh. The New York Times reports: “Netflix said on Thursday that it had backed away from its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a stunning development that paves the way for the storied Hollywood media giant to end up under the control of a rival bidder, the technology heir David Ellison. Netflix said that it would not raise its offer to counter a higher bid made earlier this week by Mr. Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance, adding in a statement that ‘the deal is no longer financially attractive.’ … Paramount eventually submitted a revised offer of $111 billion, which Warner on Thursday had decreed a ‘superior deal,’ giving Netflix four business days to decide if it would counter. As it turned out, Netflix decided not to. Any purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery will be scrutinized by regulators in the United States and Europe, including the Justice Department’s antitrust division. If Paramount is unable to secure the proper regulatory approvals, Netflix could potentially revive its interest as a buyer. For now, though, the war for Warner Bros. appears to have been all but decided in favor of Mr. Ellison, a 43-year-old budding mogul who came to Hollywood two decades ago as an aspiring actor and, somewhat improbably, could now control two of the town’s most famed movie studios, along with the prestige television channel HBO and the 24-hour news network CNN.”

• NPR reports: “Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump.” Sigh. Details: “The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump. Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor. NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR’s investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.”

• Remember that racist video of the Obamas that was shared on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account (before it was removed, and the post was blamed on a staffer)? Well, a popular far-right-wing X account called that video a “masterpiece”—and Wired magazine reports that the account is apparently run by a White House staffer: “Johnny MAGA appears to actually be a White House staffer named Garrett Wade who works for the Trump administration as a rapid response manager, helping to run the very same White House account his anonymous MAGA account amplifies. A phone number associated with Wade is linked to Johnny MAGA, according to a WIRED review of publicly available records, and the connection was confirmed by a source close to the White House. Wade and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Johnny MAGA account was created in September 2021, according to its X profile. (It originally used a different handle, which referenced Wade’s birth year, according to records reviewed by WIRED.) While the account’s earliest available posts focused on NFTs, it has been a consistent pro-Trump presence since at least 2022.”

• Now, a here are a couple of Tech Gone Horribly Wrong pieces. First up, here’s a Popular Science headline: “Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums.” What? The lede: “A software engineer’s earnest effort to steer his new DJI robot vacuum with a video game controller inadvertently granted him a sneak peak into thousands of people’s homes. While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI’s remote cloud servers. But he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries. The backend security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that, in the wrong hands, could have turned into surveillance tools, all without their owners ever knowing.” Yikes!

• Next, Awful Announcing looks at a disconcerting social-media trend: People making up fake quotes, attributed to athletes and other celebrities, which then spread like wildfire: “Debunking viral fake quotes has become a Sisyphean (and near-weekly) task for celebrities of all kinds, though sports media personalities seem to be the preferred targets for this type of content—almost certainly because sports fans are known for being extremely engaged (and easily irritated) social media users. It usually goes something like this: A fabricated quote is overlaid against a graphic designed to mimic the style of social media posts by legitimate sports outlets, like ESPN or Bleacher Report, and shared by a handful of obscure Facebook pages. … The posts are then picked up by well-followed aggregator accounts and widely circulated across most other platforms, including X, Threads, and Instagram. The quotes often have a racial, political, or otherwise divisive bent, which boosts their placement in algorithmic feeds.”

• We’ll end with two bits of today’s recall news. First up … Walmart cottage cheese! USA Today says: “Cottage cheese sold under Walmart’s Great Value brand is currently under a recall in 24 states, as officials said the cheese may not have been properly pasteurized. According to a recall notice posted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the issue was discovered by the cheese’s manufacturer, Saputo Cheese USA, during ‘pasteurizer troubleshooting exercises.’ Officials said that during the exercises, they found that ‘there’s the possibility liquid dairy ingredients used in the items not being fully pasteurized according to state regulatory standards.’ The FDA says the cottage cheese was sold in 24 states (including California) under Walmart’s Great Value label between Feb. 17 and Feb. 20.”

• And finally … next up is … Weber barbecue brushes! This one is a biggie—and it is a nasty one, too. AL.com says: “About 3.2 million grill brushes have been recalled due to an ingestion hazard, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Weber issued a recall on millions of metal wire bristle grill brushes because the bristles can detach from the product and stick to the grill or food. This poses an ingestion hazard and risk of severe internal injuries that may require surgery. The company has received at least 38 reports that the small wire bristles detached from the grill brushes. Four of the reports include consumers who ingested the metal bristles and received medical treatment to remove them from their digestive tract or throat, according to the recall alert. The recall covers the metal wire bristle grill brushes with plastic or wood handles that are between 12 and 21 inches long.” Ack!

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