One of the most common refrains we hear from age verification proponents is that online ID checks are nothing new. After all, you show your ID at bars and liquor stores all the time, right? And it’s true that many places age-restrict access in-person to various goods and services, such as tobacco, alcohol, firearms, lottery tickets, and even tattoos and body piercings.

But this comparison falls apart under scrutiny. There are fundamental differences between flashing your ID to a bartender and uploading government documents or biometric data to websites and third-party verification companies. Online age-gating is more invasive, affects far more people, and poses serious risks to privacy, security, and free speech that simply don’t exist when you buy a six-pack at the corner store.

Online age verification burdens many more people.

Online age restrictions are imposed on many, many more users than in-person ID checks. Because of the sheer scale of the internet, regulations affecting online content sweep in an enormous number of adults and youth alike, forcing them to disclose sensitive personal data just to access lawful speech, information, and services. 

Additionally, age restrictions in the physical world affect only a limited number of transactions: those involving a narrow set of age-restricted products or services. Typically this entails a bounded interaction about one specific purchase.

Online age verification laws, on the other hand, target a broad range of internet activities and general purpose platforms and services, including social media sites and app stores. And these laws don’t just wall off specific content deemed harmful to minors (like a bookstore would); they age-gate access to websites wholesale. This is akin to requiring ID every time a customer walks into a convenience store, regardless of whether they want to buy candy or alcohol.

There are significant privacy and security risks that don’t exist offline.

In offline, in-person scenarios, a customer typically provides their physical ID to a cashier or clerk directly. Oftentimes, customers need only flash their ID for a quick visual check, and no personal information is uploaded to the internet, transferred to a third-party vendor, or stored. Online age-gating, on the other hand, forces users to upload—not just momentarily display—sensitive personal information to a website in order to gain access to age-restricted content. 

This creates a cascade of privacy and security problems that don’t exist in the physical world. Once sensitive information like a government-issued ID is uploaded to a website or third-party service, there is no guarantee it will be handled securely. You have no direct control over who receives and stores your personal data, where it is sent, or how it may be accessed, used, or leaked outside the immediate verification process. 

Data submitted online rarely just stays between you and one other party. All online data is transmitted through a host of third-party intermediaries, and almost all websites and services also host a network of dozens of private, third-party trackers managed by data brokers, advertisers, and other companies that are constantly collecting data about your browsing activity. The data is shared with or sold to additional third parties and used to target behavioral advertisements. Age verification tools also often rely on third parties just to complete a transaction: a single instance of ID verification might involve two or three different third-party partners, and age estimation services often work directly with data brokers to offer a complete product. Users’ personal identifying data then circulates among these partners. 

All of this increases the likelihood that your data will leak or be misused. Unfortunately, data breaches are an endemic part of modern life, and the sensitive, often immutable, personal data required for age verification is just as susceptible to being breached as any other online data. Age verification companies can be—and already have been—hacked. Once that personal data gets into the wrong hands, victims are vulnerable to targeted attacks both online and off, including fraud and identity theft.

Troublingly, many age verification laws don’t even protect user security by providing a private right of action to sue a company if personal data is breached or misused. This leaves you without a direct remedy should something bad happen. 

Some proponents claim that age estimation is a privacy-preserving alternative to ID-based verification. But age estimation tools still require biometric data collection, often demanding users submit a photo or video of their face to access a site. And again, once submitted, there’s no way for you to verify how that data is processed or stored. Requiring face scans also normalizes pervasive biometric surveillance and creates infrastructure that could easily be repurposed for more invasive tracking. Once we’ve accepted that accessing lawful speech requires submitting our faces for scanning, we’ve crossed a threshold that’s difficult to walk back.

Online age verification creates even bigger barriers to access.

Online age gates create more substantial access barriers than in-person ID checks do. For those concerned about privacy and security, there is no online analog to a quick visual check of your physical ID. Users may be justifiably discouraged from accessing age-gated websites if doing so means uploading personal data and creating a potentially lasting record of their visit to that site.

Given these risks, age verification also imposes barriers to remaining anonymous that don’t typically exist in-person. Anonymity can be essential for those wishing to access sensitive, personal, or stigmatized content online. And users have a right to anonymity, which is “an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.” Even if a law requires data deletion, users must still be confident that every website and online service with access to their data will, in fact, delete it—something that is in no way guaranteed.

In-person ID checks are additionally less likely to wrongfully exclude people due to errors. Online systems that rely on facial scans are often incorrect, especially when applied to users near the legal age of adulthood. These tools are also less accurate for people with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian backgrounds, for users with disabilities, and for transgender individuals. This leads to discriminatory outcomes and exacerbates harm to already marginalized communities. And while in-person shoppers can speak with a store clerk if issues arise, these online systems often rely on AI models, leaving users who are incorrectly flagged as minors with little recourse to challenge the decision.

In-person interactions may also be less burdensome for adults who don’t have up-to-date ID. An older adult who forgets their ID at home or lacks current identification is not likely to face the same difficulty accessing material in a physical store, since there are usually distinguishing physical differences between young adults and those older than 35. A visual check is often enough. This matters, as a significant portion of the U.S. population does not have access to up-to-date government-issued IDs. This disproportionately affects Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, and individuals with disabilities, who are less likely to possess the necessary identification.

We’re talking about First Amendment-protected speech.

It’s important not to lose sight of what’s at stake here. The good or service age gated by these laws isn’t alcohol or cigarettes—it’s First Amendment-protected speech. Whether the target is social media platforms or any other online forum for expression, age verification blocks access to constitutionally-protected content. 

Access to many of these online services is also necessary to participate in the modern economy. While those without ID may function just fine without being able to purchase luxury products like alcohol or tobacco, requiring ID to participate in basic communication technology significantly hinders people’s ability to engage in economic and social life.

This is why it’s wrong to claim online age verification is equivalent to showing ID at a bar or store. This argument handwaves away genuine harms to privacy and security, dismisses barriers to access that will lock millions out of online spaces, and ignores how these systems threaten free expression. Ignoring these threats won’t protect children, but it will compromise our rights and safety.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

I’ve criticized Chuck Schumer plenty over the years, generally for being bad on tech policy, but also for not understanding the moment we’re living through. Yes, he’s the leader of a minority party with zero power, but that doesn’t mean he’s powerless. Yet he acts as if he is.

And if he can’t figure that out, it’s time for someone else to do it.

Let’s start with what just happened. As I detailed yesterday, Trump ordered military strikes on a sovereign nation and kidnapped its president without Congressional authorization—a clear violation of the War Powers Act and, you know, the basic constitutional requirement that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. And don’t buy the claim that it’s okay because this was just “law enforcement”: the Senate Judiciary Committee—including Republican chair Chuck Grassley—has pointed out that the White House refused to brief them, claiming it’s a military action and not law enforcement.

There is no way to describe this other than a massive breach of basic international order and the separation of powers our Constitution established. It’s yet another in a long line of efforts by Donald Trump to act as sovereign king of the US, rather than the elected executive of a single branch of a government with three co-equal branches.

Any opposition leader in such a world should seize the moment, call out the blatant unconstitutional and illegal behavior and make that the story. Over and over and over again.

But not Schumer. He starts out by needlessly granting the premise that Maduro is bad, and that’s unnecessary. Whether he’s terrible and an illegitimate dictator is besides the point. That doesn’t give Trump the authority to do what he did. But even if you want to start there, you have to follow it up with a serious condemnation. Instead, Schumer goes meekly with the idea that it was “reckless.”

“Maduro is an illegitimate dictator, but launching military action without congressional authorization, without a credible plan, but what comes next is reckless,” Schumer said.

And then he makes clear that his entire strategy is to hope that the Republican elected officials in Congress will come to their senses and push back against Trump, something that anyone who has been awake for more than a few days in the last decade knows will never happen.

Schumer pressed troubled Republicans to back the passage of the bipartisan War Powers Resolution, which he introduced alongside Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and other lawmakers last month. The resolution will be brought to the Senate floor for debate next week, Schumer promised, telling reporters “we’re going to be pushing our Republican colleagues to stand up for the American people to get this done.”

“We have heard from some Republicans in private conversations, chairs, talking to their ranking members, that they have some — they are troubled by this,” Schumer said, adding that he’s in talks with ranking Democrats on relevant committees on how to respond to the administration’s action against Maduro.

There it is. The classic Chuck Schumer move: “We’ve heard from some Republicans in private that they’re troubled by this.” Oh, how wonderful. Some Republicans are “troubled.” They’re always troubled. They’re perpetually troubled. They furrow their brows and express deep concern and then vote with Trump anyway. EVERY FUCKING TIME. This has been the pattern for nine years now, and Schumer keeps acting like this time will be different.

But making it even worse, we learn from Spectrum News that Schumer is publicly dropping the only procedural leverage tool he has:

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York dismissed the idea that there could be another government shutdown at the end of the month as Congress stares down a new funding deadline of Jan. 30.

Appearing on ABC News Sunday, Schumer was definitive in responding “no” when asked if the country was headed toward another shutdown and went on to say that “good progress” is being made toward passing funding bills for the 2026 fiscal year.

“Democrats want to fund the appropriations, the spending bills, all the way through 2026,” Schumer said. “We want to work in a bicameral, bipartisan way to do it and the good news is our Republican appropriators are working with us.”

Read that again. The Democratic leader, faced with a president who just launched an illegal war, publicly announced that he won’t use the one bit of actual leverage he has—the threat of a government shutdown—to force accountability. He just… gave it away. For free. He told Republicans “don’t worry, we won’t actually fight you on this, we’re committed to being ‘reasonable.’”

This is political malpractice of the highest order.

Now, I can already predict some of the replies to this. “What do you expect Schumer to do? Democrats don’t have power! They can’t stop this!” And look, I get it. Democrats are in the minority in the Senate. They don’t control the House. They don’t control the executive branch. In terms of the formal mechanisms of power, they’re largely shut out.

But you know who else was in the minority? Mitch McConnell for most of Obama’s presidency. And he didn’t just sit around hoping Democrats would come to their senses. He built a movement. He shaped a narrative. He made obstruction itself into a political strategy that energized his base and put constant pressure on the majority. He understood something fundamental: being an opposition leader isn’t just about counting votes. It’s about building public pressure, shaping the discourse, and making your opposition pay a political price for their actions.

Here’s what a real opposition leader would do in this moment:

Make the illegality of Trump’s actions the story. Every single day, Democrats should be holding press conferences explaining in great detail how this is illegal and unconstitutional and just generally offensive to American values. They need to keep banging the drum on the only bit that matters: the President cannot do this under the Constitution and the law. The message should be simple and repeated until everyone is sick of hearing it: “The president launched an illegal war without Congressional authorization, in violation of the Constitution and the War Powers Act. This is not normal. This is not acceptable. This cannot stand.”

Make reporters ask Republicans about it in every single interview. Make them defend the indefensible. Force them to either break with Trump or publicly embrace illegal military action. Don’t let them hide behind vague statements about being “troubled.”

Frame this as a constitutional crisis, not a partisan fight. This isn’t hard. Tell a story that isn’t political or partisan, but that hits at fundamental values. America shouldn’t be engaging in dangerous regime change adventurism for oil (as Trump has repeatedly admitted, even as his Fox News minions pretend its about fentanyl, a drug that Venezuela has nothing to do with). Don’t let Trump and MAGA frame the debate.

Frame the whole issue around fundamental American values that transcend party: the rule of law, constitutional limits on executive power, Congress’s role in decisions about war. Make it clear that this has nothing to do with whether you like Maduro (spoiler: nobody does), but about whether we’re a nation of laws or a nation where the president can do whatever he wants. Americans across the political spectrum understand that distinction, even if their representatives pretend not to.

Create real consequences. Schumer has more leverage than he thinks. Yes, he can threaten a government shutdown—and no, that’s not crazy. Sometimes you have to be willing to fight. But beyond that: refuse to move any of Trump’s nominees until he complies with the War Powers Act. Literally yesterday, a bunch of Democrats (obviously with Schumer’s approval) voted to confirm a new assistant Secretary of Defense. Why? Why would they do that at this moment?

Demand daily briefings on Venezuela and the legal justification for the strikes. Hold public hearings showcasing the legal scholars and national security experts who agree this was illegal. File lawsuits. Encourage state attorneys general to file their own challenges. Make noise. Make trouble.

Inspire and mobilize their base. This is perhaps the most important thing, and the thing Schumer is absolutely the worst at. Millions of Americans are watching this unfold with horror and feeling helpless. They want someone to fight. They want someone to tell them this matters and that there’s something they can do about it. Give them that. Hold rallies. Organize protests. Create a “Restore the Constitution” campaign that gives people something to be for, not just against. Build a movement of Americans who believe the Constitution still matters. Stop hoping those “troubled” Republicans will suddenly grow spines and start building public pressure that makes their continued acquiescence politically toxic.

Shape the narrative about what comes next. Trump’s supporters still want to claim this is about drugs, but Trump himself keeps admitting it was totally about stealing Venezuelan oil and making his donors at the large oil companies rich. Make that the whole fucking story. Connect it to the broader pattern of Trump’s transactional, lawless approach to foreign policy. Paint a picture of where this leads if unchecked. How are Democrats not calling this out over and over again? Keep showing the clips of Trump promising he was against foreign wars, against regime change.

There are so many opportunities and Schumer is letting them all go by because he doesn’t want to feel embarrassed to bump into a GOP Senator at the gym.

Prepare for 2026 and beyond. Even if Schumer can’t stop this action, he can make Republicans pay a political price for enabling it. Identify the vulnerable Republicans who will face tough races in 2026 and 2028. Run ads in their districts highlighting their refusal to stand up to an illegal war. Make them defend their votes. Build a case to the American people that Republicans have abandoned the rule of law. Turn this into a major campaign issue.

None of this requires having a Senate majority. It doesn’t even require getting Republican senators on board, though it could help if Schumer picked off a few Republicans. What it requires is recognizing that an opposition leader’s power doesn’t come solely from their vote count. Mitch McConnell understood this. Newt Gingrich understood this.

The job of the opposition leader, especially in moments like this, is to be oppositional. To fight. To make noise. To create consequences even when you don’t have the votes to block something outright. And that time is now.

Instead, Schumer is doing what he always does: magical wishcasting: hoping against all evidence that Republicans will be reasonable. On top of that, giving away his leverage before negotiations even start, and treating politics like a genteel debate club where everyone follows the unwritten rules. But those rules are gone. Trump lit them on fire years ago. And continuing to pretend they exist is just enabling the erosion of constitutional democracy.

I understand the impulse to be the “adults in the room.” To pretend that acting this way shows that Democrats can govern responsibly: that they won’t play games with government funding, that they’ll work across the aisle. In normal times, that’s potentially admirable. But these aren’t normal times. When a president launches an illegal war, captures a foreign leader, and faces no consequences, you’re not in “normal times” anymore. You’re in a constitutional crisis (the latest in a long line of constitutional crises Trump has kicked off, without much in the way of consequences).

In a constitutional crisis, being the adult in the room should mean fighting back with every tool you have. And Schumer has failed to do that over and over and over again in the last year, enabling Trump to continue to push the boundaries further and further. All while Schumer twiddles his thumbs and waits for the GOP to come around? What is he thinking?

The most frustrating part is that this isn’t even particularly difficult or risky politically. Polls consistently show that Americans don’t want more military interventions abroad. There’s broad skepticism of foreign entanglements. Standing up and saying “the president can’t just launch wars on his own” isn’t some far-left position—it’s basic constitutionalism that should command widespread support. This is a fight Schumer could easily win in the court of public opinion. But he has to actually try.

If Chuck Schumer can’t do these basic things—can’t recognize the moment we’re in, can’t build a movement, can’t shape the narrative, can’t use the tools he has to create political pressure—then he’s not the right person for this job. The Senate needs an opposition leader who understands that leadership means leading, not just reacting and hoping. It needs someone who can inspire people to fight, not someone who tells them to keep calm and hope Republicans will do the right thing.

Democracy doesn’t save itself. Constitutional norms don’t restore themselves. They require people willing to fight for them, especially when it’s hard and especially when the outcome is uncertain. Right now, when it matters most, Chuck Schumer isn’t fighting. He’s hoping. And hope, as we’ve learned over the past nine years, is not a strategy.

Donald Trump and his authoritarian friends have successfully destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the closest this country has gotten to having a useful and effective publicly-funded media. The CPB this week voted to officially shut down, just months after Republicans passed a massive billionaire tax cut plan that stripped the organization of more than $1 billion in funding.

“For more than half a century, CPB existed to ensure that all Americans—regardless of geography, income, or background—had access to trusted news, educational programming, and local storytelling,” said Patricia Harrison, CPB’s president and CEO.”

As we’ve noted previously, right wingers and authoritarians loathe public broadcasting because, in its ideal form, it untethers journalism from the perverse financial incentives inherent in our consolidated, billionaire-owned, ad-engagement based, corporate media. A media that is easily bullied, cowed, and manipulated by bad actors looking to normalize, downplay, or validate no limit of terrible bullshit (see: CBS, Washington Post, the New York Times, and countless others).

The destruction of the CPB is particularly harmful for local U.S. broadcasting stations. While NPR doesn’t really take all that much money from the public anymore (roughly 1% of NPR’s annual budget comes from the government), the CPB distributed over 70 percent of its funding to about 1,500 public radio and TV stations, which now face existential collapse.

The attacks on the CPB are part of a broader information warfare campaign by the U.S. right wing, which has involved destroying all remaining media consolidation limits, letting radical right wing billionaires buy up major news networks and social media platforms, and launching fake investigations into public broadcasting. They’re afraid of the truth and a functional press, and it’s not subtle.

While Republicans are outwardly hostile to informed consensus, Democrats historically have done a shit job defending journalism or implementing media reform. The press also generally doesn’t like covering this destruction too deeply because consolidated corporate media billionaire ownership doesn’t much like the idea of having to compete with government subsidized alternatives to their bland infotainment dreck.

And even though U.S. public media never truly reached the potential we’ve seen in other countries (usually due to decades of right wing defunding and attacks), this is a generational, devastating loss all the same. Especially in terms of what could have been.

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Given the recent Supreme Court ruling that (surprisingly!) said Trump did not have the executive power to commandeer National Guard troops to aid and abet law enforcement/deportation efforts in Illinois, this ruling [PDF] from the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court was, perhaps, inevitable.

If it’s illegal to do it in Illinois, it’s equally illegal in California (as well as Oregon and any other state the administration has targeted). It may still be legal in Washington DC, but it’s probably only a matter of time before that deployment of National Guard troops (especially those from other states) is declared equally illegal.

The extremely short order by the Appeals Court vacates the stay it had placed on the lower court’s ruling in favor of the rule of law (which is, of course, a ruling against the Trump administration), allowing it to take force. It only runs two pages, but it does contain at least one surprising element: capitulation by Trump’s DOJ.

On December 23, 2025, this court issued an order directing defendants to file a supplemental brief “explaining why the partial administrative stay should not be lifted” in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443 (U.S. Dec. 23, 2025).

Defendants filed their supplemental brief on December 30, 2025. Defendants represented that “[w]ithout prejudice as to any other arguments defendants may present, defendants do not oppose lifting of the partial administrative stay and hereby respectfully withdraw their motion for a stay pending appeal.”

Trump, meanwhile, continues to operate in his usual fashion, sporting the sort of reckless “never say die” attitude that usually results in death by misadventure.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he was, for now, abandoning his efforts to deploy the Guard in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Ore. But he suggested that the administration may deploy them again the future.

“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again — Only a question of time,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

There’s the patented Trump bravado — something that runs on a clean blend of bigotry and ignorance. Because this loss came at the hands of SCOTUS, administration officials are unable to deploy their usual “activist judge” bitching since the activist judges in the Supreme Court are mostly MAGA-cooked.

And they can’t claim this is the “liberal” Ninth Circuit going rogue, since its ruling is based entirely on the precedent set by the nation’s top court. All that’s left to do is the sort of social media sour grapes shit Trump is known for. At least until the administration decides to break every pane of glass in the Overton Window and just start turning every “Democrat” city into the Kent State campus.

But until that happens, the threats of bringing “liberal” states to heel by commandeering their National Guard are as empty as the heads of the administration’s most powerful members.

American right wing propaganda companies are beginning to fight among themselves as a shrinking number of dodgy media companies vie for domination of the Trump-coddled U.S. propaganda market.

Newsmax, a right wing propaganda organization pretending to be a cable news company, is upset at the fact that Nexstar Media Group and TEGNA, two right wing propaganda companies pretending to be “local broadcast news” operations, are going to see too many benefits from the Trump administration’s quest to destroy what’s left of U.S. media consolidation limits.

Newsmax executives filed an adorable complaint with the Trump FCC and Brendan Carr (who they actively helped install), pointing out that letting all the local fake-journalism right wing-coddling broadcasters merge into one giant shitty company will be bad for media diversity:

“The company formally filed a petition with the FCC on New Year’s Eve, arguing that the proposed merger “violates the law and creates an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of one broadcaster.”

Newsmax’s focus on its opposition is that the current ownership limits make a single entity owning enough stations to reach more than 39% of the U.S. TV households illegal. Should the proposed merger with TEGNA go through, Nexstar Media Group would reach nearly 80% of all households.”

These folks literally and actively helped install a corrupt NYC real estate con man president, who openly and repeatedly stated he was going to destroy whatever was left of U.S. media consolidation limits, and now they’re shocked and upset that he’s following through. It’s priceless.

Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy goes on, suddenly seemingly concerned about media consolidation issues:

“This merger would create an unprecedented and dangerous consolidation within the broadcast TV industry, giving them immense control over local news and political news coverage,” Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy — who signed the filing with the FCC for the network — said in a statement.

“This merger is no better than others the FCC has already blocked,” the filing from Newsmax concludes. “The Commission should reject the proposed transaction because it violates the law, will harm competition, and will damage the public interest.”

Spoiler: Brendan Carr will not block the merger because he doesn’t care about the public interest, functional competition, or healthy markets. He cares about getting a post-FCC revolving door gig at whatever telecom and media giant remains at the end of the Trump administration.

During Trump 1.0, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely-owned) competitors underfoot. The result of their destruction has been a rise in local news deserts, a lot of right wing propaganda outlets pretending to be “local news,” less diverse media ownership, and (if you hadn’t noticed) a painfully disinformed electorate.

It’s about to get much, much worse under Trump 2.0.

There are a few media consolidation limits left, like rules preventing the big four (ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC) from merging. There’s also the national television ownership rule, which prevents one company from reaching more than 39 percent of all US TV households (again, because the goal was ensuring a more diverse array of opinions and ownership, which is good for media markets and the public interest).

Once TEGNA and Nexstar merge, you can be absolutely sure the remaining company will seek to merge with Sinclair broadcasting, the poster child for right wing agitprop pretending to be local broadcast news. After that, expect efforts by ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC to both merge with each other, and increasingly merge with existing telecom and tech companies looking to goose stock earnings with pointless consolidation.

Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is preparing to take a hatchet to all of these remaining restrictions, propped up by the false claim that the modern media environment is just so damned competitive and vibrant, such restrictions harm “free market innovation.” Ironically, the consolidated mass media doesn’t like to report on the problems this will cause because that’s not in ownerships’ best financial interests.

It’s not all downside. These folks are all rushing to try and dominate a traditional media sector aren’t historically competent. And their ham-fisted attempt to replace U.S. journalism with infotainment cack is likely to result in an even greater exodus of viewers as their primary target audience dies off. Which is why right wing billionaires also made sure to acquire Twitter and TikTok.

Somewhere in this hot agitprop mess you’d like to believe that there’s opportunities for individual, independent and worker-controlled media (and ethical, public-interest oriented companies, if any remain) to grab greater audience share. And for actual innovators to disrupt traditional app and media domination. Otherwise, any hope of having an informed electorate and building a useful anti-authoritarian cultural counter-movement grows increasingly dim.

I’ve come to really appreciate the term “Trump derangement syndrome.” I’ve found it incredibly useful, primarily because whenever I hear someone use the phrase unironically, I am comfortable assessing that the conversation with that person will be unproductive and can be ended. It’s a rhetorical device, and not a particularly good one, that is trotted out to dismiss any criticism of Dear Leader/Orange Daddy. There’s no actual substance to it, but it’s been picked up by all kinds of right wing media outlets and even the President himself when he wants to take a shit on a beloved dead man’s undug grave. It’s all just empty calories, candy for a base of fervent fandom that can’t be bothered to actually argue a point.

Which makes it particularly galling that one Arizona state Senator wants to spend government resources “studying” TDS.

If it’s a contest on who can tee up the wackiest bill for a veto, Surprise state Sen. Janae Shamp might be going for gold. In a bill filed Monday ahead of the 2026 legislative session, Shamp has proposed that Arizona’s government undertake a study of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a phrase that has become popular among Republicans to describe negative sentiments toward President Donald Trump.

Shamp’s Senate Bill 1070 — not the most infamous bill by that name, which it shares with Arizona’s notorious “show me your papers” law — would direct the Arizona Department of Health Services to conduct or support research to “advance the understanding of Trump Derangement Syndrome, including its origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and public discourse.” It also directs the department to identify early documented cases and analyze factors like political polarization. The department would have a year to present its findings or provide an update.

Some have called this a “statement bill.” Some have indicated it’s red meat for the base in order to further Shamp’s career. I call it something much more simple: a giant waste of fucking time, money, and resources that are provided by the people of Arizona. The disrespect to go on a campaign of legislative shitposting, while putting real dollars and people behind the troll, is breathtaking.

So much so, actually, that I hope this passes. It almost certainly won’t survive a veto from Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs of course, but a big piece of me wishes it would. Put this bullshit on full display. Make a circus of it. Show in painful detail exactly how some lawmakers in the Trump cult want to use your money for this nonsense. Then come back to me and tell me once more about the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility.

Or turn this bill completely on its head.

The bill’s definition of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is amusingly — and perhaps unintentionally — broad. Shamp’s bill defines so-called TDS as “a behavioral or psychological phenomenon that is characterized by intense emotional or psychological reactions to Donald Trump, his actions or his public presence as observed in individuals or groups.”

According to that definition, it appears that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” could also be applied to the intense adoration and worship of Trump that Republicans often exhibit. Perhaps right-wingers like Shamp and Wendy Rogers, who often fawn over Trump, should be in padded cells.

To be clear, I think that would be a giant waste of time as well. But if modern American politics is going to devolve into a troll-off, at least go ahead and try to win it, I guess.

Or perhaps we can all agree that this is stupid, that spending any calories studying a made up affliction that has no basis in reality is silly, and that there are obviously some members of state government who are past their expiration date.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

It was a chilly afternoon in January, just a week after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, when I met Yineska, a Venezuelan mother who had been living in the United States for nearly two years. Trump’s election, she told me, had put her in a bind. On his first day back in office, Trump announced that he planned to end the humanitarian parole program that had allowed her, her children and more than 100,000 other Venezuelans to come to the United States in recent years. She feared that the new life she had worked so hard to build was about to unravel.

I went to her home and we talked for hours in the small kitchen. She told me about her two boys, Sebastián and Gabriel, and about Eduard, her partner, who worked as a cook in a restaurant nearby in Doral, Florida, a city beside Miami. She described how difficult it had been to leave her family and small business behind in a once-thriving part of Venezuela, now hollowed out by years of economic decline. The journey to the U.S. was grueling. It took almost seven months for Yineska, her boys and a nephew to cross the dangerous Darién Gap and then Mexico before reuniting with Eduard in Miami.

They managed to rent a safe space to live on the edge of Doral, found work and enrolled the boys in school. Yineska’s oldest was excited about getting an American high school diploma. And then, with the swipe of his pen, the president threatened to take away the stable lives they had finally begun to build. I could hear the fear in her voice as we spoke. 

I introduced myself to Yineska because I knew she wasn’t alone. I’m a journalist and filmmaker at ProPublica, and I moved to the U.S. from Venezuela nearly a decade ago. I was fortunate to arrive with a visa that allowed me to work legally.

As I watched Trump’s second presidential campaign, I sensed what might be coming. His return to office would thrust so many Venezuelans who had recently settled in the U.S. between two storm clouds: an American government turning against them and a repressive regime back home that offered no future. Many of my Venezuelan friends saw something entirely different. They believed his return would be a blessing for our community, that he would cast out only those who had brought trouble and shield the rest. 

When I left Yineska’s house that first night, I wrote in my notebook: “This is a good family. A working family. They represent so many Venezuelans who came here seeking safety and opportunity — and, in many ways, they represent me, too.” In her story, I saw the chance to highlight the quiet anxiety growing in some corners of Doral that the sense of safety we had found in America could disappear overnight. 

Doral is the heart of the Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. About 40% of those who live there emigrated from my country to escape the deep economic, political and social collapse that has unfolded in the nearly 12 years President Nicolás Maduro has been in power. His authoritarian grip and the country’s unraveling economy caused nearly 8 million people to flee, mostly to other Latin American countries and the Caribbean. It’s the largest mass displacement in the Western Hemisphere’s recent history.  

When I came to the U.S., most Latinos were facing the first waves of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. At the time, Trump called Mexican people “bad hombres.” Venezuelans, by contrast, were not viewed negatively. Trump took a hard line against Maduro, imposing heavy economic sanctions meant to weaken his autocratic hold on power. The stance earned Trump broad support among Venezuelan exiles in the U.S., especially in South Florida and in Doral. In the final days of his first term, Trump recognized the danger Venezuelans faced if they were forced to return and issued a memorandum that temporarily shielded those already in the U.S. from deportation. 

In the following years, President Joe Biden opened several temporary pathways that allowed more than 700,000 Venezuelans to live legally in the U.S. His administration granted humanitarian parole to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, like Yineska and her sons, allowing them to reside and work in the U.S. for up to two years if they passed background checks and secured financial sponsors. He also expanded Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans already living here, which prevented them from being sent back to an unstable Venezuela and granted them work permits. 

After securing humanitarian parole and entering the U.S. in April 2023, Yineska and her two sons made their way to Florida to reunite with Eduard. He was in Miami and had applied for TPS. Traveling with Yineska was a nephew who applied for asylum. All of them entered the U.S. legally.

Even as some in the community benefitted from Biden’s policies, many Venezuelans counted themselves among the Latinos who argued that the Biden administration was giving asylum-seekers preferential treatment and not carefully vetting those entering the country. They said that lax oversight had allowed criminals, including members of the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, to cross into the U.S. They also wanted Biden to take a stronger stance against Maduro. In 2024, the Venezuelan American vote helped Trump win handily in Miami-Dade County. 

Since Trump returned to the White House, that loyalty has been shaken. His administration has targeted Venezuelans in some of its most dramatic and punitive operations. In February, the federal government flew more than 230 Venezuelans to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where men described being beaten and berated. The administration branded them “the worst of the worst.” 

My colleagues found that the U.S. government knew the vast majority had not been convicted of any crime here. Its own data indicated that of the 32 men with convictions, only six were for violent crimes. In response to that reporting, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted, without providing evidence, that the deportees were “terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members and more — they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

At the same time, the Trump administration has sought to end legal protections for families like Yineska’s. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in April that Temporary Protected Status “was only supposed to be used in times of war or storm or destruction in the home countries of these migrants. It was completely abused.” 

“It’s as if you’re standing on a rug that’s pulled from under you,” Yineska told me during one of our many conversations in her kitchen. For Venezuelan families like hers, the idea of “temporary relief” feels detached from reality. They have followed the rules and envisioned a future for their children. To tell them that their safety has an expiration date while their home country remains mired in the same crisis they fled — and is now in the crosshairs of the U.S. military — is a painful contradiction. 

Venezuelans I spoke with, including Yineska and Eduard, said migrants who break the law should face consequences, but those who follow the rules should have an opportunity to stay. And even as they confront the administration’s crackdown, many still cheer Trump’s hard-line stance against Maduro because they see a glimmer of hope that Venezuela might finally move toward a brighter future, something Venezuelans everywhere — myself included — dream of. But the future is dimming for those in Doral with temporary status. I see the impact every day. Restaurants are quieter. More apartments are listed for rent. The energy that once defined this community isn’t the same. 

I am now a U.S. citizen, but this milestone feels bittersweet as I watch friends pack their belongings to seek opportunities abroad. Few plan to return to Venezuela.

As the hostility of the administration pressed down on people like Yineska and her family, they worried they, too, would be forced to pack their bags. My new film, “Status: Venezuelan,” follows them as they weigh fear against hope, struggling to decide whether to fight for the life they have built or leave everything behind.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul just signed a law that’s going to get expensive fast. The state’s new social media labeling requirement—S4505, courtesy of state Senator Andrew Gounardes—forces websites to slap unscientific warnings on their services claiming that features like algorithmic feeds and push notifications cause addiction.

It’s compelled speech based on contested science, which means it’s blatantly unconstitutional, and courts have already rejected nearly identical schemes. But Hochul and Gounardes either don’t care or don’t understand First Amendment basics, so New York taxpayers are about to fund a losing legal battle whose only real purpose is generating headlines for those politicians pretending to care about “protecting the children.”

(For those keeping track: Gounardes has a track record of pushing unconstitutional anti-internet legislation, and when constituents call him out on it, he tells them they’re just parroting “big tech” talking points. Several of his constituents have forwarded me these dismissive responses. Engaging on substance apparently isn’t part of his process.)

We had warned New York officials that this law was unconstitutional, but Hochul and Gounardes clearly don’t care.

The law targets any site with algorithmic feeds, push notifications, infinite scroll, like counts, or autoplay—basically every modern website—and demands they post warnings claiming these features are addictive. This isn’t based on scientific consensus. It’s based on misreading correlational studies and pretending they show causation.

Hell, even with Texas’s law regarding porn which went to the Supreme Court over its age verification requirements, every court along the way outright rejected the required labeling with unscientific warnings about how porn is unhealthy. Not just the lower court, but the Fifth Circuit, which seems quite willing in other circumstances to go along with anti-internet nonsense. While the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in the case was extremely problematic on other grounds, even it wouldn’t go so far as to say that the government can force websites to label their services based on made up, unsubstantiated claims of “public health.”

Throughout that ruling, the normally censorial Fifth Circuit highlights that the consensus on such public health warnings for pornography are way too contested to require getting around the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech around health warnings:

We are not scientific journal editors, much less social scientists, behavioral experts, or neurologists. The courts generally are not the place to hash out scientific debate, particularly not on so contentious a topic as the impacts of engaging with pornography. Experts must do that in academic journals, studies, and presentations. Therefore, the record leaves us with no option but to declare that the health impacts of pornography are currently too contentious and controversial to receive Zauderer scrutiny.

The science on social media’s “addictive” features is even more contested than the porn stuff the Fifth Circuit already rejected. Yet Hochul’s signing statement declares, with absolute certainty, that “studies show” spending more time on social media increases anxiety and depression. That’s likely backwards.

The studies show correlation, not causation. And actual experts in the field—not politicians cherry-picking abstracts—suggest the causal arrow likely points the other direction. Kids struggling with anxiety and depression aren’t getting adequate professional help and support. So they turn to social media to self-medicate, to find community, to cope. The increased screen time is a symptom, not the cause. Which means taking away that tool—or scaring them away from it with dire warnings—could make things considerably worse for the kids who need support most.

But the key here is that there is no generally agreed upon scientific consensus that social media itself, let alone any specific features of social media, are the cause of depression or anxiety. Yet, Hochul and Gounardes are forcing all sorts of sites to speak and claim that these unproven things are true. That’s dangerous! And obviously unconstitutional.

The bill’s language is so broad that it’ll snag far more than just Facebook and TikTok. Here’s the language in the bill:

“Addictive social media platform” shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application that primarily serves as a medium for covered users to interact with media generated by other users and which offers or provides covered users an addictive feed, push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and/or like counts as a significant part of the services provided by such website, online service, online application, or mobile application.

Techdirt has our comment voting system, which we created years before other systems of “likes” and whatnot, but do we need to warn users that our comments are addictive? Here’s the definition of “like counts”:

“Like counts” shall mean the quantification and public display of positive votes, such as but not limited to those expressed via a heart or thumbs-up icon, attached to a piece of media generated by a covered user.

We don’t publicly “quantify” people voting for “funny” or “insightful,” but we will display an icon when they reach a threshold. Does that qualify? Do I need to pay a lawyer to find out if I have to warn people our comments are addictive? Can I send the bill to Andrew Gounardes?

The whole thing is nonsense.

There can be exceptions, but they appear to be solely the determination of NY’s Attorney General deciding which sites to exempt, which seems to be putting way too much power in the hands of a single politician.

“Addictive social media platform” shall not include any such service or application which the attorney general determines offers the features described herein for a valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use of such platform.

We’ve criticized NY’s Attorney General in the past. Now she has a tool to punish us since she has sole authority of determining whether or not our comments qualify under this law. Doesn’t that seem like a problem? It does to me!

Obviously, this applies to way more than just Facebook and Tiktok. But also more than just our comments. It means almost any site with a recommendation algorithm? That’s probably covered. Auto-playing videos? Covered. Notifications of things that may interest you? Covered. That means news sites, recipe apps, fitness trackers, even email clients could theoretically fall under this law’s scope if they have the wrong combination of features and don’t play nice with NY’s Attorney General.

All of these services could face fines from the AG—the same AG with a documented history of launching bogus investigations against internet companies specifically to cover up New York’s own policy failures.

So what happens next? Either this law gets struck down immediately when challenged in court—wasting taxpayer money on litigation over compelled speech that even the Fifth Circuit wouldn’t tolerate—or it survives long enough to force websites to lie to users about nonexistent dangers, potentially driving vulnerable kids away from the online communities that actually help them cope.

Neither is a good look for New York. But at least Gounardes and Hochul will have gotten their headlines. That must be worth something.

It’s hilarious that a single Salvadoran migrant has made the Trump administration look so pitiful. During one of its first purge efforts, the administration deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and another 100-plus migrants to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison.

Since then, the administration has done nothing but lose when it comes to Abrego Garcia. He not only managed to get returned to the US, but he’s successfully pushing back against the bullshit prosecution the DOJ cooked up to punish him for daring to stand up for his rights.

At this point, the DOJ is almost out of options. The Tennessee judge overseeing the attempted prosecution has not only allowed Abrego Garcia to go free on bail, but has taken setting a trial date completely off the docket until the government can provide an argument for engaging in the prosecution that isn’t just “because he pissed us off.”

The timeline of this prosecution strongly suggests the government can’t contradict Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution allegations. Abrego Garcia’s first experience with US law enforcement happened in November 2022 when he was pulled over for speeding by Tennessee Highway Patrol officers. The locals referred the case to Homeland Security Investigations based on “suspicions of human trafficking.” Garcia, however, was free to go and didn’t even get a speeding ticket.

On March 12, 2025, he was arrested and interviewed by HSI. The decision was made to deport him. Although the 2022 traffic stop was discussed, Abrego Garcia still wasn’t charged with any crime beyond being in the country illegally. HSI closed its human trafficking investigation on April 1, 2025. Again, no charges were brought.

Three days after that, a Maryland court ordered Abrego Garcia returned to the US because his due process rights had been violated. More litigation ensued with the Supreme Court finally weighing in on the issue on April 10. Then this happened:

[O]n May 21, 2025, a Middle District of Tennessee grand jury presented a two-count indictment against Abrego arising from the November 30, 2022 traffic stop. An arrest warrant issued, prompting the United States to return Abrego from El Salvador. Abrego was arrested on June 6, 2025, and was brought to this District.

So far, the government has turned over 3,000 pages to the court. Abrego Garcia hasn’t seen many of these because the government claims almost everything it has provided are privileged communications. The court says that may be true in some cases, but it hardly matters because what it has seen so far undercuts the sworn statements the DOJ has previously made in this case. The government has argued (not very convincingly) that this can’t possibly be vindictive prosecution because the acting US Attorney Robert McGuire did all of this on his own without any input from the rest of the administration.

Not true!, says the court [PDF]:

The central question after Abrego established a prima facie case of vindictiveness is what information in the government’s control sheds light on its new decision to prosecute Abrego, after removing him from the United States without criminal charges. These documents show that McGuire did not act alone and to the extent McGuire had input on the decision to prosecute, he shared it with (Associate Deputy Attorney General Akash] Singh and others.

Specifically, the government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences. For example, Singh contacted McGuire on April 27, 2025, to discuss Abrego’s case. On April 30, 2025, Singh asked McGuire what the potential charges against Abrego would be, whether the charging document would reference Abrego’s alleged MS-13 affiliation, and asked for a phone call before any charges were filed. In a separate email on April 30, 2025, Singh made clear that Abrego’s criminal prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s office (Blanche). He then told McGuire to “sketch out a draft complaint for the 1324 charge [making it unlawful to bring in and harbor certain aliens].”

On May 15th, McGuire emailed his staff that “DAG (Blanche) and PDAG would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later.” Then, on May 16, 2025, counsel of record Jacob Warren emailed Singh and reported, “if the DAG (Blanche) does want to move forward with the indictment on Wednesday, we think it would be prudent to loop in the press office ASAP.” Finally, on May 18, 2025, Singh emailed McGuire and others, and instructed them to “close[ly] hold” the draft indictment until the group “g[o]t clearance,” to file. The implication is that “clearance” would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, not just McGuire.

The upshot is this: the government can assert all the privilege it wants to, but the system of checks and balances means it can’t bypass constitutional rights just by denying criminal defendants access to anything that might support their arguments.

The Court recognizes the government’s assertion of privileges, but Abrego’s due process right to a non-vindictive prosecution outweighs the blanket evidentiary privileges asserted by the government.

For now, the government is barely managing to hang onto a case it’s probably going to end up losing. All the power of the government — especially this government which has repeatedly expressed its disdain for courts, judges, and orders it doesn’t like — is meeting an unexpectedly immovable object. And if Abrego Garcia walks away from this a free man, he’s going to make it clear that even the cadre of thugs currently inhabiting White House cabinet positions still have soft, white underbellies that can be exposed.

By now it’s pretty clear that right wing, billionaire, Trump ally Larry Ellison bought CBS to convert what was left of the news division into lazy agitprop that blows smoke up the ass of wealth and power. Leading the charge is CBS News boss Bari Weiss, an unqualified contrarian Substack troll who recently vividly demonstrated her purpose by killing a story critical of the administration’s concentration camps.

If you’re one of the few journalists left at CBS (who didn’t leave after the network’s embarrassing effort to bribe the president), this is obvious not a good time. Pre-holiday, a collection of CBS journalists got together to pen a letter to Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David, urging them to reconsider their plan to turn CBS News into a right wing propaganda mill:

“In the public letter, which is addressed directly to Ellison, the signatories declare that they “stand in solidarity” with the 60 Minutes team that worked on “Inside CECOT,” the story that was pulled by Weiss shortly before it was set to air on December 21. They also note that this signaled a “breakdown in editorial oversight” and risked “setting a dangerous precedent in a country that traditionally valued press freedom.”

Ellison, of course, won’t balk. Much like Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the Ellisons bought CBS (and a part of TikTok) with the goal of information control. The goal is the same goal billionaires have had for generations: dominate mass media, soften its criticism of wealth and power, and befuddle, distract, confuse, and disorient an already pretty fucking dim electorate.

They’re not going to back off that agenda because you said “pretty please.”

It’s worth reiterating that CBS already wasn’t in great shape to begin with. Even before Ellison, the network’s very first response to rising U.S. authoritarianism was to hire more Trump-friendly Republicans. And if you haven’t read it already, this piece by longtime journalist Spencer Ackerman demonstrates how the network already had a very rich history of coddling U.S. wealth and power.

It’s further demonstration that commercial mass media and public interest journalism are generally incompatible. There’s a reason that authoritarians like Donald Trump and Brendan Carr are ramping up attacks on public broadcasting, paving the way for greater media consolidation, and trying to censor late-night comedians, and it’s because they’re afraid of the truth.

This is, as you might be noticing, a lot harder than billionaires tend to think. It’s very likely that the Ellison effort to dominate media simply drives people away from CBS and toward more ethical, interesting alternatives. There’s really no indication that this weird assortment of nepobabies and contrarian trolls have any idea what they’re doing. They’re not even good at agitprop.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. If successful, Ellison could still turn CBS, TikTok, and potentially CNN into an even worse version of Fox News, which is arguably the last thing American media needs.

Ethical folks who care about an informed electorate should fund trustworthy independent and worker-owned media (like Techdirt) whenever possible in the new year.

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If you needed proof that Trump’s “war on drugs” is pure theatrical bullshit designed to justify geopolitical adventurism and the transactional nature of how he views absolutely everything, look no further than the past two months of his foreign policy.

Two months ago, Donald Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who was convicted in a Manhattan federal court of facilitating the importation of at least 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. The conviction wasn’t based on hearsay or shaky evidence—it came after a three-week trial featuring multiple cooperating witnesses, business ledgers documenting drug transactions, undercover video recordings, and testimony detailing how Hernandez turned Honduras’ entire government apparatus into a cocaine superhighway.

As Bloomberg’s detailed investigation lays out, the evidence was quite strong. Hernandez’s brother, Tony (who was also an elected official), had been convicted earlier of basically running a massive drug smuggling campaign, and there were clear ties between Tony’s operation and his brother. And there’s this colorful story:

In 2021, during the trial of another trafficker Sandy Gonzalez had arrested, a former accountant for a Honduran agricultural company testified that he attended meetings with Hernández, who accepted bribes from the accountant’s boss and spoke openly of his connections to traffickers. Hernández, he said, bragged about fooling his American counterparts into thinking he was on their side in the drug war. “He then took a sip of drink,” the accountant said of Hernández, “and he said: ‘We are going to stuff drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it.’” At that same trial, witnesses said that in return for protection, the trafficker paid bribes to Hernández to ensure his business enjoyed military protection. Data scraped from the trafficker’s phone—which included the president’s cellphone number in the contact list—showed that on two separate days when news broke about the president’s alleged involvement in Tony’s drug-smuggling activities, the trafficker downloaded driving directions to the presidential palace.

A judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison. Trump pardoned him anyway, claiming he’d been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

So with that conviction and evidence in mind, let’s look at what Trump claims justifies launching an illegal war. Trump (without the required permission of Congress) ordered military strikes on Venezuela this weekend, and captured President Nicolas Maduro, claiming the operation was justified by… drug trafficking charges.

The charges against Maduro appear less direct and less clear than those against Hernandez.

It also details specific actions that Maduro allegedly took as part of the conspiracy. It says, for example, that between 2006 and 2008 when he served as foreign minister that Maduro sold Venezuelan diplomatic passports to known drug traffickers “in order to assist traffickers seeking to move drug proceeds form Mexico to Venezuela under diplomatic cover.”

He also allegedly facilitated the flights of private planes under diplomatic cover to bring drug proceeds back from Mexico to Venezuela.

Prosecutors allege that Maduro and Flores worked together for years to traffic cocaine that had previously been seized by Venezuelan law enforcement. They say the Maduros had their own state-sponsored gangs to protect their operation, and that they ordered “kidnappings, beating and murders against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.”

Notice what’s missing there: actual convictions, actual evidence of tons of cocaine moved, actual documentation like the ledgers and recordings that convicted Hernandez. And indeed, as The Guardian notes, many experts are deeply skeptical that Maduro is actually the drug kingpin Trump claims:

“It just shows that the entire counter-drug effort of Donald Trump is a charade – it’s based on lies, it’s based on hypocrisy,” said Mike Vigil, the former DEA chief for international operations. “He is giving a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández and then going after Nicolás Maduro … It’s all hypocritical.”

Contrary to Trump’s claim that Hernández, 57, had been the victim of a “Biden set up”, Vigil said there was overwhelming evidence that the Central American politician was “a big fish in the narco world”. Not only had Hernández helped turn Honduras into a major transit point for South American cocaine heading to the US, but Vigil said he had also transformed it into a cocaine-producing hub which was now home to coca plantations and makeshift labs for processing coca leaves.

[….]

Meanwhile, despite Trump’s claims that Maduro is the leader of a narco organization called the “Cartel of the Suns”, many experts doubt such a group even exists.

“Maduro is not a saint,” said Vigil, noting how he and several allies were indicted for trafficking cocaine in the US in 2020. “[But] they’re not a cartel, they don’t have an infrastructure,” he added, calling such allegations “nonsense”.

So to recap: Trump pardoned a president who was actually convicted in US court of moving 400 tons of cocaine, with overwhelming evidence including recordings, ledgers, and multiple witness testimony. Then, two months later, he launched military strikes—without Congressional authorization, in violation of both US and international law—and captured a different president based on an indictment that experts say lacks solid evidence that he’s running an actual drug cartel.

The main difference? Hernandez sucked up to Trump from the start. From Bloomberg:

President Hernández had enjoyed good relationships with President Obama and Vice President Biden, but he harbored a special affinity for President Trump, whose transactional style suited him well. Hernández had adopted the slogan “Honduras is open for Business.” During Trump’s first term, Hernández established Próspera, an economic development zone on the Honduran island of Roatán. Próspera offered investors a self-governed haven where they could set their own regulations and pay next to nothing in taxes. Libertarian-inclined Trump supporters invested in it.

Hernández had met with Trump in New York just before his brother’s trial, when they signed a series of bilateral agreements intended to encourage a Honduran crackdown on northbound migrants. “You’re doing a fantastic job,” Trump told Hernández. “My people work with you so well.”

He continued to court Trump’s favor even after his brother’s guilty verdict. The following spring, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the US Food & Drug Administration publicly rebuked Trump’s claim that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial medicine, could effectively treat the virus. Hernández seized an opportunity.

“Well, I never spoke to a scientist,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “but I will tell you this: I did speak with the president of Honduras, just a little while ago. I didn’t bring it up—he brought it up. He said they use the hydroxychloroquine, and he said the results are just so incredible, with the hydroxychloroquine. Check with him. Call him. The president of Honduras. A really nice guy.”

For the rest of Trump’s term, even as his Justice Department was compiling more evidence of his ties to trafficking, members of the administration repeatedly praised Hernández for his commitment to battling migration and organized crime.

What’s really going on doesn’t take a very deep analysis: Hernandez was a right-wing ally who supported Trump’s policies and had publicly supported Trump. Maduro is a left-wing adversary. One gets pardoned despite a conviction based on overwhelming evidence. The other gets military strikes based on flimsier charges.

Even more absurd: Trump has been conducting all these “kinetic strikes” we’ve written about on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, killing approximately 80 people and destroying about 20 boats—most of which likely contained far less cocaine than Hernandez was convicted of moving, and many of which may have just been impoverished fishermen. Meanwhile, he’s letting the guy actually convicted of industrialized drug trafficking walk free.

Once again, this is all about political alignment and personal loyalty. Hernandez worked with the Trump administration, endorsed Trump’s preferred candidate in Honduras’ recent election, and had allies like Roger Stone lobbying for his pardon. Maduro is a geopolitical adversary Trump wants removed.

To everyone who can keep more than one thought in their head at the same time, the hypocrisy is clear: you can’t credibly claim your military action is justified by the need to combat drug trafficking when you just pardoned someone convicted of far more extensive drug trafficking. You can’t bomb boats supposedly carrying cocaine while freeing a man who moved 400 tons of it. You can’t invoke “law enforcement” as justification when you’re simultaneously undermining the very legal proceedings that proved another leader’s guilt.

This is nothing more than naked illegal geopolitical maneuvering dressed up in drug war rhetoric. And the fact that the administration thinks this narrative will fly shows how little they think of the public’s ability to notice the contradiction sitting right in front of us.

As one expert put it to The Guardian:

Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert from the University of North Texas at Dallas, said Trump’s double standards on which drug-smuggling presidents to pursue revealed there was no consistent strategy to fight the region’s drug traffickers. “It’s all ad hoc and based on political considerations,” he said.

“One [Hernández] is a rightwing supporter of the US – and the other [Maduro] is not,” Pérez added. “It is ideological. It is political. It is self-interested in terms of advancing an ideological agenda – and it has nothing to do with effective anti-drug policies.”

When your “drug war” pardons the convicted trafficker and invades over the unproven allegation, you’ve pretty much admitted it was never about the drugs at all.

This is about way more than the hypocrisy, though the hypocrisy is staggering. We should be aghast at the complete erosion of any pretense that US foreign policy is guided by law, evidence, or principle rather than personal loyalty and political convenience. When the same action (drug trafficking) earns you a pardon or an invasion based solely on whether you’re useful to Trump, you’ve turned “law enforcement” into a pure protection racket. And when you can’t even maintain the fiction for two months, you’ve stopped pretending the rules matter at all.

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It’s that time again! Instead of our usual look at the top comments of the week, it’s time to celebrate the most highly voted comments of the year at Techdirt. As usual we’ll be looking at the top three winners in the Insightful and Funny categories, as well as some outliers that rose to the leaderboard of votes in both categories combined. Normally I also link to the weekly winners for those who are interested, but since I’m writing this a bit early and commenting has been very slow this week, we’re going to skip that and get right into the main event.

The Most Insightful Comments Of 2025

For our most insightful comment of the year, we head all the way back to January when Trump’s Department of Education rolled back its anti-book-ban guidance and invited more censorship in schools. An anonymous comment rose to the top by offering up the message students should be taking from this:

Remember, kids. If a government is trying this hard to ban books, you should damn well be interested in finding out what those books actually say!

For second place, we move forward a bit to March, when we published our tentpole post explaining why the horrifying state of US politics means Techdirt is now a democracy blog. One commenter asked for recommendations of other sites doing similar work, and Thad racked up the votes by providing some advice:

Wired has been pretty much head of the pack at covering Musk’s government takeover.

ProPublica might be the best national news outlet in the country at this point. It’s independent and donation-supported.

404 Media is owned and operated by journalists who were laid off from Motherboard; they’re doing good work in the same tech-oriented vein as Techdirt and Wired.

You may also want to look into supporting your local paper and your local PBS affiliate. And maybe your local NPR station? I kinda got burned out on mine by one too many “let’s go to a diner and talk to Trump supporters to see if they’re still Trump supporters” Cletus safari, but they’re still better than the for-profit news media.

Finally, for third place, we jump back to January again, and the story of a Milwaukee meteorologist who was fired the day after criticizing Elon Musk’s on-stage Nazi salute. Maura had some personal thoughts on the incident and the excuses people were making for the world’s richest far-right troll:

I hate that Elon Musk’s fans are using his autism diagnosis to excuse his behavior. I’m on the autism spectrum. Like Musk, I have autism 1 (formerly Asperger’s syndrome), and like Musk, I struggle with the non verbal, implicit communication primates use to learn complex social behavior. My issues are thus: autism or not, Musk is keenly aware of the political climate. There is no way he did not or could not understand that such a gesture would be extremely controversial. Second, plenty of smart autistic people have self stimulatory behaviors that can involve movements and gestures ( I point at things with my whole hand with my ring finger bent), and if Musk’s stimming truly looks like Nazi salutes (), it’s on him to explain that or change the way it appears. Autism should definitely be a mitigating factor when it comes to consequences, but having autism isn’t an excuse to act like a jackass or to make people uncomfortable. The world needs to be accepting of autistic people, but autistic people (ESPECIALLY those of us w/o intellectual disabilities) also need to be good citizens, and understand that the rights to community life come with responsibilities to others… except if they’re billionaires, I guess.

Now, on to the other side of things…

The Funniest Comments Of 2025

Let’s face it, this wasn’t the funniest year. The funny things that did happen were rather overshadowed by America’s slide into authoritarianism and the incredible harm being done to people every day. Nevertheless, commenters came through with a banger here and there, starting with our first place funny comment of the year. Back in March, when the DOGE debacle was being tossed around in the courts, an anonymous commenter rose to the top by coining a new appellation:

Stop calling them the doge crew. They’re twitler youth.

For second place we jump one month earlier to February, and Trump’s absurd renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Another anonymous commenter offered up an observation about the administration’s values:

Curious how only in this one instance the Trump Administration is upset about deadnaming.

To round things out with third place, we have yet another anonymous comment (that’s right, they dominated the funny leaderboard this year!) from that very same post about renaming the Gulf. This time, it’s a comment venting some understandable frustration with a healthy dose of sarcasm:

I couldn’t be happier!

So many Magaheads who are complaining about Latin Americans with an 8th grade education taking their jobs are saying this is what will really solve the immigration issue, grocery costs, inflation, the price of gas, stimulate oil drilling, end the war in Ukraine, get all the hostages freed, and send a clear message to our foes and allies alike that we’re a serious country. (Not to mention grow the GDP by 2% every 5 minutes, cut the deficit by $30 trillion, turn North Korea and Gaza into popular tourist destinations, and eliminate all those damn electric cars.)

Who knew it was so simple?

America, that’s who! An example for the world on how being simple can demand such respect!

And now, to wrap things up…

The Outliers

The aforementioned first place winner on the funny side was also the second place winner for combined votes for both categories, but the other two of the top three on this leaderboard made it there without cracking the top three of either category individually. In first place for combined votes, it’s another comment from Thad, this time about the Supreme Court’s April ruling that the administration can’t just human-traffick people to foreign prisons (though they weren’t sure how to stop them):

Wow, I never realized that Thomas, Alito, and all three of Trump’s appointees were Marxists.

Then, in third place for combined votes, we’ve got a comment from TheHangNail about Trump’s very incorrect claim in March that boycotting Tesla is illegal:

Up is Down

Wait, it was ok to boycott Bud Light because a trans person was shown drinking one for 30 seconds but boycotting a company because its CEO is systematically destroying our civic structure is not ok?

Maybe we need to get as many trans people as possible to video themselves driving Teslas. It will, at the very least, confuse the heck out of the right.

And with that, we close the books on 2025! Thanks again to our amazing community here for always keeping the comments flowing, and making sure there’s plenty of great content for both our weekly and yearly posts. I can’t wait to see the discussion that happens in 2026.