What's Resonating: Friday, July 11
ICE, Epstein, and Noem’s FEMA
We’re back with another edition of What’s Resonating – a daily newsletter from the Resonate team that delivers a data-driven snapshot of the stories, trends, and messages shaping online culture and politics.`
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Now, let’s dive in.
What’s Resonating
Opinions on ICE and Trump immigration policy
Lingering Epstein commentary
Reactions to CNN reporting about Kristi Noem and FEMA’s response to the Texas floods
Today’s Analysis: The week in review
TLDR: Fox News led political entities across topics this week while left leaning pages struggled to keep up.
Email users: Click through for the full chart.
Yesterday on Social Media
🟦 Left-leaning accounts
Immigration, notably with a strong focus on ICE, was a major topic for left-leaning pages on Thursday:
Sen. John Fetterman defended ICE on Twitter, earning the second-most likes for a post from left-leaning pages. (125,000 engagements)
Gavin Newsom responded to Libs of TikTok when they asked if he condemned violence against ICE by protesters, flipping the question to Jan. 6th. (95,000 engagements)
MSNBC reported on the San Bernardino Bishop formally excusing more than 1.5 million parishioners from their weekly obligation to attend Mass because of increases in ICE raids. (740,000 views)
Aaron Parnas reported on ICE morale being at an all-time low (592,000 on Instagram) and an ICE official resigning in protest (686,000 on Instagram)
A collab post between Occupy Democrats, Jasmine Crockett, Dear White Staffers, and several other pages featured a GOP poll showing Rep. Jasmine Crockett leading the hypothetical race to unseat Sen. Cornyn in Texas. (23x the average likes for DWHS, and the third most-liked post from left-leaning pages)
Several pages, including Feminist News, shared CNN reports that Kristi Noem did not authorize FEMA deployment for more than 72 hours after the Texas floods.
MediasTouch’s video on the Trump administration accidentally confirming CNN’s reporting was the top left-leaning YouTube video yesterday (1 million views). The TikTok on the story also earned 250,000 views and the Instagram post earned over 315,000 views.
Early reports that Trump is planning to pardon Ghislane Maxwell also broke through.
🟥 Right-leaning accounts
Trump shared an AI image of himself as Superman, claiming “Superman Trump” is a symbol of hope, truth, justice, and the American way. (most-liked right-leaning Instagram post, 4x the average comments for the account)
Right-leaning pages responded to Trump revoking “a Clinton-era rule that allowed illegal aliens to receive taxpayer-funded tuition.”
Fox News and Dan Bongino shared a Fox graphic about Trump cutting off free tuition, food aid, and health benefits to “illegal immigrants.”
The version on Fox’s Facebook pages was the third most-liked tracked post, earning over half a million engagements and 126 times the average channel likes.
Trump posted a meme alongside his announcement. (98,000 likes)
Karoline Leavitt posted an article about the new Department of Education rule. (85,000 engagements)
Fox News amplified the clip of Fetterman “[scorching] radical Dems for violent ICE attacks” (2.7 million views) and posted clips of ICE raids (1.1 million views).
David Harris Jr. posted a clip of an ICE raid while celebrating that “illegal aliens are going home.” (2.3 million views, 29x the average channel likes)
🟨 Neutral (Political) accounts
Dylan Page reported that the U.S. version of TikTok in development will operate on a separate algorithm and data system from the global app. (2 million views)
Page also had a popular post asking if sanctions proposed by a U.N. official against the U.S. for their support of Israel were fair or not. (843,000 views)
Al Jazeera English shared clips of victims of an Israeli attack in Gaza. (2.4 million views across two platforms)
Newsweek reported that an Iran fatwa fundraiser to kill Donald Trump raised over $40 million. (45,000 engagements)
🟨 Neutral (Cultural) accounts
Andrew Schulz shared a clip from the latest Flagrant episode where they discuss how the Epstein list announcement from the DOJ insults their intelligence. (3.2 million views, 16th most-liked cultural posts from tracked cultural pages)
The clip was amplified by top left-leaning political pages including MediasTouch, Brian Tyler Cohen, Courier, and Jess Craven, already earning over half a million views across four posts
Ms. Rachel posted an interview with 3-year-old Leen from Gaza and encouraged her audience to share stories of children’s human rights violations. (2.5 million views)
The Full Send Podcast shared a clip of Dana White explaining that Trump never asked him about the UFC fight at the White House. (632,000 views, 5x the channel average)
Moo Deng, the viral pygmy hippopotamus, turning a year old was featured in several top-liked posts.
Today’s Analysis: The Week in Review
A national holiday, natural disasters, and breaking conspiracy news made for a busy, fractured landscape online this week. Let’s look a bit closer.
As seen in the chart above and Resonate analysis from this week, conversations on many of the top stories largely favored right-leaning pages.
This week, the right has one entity to thank for most of their engagements: Fox News. Fox posted 2,300 times across platforms in the past week, accounting for 2% of all tracked posts and 5% of all engagements—eclipsed only by TikTok powerhouse the Daily Mail on both metrics. Fox’s share of total political engagements nearly doubled week-over-week, and their 24 million engagements last week were more than Donald Trump and Elon Musk combined.
While left-leaning entites had a down week overall, they still took four of the top 10 spots by total engagements.
Carlos Espina led the group with 12 million (just ahead of Instagram powerhouse the Shade Room), and Aaron Parnas, Occupy Democrats, and The Other 98% made up the other three — each averaging over 20,000 engagements per post.
Notably, Kamala Harris also received the second-highest average engagements among entities with more than one post last week — behind only Dylan Page. Her 4th of July Instagram post received 1.3 million likes, one of the top tracked posts on the platform in the past week.
Given the busy week, there are a variety of big posts your algorithms may not have fed you. We’re here to share a few interesting ones you may have missed:
Mark Zuckerberg had two viral fourth of July Facebook posts earning over 20 million views combined.
Ryan Fournier’s Facebook post amplifying news that Trump wants to eliminate property taxes earned over 250,000 engagements (43x the account average)
Zohran Mamdani had the 6th most-liked tracked post on Threads featuring a clip of strangers coming up to him while filming in New York given his new-found celebrity. (840,000 views)
The Shawn Ryan Show on Youtube posted a short arguing “Elon Musk Isn’t Crazy After All” tying his investments to future plans to colonize Mars (5.2 million views)
The Daily Show featured Jon Stewart on Who Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Really Helps — and Hurts (4.5 million views)
Today’s takeaway: Some left-leaning pages found success posting about the floods and Epstein files this week, but post volume compared to right-leaning pages remains a challenge. Repackaging content across platforms and taking multiple angles on an issue can give left-leaning pages more chances at going viral on a priority topic.
Email users: Click through for the full chart.