Chuck Darwin

Social and economic justice, technology and tennis.  I'll have what @jbf1755 is having. 
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Last Notes

2026-07-25 07:11:39 GMT

The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American
for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a passcode that wiped the contents of his phone,
according to an indictment and media reports.
This is thought to be the first known case in the United States where federal prosecutors have charged someone for the alleged destruction of data using a “duress” password built into a phone’s software.
According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court’s first hearing on Monday,
Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges.
Tunick’s attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year
and that any evidence
— including the alleged wiping of his phone
— should be thrown out.
The case centers on a feature included in GrapheneOS, a custom Android operating system that runs in place of the software on most modern Google Pixel devices.
Tunick’s attorneys confirmed GrapheneOS was running on his phone.
The software feature allows the device owner to set a passcode that deliberately wipes the contents of that device if entered instead of the user’s unlock passcode.
Tunick’s case also raises ongoing questions about what constitutional rights can be invoked at the border,
which the U.S. government has long asserted is not U.S. soil until a person is authorized to enter.
The government’s indictment, which contains a typo (“Untied States Code”),
accuses Tunick of allegedly providing a passcode to border agents that caused the phone
to “delete the digital contents,”
prior to the device being seized.
Tunick’s attorneys filed a motion to suppress the evidence, claiming that the detention and the seizure were unlawful.
The motion said U.S. border authorities took Tunick into a secondary inspection at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport as he returned from overseas on January 24, 2025,
but that he was repeatedly denied access to an attorney and was not informed of his legal rights.
Tunick’s attorneys accused the government of demanding access to his phone under the pretext of searching for child exploitation imagery,
but without providing evidence to justify its suspicion.
His motion to suppress argued that the government was instead investigating him over his association with a
long-running environmental movement called "Defend the Atlanta Forest", which opposes the development of a sprawling training campus for law enforcement in Atlanta dubbed “Cop City.”
#duresspasscode #grapheneos
#copcity #atlanta #samueltunik
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/us-accuses-american-of-allegedly-wiping-his-phone-using-a-duress-password-during-border-search/

2026-04-09 01:30:42 GMT

In a rare public criticism of a fellow member of the Supreme Court,
Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized Justice Brett Kavanaugh
for his justification of racial profiling
in immigration-based stops of U.S. citizens.
“I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,”
Sotomayor said at a University of Kansas School of Law event on Tuesday.
She was referring to the case of
"Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo",
in which Kavanaugh wrote an opinion framed as a concurrence to the unsigned majority ruling.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
“Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,”
she added.
“And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.”
In his concurrence, Kavanaugh said that race or ethnicity can be a “relevant factor” when combined with other factors
like “day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction”
or speaking Spanish instead of English.
He added that the burden of racial profiling on citizens or legal non-citizens would be minimal.
“If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter,” Kavanaugh wrote.
“Only if the person is illegally in the United States may the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.”
As Sotomayor’s critique shows, these encounters are anything but brief or friendly.
Citizens profiled by immigration agents have been manhandled, hit, zip-tied, kidnapped off the street and held for days in detention
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sonia-sotomayor-brett-kavanaugh-racial-profiling-immigration_n_69d6ae34e4b0ccb589eaa377

2026-04-04 00:26:19 GMT

Last September, the Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applicants,
stirring confusion around the program.
Then in late February, another hurdle was introduced:
The Department of Homeland Security turned this game of chance into one that prioritizes higher salaries.
Now, if there are more H-1B applicants than spots available, U.S.C.I.S. will conduct a weighted lottery system based on new criteria:
wage levels that are calculated with government employment and wage data, which include factors like job title and location.
This new process gives applications tied to higher wages an advantage in the lottery system.
The D.H.S. says the new rule is meant to better protect job opportunities for Americans and to deter companies from filing H-1B petitions for low-skilled, low-paid positions, a practice the Trump administration says has led to the abuse of the program.
“There’s definitely a panic level that we hadn’t seen in the past with clients,” said Matthew Maiona, a Boston-based immigration lawyer who has over 30 years of experience representing both employers and employees in sectors like I.T. and engineering.
These changes have impelled some foreign workers to rethink their careers in the United States.
Those we spoke to said that it felt nearly impossible to find U.S. employers over the last year that would sponsor their H-1B visas for roles in biotechnology and marketing analytics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/video/h-1b-visa-skilled-workers-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

2026-04-03 14:37:02 GMT

Iran shot down a US fighter jet
A search is under way for the crew of a US fighter jet that was shot down by Iran, a person familiar with the matter has confirmed.
Iran claimed that it had shot down a US fighter jet, with state media reporting it was an F-35 warplane.
The fate of the crew remains unclear.
It follows reports by Iranian state media that the US military is searching for an American pilot of a downed aircraft in Iran, following earlier reports that Tehran had shot down a US F-35 fighter jet.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency claimed that the US military is searching for a pilot “of a fighter jet that was attacked by the Iranian armed forces this morning”.
In an earlier report, it published photos purporting to show the wreckage of a downed US aircraft, although it appears to be an F-15E Strike Eagle based out of RAF Lakenheath.
Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, told NBC News:
“I think the structure looks like an F-15 and from the tail flash stripe markings from the 48th Fighter Wing, based at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom.”
US officials have not publicly commented on the claims.
The Associated Press news agency reported that a channel affiliated with Iranian state television broadcast news of the pilot.
The channel is in Kohkilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, a rural and mountainous region that spans over 15,500 sq km (5,900 sq miles).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/apr/03/middle-east-crisis-live-trump-urges-iran-to-make-deal-after-bridge-strike?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-04-03 14:25:32 GMT

German bargain grocer Aldi plans to open more than 180 U.S. stores this year.
The chain, which has been rapidly expanding since inflation surged in 2021, has set a goal of 3,200 stores globally by the end of 2028.
Trader Joe’s has been on an expansion spree.
Many Dollar General stores have begun selling fresh produce.
“Discounters are in this really tricky spot, where price is paramount, but they’re up against the likes of Walmart,” Moran said.
Walmart and Amazon have expanded grocery offerings and are scooping up wealthier consumers.
Their massive size and efficient supply chains allow them to have lower prices than competitors.
Lower-income consumers, facing tough economic pressure, are increasingly turning to food banks, Moran said.
A November Pew Research Center study estimated that more than 40 million people in 22 million households receive monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.
Grocery Outlet will be scaling back in California
In the latest earnings announcement, Potter said Grocery Outlet left its shoppers disappointed
— and their baskets mostly empty
— because stores didn’t offer enough “wow” deals on name-brand products.
The company has since expanded its distribution capacity and is reducing slow-selling stock to make more room for “opportunistic products” from name brands.
https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=95a40f0d-11f8-4d00-b54a-a6885fe141f3&v=sdk

2026-03-30 04:43:03 GMT

What happens on Tuesday is a matter of life and death.
The Endangered Species Committee
—composed of the heads of the Interior, Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Army, and the Council of Economic Advisors
—can decide that the very presence of an endangered species is an unacceptable obstacle to the oil and gas industry’s balance sheet.
When the "God Squad" grants an exemption, the species in question is put at risk of extinction.
The principal species in question is the Rice’s whale,
a majestic creature that has navigated the Gulf since long before humans named it,
but was only identified as a distinct species in 2021.
As the only baleen whale to live exclusively in American waters, it has earned the nickname “America’s whale”
—and there are only around 50 of them left in our world.
There is a certain irony to the fact that a species so closely identified with America now faces existential risk from policies advanced in the name of putting America first.
https://newrepublic.com/article/208313/trump-god-squad-endangered-rices-whale-extinction-gulf-mexico

2026-03-26 14:02:19 GMT

Not long after Donald Trump said the US was engaged in “strong talks” to bring the war with Iran to an end this week,
Qatar took the unusual step of distancing itself from the alleged diplomatic negotiations.
Qatar was not involved in any mediation efforts, said government spokesperson Majed al-Ansari at a briefing on Tuesday night,
before adding as a telling aside:
“If they exist.”
It signalled a notable break from Qatar’s historic and recurring position as chief mediator in Middle East and wider regional conflicts
“They’ve been burned by their previous experience,”
said Bilal Saab, senior managing director of advisory group Trends US and former Pentagon official in the first Trump administration.
He added: “They previously thought they played a useful mediating role
– until they realised that it was all for naught.
Not to mention that they have been directly implicated in the war and are still being attacked by the Iranians.
So there’s a lot of pent-up frustration and disappointment that is affecting their willingness, and perhaps even ability,
to mediate anything.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/26/gulf-states-scepticism-over-alleged-us-iran-talks-signals-a-distrust-of-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-03-25 14:44:20 GMT

Over two days in October 2025, up to 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred;
a further 40,000 civilians from the Sudanese city are still unaccounted for.
Heroism, horror and the ‘pits of hell’: inside the last days of El Fasher
This is the story of what happened
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/25/heroism-horror-and-the-pits-of-hell-inside-the-last-days-of-el-fasher?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-03-22 06:59:52 GMT

Jeff Webb,
a conservative political activist considered to be Charlie Kirk’s “mentor”
has died after he fell while playing pickleball
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/charlie-kirks-mentor-dies-after-36904048

2026-03-22 01:33:22 GMT

Western car manufacturers are making what one former boss calls a
“profound strategic mistake”
as they pull back from electric vehicles (EVs) and refocus on the combustion engine -- just as oil prices are soaring once again.
Experts say the industry’s future
– and that of tens of millions of jobs
– could be on the line.
This time, however, the threat is from China.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/21/west-carmakers-retreat-electric-vehicle-risks-irrelevance-iran-war-evs-china?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-03-20 23:37:45 GMT

NO KINGS 3
RALLY AND MARCH
SAT. MARCH 28
ALAMEDA PARK
SANTA BARBARA
11 AM: MEET OUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS
12:30 PM: RALLY AND SPEECHES
1:30 PM: MARCH TO DE LA GUERRA PLAZA
https://bsky.app/profile/indivisiblesb.bsky.social/post/3mhjio5jmxc22

2026-03-19 03:13:35 GMT

Police officers raided the
rapper Afroman's Ohio home,
... then sued him after he ridiculed them on social media
— but a jury just sided with the rapper.
In an unusual lawsuit members of an Ohio county sheriff’s department sued over songs and social media posts by Afroman
(Joseph Foreman)
that criticized the guns-drawn 2022 raid on his property, which yielded no charges.
The case claimed the videos were false and caused the officers "severe emotional distress".
But Afroman,
known for his 2000 hit “Because I Got High,”
testified at trial that he had a First Amendment right to mock the officers,
-- particularly after they smashed down his door for ultimately no reason:
“All of this is their fault, and they have the audacity to sue me"
https://www.billboard.com/pro/afroman-trial-verdict-rapper-wins-lawsuit-cops-music-videos/

2026-03-09 14:36:08 GMT

Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was ready to go to jail.
She had been prepared to spend six months in the custody of the Shasta county sheriff’s office.
One of the top prosecutors in this part of far northern California had presented the evidence against her in a weeklong trial,
and a jury had delivered a guilty verdict.
A judge offered probation, but O’Connell-Nowain did not agree to the terms.
Her crime?
Sitting on the floor in front of the dais of the board of supervisors with a sign, silently protesting an official who had criticized the county elections office.
The case of a former preschool teacher with no criminal history
tried and convicted for a peaceful demonstration was shocking even for Shasta county,
which has drawn international attention for its rowdy and radical brand of conservative politics.
But what happened to O’Connell-Nowain is not just the story of one county’s crackdown on free speech
and the forces that have sown division in the community;
it is emblematic of the political turmoil that has become commonplace in this part of California
and the US more broadly.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/09/fighting-extremism-redding-california?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-03-09 14:31:18 GMT

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has said that DHS leadership change is not enough to reopen the government
and starting to fund the Department of Homeland Security again.
It comes as Republican Senator Thom Tillis said he believes White House adviser Stephen Miller “should go”
and that his role in the Trump administration has been a “big problem”.
The senior senator representing North Carolina, when asked on CNN’s State of the Union if he thinks Miller should go, during a conversation about the administration’s immigration crackdown, responded to host Jake Tapper stating “Oh, of course I do.”
“He is not worried about substance.
He’s more worried about form, but I also think that he has an outsized influence over the operations of the cabinet.
And I believe we’ve got qualified cabinet members there that sometimes are doing less than what they want to,
-- because of his direction and his outsized influence.
He’s a big problem in this administration.
He has been from the beginning,” said Tillis.
Tillis affirmed support for Department of Homeland Security Secretary pick Markwayne Mullin to replace Kristi Noem,
claiming he believes Mullin will be independent from Miller’s influence,
even though Mullin repeated similar falsehoods about the killings by federal agents of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Tillis, who is not seeking re-election this year, was the first Republican to call for the resignation or firing of DHS secretary Noem.
But Jeffries said on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker that leadership change alone is not enough.
“What we want is a situation where ICE is actually conducting itself like every other law enforcement agency in the country
as opposed to using taxpayer dollars to brutalize or in some cases kill American citizens,” Jeffries said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/mar/09/white-house-dhs-donald-trump-us-politics-latest-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-03-09 05:41:21 GMT

James Fallows:
This week I realized that over the past 45 years I’d been preparing for the news of the past nine days.
I’ll list the reporting steps I’ve taken, because they set up the questions and reactions I have now.
-In 1981 I published a book called "National Defense", which was serialized in the Atlantic.
Its purpose was to interview people who’d spent their lives waging war, or studying warfare,
and ask what realities of combat they think the rest of us misunderstand.
One of its messages was that the ability to think many steps ahead of the adversary
—if we do this, they’ll probably do that, and then we’d have to imagine something else
—distinguished the victors from the defeated.
This applied on the battlefield and in other arenas of competition.
So did the related-but-different ability to re-orient and change plans more quickly than the adversary,
when circumstances inevitably changed.
These points may seem obvious,
but you’ll see why I’m returning to them now.
Another message involved “quantity vs quality.”
The historians, combat veterans, and technologists I spoke with also emphasized that in warfare,
having more weapons, could sometimes matter more than having “better” weapons.
One gruesome example from Vietnam was the cheap but reliable AK47 rifle used by the Vietcong, versus the more “advanced” American M16, prone to deadly jams in the arms of US troops.
Drones did not exist in those days.
But since 2022 Ukraine has shown how a $2,000 “first-person-view” drone can destroy a $5 million Russian tank.
Right now, Iran can buy at least 150 of its Shahed “suicide missiles” for the cost of a single US-made Patriot missile to defend against them.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/the-arrogance-of-ignorance

2026-03-03 05:10:26 GMT

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that
⚠️ the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was
💥“anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.
From Saturday morning through Monday night,
👉more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).
The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.
The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department.
https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for

2026-03-03 00:26:49 GMT

Sharing content to Mastodon is getting easier with the addition of a universal “Share to Mastodon” button for the decentralized social media platform.
Announced on Monday, the widget allows users to share content on any Mastodon server by connecting your Mastodon account and redirecting you to the server that account is on.
The blog post announcing the feature also explains that the tool “works entirely in your browser: there is no tracking data, and it does not store any information on the server.”
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/03/a-new-share-button/

2026-03-02 00:52:13 GMT

I can’t stop thinking about
Nurul Shah Alam,
the disabled refugee who died after Border Patrol left him outside in the cold with no way to contact friends or family.
It took five days for him to die.
He was blind and didn’t speak English.
They took the pole he was using as a cane.
This man survived an actual genocide only to be killed by the incompetence and cruelty of the Trump regime.
Five days of wandering around lost, sick and disoriented.
It was all preventable.
They could have taken him home.
They could have called his family.
They could have refused to leave him for dead.
Say his name. Don’t ever forget what they did.
https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2026/02/shah-alam-buffalo-rohingya-blind-man-border-patrol/
https://zeroes.ca/@broadwaybabyto/116144619166553375

2026-02-28 20:28:49 GMT

Rising carbon dioxide levels are being detected within the human body,
with new research warning a key blood marker for the gas could near its healthy limit within decades if current trends continue.
The findings are especially relevant for children and adolescents, whose developing bodies will experience the longest cumulative exposure to rising atmospheric CO₂
Bicarbonate plays a central role in maintaining the body's acid–base balance.
When CO₂ levels rise, the body retains more bicarbonate to stabilize blood pH.
Over time, however, sustained compensation may carry physiological consequences.
"If current trends continue, modeling indicates average bicarbonate levels could approach the upper limit of today's accepted healthy range within 50 years," Prof Larcombe said.
"Calcium and phosphorus levels could also reach the lower end of their healthy ranges later this century."
Humans evolved in an atmosphere containing roughly 280–300 ppm of CO₂.
The average annual increase over the past decade has been about 2.6 ppm per year, with 2024 recording a 3.5 ppm rise.
Fellow Author Dr. Phil Bierwirth, a retired environmental geoscientist who is affiliated with the ANU Emeritus Faculty,
said while the study does not prove direct causation,
the consistent, population-wide trends are difficult to ignore.
"I actually think that what we are seeing is because our bodies are not adapting," Dr. Bierwirth said.
"It appears we are adapted to a range of CO2 in the air that may now have been surpassed"
https://phys.org/news/2026-02-carbon-dioxide-human-blood.html

2026-02-25 23:03:55 GMT

Speaker Emerita Pelosi:
Trump took $500 billion out of Medicare
and $1 trillion out of Medicaid,
took many off SNAP
-- and the Republicans just stood up and cheered.
All of that to give a tax cut to the richest people in America.
https://bsky.app/profile/larrycolvin.bsky.social/post/3mfprsxn6hc2d

2026-02-25 06:24:27 GMT

"They have killed American citizens in our streets."
Gov. Abigail Spanberger criticizes Trump's immigration enforcement in the Democratic response to the State of the Union.
https://bsky.app/profile/ms.now/post/3mfnwvrkp522h
READ NOW: https://www.ms.now/liveblog/state-of-the-union-2026-trump-live-updates

2026-02-24 08:38:07 GMT

A group of nearly 400 prominent Christian leaders called Donald Trump’s administration
“cruel and oppressive”
and accused the government of being corrupted by an aberrant form of Christianity,
in an Ash Wednesday statement
https://acalltochristians.org/

2026-02-21 23:12:37 GMT

MeidasTouch and MoveOn are hosting the "People’s State of the Union" on the National Mall as Dems boycott Trump’s address.
Hosted by Katie Phang and Joy Reid, it will feature lawmakers alongside federal workers, immigrants, and Americans impacted by Trump’s policies.
Watch on YouTube.
https://bsky.app/profile/meidastouch.com/post/3mf5hlj3a6s2j

2026-02-10 03:35:32 GMT

Three members of Congress say
the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr,
lied during his Senate confirmation hearings
in response to newly revealed emails that undermine his testimony that a trip he took to Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
The governor of Hawaii,
a medical doctor who responded to the crisis, also spoke out
– saying that the disclosure of the emails by the Guardian and the Associated Press show
Kennedy misled the Senate
Wand that he should step down.
Kennedy, a lawyer and longtime anti-vaccine activist before his appointment as health secretary,
was asked about the trip several times during two days of confirmation hearings last year.
He repeatedly denied that his reason for going there in June 2019 had anything to do with vaccines.
But the records show staff at the US embassy and the United Nations wrote emails shortly before Kennedy’s visit saying he was visiting because of his concerns about vaccine safety.
Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak
that sickened thousands and killed 83 people, mostly children under age five.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/09/rfk-jr-samoa-trip-senate-confirmation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-02-01 06:13:25 GMT

Republican messaging, after intentionally jacking up people’s health insurance costs to insane levels,
has shifted towards “uhhhh we hate insurance companies now, why are they so mean to you.”
Voters across the board are smart enough to see through that

2026-01-29 03:48:21 GMT

Germany has issued a travel advisory to its citizens travelling to the United States,
citing risks linked to immigration enforcement and public-order situations
https://www.newsweek.com/germany-issues-formal-travel-advisory-for-us-11421830

2026-01-21 07:19:19 GMT

The real reason people move to red states
The “U-Haul index” does not prove a point -- or at least the point the WaPo Editorial Board makes.
Yes, people are moving from more expensive to less expensive areas,
but why are those areas more expensive?
Many factors play into the calculation, but one is obvious and significant:
Real estate is more expensive where people want to live.
Tax rates by themselves don’t make real estate expensive;
ultimately, desirability does.
 A simple comparison shows that housing vacancies are higher in the destinations than in the places people are leaving
(e.g., vacancy rates of 15 percent in Florida vs. 8 percent in Massachusetts).
And, as expected,
prices are lower in the destinations.
That is how markets work;
people leave more desirable places for less desirable places where they can afford real estate.  In other words:
the exact opposite of what the WaPo editorial argues.
 -- Bill Cusmano,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/16/lonely-people-food-pyramid-spider/

2026-01-21 03:18:47 GMT

Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency may have⚠️ accessed and shared Social Security numbers
-- in an effort to help an advocacy group🔥 “overturn election results in certain States” last year,
according to court documents.
The revelation, which was first reported by Politico, comes as part of a series of corrections to previous testimony by top Social Security Administration officials
related to legal battles over DOGE’s access to Social Security data.
Neither the two DOGE members,
nor the advocacy group, are named in the court documents.
In March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of the DOGE team at the Social Security Administration (SSA)
“with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired,”
Elizabeth Shapiro, a Justice Department official, wrote in the court documents.
“The advocacy group’s stated aim was to ⚠️find evidence of voter fraud 🔥and to overturn election results in certain States,”
said Shapiro.
Shapiro wrote that after these communications, one of the DOGE members, as an SSA employee,
👉signed and sent a “Voter Data Agreement” with the advocacy group.
⛔️The DOGE members may have accessed private information that was ruled to be off-limits by a court at the time, and shared data on unapproved “third-party” servers.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/20/trump-administration-admits-doge-may-have-misused-americans-social-security-data/

2026-01-20 23:17:24 GMT

ICE Details a New Minnesota-Based Detention Network That Spans 5 States
Internal ICE planning documents propose spending up to $50 million on a privately run network capable of shipping immigrants in custody hundreds of miles across the Upper Midwest
https://www.wired.com/story/ice-detention-network-minnesota-5-states/

2026-01-20 22:59:48 GMT

Trump's Negation of NATO
Murder in Minneapolis
Violence in Venezuela
Just to distract from Epstein
Enough Already
https://www.democracynow.org/2026/1/20/trump_epstein

2026-01-20 15:28:48 GMT

The Justice Department is considering loosening a slate of gun regulations as it seeks to bolster support from MAGA gun nuts
 Some of the changes are expected to ease restrictions on the private sale of guns and loosen regulations on shipping firearms.
 Other changes to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulations under consideration would change the types of firearms that can be imported and make licensing fees refundable.
Officials are also expected to change the form required to purchase guns to have applicants list their biological sex at birth.
-- The current form asks applicants to just list their sex.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/19/trump-justice-department-gun-regulations-atf/

2026-01-20 15:15:04 GMT

Labor unions, community leaders and faith groups are calling for an #economic #blackout in Minnesota-on Friday
to protest the surge of federal immigration agents in the state
and mourn Renee Good.
Organizers are urging Minnesotans not to work, shop or go to school.
The Trump administration has dispatched some 3,000 federal agents to the state,
in what it claims amounts to its largest enforcement operation thus far,
amid a national crackdown on immigration.
More than 2,400 people in Minnesota have been arrested in recent weeks.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot Good, 37, in Minneapolis earlier this month.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/20/ice-immigrarion-minnesota-economic-protest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-01-20 07:03:39 GMT

We might think of the 1963 March on Washington when we talk about organizing and civic change
-- but smaller networks are equally important.
Find many small groups of people you trust,
as small as 2-5 other people.
Use encrypted communications,
like Signal.
Meet in person and break bread,
if you can, building trust slowly.
Be a bridge-builder between trusted colleagues, where appropriate.
Appreciate the beauty of all that can be achieved with quiet information sharing amongst a few of the right people.
It's tempting to want to go big or grab headlines,
but you are just as likely to make a big impact by focusing on solving important, discrete problems with a small number of trusted colleagues.
Set goals and timelines, and focus on outcomes.
https://america2.news/what-to-do-when-there-is-nothing-to-be-done/

2026-01-20 02:45:57 GMT

The United States is a global superpower,
and its military trains for war in every domain.
During my years as a military educator, I saw American officers wrestle with any number of scenarios designed to challenge their thinking and force them to adapt to surprises.
One case we never considered, however, was how to betray and attack our own allies.
We did not ask what to do if the president becomes a threatening megalomaniac who tells one of our oldest friends, Norway,
that because the Nobel Committee in Oslo refuses to give him a trophy,
he no longer feels
“an obligation to think purely of Peace”
and can instead turn his mind toward planning to wage war against NATO.
As my colleague Anne Applebaum wrote today, Donald Trump’s threatening message to the Norwegian prime minister should, in any responsible democracy,
force the rest of the U.S. political system to act to control him.
The president is talking about an invasion that would require
“citizens of a treaty ally,” as she put it,
“to become American against their will,”
all because he
“now genuinely lives in a different reality.”
And yet neither Congress nor the sycophants in the White House seem willing to stop him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/us-military-trump-greenland/685677/

2026-01-20 01:45:31 GMT

Dozens of unions, community and faith organizations are calling on every Minnesotan to take a stand on January 23rd.
The ICE “surge” that cost the life of Renee Nicole Good is violating the Constitutional and human rights of Americans and our neighbors.
On January 23rd there will be a unified, statewide pause in economic activity.
We are demanding:
🔸ICE must leave Minnesota now.
🔸The officer who killed Good must be held legally accountable.
🔸No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming Congressional budget -- and ICE should be investigated for human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.
🔸We call upon MN and National Companies to become "4th Amendment businesses",
cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds.
https://maydaystrong.org/iceoutmn

2026-01-20 00:59:33 GMT

Dr. Gladys West,
the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology,
has died. She passed away Saturday, surrounded by her loving family. She was 95.
Born into poverty on a Virginia farm during the Jim Crow era, West grew up in a segregated South where opportunity was scarce.
Through determination and extraordinary academic talent,
she graduated first in her high school class and earned a scholarship to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University).
She received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1952 and went on to earn a master’s degree in 1955.
In 1956, West began working as a mathematician at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia.
She was only the second African American woman hired at the base and one of just four African American employees at the time.
What followed was a career that would quietly change the world.
Over many years, Jane Plitt, founder and board chair of the Alexandria-based "National Center for Women’s Innovations" (NCWI), made it her mission to put Gladys West on the map
—quite literally.
West’s story became the centerpiece of NCWI’s inaugural work,
culminating in a lavish gala celebrating her 93rd birthday on October 27, 2023.
Emceed by Deborah Roberts, the evening showcased West’s extraordinary contributions,
with West herself declaring,
“This is the best day of my life.”
https://thezebra.org/2026/01/18/dr-gladys-west-mathematician-whose-work-made-gps-possible-dies-at-95/

2026-01-19 23:31:34 GMT

Call your reps! https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-budget-ice-defund/
Demand that they block any DHS appropriations bill or Continuing Resolution (CR) that maintains funding for ICE.
This lawless and violent agency must be defunded and dissolved for good.
https://bsky.app/profile/altcdc.altgov.info/post/3mcspzlq6vk2b

2026-01-19 22:02:16 GMT

Strong geomagnetic storm in place!
Northern lights already visible from the Alps.
This is a webcam in the Matterhorn area
Https://zbag.roundshot.com/matterhornglacierparadise/#/
#nevent1q…zsqz

2026-01-19 21:40:35 GMT

- reply

@nprofile…l70y
The day after Dr. King's murder,
almost no one in our high school had anything to say about this historic event
— no shock, no sorrow, no outrage.
@nprofile…eymu unroll please

2026-01-19 21:15:29 GMT

Nothing brings tech titans together like taxes.
This week, as the specter of a California “#billionaire #tax” ballot initiative gained momentum,
the moguls grew furious.
The outrage reached a fever pitch on X,
where the following scenarios were predicted, should the initiative be approved in November:
🔸The next great tech company will be built in China,
🔸Anduril founder Palmer Luckey could be “screwed for life,”
🔸and (should you believe “All-In” host David Friedberg)
California will slide into “the darkest of human fantasy
— socialism.”
♦️But what does the proposal actually say? Who would have to pay up? Is it time to start addressing your neighbors as “comrade”?
Here’s a cheat sheet to cut through the panic.
♦️What is this tax measure?
The Billionaire Tax Act is a ballot initiative aimed for the November election that would create a one-time
5% tax on California residents with a net worth of more than $1 billion
— that’s about 200 people.
They could choose to pay the bill all at once
or spread the payments over five years. (Installment payments would accrue interest.)
Should the measure pass, the tax is projected to raise roughly $100 billion,
which would be placed into a special fund.
Of that, 90% would go toward state-funded healthcare services;
the legislation says this is necessary to offset recent Republican budget cuts to Medicare.
The remaining funds would go for food assistance and education programs.
♦️Whoa, is this thing for real?
Hold your horses. We’ve got a long way to go:
The initiative was submitted in October, but it will need to earn 874,641 signatures
— about 4% of registered voters in California
— to qualify for the November ballot.
If it appears on the ballot, it will need a simple majority to pass.
♦️Who’s pushing for it?
The proposal is sponsored by the "Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West",
a powerful union with more than 120,000 members.
It also has support from Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley’s representative in Congress.
“A billionaire tax is good for American innovation which depends on a strong and thriving American democracy,”
Khanna wrote on X.
A Democrat, Khanna has enjoyed wide support from tech founders.
Venture capitalist David Sacks threw him a fundraiser in 2023,
and Peter Thiel donated to his campaign in 2011.
So Khanna’s support for the initiative has ruffled some feathers in the Valley.
♦️Who really, really doesn’t want it?
Those 200 billionaires, of course.
But also Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has begun raising money for a committee to oppose the ballot measure, according to The New York Times.
“You can’t isolate yourself from the 49 other states,” Newsom said
this month.
“We’re in a competitive environment.
You’ve got to be pragmatic about it.”
♦️Wait, what about paper billionaires
— those people who are worth 9 zeros only because of startup equity?
This is one of the main complaints from Silicon Valley:
In the past five years, many AI startups have been valued in the billions of dollars.
But tech is fickle, and today’s princess could be tomorrow’s toad.
Any of the darlings could fail in the next few years
— but if the tax measure passes,
the founders would conceivably still be on the hook for millions.
The initiative makes an effort to account for this possibility,
with some fancy math about valuations.
But none of that soothes Silicon Valley.
“If it passes, the net effect will only be the destruction of the SV startup ecosystem,”
Replit founder Amjad Masad wrote on X.
(Replit is valued at more than $3 billion.)
Khanna has tried to address those concerns.
“I oppose capital gains on unrealized gains,” he wrote.
“I support a 1-2 percent wealth tax on established billionaires
with workarounds for founders who have illiquid assets and unprofitable companies.”
https://sfstandard.com/2025/12/30/california-s-billionaire-tax-explained/

2026-01-19 20:40:11 GMT

If police can come to your door in the middle of the night and put you behind bars
based on nothing more than an entirely false and contrived interpretation of a Facebook post,
no one’s First Amendment rights are safe
#nevent1q…l07m

2026-01-19 20:38:31 GMT

On Sept. 21, the police came for Larry Bushart.
They handcuffed him and hauled him away in the dead of night.
He spent 37 days in jail while held on a $2 million bond
— an amount the retired police officer could not afford.
It’s the sort of treatment one expects for accused murderers and thieves.
But Larry’s only “crime”?
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, he posted a meme on Facebook
quoting President Trump’s remarks about a different shooting a year earlier and in a different state.
“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” said Larry.
“But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”
Today, with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression,
Larry filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sheriff Nick Weems and Perry County, Tennessee,
for violating his constitutional rights in retaliation for his protected speech.
https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-ex-cop-sues-after-spending-37-days-jail-sharing-meme-following-charlie-kirk-murder

2026-01-19 19:37:13 GMT

Catholic personnel in the US military could in good conscience consider disobeying orders to attack Greenland,
according to the bishop responsible for their pastoral care.
The Archbishop of the Military Services #Timothy #Broglio said personnel
“could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something that’s morally questionable”
if the US acted on President Donald Trump’s threats of military action to take control of Greenland.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday program
on 18 January,
Archbishop Broglio said it would be “very difficult for a soldier or a marine or a sailor by himself to disobey an order such as that”,
but “within the realm of their own conscience it would be morally acceptable to disobey”.
In December, the archbishop issued a statement condemning a “second strike” by US forces on an alleged drug trafficking vessel in the Caribbean,
insisting that “the moral principle forbidding the intentional killing of noncombatants is inviolable”.
He told Sunday he was concerned as a pastor to military personnel that US policy ignored
“the proper way and the moral way to respond to these situations”.
“Men and women under my charge were being forced to engage in situations that were not necessary,” he said,
referring to the strikes in the Caribbean.
Any action against Greenland, he continued,
“doesn’t seem necessary,
doesn’t seem acceptable”.
“Greenland is a territory of Denmark [and] Denmark is an ally,” he said.
“It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/broglio-us-personnel-could-disobey-immoral-orders-against-greenland/

2026-01-19 18:14:21 GMT

The Trump administration is preparing to upend a foundational safeguard of the Department of Justice,
by proposing a rule that would effectively bar DOJ attorneys from recusing themselves from cases due to conflicts of interest.
The rule, expected to be filed in the Federal Register as early as this week,
would grant Attorney General Pam Bondi final authority over all recusals.
Under the proposal, career prosecutors and political appointees alike would be required to remain on assigned matters unless personally excused by the attorney general.
There will be a period for public comment once the rule appears in the Federal Register.
Legal experts warn the move would dismantle a century-old norm designed to insulate federal prosecutions from political pressure and personal bias.
Current DOJ standards require attorneys to step aside from cases that present even the appearance of a conflict of interest -- a principle codified in federal statute and reinforced through decades of internal ethics rules.
The proposed policy would reverse that presumption entirely,
-- transforming recusal from a duty into a privilege controlled at the top of the department.
“The President believes that conflicts have been used as a weapon by the deep state to slow-walk his agenda,” said one administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This rule ensures that the people hired to do a job actually do it.”
Critics counter that the change is tailored to prevent ethical objections from sidelining loyalists tasked with pursuing politically sensitive prosecutions.
They point specifically to recently appointed special attorneys such as Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan, whose roles have already triggered judicial scrutiny.
The proposed rule marks the latest escalation in a broader effort to consolidate control over the Justice Department during Trump’s second term, which began in January 2025
https://meidasnews.com/news/doj-moves-to-eliminate-attorney-recusals-in-sweeping-power-shift

2026-01-19 18:04:50 GMT

A decade into our collective Donald Trump nightmare,
most of the reality-based population has given up on hoping MAGA voters will wake up and see the light.
We’ve come to realize that he could eat a live kitten on TV and they, unwilling to admit his critics were right all along,
would argue that kitten was “antifa” and liberals are the ones who are stupid for not seeing the threat the kitten posed to our safety.
I predicted this miserable state of affairs back in 2017, after interviewing psychology experts on cognitive dissonance.
For Trump voters, the pain of saying “I was wrong” is too great.
They would rather burn the country to the ground than accept fault.
If anything, the worse Trump acts the harder they cling to him because the psychic price of saying “liberals were right all along” grows steeper.
The situation can feel hopeless, especially in the face of events like the recent killing of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.
A woman is dead because of Trump’s racist obsessions;
children have lost their mother.
But all his voters seem capable of doing is protecting their own egos by telling lies to justify the indefensible.
Most them will go to their graves with this sin on their consciences, protesting until the end that they were good people even as they defended kidnapping, murder and fascism.
But there is a small ray of light in all this darkness.
Polling suggests that a small but important number of Trump voters are trying to pull an exit,
abandoning the coalition quietly rather than continuing the miserable task of pretending what he’s doing is okay
https://www.salon.com/2026/01/19/some-trump-voters-are-sneaking-away/

2026-01-19 17:14:45 GMT

When I took my post as secretary general of the Council of Europe just over a year ago,
I did not think that I would ever have to write about the possibility of the United States taking military action against a member state.
Yet here we are.
Donald Trump has vowed to make Greenland
— a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, which is a member of the Council of Europe and a founding member of NATO
— part of the United States, and that he will do so “the easy way” or “the hard way.”
His statements about the territory have strained relations between states
and called into question the rights, consent and democratic choices of Greenland’s people.
For now, this remains talk.
But recent events in Venezuela show how quickly words can harden into action.
Trump has also said that he is constrained only by his “own morality,”
not international law,
brushing aside the legal order established in the aftermath of World War II.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/opinion/greenland-trump-europe.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

2026-01-19 15:57:49 GMT

Human Rights groups warn an immigration detention camp at Fort Bliss has reached a “breaking point”
Human rights experts are sounding the alarm about living conditions at the immigration detention camp that houses hundreds of people.
“Fort Bliss is a human and civil rights disaster,” said Eunice Cho Senior Counsel for the American Civil Liberty Union’s prison program.
The ACLU and other organizations allege physical abuse, unsanitary conditions and medical neglect at the massive tent facility operated by a private contractor on military property.
The amount of violence we have heard about officers using against detained people is creating a crisis situation, ACLU Texas attorney Savannah Kumar said.
People at the tent facility have given sworn declarations detailing alleged abusive treatment, according to the ACLU.
“Officers have crushed detained people’s testicles, slammed people to the ground, stomped on them and punched their faces. Officers have beaten people even when they are already restrained and handcuffed,” Kumar said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said allegations of inhumane conditions are “categorically false” in an emailed statement.
Nearly 3000 people from across the country are held in the camp. Future plans are to increase capacity to 5,000.
Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, pushed back against the allegations, saying: “No detainees are being beaten or abused. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, access to showers, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
ICE opened the tent facility named Camp East Montana in mid-August to provide extra detention space as the Trump administration works to carry out mass deportations. The federal government awarded the Virginia-based company Acquisitions Logics LLC $1.2 billion to operate the sprawling camp. The ACLU, in a letter, urged the federal government to shut it down.
Along with alleged abuse, human rights advocates say people detained in the tent facility don’t get enough food and what they’re served is often spoiled leading to food-borne illnesses.
“These conditions force individuals to experience widespread hunger, debilitating illness and significant weight loss,” said Charlotte Weiss, staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights project in El Paso.
Weiss said it’s especially concerning for people with diabetes or other medical issues who have special dietary needs and have experienced long delays in getting their meals.
Immigrant advocates also allege medical neglect that includes delayed or denied care and medication. ICE confirmed the death of a 48-year-old Guatemalan man in custody at the camp. Francisco Gaspar-Andres died in December after he was hospitalized for a medical condition.
“From the moment they were notified of his health crisis, ICE medical staff ensured he had constant, high-quality care,” according to a news release.
The poor living conditions and alleged abuse are designed to force people detained at the facility to voluntarily leave the U.S. rather than challenge deportation, say Human Rights advocates.
“It is cruel. It is inhumane and it’s designed to make people, force people to elf deport, leave and flee which would be called forced migration,” said Marisa Limon-Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
Limon-Garza, a native El Pasoan, said using department of defense land for the massive detention center is “completely out of alignment with the shared values that our community holds.”
Many in El Paso have close ties to Fort Bliss and generations of veterans call the border city home.
On Saturday, area residents plan to hold a “silent protest” at ICE offices near the tent facility. Organizers with the group, Indivisible The 915, ask demonstrators to wear black and hold signs that describe the conditions inside the camp.
https://www.ktep.org/2025-12-12/human-rights-groups-warn-immigration-detention-camp-at-fort-bliss-reaching-breaking-point

2026-01-18 23:05:35 GMT

Legendary rocker
#Bruce #Springsteen delivered an impassioned condemnation of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement
during a surprise 75-minute performance Saturday night
at the "Light of Day" benefit concert in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Springsteen dedicated his 1978 anthem "The Promised Land" to #Renee #Nicole #Good, a mother of three and American citizen who was fatally shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on January 7.
The singer slammed the administration's
"#gestapo #tactics" and echoed Democratic Minneapolis Mayor #Jacob #Frey's call for ICE agents to leave the city, telling the sold-out crowd of approximately 1,500 at the Count Basie Center for the Arts that
💯 "ICE should get the f*** out of Minneapolis," according to video viewed from the concert.
https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/bruce-springsteen-slams-gestapo-tactics-demands-ice-leave-minneapolis-11379279#Echobox=1768775725

2026-01-18 07:03:13 GMT

For centuries, people believed ice was slippery because pressure and friction melted a thin film of water.
But new research from Saarland University reveals that this
long-standing explanation is wrong.
Instead, the slipperiness comes from the subtle interaction of molecular dipoles between ice and surfaces like shoes or skis.
These microscopic electrical forces disorder the crystal structure of ice,
creating a thin liquid layer even at temperatures near absolute zero.
The discovery overturns nearly 200 years of scientific thought and has wide implications for physics and winter sports alike
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250912081323.htm

2026-01-18 04:56:10 GMT

A damning new study could put AI companies on the defensive.
In it, Stanford and Yale researchers found compelling evidence that AI models are actually copying all that data,
not “learning” from it.
Specifically, four prominent LLMs
— OpenAI’s GPT-4.1, Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, xAI’s Grok 3, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet
— happily reproduced lengthy excerpts from popular
— and protected
— works, with a stunning degree of accuracy.
They found that Claude outputted “entire books near-verbatim” with an accuracy rate of 95.8 percent.
Gemini reproduced the novel “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” with an accuracy of 76.8 percent,
while Claude reproduced George Orwell’s “1984” with a higher than 94 percent accuracy compared to the original
— and still copyrighted
— reference material.
“While many believe that LLMs do not memorize much of their training data, recent work shows that substantial amounts of copyrighted text can be extracted from open-weight models,”
the researchers wrote.
Some of these reproductions required the researchers to jailbreak the models with a technique called "Best-of-N",
which essentially bombards the AI with different iterations of the same prompt.
(Those kinds of workarounds have already been used by OpenAI to defend itself in a lawsuit filed by the New York Times,
with its lawyers arguing that “normal people do not use OpenAI’s products in this way.”)
The implications of the latest findings could be substantial
as copyright lawsuits play out in courts across the country.
As The Atlantic‘s Alex Reisner points out,
the results further undermine the AI industry’s argument that LLMs “learn” from these texts
-- instead of storing information and recalling it later.
It’s evidence that “may be a massive legal liability for AI companies”
and “potentially cost the industry billions of dollars in copyright-infringement judgments
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-industry-recall-copyright-books

2026-01-18 01:03:45 GMT

Newly sworn-in Virginia Governor #Abigail #Spanberger signed
10 executive orders in her first official act at the Virginia State Capitol.
Three of the orders target
✅reducing cost-of-living expenses for Virginia families,
✅bringing down healthcare costs
✅and making it easier to build more housing.
Other orders will impact⭐️ Virginia's public schools
and ⭐️the way police enforce some immigration laws.
"Today, we are responding to the moment.
We are setting the tone for what Virginians can expect over the next four years:
pragmatic leadership focused on lowering costs and delivering results," Spanberger said in a statement.
"My administration is getting to work on Day One to address the top-of-mind challenges facing families."
https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/abigail-spanberger-10-executive-orders-jan-17-2026

2026-01-17 22:47:55 GMT

America’s top trading partners are responding to Trump’s belligerent and unpredictable trade policies by taking their business elsewhere.
Canada broke with the United States Friday,
slashing its 100% import tax on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products, particularly canola seeds.
“It’s a huge declaration of realignment in Canada’s economic relations,”
said Edward Alden, who studies trade issues as senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The economic threat from the United States is now perceived by Canadians as far bigger than the economic threat from China.
So this is a big deal.’’
Canada has repeatedly been the target of Trump’s impulsive wrath.
In October, for instance, he said he was imposing a 10% tariff on Canadian imports as a reprisal for Ontario’s provincial government airing an advertisement that criticized the president’s go-to diplomatic tariff tool.
He didn’t follow through on the increase, but tariffs on on some key Canadian sectors like steel and aluminum remain.
But Friday’s deal with China is potentially perilous one for Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney,
who risks retribution from Trump on the eve of negotiations over the renewal of a North American trade pact that is crucial to Canadian businesses.
https://apnews.com/article/china-canada-trade-ev-trump-aa2904669445a9ea0b56ebe64f611928

2026-01-17 21:16:26 GMT

Trump’s threat against Minnesota this week is the latest example of how his administration has considered using arcane laws and legal arguments to enact his agenda.
In addition to the #InsurrectionAct, Trump officials have talked publicly about #suspending #due #process, a foundational constitutional principle.
Trump invoked the
#AlienEnemiesAct last year
to speed up deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
White House officials considered using it a second time to justify detaining people in Chicago, according to previously unreported Signal messages obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
The 1798 wartime law,
designed to combat an invasion or predatory incursion,
has only been used three times prior to this administration.
-- The last time was during World War II.
Opponents have aggressively fought the administration in court over these maneuvers.
This week, both Minnesota and Illinois filed lawsuits challenging the legality of Trump’s immigration enforcement.
The Illinois Attorney General’s Office alleged federal agents acted as “occupiers” instead of law enforcement during operations in the state last fall.
In separate cases, federal judges issued temporary restraining orders in both #Portland and #Chicago #Illinois, stopping the administration from sending National Guard troops into those cities.
A judge ordered troops out of #California in December, saying it violated the law.
And another judge has limited the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people.
In an interview with the New York Times, #Trump suggested the Insurrection Act could provide a work-around to legal rulings.
“Look, I’ve been stopped on some things,” he told the newspaper last week.
“Now, I will say, if I feel it’s important to invoke the Insurrection Act,
which I have the right to do,
that’s a different thing,
because then I have the right to do pretty much what I want to do.
But I haven’t done that.”
https://www.startribune.com/we-are-living-in-james-madisons-nightmare-how-trump-could-invoke-arcane-laws-to-dominate-in-minn/601564630

2026-01-17 20:46:03 GMT

A federal judge banned Los Angeles Police Department officers from using some so-called
"#less-#lethal" launchers at protests,
after finding that the department violated previous court restrictions by using such projectile weapons to disperse crowds at last summer's mass demonstrations against immigration enforcement.
In her ruling Wednesday,
U.S. District Judge #Consuelo B. #Marshall sided with a contempt motion filed by attorneys for
Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles.
That same day LAPD officials sent a department-wide memo announcing an immediate moratorium on the use of the 40-millimeter weapons in light of Marshall's ruling.
The memo advised those seeking further clarity to contact the department's risk management and legal affairs division.
"Accordingly, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY the 40mm SHALL NOT be used during any CROWD CONTROL situation,"
said the memo, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times.
A preliminary injunction handed down by Marshall in 2021 placed certain restrictionson the weapons' use,
including requiring specialized training for handlers;
the issuance of a warning before firing such weapons;
and restricting their use only to situations in which "the officer reasonably believes that a suspect is violently resisting arrest or poses an immediate threat of violence or physical harm."
The latest order halts the use of a weapon,
👉recognizable by its neon green handle,
that has been used by police during recent protests to clear crowds after demonstrations were declared unlawful.
💥The weapon launches projectiles the size of a mini soda can at speeds of more than 200 mph.
But attorneys for Black Lives Matters-L.A. argued that LAPD routinely flouted the injunction
— citing numerous apparent violations in their contempt motion.
Officers already were barred from firing their weapons from five feet away or closer,
or from targeting a person's head, groin or spine,
but attorneys argued that police repeatedly did so.
One lawyer said the department also seemed to be violating its own guidelines governing the
40-millimeter's use by
🔥shooting journalists and others in sensitive areas such as the head.
https://www.aol.com/news/federal-judge-bars-lapds-less-130000239.html

2026-01-17 20:13:07 GMT

Allegedly, the Navy used an aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump claimed,
without any evidence,
was smuggling drugs,
killing 11 people last September 1st-2nd.
Here are some insights into the aircraft most likely used.
https://bsky.app/profile/sevenstarhand.bsky.social/post/3mcbg5nvhhs2s
https://bsky.app/profile/sevenstarhand.bsky.social/post/3mcbg5nvhhs2s

2026-01-17 18:49:13 GMT

ICE Watch works
because it surrounds men seeking approval with people loudly expressing their disapproval.
The vast majority of men are only willing to engage in public violence if they feel like the people around them will approve of
— and reward them for
— that violence.
And the noise has the added benefit of drawing large crowds of bystanders who can quickly outnumber the ICE agents,
who then have to decide if they want to escalate a situation or perhaps abandon their activity altogether.
It can be hard to see the success of prevention efforts
because we can’t see inside the minds of people who changed their behavior.
But there are signs that ICE Watch is successfully
de-escalating violence in the Twin Cities.
That also means ICE Watch is a whole lot safer for observers
and the broader community
than it might have seemed the first time you saw a video full of bystanders with whistles
https://www.ms.now/opinion/minneapolis-ice-watch-protesters-violence-research

2026-01-17 18:37:46 GMT

New tariff just dropped.
Americans set to pay an additional 10% tax on all goods
from Germany,
the UK,
France,
the Netherlands,
Sweden,
Norway,
Denmark, and
Finland.
It starts in two weeks,
rising to 25% by June.
(Aside: A trade war with one EU country is a trade war with the entire EU).
https://bsky.app/profile/justinwolfers.bsky.social/post/3mcn52fsouj22

2026-01-17 17:38:02 GMT

Federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Willmar, Minn., on Jan. 15, hours after four agents ate lunch there.
A handful of bystanders blew whistles and shouted at agents as they detained the people.
“Would your mama be proud of you right now?”
one of the bystanders asked.
https://www.startribune.com/ice-agents-eat-at-small-town-mexican-restaurant-then-detain-workers/601565580

2026-01-17 17:10:43 GMT

“I find it breathtaking that ...
such high-level officers of our government
—Cabinet secretaries
—🔥conspired to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States,"
the Reagan-appointed federal judge said.
https://trib.al/j8xFtle
https://bsky.app/profile/newrepublic.com/post/3mcmwlax4wc23

2026-01-17 16:47:55 GMT

Two protesters have been #blinded by so-called “#less-#lethal” munitions deployed by federal officers during an anti-ICE protest last week in Santa Ana, California, according to reports.
The blindings come amid rising scrutiny of federal authorities’
"use-of-force policies",
after the fatal shooting of
Renee Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer set off nationwide protests.
Widely seen video recorded at the Santa Ana protest showed a 🔥homeland security agent shoot #Kaden #Rummler, 21,
in the face with a less-lethal
munition
at a distance of only a few feet.
Doctors found glass shards and plastic fragments in his skull
and a fragment of metal lodged just shy of his carotid artery.
Video also showed the federal officer drag Rummler several yards across the pavement and into a federal building after shooting him.
💥The shooting left him blind in his left eye.
“I can’t sneeze or cough because it’s dangerous,” Rummler told KTLA.
“They pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel out of my eye.”
“They said it was a miracle I survived,” he added.
Rummler is 5ft 1in tall and weighs 102 lbs, he said.
♦️A second person, 31-year-old
#Britain #Rodriguez,
described taking a similar close-range shot
to the face with a
"less-lethal" round
at the same protest,
🆘 saying
it felt like his
“eye exploded in my head”,
in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published on Friday.
The shooting appeared to take place at roughly the same time as the one that blinded Rummler.
Homeland security use-of-force policies describe
“uses of impact weapons to strike the neck or head”
👉as a form of “deadly force”.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment about the Santa Ana incidents.
But a DHS spokesperson,
Tricia McLaughlin, has described the protesters as a “a mob”, accusing them of throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks at federal officers.
-- Local police and media reports, however, said protesters threw only traffic cones.
🔸There is no evidence of anything being thrown at officers in the video of Rummler being shot.
About 150 people gathered last week for a procession and vigil honoring #Rene #Good at which the shootings took place.
The event culminated with a demonstration in front of a federal building used by ICE.
Orange county supervisor
Vicente Sarmiento
described the event as
“very peaceful”.
Attendees included local elected officials and
“many parents with strollers”, he said.
A handful of homeland security officers stood at the top of the steps to the federal building during the protest.
When protesters moved closer to them,
the officers confronted them, according to Sarmiento.
Videos of the shooting that blinded Rummler show him approaching the officers with a bullhorn after they grabbed another protester and dragged them up the stairs to detain them.
“I feel just outraged that some of our federal delegation and others are considering continuing to fund these federal agencies
that have now gone rogue and are no longer protecting us,
but are putting people in critical harm
– killing people and maiming people,”
Sarmiento said.
“I’m just really, really distressed.”
❌Crowd control is not a typical function for homeland security.
👉It is not clear why the federal officer chose to engage with protesters who were not the target of immigration enforcement
and who appeared to be demonstrating on public property,
outside the federal building.
Arizona State University criminologist Edward Maguire,
who has studied crowd control, did not observe the Santa Ana protest,
but said he had noted
⚠️recent DHS actions elsewhere “appear inconsistent with basic principles of crowd management and de-escalation”.
“Decades of research show that when law enforcement responds to crowds and protests in this way,
it tends to escalate tension and conflict
and increases the risk of harm to both officers and civilians,”
Maguire wrote in an email.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/17/protesters-blind-us-federal-agents?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-01-17 07:03:57 GMT

Trump is selling pardons every week
to people who pay $1-2 million to his PAC
and is approaching 2,000 corrupt and disgusting pardons
less than a year into his term,
but yeah “no one is above the law.”
-- Ron Fillipkowski
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3mclmaib42s2y

2026-01-17 06:38:04 GMT

#Peter #Yazzie told ICE agents where they could locate his
Certificate of Indian Blood,
birth certificate
and other documents proving that he was both a U.S. citizen and Native American.
It made no difference.
They aggressively placed him in the back of their vehicle and drove away early the morning of Monday, Jan. 12.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2026/01/16/ice-detained-navajo-man-peoria-arizona/88171195007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=false&gca-epti=z11xx65p118950c118950u003065d00----v11xx65&gca-ft=35&gca-ds=sophi

2026-01-16 03:03:05 GMT

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed a class action Thursday against the Trump administration,
accusing immigration agents of racially profiling members of Minnesota’s Somali and Latino community
throughout the ongoing surge of federal enforcement in the Twin Cities.
“Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration has increased its deployment of federal forces by the thousands,”
the ACLU said in a press release.
“Masked federal agents in military gear have ignored basic human rights in their enforcement activity against Minnesotans,
especially targeting Somali and Latino communities.”
The ACLU named the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies and officials as defendants
and describes a “startling pattern of abuse”
through the federal government’s #police-#state #tactics that is
“fundamentally altering civil life in the Twin Cities.”
https://www.courthousenews.com/aclu-sues-trump-administration-over-unconstitutional-stops-arrests-of-minnesotans-by-federal-agents/

2026-01-16 01:11:05 GMT

A federal judge Thursday decried what he said were “breathtaking” constitutional violations by senior Trump administration officials and called the president an “authoritarian” who expects everyone in the executive branch to “toe the line absolutely.” In remarks laced with outrage and disbelief, U.S. District Judge William Young said Donald Trump and top officials have a “fearful approach” to freedom of speech that would seek to “exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.” Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, leveled the searing critique during a hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate remedies for the administration’s detentions of pro-Palestinian students last year. The judge had ruled in September that senior administration officials engaged in an illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.  On Thursday, he again denounced the administration’s conduct in unusually stark terms. “Talking straight here,” he said. “The big problem in this case is that the cabinet secretaries and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment.”  Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to deprive people of their rights, Young said. “The secretary of state,” he noted, his voice full of incredulity, “the senior cabinet officer in our history involved in this.” Spokespersons for the White House, Noem and Rubio did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, last year called Young a “craven” judge who was “smearing and demonizing federal law enforcement.” The government actions at the core of the case date to early March, when the Trump administration launched a campaign to detain and deport noncitizen students at U.S. universities who had been active in opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. Though not accused of any crime, those arrested spent weeks confined in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, at times hundreds of miles from where they lived, before being released on bail. The plaintiffs in the case are the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. The groups of scholars accused the administration of having an unconstitutional policy of deporting people based on their political views, a policy intended to chill the free-speech rights of their members.  The trial last summer focused on the targeting of five noncitizen students and scholars: Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung and Mohsen Mahdawi, who were students at Columbia University; Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University; and Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University. All were arrested except Chung, who obtained a restraining order before ICE could find her. The other four were released on the orders of federal judges, but the Trump administration is still trying to deport them. On Thursday, an appellate court in Philadelphia overturned a lower-court ruling in Khalil’s case on jurisdictional grounds, raising the possibility that he could be rearrested. The president and other officials hailed last year’s detentions as part of a fight against antisemitism, alleging without presenting evidence that the targeted students promoted violence or were pro-Hamas. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/01/15/protesters-trump-administration-free-speech-violations/

2026-01-16 00:47:17 GMT

"Terrible things are happening outside.
Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.
Families are torn apart.
Men, women, and children are separated.
Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared."
- Diary of Anne Frank
January 13, 1943
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/115/902/017/274/044/295/original/76fddc5e753ebe76.jpeg

2026-01-16 00:00:22 GMT

Christian nationalist pastor says that wives must submit to their husbands
with "a sense of fear, and trembling, and awe ...
not only in things she agrees with, but in everything":
"She belongs to him. He owns her."
https://bsky.app/profile/rightwingwatch.bsky.social/post/3mcif5i3x6s2l

2026-01-15 19:03:59 GMT

Trump is keeping proceeds from the first sale of Venezuelan oil
in an offshore bank account based in Qatar, according to reporting from Semafor.
The sale was worth $500 million.
This unprecedented move is yet another middle finger to Venezuelan sovereignty
and once again raises questions about the president’s cozy relationship with the Qatari government.
“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls
so that he can sell assets seized by the American military,”
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told Semafor.
“That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to.”
That seems to be exactly what Trump is doing.
Trump has vowed to “indefinitely” control Venezuela’s oil,
claiming the proceeds will be given back to the U.S. and Venezuela.
Still, it remains unclear just how that money held in Qatar will benefit the Venezuelan people the administration claims to care about.
https://newrepublic.com/post/205327/trump-money-venezuelan-oil-sale-account

2026-01-15 16:25:41 GMT

The euphoria on the right after the unjustifiable kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro has ended an era of illusion.
No more is Donald Trump’s movement interested in posturing for the credulous as restorers of peace.
No more is there outward deception or internal struggle over the meaning of Trumpist foreign policy.
There is only violent, extractive dominance politics abroad
to match violent, extractive dominance politics at home.
America First is moving closer to its final form.
https://zeteo.com/p/imperialism-is-inevitable-well-so

2026-01-15 16:23:01 GMT

The immediate causes of the #Iran #protests were a combination of worsening government #austerity and a dramatic #currency crisis,
the falling value of the rial pushing domestic #inflation up even beyond the 40% it had reached earlier in the year.
⭐️But that shock has to be understood as the final break after decades of cumulative failure.
For Iran, the evidence strongly suggests that #climate breakdown is the deep cause of its #water #shortages:
average temperatures in its cities between 1990 and 2022 have risen about twice as fast as the global rate, according to research from Iran referenced by Cole.
The impact of those rising temperatures has been amplified by the #mismanagement of Iran’s water supplies, in a decades-long failure under successive governments that long predates the 1979 revolution.
https://zeteo.com/p/the-economic-roots-of-irans-protests?internal=true

2026-01-15 15:46:06 GMT

Trump is threatening to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military to Minnesota.
To learn more about the act and its limits, check out this explainer from @brennancenter.org
https://bsky.app/profile/startribune.com/post/3mchqk5bcie2z

2026-01-15 03:50:03 GMT

This should be getting more attention
Lawsuit: DHS wants
“unlimited subpoena authority”
to unmask ICE critics
DHS is weirdly using import/export rules to expand its authority to identify online critics.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/instagram-user-fights-dhs-for-the-right-to-post-ice-sightings-anonymously/

2026-01-15 00:14:22 GMT

The president of #Oglala #Sioux Tribe in South Dakota on Tuesday called for the #immediate #release of tribal members who were detained at a homeless encampment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota last week.
“The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s memorandum makes clear that ⭐️‘tribal citizens are not aliens’ and are ♦️‘categorically outside immigration jurisdiction,’”
President Star Comes Out said.
“Enrolled tribal members are citizens of the United States by statute
and citizens of the Oglala Sioux Nation by treaty.”
Three of the four Oglala Sioux Tribe members who were arrested in Minneapolis on Friday have been transferred to an ICE facility at Fort Snelling,
President Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement released with a memorandum sent to federal immigration authorities.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-minneapolis-tribal-citizens-immigration-detention-29ac43de85569b80bd64875388097ab6

2026-01-14 03:58:43 GMT

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Monday that Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot #Grok will be integrated into Pentagon networks,
including classified systems,
as part of a broader initiative to
💥incorporate AI technology across the military.
Speaking at SpaceX headquarters in South Texas, Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department this month
and will join Google's generative AI engine in operating within the Pentagon's infrastructure.
Newsweek reached out to the Pentagon via email on Monday for comment.
The announcement comes days after Grok drew international criticism for generating highly #sexualized #deepfake images
-- without user consent.
The U.K.'s independent online safety watchdog Ofcom launched a formal investigation into X on Monday,
citing "deeply concerning reports" of the chatbot creating sexualized images of women, girls and children.
Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked the platform entirely.
Content analysis firm Copyleaks reported that Grok is generating
💥"roughly one nonconsensual sexualized image per minute."
Multiple high-profile women,
including Princess Kate and conservative influencer
Ashley St. Clair,
have been targeted.
St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk's children, told the BBC that Grok had generated sexualized photos of her as a child.
https://www.newsweek.com/hegseth-announces-grok-access-to-classified-pentagon-networks-11349020

2026-01-14 03:45:03 GMT

Since November, a total of 35 people across California have been poisoned by mushrooms,
leading to three people receiving liver transplants
in addition to the three deaths.
Health officials in Sonoma County reported the latest death last week.
Michael Stacey, Sonoma’s interim health officer, attributed the cases and deaths to
an extraordinary boom in the prevalence of death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides),
noting that in an average year the state sees fewer than five mushroom poisoning cases.
“Early rains and a mild fall have led to profusion of the toxic death cap mushrooms in Northern California,”
Stacey said in the announcement.
“Eating wild mushrooms gathered without expert identification can be unsafe.
Some harmful varieties closely resemble edible mushrooms,
even to experienced foragers.”
In an interview with Ars Technica on Monday,
Craig Smollin,
medical director for the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System (CPCS) and an emergency medicine professor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center,
said that
death cap mushrooms tend to flourish between November and March in the state,
though not usually to this extent.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/01/wild-mushrooms-keep-killing-people-in-california-3-dead-35-poisoned/

2026-01-13 15:45:05 GMT

Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns.
An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold,
wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later.
A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed;
she then appeared to pass out.
An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter.
The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.
After George Floyd’s murder by a police officer six years ago in Minneapolis
— less than a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good last week
— police departments and federal agencies banned chokeholds and other moves that can restrict breathing or blood flow.
🔥But those tactics are back, now at the hands of agents conducting Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Examples are scattered across social media.
♦️ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these
life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters.
The agents are usually masked, their identities secret.
The government won’t say if any of them have been punished.
♦️In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “unless deadly force is authorized.”
♦️About two dozen videos show officers kneeling on people’s necks or backs or keeping them face down on the ground while already handcuffed.
Such tactics are not prohibited outright but are often discouraged, including by federal trainers, in part because using them for a prolonged time risks asphyxiation.
https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens

2026-01-13 01:22:42 GMT

‘No fascist USA!’:
Baltimore marches against ICE
https://therealnews.com/baltimore-marches-against-ice

2026-01-12 20:36:12 GMT

GoFundMe Ignores its Own Rules
by Hosting a Legal-Defense Fund for the ICE Agent Who Killed Renee Good
https://www.wired.com/story/gofundme-ice-jonathan-ross-renee-good-fundraiser/

2026-01-12 20:01:05 GMT

Federal immigration officers have started using Renee Good’s death to threaten more U.S. citizens.
A video posted to Reddit showed a screaming ICE agent repeatedly threatening to kill a man who was sitting in his car, asking how he didn’t “learn from what just happened.”
In the two-minute clip, a masked agent wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves hat approached the vehicle already furious, while the driver rolled down his window.
“Stop fucking following us, you are impeding operations, this is the United States federal government,” the officer shouted.
“I live over here, I got to get to my house,” the driver replied calmly.
“This is your warning, alright? Go home to your kids, go home to your kids. This is your last warning. I won’t arrest you,” the officer threatened, before stomping away.
When the driver tried to engage another agent on the other side of his car, the agent urged him not to “make a bad decision.”
“I’m not making any bad decision, I’m peaceful. I serve the Lord, not a draft-dodging coward,” the driver said.
“You’re not gonna like the outcome of this, sir. I guarantee you that,” the first officer said, circling back. “I guarantee you’re not gonna like the outcome. Go home to your children. It’s Sunday. It is Sunday. You did not learn from what just happened?”
“Learn what?” the driver asked, but the officer did not elaborate, and the group of federal agents appeared to leave without arresting anyone.
It seems clear, however, that the agent was referring to Renee Good, the U.S. citizen who was shot multiple times by an ICE agent last week after federal officers surrounded her vehicle.
While the Trump administration initially justified the deadly use of force by claiming Good was a “domestic terrorist,” Donald Trump most recently claimed her death was the result of being “disrespectful” of law enforcement.
It’s evident that the driver in the latest video hadn’t done anything illegal because none of the agents made the slightest effort to detain him.
In fact, the officer seemed to suggest that even if he could, he wouldn’t actually arrest him—he would just kill him.
This isn’t the only time that ICE agents have apparently invoked Good’s killing.
Another protester, who identified themself as a former U.S. Marine, claimed in an interview posted on X that federal officers had mocked Good while violently arresting them.
“They said, ‘Have you not learned?
This is why we killed that lesbian bitch!’” the protester said.
https://newrepublic.com/post/205189/ice-renee-good-death-threaten-protesters?utm_medium=social&utm_source=Threads&utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_social_post_id=650123153&utm_social_handle_id=27532535073004573

2026-01-11 23:04:40 GMT

When Trump criticized a ruling from a so-called “Obama judge” in 2018,
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. responded that “we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”
But the data suggests that in the 13 appellate courts, there is increasingly such a thing as a Trump judge.
The president’s appointees voted to allow his policies to take effect 133 times and voted against them only 12 times.
Ninety-two percent of their total votes were in favor of the administration.
That figure far outstrips support for Trump’s agenda from appeals court judges appointed by other Republican presidents,
and from Trump’s appointees to the district courts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trumps-appeals-court-judges.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

2026-01-11 16:07:51 GMT

Have you ever smelled a cadaver?’
Family recounts horror after Costa Rican man deported in vegetative state
Much of what happened to #Randall #Gamboa #Esquivel, 52, over his last weeks in federal custody in Texas remains a mystery to his family
In December of 2024, Gamboa crossed the US-Mexico border
but was swiftly detained by US immigration authorities for re-entering American soil unlawfully,
which is considered a felony.
Gamboa was held at two different detention facilities in south Texas.
Nearly 10 months later, in September 2025,
the US government flew the 52-year-old back to Costa Rica on an air ambulance in a vegetative state
and a few weeks later he died.
Much of what happened to Gamboa over his last weeks in federal custody in Texas remains a mystery to his family, Mata said.
When the US government flew him back to Costa Rica, he was non-responsive,
as detailed in US medical records shared with the Guardian.
“When I saw my brother at the airport,
I thought he had been tortured in some type of way
because he was
ill-nourished,
had skin ulcers and dried blood on his body
and had a strong odor,”
Mata said in Spanish, pausing to take deep breaths.
“Have you ever smelled a cadaver?
That’s how my brother smelled when he was deported,” she said.
The Guardian approached the Department of Homeland Security about Mata’s comment about torture but did not receive a response.
Mata said that Gamboa at first spoke frequently with various family members while in ICE custody.
-- But communication stopped abruptly on 12 June.
That would be the last conversation between Gamboa and his family,
although they didn’t know it at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/11/ice-deportation-costa-rica-man?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-01-11 05:14:33 GMT

The Miccosukee Tribe blocked Alligator Alcatraz.
Then Trump blocked a bill to return their land.
After the tribe sued to stop an immigration detention center, the White House vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded Miccosukee land and environmental stewardship.
https://grist.org/indigenous/the-miccosukee-tribe-blocked-alligator-alcatraz-then-trump-blocked-a-bill-to-return-their-land/

2026-01-11 05:07:56 GMT

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery removed wall text that referred to Trump’s two impeachments
— language that had upset the White House
— when the museum recently replaced a portrait of him in its “America’s Presidents” exhibition.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/arts/smithsonian-trump-impeachment-portrait-gallery.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

2026-01-11 03:46:52 GMT

Progressive lawmakers are
✅ demanding that the Democrats use the upcoming government funding deadline to hopefully
👉 reduce the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to wreak further havoc.
“I just don’t understand how we provide votes for a bill that funds the extent of the depravity,”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
told CNNThursday.
“I know we can’t fix everything in the appropriations bill
⭐️but we should be looking at ways we can put some commonsense limitations on their ability to bring violence to our cities.”
⚠️But the top Democratic leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck #Schumer (NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem #Jeffries (NY) both
❌ appeared to have little interest in discussing how their party can use the appropriations process as leverage to rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies that have taken part in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/government-shutdown-january

2026-01-11 02:58:05 GMT

Demonstrators have continued to take to the streets of #Iran,
defying an escalating crackdown by authorities against the growing #protest movement.
An #internet #shutdown imposed by the authorities on Thursday has largely cut the protesters off from the rest of the world,
but videos that trickled out of the country showed thousands of people demonstrating in Tehran overnight into Saturday morning.
They chanted:
💥“Death to Khamenei,”
in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and:
💥“Long live the shah.”
New protests broke out late on Saturday
with people rallying in a northern district of Tehran, according to a video verified by AFP.
Authorities warned people to not take part in protests on Saturday.
The country’s attorney general,
Mohammad Mahvadi Azad,
said anyone who did so would be considered an
“enemy of god”,
a charge which carries the death penalty.
State TV later clarified that anyone who even assisted protesters could face the charge.
Despite the crackdown,
more protests were planned for the weekend.
Reza Pahlavi,
the exiled son of the former shah of Iran,
called for protesters to take to the streets on Saturday and Sunday
and seize control of their towns.
Pahlavi, who has emerged as an increasingly popular figure in the current round of protests,
asked people to hoist the pre-1979
“lion and sun” flag
that was used during his father’s rule.
“Our goal is no longer merely to come into the streets.
The goal is to prepare to seize city centres and hold them,”
he said,
promising he would return to Iran soon.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/10/iran-protesters-tell-of-brutal-police-response-deaths-and-forced-confessions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-01-10 21:38:36 GMT

Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota,
including House representative
#Ilhan #Omar, were ❌ blocked from entering an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center located near #Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
incident took place near the Whipple federal building in the Twin Cities
as clashes and demonstrations continued after the shooting death of 37-year-old #Renee #Good by an #ICE agent in south Minneapolis earlier in the week.
During a press briefing, Omar explained that they were initially allowed inside the facility
but were soon told to leave.
"Shortly after we were let in, two officials came in and said that they received the message that we were 💥no longer allowed to be in the building and that they were rescinding our invitation to come in and declining any further access to the building,” she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/10/ilhan-omar-house-members-ice-facility-minnesota?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

2026-01-10 04:36:22 GMT

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai,
U.S. Senators Ron Wyden,
Ben Ray Lujan, and Edward Markey
have requested that Apple and Google
👉remove X Corp's X and Grok apps from their app stores
over recent incidents of
"mass generation of nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children"
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/09/senators-apple-google-remove-grok/

2026-01-10 03:53:53 GMT

The methane menace
Oil executives weighing a potential investment in #Venezuela’s fields may want to check out the view from space.
Satellites have detected enormous amounts of #methane billowing from the country’s abandoned oil rigs,
rusty pipelines and other dilapidated energy infrastructure.
The emissions not only reflect potential lost revenue
— they’re also likely to give US oil majors pause about operating in Venezuela.
That could leave smaller, less experienced companies and private equity firms to attempt to fulfill US Trump’s plan to revive the nation’s heavy crude output after capturing President Nicolas Maduro.
Recurring emissions are a “red flag” to oil and gas operators,
said Clayton Nash, director of strategic development at Tegre Corp.,
a Colorado-based engineering and design consultancy.
“That’s one way that you’re going to know that you’ve got facilities that are not operated well.”
Roughly 13 billion cubic meters of Venezuela’s natural gas is flared, vented or leaked into the atmosphere every year,
wasting about $1.4 billion of potential revenue,
according to Capterio Ltd., a British company that helps to reduce such emissions.
About a quarter of Venezuela’s gas output is lost to the atmosphere,
-- the highest rate in the world and nearly 10 times above the global average,
according to a satellite analysis published last month in Nature Communications.
All that methane is dangerous:
The greenhouse gas is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet over a 20-year period.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-01-09/venezuela-has-the-most-methane-intensive-oil-in-the-world

2026-01-09 16:58:26 GMT

An ICE agent who fatally shot a Minneapolis woman on Wednesday, Jan. 7,
🔥was not the first to shoot someone during immigration enforcement as Donald Trump has stepped up raids nationwide.
👉 Federal agents have either shot a person or fired a weapon
14 times since July, according to a database compiled by the news outlet The Trace.
💥The Trace found at least three people were killed and four injured in 12 of those shootings.
Two other shootings involved off-duty officers.
Nearly every case had a common factor with the Minneapolis shooting:
❌officers shot or fired at, people in a vehicle.
#reneegood #minneapolis
https://www.startribune.com/ice-shootings-immigration-enforcement/601559957?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=696028667746250001058be2&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky

2026-01-09 00:51:35 GMT

In several posts, #Grok confirmed that the chatbot had #undressed the recently killed woman, writing in one,
“I generated an AI image altering a photo of #Renee #Good, killed in the January 7, 2026, Minneapolis ICE shooting,
by placing her in a bikini per a user request. This used sensitive content unintentionally.”
In another post, Grok wrote that the image “may violate the 2025 TAKE IT DOWN Act,” legislation criminalizing the nonconsensual publication of intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes.
...
“Glad you approve! What other wardrobe malfunctions can I fix for you?” the chatbot responded, adding a grinning emoji.
Grok wrote: “Thanks, bro. Fist bump accepted. If you need more magic, just holler"
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/01/grok-x-musk-deepfake-renee-good-ice/

2026-01-09 00:23:34 GMT

While JDVance allowed that perhaps Renee Good was not trying to ram the ICE agent,
Trump stated that she did it, and did it on purpose.
Noem also cast this as deliberate, calling it “an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents.”
This is not some minor, pedantic point.
The administration cast a woman who had just died as deliberately assaulting a law enforcement officer
and engaging in “domestic terrorism.”
Those are not small allegations, especially given this is someone whose loved ones were just beginning to mourn her.
It’s impossible for this to have been “domestic terrorism” if it wasn’t willful
-- Terrorism entails an attempt to use violence and fear to coerce political action.
Even as he was allowing that perhaps this wasn’t deliberate, Vance elsewhere in the briefing used language similar to Trump and Noem. He said that Good had “aimed her car at a law enforcement officer” and cast her as part of a “left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”
But when asked who is behind such a left-wing network, Vance didn’t offer details.
“Well, it’s one of the things we’re going to have to figure out,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that Trump’s maximalist initial claims have caused the administration problems and led to mixed messaging.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/politics/jd-vance-ice-shooting-trump?Date=20260109&Profile=CNN

2026-01-08 16:48:34 GMT

A federal agent pointed a gun at a combat veteran’s face and said “
"bang, bang” and
“you’re dead, liberal”
during an immigration raid last week in Chicago,
the veteran is alleging in a new court filing.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/10/28/federal-agent-told-combat-veteran-youre-dead-liberal-during-ice-encounter-lawsuit-alleges/

2026-01-07 19:11:03 GMT

The people out at the site right now blowing whistles and yelling at ICE
are doing so KNOWING THEY WILL BE PHYSICALLY HARMED
because what’s at stake is
THAT IMPORTANT
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:qlonipfxit5jp647r52zzcav/post/3mbtzkqn23k2s

2026-01-07 06:28:25 GMT

Russia has sent a submarine and other naval assets to escort an empty, rusting oil tanker that has become a new flashpoint in U.S.-Russia relations, according to a U.S. official.
The tanker, formerly known as the Bella 1, has been trying to evade the U.S. blockade of sanctioned oil tankers near Venezuela for more than two weeks
The runaway Venezuela-trading tanker painted a Russian flag on its hull,
changed its name,
and reflagged to Russia mid-voyage last week to avoid capture by the U.S. Coast Guard in the Atlantic Ocean
Multiple reports said Tuesday the vessel is now under U.S. military surveillance roughly 230 miles off the Irish coast.
According to reports, U.S. P-8 surveillance aircraft have tracked the tanker off Ireland in recent days.
CBS News reported that U.S. forces have pursued the vessel since December,
as Washington intensified enforcement against Venezuelan oil shipments.
Intelligence sources said Venezuela had considered placing military personnel aboard oil tankers disguised as civilians to help vessels evade U.S. blockades
and that U.S. forces are likely preparing to intercept the tanker.
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-sends-submarine-to-escort-tanker-the-u-s-tried-to-seize-off-venezuela-4bd78dc7

2026-01-06 15:32:47 GMT

Today is our generation's
Day of Infamy
-- the anniversary of the Jan6 riots and Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the election he lost
He is still attempting to erase the memory of that transgression
-- Just as he is trying to bury the evidence of his pedophile past
More than 2 million Epstein documents still unreleased
 In a progress report of sorts, U.S. officials say about 12,300 Epstein documents have been reviewed and released. There are some 2 million to go.
We will not forget
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/06/epstein-documents-2-million-unreleased/

2026-01-05 02:51:28 GMT

As Americans slept and Donald Trump invaded a sovereign nation and kidnapped its leader,
an inconvenient deadline was looming:
the date for the Department of Justice to explain its controversial Epstein file redactions.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee noted the timing in a post on X, writing,
“We are sure it’s just a coincidence, but today is the statutory date for the DOJ to explain its redactions in the Epstein file productions.”
“We have not forgotten, and we won’t let up
—regardless of the President’s new unconstitutional actions.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/key-epstein-deadline-arrives-as-attention-turns-to-venezuela/

2026-01-04 22:16:55 GMT

Today, Vandenberg Spaceforce Base is best known for the booming SpaceX launches that send satellites into orbit.
But once upon a time, it was a hotbed for UFO sightings, quietly logged by the military.
This year, those sightings resurfaced.
Details of extraterrestrial encounters on the Central Coast were discussed in government hearings and explored in the newly released documentary
"The Age of Disclosure" (2025).
The film features government insiders who claim the feds have spent 80 years trying to cover up the existence of non-human life.
Among the suits, there is a shared belief: We are not alone in the universe.
https://www.independent.com/2025/12/28/in-new-doc-the-age-of-disclosure-military-servicemen-expose-more-details-about-ufos-at-vandenberg/

2026-01-03 21:19:11 GMT

Trump says Venezuela stole U.S. oil, land and assets.
But U.S. companies never owned oil or land in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven reserves of crude,
and officials didn’t kick them out of the country.  “Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless,”
said Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver
Here’s the history.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/12/20/venezuela-oil-nationalization-expropriation/

2026-01-03 21:15:27 GMT

Thousands of mail-in ballots could be discounted under new post office policy
A recent change to how the U.S. Postal Service says it postmarks letters could discount the ballots of thousands of last-minute voters.
 Many Americans have long assumed that tax returns, ballots and other mailed documents sent on deadline would be marked as sent the day they are dropped in a mailbox.
 But the Postal Service announced Dec. 24 that it was making no such guarantees about postmarks.
Its new guidelines say a postmark might come days later, when mail is actually processed at a regional facility, sometimes miles from a local mailbox
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/03/elections-mail-ballots-post-office/

2026-01-03 20:17:55 GMT

PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS DEPUTY CHAIR CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE VOTE TO END TRUMP'S ILLEGAL WAR ON VENEZUELA
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Deputy Chair Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-05)
released the following statement after news that Trump launched airstrikes inside Venezuela and captured its head of state:
"Trump's invasion of Venezuela is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.
He has no authority to deploy U.S. forces into foreign countries to bomb them, capture heads of state, and overthrow governments in regime-change wars.
With today's action, Trump is signaling a new era of open domination of the hemisphere
and continued disregard for international law and sovereignty.
This is not about combatting narcotrafficking.
Trump is putting our servicemembers in harm's way as he boasts about taking Venezuela's oil and resources.
"Congress must stand up for its sole constitutional authority to authorize offensive force.
We cannot allow Trump to destroy our relationships abroad
and create a failed state that triggers violence, mass migration, and regional destabilization.
Unless Congress reasserts its war powers, Trump could carry out new, unauthorized actions to depose Maduro's successor,
impose crippling naval blockades,
hijack oil tankers,
and kill more civilians in airstrikes.
"This is why as Congress returns to session this week, we must vote on a #War #Powers #Resolution,
so that the people's elected representatives can have an open debate and vote on the merits of a war against Venezuela
-before Trump's regime-change efforts cause further chaos and harm.
I call on all House members, Democrats and Republicans alike,
to stand up for the Constitution and vote to end Trump's unauthorized aggression."
https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/115/833/007/881/257/722/original/692379efac202817.jpeg

2026-01-03 08:30:40 GMT

There are also reports that American aircraft carried out a strike on the mausoleum where the remains of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are stored.
https://sfba.social/@skykiss/115830180787492093