Tim Cook flew to Mar-a-Lago, shook Trump's hand, and promised Apple was on America's side.
Then you open your iPhone every morning and a liberal magazine editor decides what news you're allowed to see.
Her name is Lauren Kern – and Trump's own FTC just caught her red-handed.
Lauren Kern and the Apple News Liberal Bias Machine
Lauren Kern spent her career at the most left-wing publications in America.
Executive editor of New York Magazine. Deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine.
In 2017, Apple handed her control of the news feed that lands on every iPhone in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom – over 100 million monthly users.
The New York Times celebrated her appointment, calling Kern one of "the most powerful figures in English-language media."
They weren't wrong. They just didn't mean it as a warning.
Apple News Censorship: Zero Conservative Sources in January
The Media Research Center spent January counting every story Apple News pushed to users during peak morning hours.
Six hundred and twenty stories total.
Four hundred and forty came from left-wing outlets – the Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, The Guardian.
One hundred and eighty came from "centrist" outlets.
Fox News got zero stories. The New York Post got zero stories. Washington Examiner got zero stories.
Not one story. Not one. In an entire month.
AllSides – a nonpartisan media rating organization – confirmed the pattern goes back years. In 2025, Apple's curated Top Stories section showed 54% of articles from left-leaning sources and zero percent from the right.
Zero percent. Year after year.
FTC's Andrew Ferguson Warns Tim Cook: Fix Apple News or Face Consequences
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent a letter directly to Tim Cook warning him Apple News may have broken federal law.
Specifically, Section 5 of the FTC Act – the provision that prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices.
Ferguson put it plainly: when Apple sells you an iPhone without disclosing that the news app is a Democrat propaganda machine, that's a deception.
"The First Amendment has never extended its protection to material misrepresentations made to consumers," Ferguson told Cook.
Apple didn't respond.
Of course they didn't.
Big Tech Censorship of Conservatives: Apple's Familiar Pattern
Lauren Kern curating conservatives out of Apple News isn't a glitch. It's the same operation Big Tech has been running for a decade.
Twitter's executives admitted under oath they killed the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 – a story that could have changed the election – without bothering to check if it was true.
Google's own employees circulated internal documents they called "The Good Censor" laying out strategies to suppress conservative content.
YouTube banned doctors, banned election skeptics, banned anyone who questioned the COVID narrative.
Every single time, the same New York-Washington corridor of liberal journalists made the decisions.
Kern is just the one Apple put in charge of your phone.
Tim Cook's Apple News Problem Isn't Going Away
Cook sat in the Oval Office. He donated to Trump's inauguration. He smiled for the cameras and pledged $500 billion to American manufacturing.
Meanwhile, his hand-picked editor was making sure 100 million Americans woke up every morning reading the Washington Post and NPR instead of Fox News or the New York Post.
Ferguson is right to press Cook on this. But a letter isn't enough.
Apple sells you a phone. Preinstalled on that phone is an app you didn't choose, run by an editor you didn't elect, pushing a political agenda you didn't ask for.
That's not curation. That's manipulation.
And now the FTC is watching.
Sources:
- Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "The Alleged Bias of Apple News: Ex-Liberal Mag Editor Tasked to Handpick Stories for Millions of iPhone Users," Fox News, February 18, 2026.
- Media Research Center, "Apple News Boosts Left-Leaning News Outlets, Shuts Out Conservative Sources," MRC Free Speech America, February 2026.
- AllSides, "Apple News Continues to Show Left-Wing Bias: Updated AllSides Analysis," AllSides.com, February 2026.
- MRC Free Speech America, "Apple News Reaches New Milestone, Suppressing Right-Leaning Outlets to Close Out 2025," January 9, 2026.
- FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Federal Trade Commission, February 11, 2026.
