This week on the insightful side, both top comments come in response to our post about the New York Times bending over backwards to downplay Trump’s criminality and absurdity. In first place it’s Thad thinking about the week in which it happened:

What better way for the New York Times to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 than to act as a propaganda arm for a fascist president?

In second place, it’s Whoever with a broader comment about journalism:

The most corrosive idea in American journalism is the “both sides” idea. It rejects the idea that there is an objective truth and that everything is an opinion. It rejects reporting facts in favor of reporting feelings or reporting the agenda of partisan people.

Sometimes, one cannot get to an objective truth, but many times, one can and should report this.

Yet, we do have several “news” sources that reject the idea of reporting “both sides”: but they don’t replace it with truth. For example Newsmax or Fox news.

But for editor’s choice on the insightful side we’ll start out with a sort of “both sides” comment that does work, from Thad again and on our post about Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon complaining about AI:

On the one hand, headlines like Gizmodo’s and this one that imply Sanders appeared directly with Steve Bannon are misleading, given that what actually happened was they were separate speakers at the same conference.

On the other hand, if you ever accept an invitation to speak at a conference, and then learn that other invited speakers include Steve Bannon, the only correct thing to do in that situation is cancel. Sanders shouldn’t have been there, regardless of whether or not he and Bannon were ever in the same room.

Next, it’s Drew Wilson back on the post about news outlets playing nice with Trump:

The kicker is that the media outlets will still get punished anyway for some reason or another (thanks to Trumps extremely thin skin). I mean, the media spent years sucking up to Trump and the Trump White House, in response, built a webpage devoted to calling the bootlicking media a bunch of liars. Won’t be the last time the Trump admin does something like that, either.

And we’ll remain on that post for a while since it’s also the source of both winning comments on the funny side. Not just that, Thad took first place here too, with a comment replying to a line of riffing that you might be able to figure out or might have to go look at:

I suppose that plan to build a bunker has some potential upsides.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment taking a look at the legal issues with Trump’s announcement:

“Attempted murder”? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry?

But if he can’t actually give the money, how is he guilty of bribery?

Checkmate libs.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from MrWilson about the fact that the problems with the reflecting pool was from a botched repair job, despite the accusations:

Ironically, there are several videos of the “vandalism.” It was the footage of the work the contractors were doing!

Finally, we’ll close it out with one last comment from Thad, this time in response to the assertion that Trump’s damage to public institutions “could end up lasting a generation”:

I never figured you for an optimist.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week in 2016

• Colin Powell’s Email To Clinton About Personal Devices Shows Routing Around FOIA Is Business As Usual
• ACLU Launching Campaign To Have President Obama Pardon Snowden
• More Details On How Corporate Sovereignty Provisions, Like Those In TPP & TTIP, Are Dangerous
• Prenda’s Paul Hansmeier Loses His Law License; Won’t Be Filing Bogus ADA Lawsuits For Now
• EU Announces Absolutely Ridiculous Copyright Proposal That Will Chill Innovation, Harm Creativity
• Over 200 Economics & Law Professors Urge Congress To Reject Corporate Sovereignty Provisions In Trade Deals

This Week in 2011

• MPAA: Bad At Math & Bad At Economics
• Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Reprinting Images Produced In 630 A.D.
• Hollywood Accounting: Darth Vader Not Getting Paid, Because Return Of The Jedi Still Isn’t Profitable
• Hotfile Responds To Lawsuit Filed By Studios, Countersues Warner Bros. For Copyright Misuse
• UK Politician Pushing For Its Own Version Of PROTECT IP
• How Payola Works Today… Or Why You Only Hear Major Label Songs On The Radio

This Week in 2006

• In A Politically Sticky Situation? Blame A Hacker!
• How Do You Hate Your Mobile Phone Company? Let Me Count The Ways…
• Why Introduce New Intellectual Property Rights In A Highly Competitive Market?
• Entertainment Industry Outsources Brainwashing School Kids To The Feds
• Schwarzenegger Hacking Claims Crumbling Like A Bunch Of Girlie Men
• Universal Music Publicly Threatens To Sue YouTube, MySpace

Well, as we previously discussed was going to occur, RFK Jr. gave his keynote speech and appearance at the Children’s Health Defense conference of anti-vaxxer conspiracy-mongers, and he was certainly firmly on brand. In fact, he did so much to make news during and around this appearance that we’re going to have to break this post up into several sections to only briefly talk about the insanity that came vomiting out of his mouth.

The Anti-Vaxxer Of It All:

Ah, RFK Jr. classic. Among the many lies Kennedy appears to have told during his confirmation hearings, the biggest of them all was when he told Congress he wasn’t an anti-vaxxer and wouldn’t do anything to change how vaccines are administered in America. Almost immediately after his confirmation, Kennedy remade the CDC’s ACIP in his image, attempted to change the vaccination schedules for children, changed federal recommendations for other vaccines in adults, and pushed Trump into issuing an executive order demanding we all pretend that we’re Danish.

Through it all, Kennedy has insisted he’s not an anti-vaxxer. Instead, he’ll say things like “the MMR vaccine is the best way to protect yourself from measles” and then go on to claim that that same vaccine is dangerous, untested, and has injured many Americans.

But he is an anti-vaxxer and you need only to listen to his address to anti-vaxxer group Children’s Health Defense to understand that.

“Let me be clear: You have a strong and steadfast friend in the White House. We’ve accomplished in 19 months things that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago,” he said.

The speech, peppered with questions about long established vaccine safety, also highlighted how once fringe views on vaccines have been given a prominent pulpit under the Trump administration. Kennedy boasted about the administration’s moves to downsize the childhood vaccination schedule and reshape a key vaccine advisory board — steps that have since been halted by a judge.

Kennedy lauded Trump for pushing ahead with attempts to overhaul vaccine guidance, including an executive order last month calling for spacing out the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, against medical groups’ recommendations.

Again, these are all things that Kennedy promised he would not do in his confirmation hearings. He lied, Congress knows he lied, and he should be impeached for it. And I’ll also say that to state the above in the middle of the largest outbreak of measles in America in over 30 years is wild. Speaking of which…

I’ll See Your Real Deaths And Raise You Fake Vaccine Injuries

Does RFK Jr. care about the 6 dead Americans who have succumbed to the measles under his watch? Sure, according to him. But why aren’t you talking about all the Americans who have been hurt by vaccines?

Let’s just start off with the obvious: Kennedy doesn’t give a single shit about the people he helped die from measles, particularly in Pennsylvania. Kennedy, like any good sociopath, cares about Kennedy. Regarding the now four measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania, Kennedy reportedly stepped in to keep the CDC from even publicly acknowledging those deaths have occurred. His primary public comments on those deaths have teetered between claiming those deaths may not even have happened and failing to mention them at all while trying to slap around Governor Shapiro online.

Show me real, scientifically validated vaccine injuries and I’ll have an opinion on what should be done about them. It’s not that they don’t exist; rather, it’s that they are tiny in number and are far outweighed by the enormous health benefits of vaccines to the public.

The real point here is that Kennedy’s attempt to pivot to vaccine injuries rather than address actual dead people from measles is a non-sequitur.

Another HHS Panel Of Charlatans

Here we go again. ACIP isn’t the only important health panel that Kennedy decided to remake in his conspiratorial image. Back in May we talked about how Kennedy had fired the leadership of the U.S. Preventative Task Force and largely sidelined their work. The USPSTF is a volunteer group, traditionally made of appointed medical generalists who recommend which preventative care procedures should be covered by insurance companies and which should not.

Kennedy has broken with that tradition by instead installing medical specialists and sycophants of his to the group.

Those fears seemed to be realized today with the announcement of members who are largely out of line with previous appointments. Many of the new members have expressed a shared ideology with Kennedy and the Trump administration. At least one voiced criticism of COVID-19 vaccines. At least two have attacked gender-affirming care. One is not even a doctor but a health economist who has worked with the Trump administration.

Five of the eight members are specialists, including cardiologists, a gastroenterologist, and a radiologist; the USPSTF has previously been made up of people who provide preventive care—generalist and primary care providers. This prevents specialists from swaying recommendations based on conflicts of interest. Notably, the USPSTF’s policy on conflict of interest disclosures has been removed, and the webpage that previously included it said the policy is now being updated.

In a statement Thursday, Willie Underwood, president of the American Medical Association, called Kennedy’s new slate of members “a significant departure from the Task Force’s traditional membership.”

The qualifications for these new members are very clear. They’re donators to the Trump campaign, doctors who are firmly against gender-affirming care, educators who have been critical of COVID vaccines, former Trump White House advisors, and so on. Every single one of these appointments is political in nature, in other words, rather than being focused in any way on actual health outcomes or good science.

The impact of whatever fuckery this panel gets up to will be of a financial nature due to insurance coverage, health outcomes due to availability of care, or both. It also means that any reporting coming out of the panel is immediately suspect, since Kennedy is a well-known meddler and puppeteer in the child agencies that work under his umbrella.

So long science and facts. Hello conspiracy theories and culture war. Good times.

Make Sure You Buy Your N95 Grade Tinfoil Helmet

Speaking at the CHD event, you can really get a sense of just how much solid-footing that group has around vaccine science by examining what else the group is interested in. And for that, we can look at what else Kennedy spoke about outside of vaccine policy.

Ah, yes, EMF and chemtrails. Now we know we’re dealing with very serious people.

EMF conspiracy theories have largely centered on claims that the radiation levels and frequencies of WiFi signals and phone data signals are harmful to those exposed to them. That would be — checks notes — pretty much fucking everyone at this point. The scientific consensus on this sort of thing is quite clear: there is no evidence to suggest that exposure to wireless and 5G signals have any measurable health impact on people and, in fact, those signals don’t contain enough energy to have such an impact.

Kennedy wants to study it more. And if he could be trusted to be an honest broker in any of this, I’d only have a mild problem with a waste of taxpayer funds like this. But Kennedy has proven to be a serial liar who is all too happy to put his thumb on the scales of science to get the outcome he wants. He may as well be spending tax money to study the existence of the Easter Bunny.

As for chemtrails, this has been another long-time passion of Kennedy’s, which should inform you just how far back his departure from reality goes. Chemtrails just simply aren’t a thing. Contrails are, which is when exhaust from plane engines collides with the freezing temperatures at high-altitude and then condenses into ice and eventually clouds of moisture. But the chemtrail claim is that something is being released from commercial planes of a chemical nature that is intentionally dumped onto unsuspecting Americans to do… something.

What that something is can vary from conspiracy theorist to conspiracy theorist, because none of this is actual science. If you’d like to know why Kennedy is particularly interested in chemtrails, well, the potential chemicals being released per these theories are chemicals for weather manipulation (meh), sterilizing agents for population control (unlikely to be that interesting to Kennedy), chemicals that allow for government mind-control (doubtful on this one, what’s next?), and spreading either illnesses, secret vaccines, or both (ding ding ding!)

There’s no reason to believe any of this is occurring. There’s no reason to spend taxpayer money to study it further. But it is a very useful barometer for just how serious the people at CHD are about science, medicine, and basic reality. The answer is they are deeply unserious.

As is Kennedy. Each of the four sections above could have been its own post, as there are more details to get into for each of them. But I think it’s also useful to see them all mashed together so you can get an idea of just how much bullshit and chaos this one man is being allowed to spread over the course of a single day.

As I’ve promised to put on repeat: Get him out of office by any and all peaceful and legal means.

Some day we’ll look back at this and laugh. I mean, I would hope so.

The DOJ and DHS are still trying to put people in jail for protesting a church whose pastor was also an ICE officer. Ultimately, the protesters entered the church and disrupted the service. Among those entering the church were a few journalists, including (formerly of CNN) Don Lemon and his partner.

While the DOJ has (with limited success) managed to make some minor charges against protesters stick (given the invasion and disruption of a religious service), it has failed to land the biggest fish: Don Lemon and local independent journalist, Georgia Fort.

Not for a lack of trying. The DOJ has done everything it can to put these two in jail. And by “everything,” I mean ignoring two consecutive federal court rulings forbidding the arrest and charging of two journalists. On the back end, the DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has pitched in by tossing subpoenas in the general direction of everyone in hope of finding something it can use to salvage these two high-profile (and highly unconstitutional) arrests.

These subpoenas aren’t being issued for the reasons they say they’re being issued. DHS is deliberately abusing a law that allows it to self-issue subpoenas to obtain evidence of customs violations. Some journalists covering a protest in a church obviously isn’t an issue of customs law, which covers things like import/export fees and verifying the provenance of items entering the United States.

This administration doesn’t really care which law it exploits to get what it wants (or which laws it breaks for the same reason). And that’s how an investigation that’s (somehow) being led by HSI is deliberately misusing administrative subpoenas for the sole purpose of (possibly?) identifying people who participated in this church protest.

This should be satire. Instead, it’s just another day in Trump’s America:

New court filings allege that Homeland Security Investigations agents subpoenaed the outdoor retailer in March, requesting the transaction information for “all persons” in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area who had purchased a specific type of dark green beanie from the company since 2024. REI did not respond to questions about whether it had complied with the request and, if so, how many people are affected.

That is some wild shit. These are not the actions of a normal law enforcement agency. (Then again, any normal law enforcement agency would have settled for whatever disturbing the peace charges they could secure, rather than try, try, and try again to turn protected First Amendment expression into federal felony charges.) These are the actions of aberrant humans who have somehow managed to secure all the power they need to do whatever they fuck they want, so long as whatever the fuck they want coincides with Trump doing whatever the fuck he wants.

There’s no telling at this point whether or not the retailer complied with the subpoena. REI isn’t legally obligated to respond to administrative subpoenas and is fully within its rights to bring it to the attention of the courts if it feels the request is, legally speaking, absurd bullshit.

If this were just REI and a bizarre beanie hunt, it might have been just some exploratory flailing that ultimately confirmed HSI was better off doing some actual, you know, investigating. But there’s plenty of iceberg below this auspicious, beanie-capped tip:

The subpoena to REI was one of 92 sent as part of HSI’s investigation into the defendants, according to the court filings. Other recipients included social media companies, airlines, telecom providers, a car rental company, and a state employment agency. At least one subpoena sent to an unnamed airline, the filings allege, asked not only for information about a defendant’s past flights, but also requested that the airline give HSI a “lookout notification” about the defendant’s travel in the future. 

I’m going to repeat myself. All of these subpoenas were issued under the same authority — an authority that has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged crimes being (supposedly) investigated by the feds. These are all “1509” subpoenas, referencing the statute allowing for their creation. Here’s what they’re supposed to be used for:

In any investigation or inquiry conducted for the purpose of ascertaining the correctness of any entry, for determining the liability of any person for duty, fees and taxes due or duties, fees and taxes which may be due the United States, for determining liability for fines and penalties, or for insuring compliance with the laws of the United States administered by the United States Customs Service…

Obviously, an alleged “invasion” of a church during service by protesters isn’t a violation of customs laws. Neither is entering a church to cover a protest, like the two journalists Trump wants to see rung up/hung up did. And any recipient of these subpoenas should have contacted their lawyers and/or thrown the meaningless summonses into the nearest trash can.

What they shouldn’t do is what T-Mobile did when it received this bullshit demand for info:

Attorneys for Georgia Fort, a journalist and one of the defendants in the Minnesota case, wrote in a court filing that they were “stunned” when they realized that the government had obtained logs detailing six months’ of Fort’s calls and text messages from T-Mobile after the government sent a customs summons to the telecom provider. 

This government can’t win without cheating. And in these cases, it’s finding it can’t even break even without cheating. But just because it can’t get the convictions it needs to make Trump happy doesn’t mean it should be excused for its actions. This is truly dangerous stuff being performed by alleged law enforcement agencies that don’t actually care what the law says or what it actually authorizes them to do.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on Patreon.

In this week’s episode, Mike and Ben cover:

• What is in the EU’s planned KIDS Act? (Reuters)
• Proposal for EU KIDS Act – ‘EU Keeping Internet Digital Spaces Accountable and Trustworthy’ (EU Commission)
• France makes new attempt to ban social media for children under age 15 (Le Monde)
• Reading scores plummet as ‘digital distraction’ harms students (FT)
• We are setting up a generation to fail at school (FT)
• TikTok rejects Meta ads pushing rivals to join child safety settlement (Search Engine Land)
• Inside ‘Project Lily’: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats (404 Media)

And in the extended episode for Patreon supporters, they cover:

• We Must Pace the Frontier (Dario Amodei)
• OpenAI Wants to Know if an AI Industry Slowdown Would Even Be Legal (Wired)
• Trump goes scorched earth on AI warnings, raging about data center opposition and regulation (CNBC)
• The AI policy window is open. We need to act. (OpenAI)

Our fun links this week include a “Welcome to the Internet” presentation for a 13-year-old and God’s Eye View, a slightly terrifying bit of open source software to explore the world.

Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and Bluesky for video clips from this week’s episode!

If you’re already a Patreon supporter, you can get the extended episode on Patreon.

Well, this is unfortunate. Late last year, Marco Rubio’s State Department declared that it had banned five people from entering the US because of their speech. Most of them work, in one way or another, on fighting hate speech online, including Imran Ahmed, the head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). As I’ve made clear over the years, I think that Ahmed and CCDH play fast and loose with their work, pushing sketchy research that is then used to create a misleading moral panic about certain online services.

But he should be protected by the First Amendment in his right to publish weak research. I said as much when Elon Musk sued CCDH in an obvious SLAPP suit, and again when the judge dismissed that lawsuit (while noting that it was clearly censorial).

But the State Department barring him from the US is a much thornier problem. Ahmed isn’t a US citizen, but he is a lawful permanent resident with an American wife and child. It’s a little harder to “bar” someone from a country he actually lives in. Indeed, it would have to involve deporting him out of the country first. So Ahmed, reasonably, challenged the designation by the State Department.

Unfortunately, last week, Judge Loretta Preska dismissed that challenge, saying that the court had no jurisdiction over the matter at this time, because the government hadn’t yet actually tried to deport Ahmed. The judge suggests her hands are tied:

Ultimately, while Mr. Ahmed may very well have valid causes of action, his claims are premature, and Congress has determined that this Court may not review them….

The issue, basically, is that while Rubio has barred Ahmed from the US, he hasn’t started actual deportation procedures against him. As the court notes, back in the 1990s, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which, among other things, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to review most deportation decisions, channeling whatever review remains into a single appeal after a final removal order. The REAL ID Act in 2005 added even more teeth to this, going even further in restricting what judges could review.

This has been a huge mess and has always raised serious red flags among civil liberties groups, and anyone who believes in basic due process.

Here, the Court finds that section 1252(g) strips this Court of subject matter jurisdiction. Although Mr. Ahmed claims he only seeks to “prevent his unlawful arrest, detention, and transfer,” … his Amended Complaint shows otherwise. Indeed, Mr. Ahmed alleges that “[t]his Court should vacate and set aside the Defendants’ efforts to target Mr. Ahmed, declare Defendants’ actions be illegal, enjoin Defendants from arresting, detaining, transferring, or deporting Mr. Ahmed from this district unless Defendants establish that their actions are lawful and do not violate the Constitution’s protections against retaliation and discrimination.” … The relief Plaintiff seeks is barred by section 1252(g) because, if granted, an injunction would prevent the Government from commencing removal proceedings against him — precisely the action Congress has removed from this Court’s authority.

So Ahmed can’t challenge the designation by Rubio, with the court saying he can only raise it after he’s received a final removal order, at which point he may be able to file a “petition for review” with the appropriate appeals court.

“[T]aken together, §1252(a)(5) and §1252(b)(9) mean that any issue — whether legal or factual — arising from any removal-related activity can be reviewed only through a petition for review filed with an appropriate court of appeals.”

While this may be the correct interpretation of current law, it should be horrifying to anyone who believes in the First Amendment (even if you buy Rubio’s claim that Ahmed himself would prefer to suppress the legal speech of Americans). Even if you could understand the logic of removing the jurisdiction of the federal courts from hearing deportation cases (and I don’t actually understand that logic), this is clearly not a standard deportation case.

The sole reason Ahmed faces the possibility of deportation, and the only plausible reason he landed on this list, is his obviously constitutionally protected speech criticizing Elon Musk, one of the biggest bankrollers of the Republican party. The decision to punish him has zero to do with immigration, and absolutely everything to do with attacking him for expressing his opinions.

That alone should be enough for a court to review on First Amendment grounds, separate from whether the deportation process itself is reviewable. The designation itself is the government punishing someone inside the United States for protected speech. The First Amendment is supposed to bar exactly that.

Tragically, because of Congress’s shameful decision thirty years ago to effectively block judicial review of immigration issues, we’re left in a position where Ahmed basically has zero recourse as Marco Rubio gets to punish him for his speech. And all of this is happening while Rubio’s State Department is lecturing European governments about their assaults on free expression. It turns out the government most eager to punish a person for disfavored speech is the one doing the lecturing.

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Contrary to the “worst of the worst” posturing presented by the Trump administration, it’s long been known that immigrants (both legal or otherwise) commit fewer crimes than natural-born US citizens:

Our consistent finding is that legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by illegal immigrants, and that native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants are half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans, and legal immigrants are 74 percent less likely to be incarcerated….

A bunch of weird racists like to argue about these findings, claiming that this lower crime rate only presents itself because the natural-born group doesn’t factor out Black people, which these bigots assume commit so many crimes that it makes white people look like menaces to society. Not so, says the bemused Cato Institute, which not only delivers more facts but calls out these bigots for their stupid bigotry.

A persistent criticism of Cato’s paper in this series is that the native-born incarceration rate is only higher because black native-born Americans have a high incarceration rate (see Table 1 from our paper). It’s certainly true that black native-born Americans have the highest incarceration rates of any ethnic or racial group in any immigrant category. However, the high black American incarceration rate does not overturn our results. It merely narrows them. Immigrants have lower incarceration rates even without considering black native-born rates….

[…]

Excluding only black native-born Americans and keeping black immigrants in the sample, which doesn’t make sense but critics have brought it up, produces almost identical results.

Watching bigots own themselves is always fun. But it hasn’t stopped the “worst of the worst” rhetoric from the bigots running the administration, which continues to make this claim even though they have to know the facts don’t back them up.

As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.

It’s all about removing people this white nationalist government doesn’t like and has nothing to do with making America safer.

But this same administration is also taking some damage from inflation rates it can’t bring down, oil prices its actions continue to keep sky-high, and a runaway deficit it appears entirely unwilling to rein in. Given all of this, you’d think it might want to welcome more migrants to the US, rather than eject as many as possible in the shortest time possible.

Here’s the real news about migrants: they pay more taxes, use fewer government resources, and — if allowed — could be the best way to dig us out of the GOP-exacerbated deficit hole. Once again, it’s the Cato Institute delivering the facts the administration would prefer to ignore:

• Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
• Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
• Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.

Given all of this, it should come as no surprise that flooding cities with ICE officers and engaging in a concerted war on migrants tends to hurt the people the GOP most often pretends to care about: US citizens and small business owners.

A new study shows that the widespread fear and isolation caused by the immigration crackdowns that began in early 2025 had a significant economic toll on Chicago commerce, draining over $1.26 billion from local businesses.

The report, published by the University of Illinois Chicago, used anonymous cellphone GPS data to track movement between immigrant and non-immigrant neighborhoods throughout Chicago’s Cook County. Researchers found that the routine back-and-forth between these areas collapsed almost immediately after President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025, amid rampant rumors and the subsequent sweeps that Chicago would be targeted for immediate Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

According to the report, local businesses have seen a 9% drop in sales, with restaurants being hit the hardest, with a nearly 10% reduction in sales. Most small businesses are incapable of surviving single-digit sales declines (especially in retail where margins are tightest). Restaurants have always been a gamble, but when the government interferes (even indirectly) with your clientele, the risk increases and chance of survival drops precipitously.

Meanwhile, the front-mouths of the administration continue to pretend terrorizing entire communities somehow provides more jobs for Americans. But it’s a rising tide that lifts all boats. A tsunami of enforcement might lift boats, but only before it smashes them against the nearest hard surface, to follow this metaphor to its Trumpian conclusion.

Then there’s the human cost that can’t be captured in year-over-year sales figures:

“I have to go grocery shopping, but I haven’t. What if ICE is there?” a Chicago waitress named Caridad told NPR at the time, requesting that her last name be withheld, for fear of being targeted. “People are more than afraid, they’re panicking.”

People are going without the necessities of life because the trade-off for patronizing a local business might be their actual lives and freedoms. The retailer loses business. The residents lose whatever’s left of their autonomy. And those who still want to maintain some resemblance of a normal live are either risking their freedom by leaving the house or paying a premium to have someone else (read: delivery services) do the things they used to do themselves. And in this economy, choosing the second option simply isn’t sustainable.

If you add it all up, the best way for cities, states, and the federal government to bounce back before we hit another Great Depression would be to immediately cease these anti-migrant efforts and do more to ensure migrants who are already here — and contributing more than their fair share to the economy and public safety — are provided a clear, safe, and expedited path to naturalization. To do otherwise is to be part of the problem, rather than a solution for whatever appears to lacking from America’s “greatness.”

Have I mentioned lately that media consolidation is bad and people who care about an informed electorate and democratic integrity should fight to restore federal media consolidation limits illegally destroyed by the Trump administration and FCC boss Brendan Carr?

Anyway, there’s a new Alex Gibney documentary coming out about Elon Musk that takes him to task for being a white supremacist far right wing con man with a head full of conspiracy theories and recreational ketamine.

It purports to take a closer look at all of Musk’s greatest hits, whether it’s the rampant product misrepresentation resulting in mass human deaths, his tendency to take endless credit for the work of actual engineers, his descent into white supremacist madness, or his time at DOGE spent killing millions of people by destroying government programs he wasn’t empathic or smart enough to understand.

Obviously Elon Musk isn’t excited about this and despite endless claims that he’s a “free speech absolutist,” has already threatened Gibney with legal action. At the same time, it appears that Comcast NBC Universal executives are scared of upsetting Trump and Musk, and as a result are having second thoughts about releasing the documentary in the U.S. this fall:

“The company has not dated the movie, has not communicated with the filmmaking team about its plans, and generally appears to be rethinking the release of a project that it once showed high enthusiasm for but is now politically sensitive for parts of the Trump administration.

Two people with knowledge of the dynamic who were not authorized to speak publicly tell The Hollywood Reporter that while a final decision has not been made and that several outcomes were possible, they believed that Universal would ultimately decide against releasing the film and return rights to the movie to filmmakers.”

Very courageous. Did I mention that media consolidation is bad?

You’re seeing this kind of fecklessness all across our billionaire-owned consolidated corporate press. Jeff Bezos’ Amazon was happy to release low-quality agitprop about the president’s wife, but backed away from releasing the Sam Altman film Artificial shortly after it got into business with OpenAI. Larry Ellison is trying to buy CNN and CBS to push them toward even lazier, pro-oligarch propaganda.

Comcast/NBC/Universal has been lobbying the FCC for years to eliminate media consolidation limits preventing the big four major networks from merging. They’re also keen to get regulatory approval for what will likely be a major sale of some or all of its spun-off TV assets. And, of course, Comcast executives just generally love deregulation, tax cuts, and the steady evisceration of federal consumer protection.

This particular film will likely be fine. People increasingly despise Elon Musk and are eager to watch it. It will not only land somewhere else, it’s likely the filmmakers will be paid both a kill fee and a second time for distribution rights. But other, more challenging projects speaking truth to power might not have the same luck in an environment so overtly hostile to speaking truth to wealth and power.

Republicans and corporations are dead set on dominating what’s left of corporate media to wage a protracted propaganda war against informed consensus and democracy itself. Democrats, meanwhile, have proven too incompetent, captured, or feckless to have any sort of meaningful media reform strategy any time in the last quarter century (spoiler: it starts with consistently enforcing antitrust law).

That desperately needs to change or what’s left of the American experiment is cooked.

If you thought we were done with the trademark bullying drama resulting from gas station and convenience store chain Buc-ee’s, you were wrong. While we’re still waiting for this corporation to take up John Oliver’s request to sue him for creating parody merchandize of the Buc-ee’s brand, the company has decided to do what bullies always do and pick on smaller entities instead.

Speaking of parody, over the summer Buc-ee’s sued Born United, a clothing and merch brand that specifically makes parody products of famous brands. Interestingly, one of the owners of Born United at the time was Tom Fernandez, a South Carolina state senator. Fernandez was pretty adamant that Born United would fight this suit and wouldn’t back down.

In the intervening months, two things that just might be related have occurred. First, Fernandez sold off his ownership stake in the company. Second, Born United settled the case with Buc-ee’s, agreeing to pay the bullying corporate giant nearly a million dollars.

A South Carolina apparel retailer has been ordered to stop selling clothing featuring an unauthorized version of Buc-ee’s beaver logo and to pay the Texas-based convenience store chain $850,000, according to WCIV. Born United, which operates stores in North Charleston, Summerville and Myrtle Beach, was sued by Buc-ee’s in 2025 along with owners Cameron Bechtold, Jared Williams and Josiah Bradley, WCIV reported.

The lawsuit centered on the company’s use of a design resembling Buc-ee’s trademarked beaver logo.

Some speculation on my end, but I’m going to ahead and assess this as cowardice across the board. Do I know that the lawsuit was at least part of the reason Fernandez dipped from his ownership stake in Born United? I don’t, but the timing makes me think that’s the case. And did his bailing out loosen the spine of the rest of the folks at Born United? That seems overwhelmingly likely as well.

Not that I can blame them. Buc-ee’s is big, has lawyers, and has plenty of money to throw around to power its bullying tactics. Born United wants to survive and without the implied imprimatur of a government official in ownership, things probably got a whole lot more dangerous.

It’s just too bad that the only vanguards against Buc-ee’s trademark abuse currently are a TV show host and a small convenience store in Ohio. This is a company in dire need of a legal smackdown.

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

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said. 

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences. 

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.

The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.

“It reflects either pure sloppiness on Paxton’s part or a deliberate effort to conceal some of his investments and property holdings,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the nonpartisan good-government group Public Citizen.

In Paxton’s filings reviewed by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, he valued an undeveloped plot of land as worth up to $50,000 in 2025, first image, but then listed it the following year at between $1 million and $5 million, second image. Obtained and highlighted by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune

If Paxton wins, an incomplete picture of his finances could prevent watchdogs from evaluating his conflicts of interest as a senator, Holman and others said.

The apparent omissions are part of a pattern for Paxton. Over three terms as attorney general, he has withheld financial information that could explain how he became a multimillionaire and had the resources to purchase more than a dozen properties in five states. He began including many of these on his state disclosures only after the Texas Ethics Commission closed a loophole in 2024 that Paxton had cited to leave them off. Most were acquired while Paxton earned a government salary of $153,750.

In the new federal disclosure, filed in August after Paxton received a three-month extension, he reported a net worth between $1 million and $27 million. That is a significantly higher range than the negative $1.9 million to $11.1 million net worth he reported a year ago, before he had secured the Republican nomination but after he had declared his candidacy for federal office.

The spike was driven not by Paxton’s acquisition of more assets but because the reported value on several of his properties soared. 

Paxton’s report omitted listing as assets seven properties worth about $5.2 million collectively, including the Utah condos for which he did not disclose mortgages. He co-owns all of his known real estate holdings with his estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, property records show. The eight he reported are held by their blind trust, which is managed by a family friend.

Federal rules do not require candidates to report as assets personal homes or properties from which they don’t earn money, even if the properties are worth millions.

At a time when voters feel anxious about their own personal finances and dislike the idea of politicians getting rich in office, it would be wise for Paxton to be more transparent about his wealth, said Texas ethics and campaign finance lawyer Andrew Cates.

“If it were me trying to get people’s vote, I would err on the side of transparency rather than not,” Cates said.

Paxton declined to be interviewed and did not answer detailed questions about how he filled out the disclosure forms. Madison Cercy, a spokesperson for his campaign, said Paxton “has had a long and successful career outside of public service, including running his own small business as a lawyer. Stirring up partisan allegations is nothing more than a bad attempt to manufacture controversy where none exists.”

Before being elected to the state Legislature in 2002, Paxton worked at a law firm in the Dallas area and was a corporate attorney for JCPenney. His state financial disclosure for 2001 listed assets totaling no more than $170,000, a ProPublica and Tribune analysis found.

By 2015, his household net worth had grown to $5.4 million, according to financial records lawmakers subpoenaed in 2023 after impeaching Paxton on charges that he took bribes in exchange for helping an Austin real estate investor.

The records, few of which were admitted into evidence during the 10-day Senate trial that resulted in his acquittal, document how Paxton built a diverse portfolio that included investments in a cellphone tower, an HVAC company, a cement supplier and a police body camera manufacturer. He netted $2.2 million when Motorola acquired the body camera firm in 2019, according to his income tax return from that year. 

Shortly after, he went on a real estate buying spree, snapping up six properties in Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and Hawaii. His impeachment defense team said Paxton made a prudent shift toward real estate at a time of rock-bottom interest rates.

Questions about Paxton’s integrity have dogged him in the race for U.S. Senate. His opponent, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, entered September with a narrow polling lead — uncharted territory in a state where Republicans have not lost a statewide race in 32 years. 

A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll released last week found that just a third of respondents viewed Paxton as “honest and trustworthy.” The same day the statewide poll was published, a super PAC supporting Talarico hit the airwaves with an ad that labeled the attorney general as “the most corrupt politician in Texas.” The commercial included a reference to Paxton’s recently disclosed net worth.

Talarico’s net worth, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure, was between $67,000 and $305,000. The range changed little from the previous year. Like Paxton, Talarico did not include his single personal residence among his reported assets. 

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project, said the questions surrounding Paxton’s latest financial disclosures reinforce a longstanding narrative that the attorney general is secretive about his finances and may have leveraged his public position for personal gain.

“It’s his choice how much he explains or doesn’t explain,” Henson said. “But I think that comes with a potential cost, and we’re seeing that in public opinion.”

Paxton’s pivot to real estate appears to be a way to supplement his salary as attorney general. The newsrooms found recent rental listings for six of the properties he disclosed but for which he said he derived no income: two homes in Ocala, Florida; a home and a condo in Austin; a home in College Station, Texas; and a vacation lodge in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. 

A tenant confirmed to the newsrooms she’s living at one of Florida houses. At the Austin condo complex, a next-door neighbor said Paxton’s unit has a renter. And the five-bedroom, three-story Oklahoma lodge he owns is listed online as a short-term rental for up to $1,200 a night, with fall bookings filling up fast.

On his disclosure forms, which require real estate income to be reported, Paxton for each property selected the option “None (or less than $201).”

Federal law requires candidates who aren’t currently in Congress to report all loans exceeding $10,000, except those for personal residences. Paxton did not report three mortgages totaling $1.3 million for condos at the Black Desert Resort in southwest Utah, renowned for its world-class golf course. He purchased the properties in February; the reporting period for the most recent disclosure ran through mid-May. 

Reporters found the mortgage documents in local land records. Each contains an addendum to the mortgage that is used for rental properties, said New Jersey real estate lawyer Daniel M. Shlufman. That addendum removes a requirement that the unit be owner-occupied and allows the lender to collect rent directly from tenants if Paxton were to default on the loan.

Paxton purchased another condo at the resort in 2025, which he disclosed on his most recent report as an asset and a liability. The land records show he obtained a $640,000 mortgage for it. The resort advertises a program in which it leases units purchased by investors, but it declined to say if Paxton’s properties were enrolled in it.

“It’s kind of mind-boggling to think about having four homes at one resort property and imagining those are for personal use,” said Cynthia Brown, a senior lawyer at the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The most significant changes between Paxton’s 2025 and 2026 reports were the valuations of the Oklahoma lodge and a plot of land outside of Fort Worth, whose value he said had increased by millions of dollars.

He appears to have switched from reporting the properties’ assessed values, which are set by the local county, to the loftier estimates of what they would fetch on the open market. 

Paxton’s initial use of the lowball values appears to defy federal rules aimed at bringing candidates’ disclosed property values in line with what they’re actually worth. While the Senate Ethics Committee instructs filers that they can use a recent tax assessment to set the worth of certain property, they must adjust it to market value if it is assessed below that. In these cases, valuations must be disclosed as a specific dollar figure rather than a range.

On both his annual reports as a Senate candidate, Paxton listed ranges for the value of each property he disclosed.

Last year, Paxton reported the Oklahoma lodge, just north of the Texas border, as worth between $100,001 and $250,000. The local county assesses the property at $176,000. Its estimated market value, meanwhile, is more than $1.5 million, according to real estate websites. This year, Paxton’s disclosure valued the property at between $1 million and $5 million. 

Likewise, Paxton valued a 42-acre plot of undeveloped land in Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, at between $15,001 and $50,000 last year. The county assesses the property as farmland worth $20,008, but estimates its market value is $2.9 million. This year, Paxton’s disclosure said the property was worth between $1 million and $5 million.

Paxton bought the property in 2006 with a group of investors including Rob Orr, with whom he served in the Texas House of Representatives. Orr, who manages the investment, said in an interview that Paxton’s 20% stake is worth about $1 million.

“It would have been around a million for quite a while, probably the last four or five years,” Orr said. “It has increased in value because of zoning and because of time.”

The group bought the plot to hold onto, Orr said, until creeping growth from the Dallas-Fort Worth area made it attractive for redevelopment. He said the group is negotiating a sale to a developer. Last year, Orr persuaded the City Council in Burleson to rezone the land, which had been restricted to agriculture, to permit retail and housing.

Paxton’s move to significantly revalue his assets without explaining why is “very strange,” said Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior counsel for ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for strong disclosure rules. Dylus-Yukins, who worked for six years analyzing executive branch officials’ financial disclosures for the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said the agency would ask filers to explain major changes in writing.

“When you have public officials that appear to be fudging the numbers on their disclosure forms, and the Senate Ethics Committee is letting that slide, then you’re not only eroding trust in the committee but the candidate himself,” Dylus-Yukins said, referring to the significant differences between the filings. 

The ethics committee did not respond to requests for comment. Candidates or senators who willingly falsify financial disclosures can be fined up to $50,000 or prosecuted for making a false statement to the government, a felony. The committee rarely investigates senators and has not formally sanctioned a member in 19 years.

Candidates do not have to file any more federal financial disclosures before the November election.