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Category: Law/Crime

Trump’s widening attacks on the First Amendment

Trump’s widening attacks on the First Amendment

Adam Serwer writes: On the first day of his second term in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order on free speech stating that his administration would ensure that “no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” He has gone on to violate that order many times. Trump announced today on his social-media network, Truth Social, that he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White…

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Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

The Guardian reports: Stephen Miller is leading an unprecedented and intense White House drive across a host of government departments to accelerate the removal of undocumented immigrant children from the US, using tactics that critics say are cruel and racist and, in some cases, flout federal law, the Guardian has learned. As deputy chief of staff at the White House, focused on immigration policy, Miller is seen as the mastermind and enforcer behind Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration agenda. He is…

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Alligator Alcatraz’s tiny cages were probably even tinier

Alligator Alcatraz’s tiny cages were probably even tinier

The American Prospect reports: The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security released a scathing report last Friday about the shuttered Florida concentration camp built on an abandoned airstrip known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” concluding the camp failed to meet numerous health and safety standards, and that the use of “small metal enclosures” was “unprecedented” and posed “significant risks to detainee health and safety.” The report included photos, taken by OIG inspectors during an “unannounced” visit in…

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‘Doom loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft admit LLMs are destroying the web and are built on theft

‘Doom loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft admit LLMs are destroying the web and are built on theft

404 Media reports: Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said generative AI products have created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.” Those statements and a series of other mask-off…

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Trump’s Minnesota surge created ‘a grave threat to the rule of law,’ says federal court’s chief judge

Trump’s Minnesota surge created ‘a grave threat to the rule of law,’ says federal court’s chief judge

The New York Times reports: Judge Patrick J. Schiltz’s warning was stark. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had violated nearly 100 orders issued by Minnesota’s Federal District Court during the month of January, including some mandating the release of undocumented immigrants from detention. The violations needed to stop immediately. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” Judge Schiltz wrote in his Jan. 28 order. Judges around the country took notice, not only of the scale of the allegation but because such…

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Follow the money: Democrats demand to know where Venezuelan oil revenue is going

Follow the money: Democrats demand to know where Venezuelan oil revenue is going

The Washington Post reports: Three Democratic senators are pressing the Trump administration for transparency on billions of dollars in oil revenue from Venezuela believed to be in a U.S. government-controlled account. In a letter obtained by The Washington Post, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) are asking Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for information about the status and use of this revenue, which is being disbursed from an account…

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Deep in Trump country, a revolt against corporate money could reshape political spending

Deep in Trump country, a revolt against corporate money could reshape political spending

Reuters reports: More than 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court reshaped American politics with its Citizens United campaign finance ruling, Montana voters will decide this November whether to make their state the first in the nation to bar corporations from spending money on ​elections through a ballot initiative. It’s a test case for a novel legal strategy that sidesteps the 2010 ruling rather than challenging it head-on — and taps into growing, bipartisan anger over the pervasiveness of so-called…

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Trump’s effort to assert control over elections continues, despite court loss

Trump’s effort to assert control over elections continues, despite court loss

The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court on Monday dealt President Trump a major blow when it blocked his executive order to restrict mail ballots. But Mr. Trump’s battle to assert control over the election process is far from finished. The stymied attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots was just one piece of a broader effort involving the full power of the federal government to take more control of state-run elections. Just days before the…

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Supreme Court blocks Trump mail-in ballot plan

Supreme Court blocks Trump mail-in ballot plan

Politico reports: The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to enforce new mail-in ballot delivery rules that threatened to severely disrupt the looming midterm elections. In a ruling Monday, the justices left in place a lower-court decision that blocked the Postal Service from implementing the new requirements in the coming weeks due to the potential that millions of voters could be disenfranchised by not having their ballots delivered. Most of the high court’s majority did not offer a…

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Whistle-blower: Federal agents may have broken state laws in search for voter fraud

Whistle-blower: Federal agents may have broken state laws in search for voter fraud

The New York Times reports: Investigators may have broken state laws under the direction of top Homeland Security leaders by posing as voters as part of an expansive effort to find noncitizens on the nation’s voter rolls, according to a federal whistle-blower’s account released on Monday. The authorities also required agents to meet quotas, which afforded them a mere 12 minutes to review each voter record. The effort has relied on questionable data, and has likely improperly flagged U.S. citizens…

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How Trump wields power to stifle free speech

How Trump wields power to stifle free speech

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting. Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding…

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Republican chief election officials say it is too late to implement Trump’s mail ballot order

Republican chief election officials say it is too late to implement Trump’s mail ballot order

Politico reports: Republican chief election officials from seven states said that it’s too late for President Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot order to be implemented before the midterm election, urging the Supreme Court to not allow the rule to go into effect in a brief submitted to the court on Wednesday. Trump’s order, signed in March, aimed to crack down on mail-in voting and assert federal control ahead of November’s election. In August, the U.S. Postal Service released a final rule…

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Trump’s $1 trillion-plus bribery plan meets immediate bipartisan pushback

Trump’s $1 trillion-plus bribery plan meets immediate bipartisan pushback

18 U.S. Code § 597 – Expenditures to influence voting: Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined…

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Appeals court rejects ICE detention policy, setting stage for SCOTUS

Appeals court rejects ICE detention policy, setting stage for SCOTUS

Politico reports: A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected ICE’s effort to detain millions of people without bond, comparing it to the “historical stain” of Japanese internment during World War II. “Mass detention of marginalized individuals without due process harkens back to some of the darkest moments in our country’s history,” 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee, wrote in a 2-1 majority opinion joined by Judge Barbara Keenan, an Obama appointee. “Those shameful and abhorrent…

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Civil libertarians knew this would happen. We should have listened in 2001

Civil libertarians knew this would happen. We should have listened in 2001

Radley Balko writes: Six weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act. The vote was 357-66 in the House, and 98-1 in the Senate. Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.), the chamber’s lone dissenter, said later that many of his colleagues hadn’t bothered to read it. The law granted sweeping powers to the federal government. It gave agents new authority to use secret search warrants on Americans and made it easier to monitor them around…

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Donald Trump’s blueprint to rig the 2026 midterms

Donald Trump’s blueprint to rig the 2026 midterms

Marc Elias writes: We are less than two months until Election Day for the most important midterms of our lifetime. Ballots have already started to be sent out. The threats to free and fair elections are real and growing more serious by the day. What once seemed like an abstract threat has now become concrete. The risk of a rigged election is no longer unthinkable. The need for action can no longer be delayed or denied. I have often said…

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