It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC.

I'm Bridget Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYCN, Gautomis Newsroom.

Happy Friday, everybody.

I'm filling in for Brian today.

Coming up on today's show,

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menon will be my guest. And there's plenty of news to talk

about, including her plan to relaunch year-round outdoor dining, help the city's most vulnerable,

stay warm in this extreme cold, and more Plus later in the show how immigration and customs

enforcement or ICE is partnering with tech companies to provide to gather private data on citizens

and how the Trump administration has supercharged the agency's surveillance operations. And we'll wrap

today's show with a conversation about what kind of activism we expect of professional athletes.

We've got the Winter Olympics starting and the Super Bowl happening this weekend.

What do athletes owe us? Should they feel compelled to share their political views?

And when they do, is it enough? Is it welcome?

We'll chat with all of that with New Yorker, staff writer, and sports columnist Louisa Thomas. But first, there were more troubling signs this week that President Trump is bringing the weight of the federal government to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections. Perhaps you heard about Trump's appearance on Dan Bungino's podcast where he said Republicans

should nationalize voting. And that's not even the most worrisome part of it. There was also

the FBI search of the Fulton County Georgia election office. Of course, Georgia is a swing state

that Trump has insisted falsely that he won in the 2020 election, even calling the Republican Secretary of State there asking him to find votes.

But now Trump is getting organized even earlier, sending in his director of national intelligence to be part of that recent search and even briefing the president afterwards, along

with some of the FBI officers who were there. For anyone who cares about free and fair elections,

your blood pressure might be rising. I haven't even mentioned how the Justice Department has tried

to tie together its immigration crackdown in Minnesota with demands for access to voter rolls.

...