Already Pardoned, Jan. 6 Rioters Push for Compensation

The rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, secured a shocking double victory this year.

President Trump granted them clemency for their crimes on his first day back in the White House, and in the months that followed, he allowed his Justice Department to purge many of the federal agents and prosecutors who sought to hold them accountable.

But even though the president has given the rioters their freedom and has taken steps toward satisfying their desire for retribution, they are asking for more. In the past several weeks, the rioters and their lawyers have pushed the Trump administration to pay them restitution for what they believe were unfair prosecutions.

On Thursday, one of the lawyers, Mark McCloskey, said during a public meeting on social media that he had recently met with top officials at the Justice Department and pitched them on a plan to create a special panel that would dole out financial damages to the rioters — much like the arrangement of a special master to award money to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The panel, which Mr. McCloskey called a “voluntary nonjudicial resolution committee,” would consider rioters’ cases individually, he said, then assign them sums according to harms they had purportedly suffered at the hands of the federal government.

Mr. McCloskey said that he wanted the panel to be overseen by Jeanine Pirro, who runs the federal prosecutors’ office in Washington that took the lead in filing charges against nearly 1,600 rioters who joined in the Capitol attack.

“The only thing I can do as your lawyer,” he told the rioters who were at the online meeting, “is to turn your losses into dollar bills.” (...)

Mr. McCloskey, who rose to prominence five years ago after he pointed an AR-15-style rifle at social justice protesters outside his home in St. Louis, has been leading the efforts to secure restitution for the rioters since at least March, when he announced that he and another lawyer, Peter Ticktin, a former classmate and longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s, were planning to sue the government. (...)

During the online meeting last week, Mr. McCloskey acknowledged that he and Mr. Ticktin had also run into “significant difficulties” in pursuing legal action on behalf of the rioters.

He acknowledged that there could be problems following through on his initial plan to file cases under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue the government for injuries caused by federal employees. He also said it could be challenging to overcome the two-year statute of limitations on bringing tort claims against the government for things that happened nearly five years ago.

But Mr. McCloskey assured the rioters that they had allies inside Mr. Trump’s Justice Department. Chief among them, he said, was Ed Martin, who runs the so-called weaponization working group, a body that was created to investigate those who investigated Jan. 6 and other people whom Mr. Trump perceives to be his enemies.

“He’s 100 percent on our side,” Mr. McCloskey said of Mr. Martin.

Mr. Trump’s grant of clemency to the Jan. 6 defendants was one of the most remarkable uses of presidential mercy in modern history. But also remarkable is the extent to which many of the rioters have remained unsatisfied by the measure, as well as by the subsequent firings and demotions of more than two dozen federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who worked on Capitol riot cases.

On Saturday, for example, Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys who was freed by Mr. Trump from a 22-year prison term stemming from Jan. 6, posted what amounted to a list of demands to the administration in a social media message. Among the things he called for were compensation for the rioters “for their suffering and that of their families” and the firing of “everyone involved” in the riot cases.

“If this isn’t done,” Mr. Tarrio wrote, “we will all hang together.”

On Sunday, another rioter, Ryan Nichols, a former Marine who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for joining a crowd that shoved at officers in a tunnel outside the Capitol, doubled down on his attacks against the police in a post on social media.

“I’d do it again given the same situation,” Mr. Nichols said of attacking officers. “They attacked Americans and killed innocent protesters.” He added that “we should have” dragged foes “through the streets.” (...)

One rioter, Shane Jenkins, who was sentenced to 84 months in prison for assaulting an officer and shattering a window at the Capitol with a tomahawk on Jan. 6, spoke during the online meeting and captured the spirit of loss and disillusionment that many of the pardoned defendants seem to feel.

Mr. Jenkins compared the rioters to the biblical story of the Israelites who were enslaved and then released by God from bondage in Egypt, only to roam for decades through the desert.

“Through Trump, God pardoned us and set us free, right?” Mr. Jenkins said. “Well, then what did they do? They wandered around the desert for 40 years and I don’t think very many of them got to see the Promised Land.”

“I just feel,” he went on, “like that’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

by Alan Feuer, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Nathan Howard/Getty Images
[ed. Missed this bit of stupidity when it came out but the smell eventually became unavoidable (like stepping on a dog turd). Courts already sent these assholes to the Promised Land once, but the Don broke them free. Now this is the thanks he gets? Speaking of stupidity (so much, so little time) remember the Cracker Barrel 'controversy' a few weeks ago? Conservative cancel culture (CCC, not KKK, although...) went apoplectic over corporate wokeness, old time values and something or other. In a logo. Anyway, ever wonder how and why this became a thing? Here you go (WSJ) - Sardar Biglari, activist investor, competitor, hedge fund manager with an axe to grind and an army of credulous MAGA idiots. Truth doesn't stand a chance these days. See also: Sure, Let’s Try Bribes! (Atlantic):]

***

Last year Tom Homan, the border czar, was allegedly recorded accepting $50,000 in cash in a bag (specifically, a bag from CAVA, the Mediterranean fast-casual chain) from undercover FBI agents posing as government contractors in a sting operation, in which Homan intimated that he would now try to steer DHS contracts their way. And then they … let him hang onto the cash, to see what he would do with it. Maybe nothing! Maybe report it to the IRS in a really scrupulous way!

When the Trump administration took over, it dropped the case. FBI Director Kash Patel even said that there was “no evidence of wrongdoing.” Homan also denies doing anything wrong. Remember, a wad of money in a weird bag intended for food only looks like a bribe, as a City Hall adviser recently explained.

[ed. Update: Also this real piece of work: How One J6er Has Been Emboldened by His Pardon (New Yorker):]

***

"On January 7th, according to prosecutors, he head-butted someone and then punched that person while they were on the ground. He also texted a friend, “I may wander over to the Mayor’s office and put a 5.56 in her skull, FKG cunt,” adding, “I hope you’re reading this Mr. FBI agent, FK U.”

The F.B.I. arrested Meredith, who goes by Cleve, at a Holiday Inn a mile from the Capitol. Inside his room were some THC edibles and a vial of testosterone. In Meredith’s trailer, authorities found a 9-millimetre semi-automatic firearm with a Stars and Stripes pattern, an assault-style rifle with a telescopic sight, approximately twenty-five hundred rounds of various kinds of ammunition—some of which could pierce armor, he’d noted in a text—and multiple large-capacity ammunition-feeding devices. He was charged with possessing unregistered firearms and unlawful ammunition, and with making a threat to injure someone from across state lines. (...)

Some J6ers have already run afoul of the law again. Baumgartner has counted nearly two dozen people who have so far committed a variety of offenses since the insurrection, including three who have been arrested since Trump’s mass-pardoning earlier this year. “They range from physical assaults to child pornography or sex-abuse charges,” he said. In January, a Missouri woman, photographed holding Nancy Pelosi’s broken nameplate on January 6th, received ten years in prison for killing a woman while driving drunk. In April, a Tennessee man, who’d been among the first to enter the Capitol, was found guilty of plotting to murder F.B.I. agents last year. (In July, he was sentenced to life in prison.) Also in April, a West Virginia man, who had attacked federal law enforcement during the insurrection, was indicted on charges of armed robbery and assault after stabbing the owner of a Mexican restaurant. (He took a plea deal and is serving six months in jail for unlawful assault.) Then there is Jared Wise, a former F.B.I. agent—who yelled, “Kill ’em, kill ’em, kill ’em, get ’em, get ’em,” as Capitol Police officers were being attacked—previously charged with civil disorder, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and aiding and abetting an assault on law-enforcement officers. Wise’s case was dismissed when Trump took office, before Wise had entered a plea, and in early August he received a new job: he is now a senior adviser in the Department of Justice."

No Public Comment Allowed

No public comment or hearings on environmental review of oil leasing in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is cutting out a public comment process, citing a Trump administration policy aimed at ‘streamlining’ development.

Federal regulators will accept no public comments on a pending environmental study of oil leasing in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, a U.S. Department of the Interior agency announced through a Federal Register notice published Thursday.

There will be no public comment period and no public hearing on a draft supplemental environmental impact statement for a Cook Inlet lease sale that was held in 2022 but found to be legally flawed, said U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which manages oil and gas development in federal offshore areas.

The rejection of public comments is in accordance with Trump administration changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, the 55-year-old law that guides federal decisions about activities that may have environmental impacts. The changes are aimed at speeding up environmental reviews and developing infrastructure projects.

BOEM is following the administration’s updated NEPA regulations and a new department handbook on the law, which went into effect on July 3, said Elizabeth Pearce, a U.S. Department of the Interior senior public affairs specialist.

“This Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is narrowly focused on addressing the court’s concerns, without a separate public-comment round – streamlining what is typically a protracted, multi-year process down to a few months.” Pearce said by email on Thursday.

Although no public comments will be accepted, the public will be able to read the new environmental impact statement when it is finished, Pearce added. “The completed Supplemental EIS will be posted online so Alaskans and other stakeholders can see exactly how we addressed the court’s limited concerns,” she said. [ed. How nice. God forbid the government would want us to know what it's doing.]

The Cook Inlet environmental study stems from a federal lease sale that was held on Dec. 30, 2022. It drew only one bid. (...)

BOEM’s announcement about the lack of public comment opportunities was blasted by environmental plaintiffs in the case.

“BOEM’s decision to exclude the public from its supplemental environmental statement is unacceptable. Public participation is not a box to check — it is the heart of NEPA,” Loren Barrett, co-executive director the water conservation non-profit Cook Inletkeeper, said in an emailed statement. (...)

“This secrecy around exploiting public waters for fossil fuels is completely unacceptable. It would only take one oil spill to devastate Cook Inlet and its beluga whales, which is why the law requires transparency for these dangerous sales,” Monsell said in a statement. 

by Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon |  Read more:

Image: Yereth Rosen

[ed. This is what I did (among other things) during my career. Never in my 30+ years overseeing oil and gas leasing in Alaska was the public ever excluded from commenting on lease sales or any other major federal action. Presumably this recent edict applies to the State of Alaska, as well. It isn't legal, but it's not surprising either. What happened to state's rights?]

Shared Custody Laws Are Changing Divorce Forever

Our society today is legally and normatively gender egalitarian. Women are empowered to pursue high-powered careers or anything else in life. Men are expected to help out with the housework and child-rearing. Now, many men don’t do that, but there’s an expectation that they should.

It was second wave feminism that brought about this revolution. But it also laid the groundwork for cultural changes that some feminists don’t like, such as in the area of divorce law.

Traditionally, divorce courts were very favorable to women. In the event of divorce, sole custody almost always went to the mother, with fathers relegated to limited visitation and hit with child support obligations. The “deadbeat dad” who failed to pay up was the target of even conservative ire. Women could even get alimony, which is financial support intended for the ex-wife herself, not the children. The logic here was that since women didn’t have careers, they couldn’t support themselves and so needed to continue to be provided for by their ex-husbands.

Men basically didn’t stand much of a chance in divorce court in this regime. The father’s rights movement publicized a litany of horrors such as men forced to pay child support for kids that were genetically proven not to be theirs, fathers being forced to pay for graduate school for kids who are well into adulthood, fathers denied access to their children at all, poor black men jailed for being too broke to pay child support, and men who can never retire because they are forced to pay lifetime alimony to their ex-wife (who may actually be shacked up with another guy).

But in this egalitarian world, where women have careers and men are spending more time with the kids, this old regime became increasingly unsustainable.

The most logical and fair divorce system in this egalitarian world would have a strong presumption of joint equal-time custody with no child support payments.

The divorce regime in general has been trending this direction, and some states have actually begun to enshrine this system in law. One of them is Kentucky, whose system was the subject of a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal.

It was 2017, and across Kentucky, divorced fathers were coming together against a common enemy: a custody system they felt favored their ex-wives.

Although custody laws in Kentucky and elsewhere granted judges discretion to decide what split was in a child’s best interest, aggrieved fathers claimed that this typically meant relegating them to the role of every-other-weekend “Disneyland dads,” forced to cram two days of fun into what mothers had two weeks to create.
…
Around the country, the fathers’ rights movement was gaining momentum. Dividing time and decision-making equally between parents, advocates argued, reduced children’s feelings of abandonment, promoted gender equality and lowered tensions between feuding couples
…
In 2018, Kentucky became the first state to pass a law making equally shared custody the default arrangement in divorces and separations. Four other states—Arkansas, West Virginia, Florida and Missouri—have since passed their own versions of Kentucky’s custody bill. Around 20 more are considering or close to passing similar laws, according to an analysis by the National Parents Organization.

The article notes that one effect of this law was a steep decline in the number of divorces in Kentucky.

The law has become a model for other states, not least because Kentucky’s divorce rate has plummeted. Between 2016 and 2023 it fell 25%, compared with a nationwide decline of 18%, according to an analysis by the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.

I don’t know that we have enough evidence to say that this law is what produced these outsized declines in the divorce rate. Divorce is very complex. People who are getting divorced tend to be extremely emotional and often irrational.

But I think there are reasons to believe this would discourage divorce in some cases. It’s extremely well-established that women initiate the vast majority of divorces - about 70% of them. But I’ve never really seen completely compelling findings on the reasons why they are filing for divorce.

But there is some evidence that custody laws do influence this. There’s an oft-cited study by Brinig and Allen called, “These boots are made for walking': why most divorce filers are women.” The authors note the many financial and power benefits to women under the traditional divorce regime:

Divorce, despite its many shortcomings, allows the woman to exercise control over household spending when she is awarded custody. If the court names her primary custodian, she makes most, if not all, of the major decisions regarding the child. As custodial parent, she will be able to spend the money the husband pays in child support exactly as she pleases—something she may not do during marriage. Finally, although the court will usually have ordered visitation, she can exert some control over her former husband by regulating many, although not all, aspects of the time he spends with the child.

After doing a lot of quantitative analysis, the authors conclude:

Our results are consistent with our hypothesis that filing behavior is driven by self-interest at the time of divorce. Individuals file for divorce when there are marital assets that may be appropriated through divorce, as in the case of leaving when they have received the benefit of educational investments such as advanced degrees. However, individuals may also file when they are being exploited within the marriage, as when the other party commits a major violation of the marriage contract, such as cruelty. Interestingly, though, cruelty amounts to only 6% of all divorce filings in Virginia. We have found that who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long. [emphasis added]

This would be consistent with an interesting study I saw some years ago out of Stanford which found that although women are more likely to initiate divorce, men and women are equally likely to initiate breakups in non-marital relationships.

The Brinig and Allen study suggests that a presumption of equal custody might reduce divorce rates.

If it is custody outcomes that most influence divorce filings, changes in custody rules (or their likely outcomes) rather than in divorce grounds should most shape the patterns of both marriage and divorce. In particular, this could take the form of a presumption of joint custody or a rule that made post-divorce patterns mirror preseparation time shares as closely as possible, with sole custody only in cases where one party can show the other parent unfit. An appropriate custody rule mitigates the incentive for one-party filing for the purpose of gaining unilateral control over the children and, to the extent both parents remain involved through visitation or child support, the other spouse.

Again, we can’t draw too many conclusions from just one or a couple of studies out of the vast literature out there. But it’s intuitive from an economics perspective that a presumption of joint custody would significantly change the incentive structures around divorce.

However, this might not always lead to fewer divorces. Among upper middle class families, joint custody divorces might actually incentivize divorce in some cases.

It’s no secret that having kids dramatically constrains your lifestyle, particularly when the kids are younger. A joint custody divorce in which the father and mother alternate weeks with the kids allows them to have “the best of both worlds.” They can still be very involved in their children’s lives and be in parent mode on the weeks they have children, but they can live the single life of fun with friends, concerts, etc. on the other weeks. This might be more appealing to a would-be wife than a situation where she more or less has to have the child full time.

So I think the dynamics might be more complex than we expect here.

Still, these arrangements are undoubtedly more beneficial to fathers than the previous regime. Naturally many feminist advocates hate it. There’s basically no compelling moral or fairness argument against it within the framework of our contemporary egalitarian culture, so they have to raise the specter of abuse. Back to the Journal article:

Some people are staying married to abusive partners, critics of the law say, because they are terrified of leaving their children alone with a parent with a history of violence. “They know their kids are safer if they stay,” said Elizabeth Martin, chief executive of the Louisville-based Center for Women and Family, which provides services to victims of domestic violence (most but not all of whom are women). “Even if it means taking some beatings.”
… (...)

What the article does not state is that it’s well established that one of the leading threats to children is mom’s new boyfriend. As sociologist Brad Wilcox writes:

This new federal study indicates that these cases are simply the tip of the abuse iceberg in American life. According to the report, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents. Likewise, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents. In other words, one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself in is a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend—especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself.

Also, many mothers themselves have a variety of their own problems that endanger their children, such as substance abuse. But I doubt these advocates want mothers with a drug problem to automatically get stripped of custody of their children.

In short, the danger to children from being with a particular divorced parent includes being with their mother as well as their father. (...)

A presumption of equal time joint custody is the obviously fair approach in cases of divorce. This is a powerful reason why the world has been moving in this direction.

by Aaron Renn |  Read more:

Image: Jennifer Pahlka/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 2.0
[ed. Some residual bitterness over this issue, so I'll just say: it's about time. Way past time.]

The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem

When employees at Meta started developing their flagship AI model, Llama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all of that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead?

Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but they weren’t thrilled with their options. This “seems unreasonably expensive,” wrote one research scientist on an internal company chat, in reference to one potential deal, according to court records. A Llama-team senior manager added that this would also be an “incredibly slow” process: “They take like 4+ weeks to deliver data.” In a message found in another legal filing, a director of engineering noted another downside to this approach: “The problem is that people don’t realize that if we license one single book, we won’t be able to lean into fair use strategy,” a reference to a possible legal defense for using copyrighted books to train AI.

Court documents released last night show that the senior manager felt it was “really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP,” as “books are actually more important than web data.” Meta employees turned their attention to Library Genesis, or LibGen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Eventually, the team at Meta got permission from “MZ”—an apparent reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—to download and use the data set.

This act, along with other information outlined and quoted here, recently became a matter of public record when some of Meta’s internal communications were unsealed as part of a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought against the company by Sarah Silverman, Junot Díaz, and other authors of books in LibGen. Also revealed recently, in another lawsuit brought by a similar group of authors, is that OpenAI has used LibGen in the past. (A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation against the company. In a response sent after this story was published, a spokesperson for OpenAI said, “The models powering ChatGPT and our API today were not developed using these datasets. These datasets, created by former employees who are no longer with OpenAI, were last used in 2021.”)

Until now, most people have had no window into the contents of this library, even though they have likely been exposed to generative-AI products that use it; according to Zuckerberg, the “Meta AI” assistant has been used by hundreds of millions of people (it’s embedded in Meta products such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram). (...)

Meta and OpenAI have both argued in court that it’s “fair use” to train their generative-AI models on copyrighted work without a license, because LLMs “transform” the original material into new work. The defense raises thorny questions and is likely a long way from resolution. But the use of LibGen raises another issue. Bulk downloading is often done with BitTorrent, the file-sharing protocol popular with pirates for its anonymity, and downloading with BitTorrent typically involves uploading to other users simultaneously. Internal communications show employees saying that Meta did indeed torrent LibGen, which means that Meta could have not only accessed pirated material but also distributed it to others—well established as illegal under copyright law, regardless of what the courts determine about the use of copyrighted material to train generative AI. (Meta has claimed that it “took precautions not to ‘seed’ any downloaded files” and that there are “no facts to show” that it distributed the books to others.) OpenAI’s download method is not yet known.

Meta employees acknowledged in their internal communications that training Llama on LibGen presented a “medium-high legal risk,” and discussed a variety of “mitigations” to mask their activity. One employee recommended that developers “remove data clearly marked as pirated/stolen” and “do not externally cite the use of any training data including LibGen.” Another discussed removing any line containing ISBN, Copyright, ©, All rights reserved. A Llama-team senior manager suggested fine-tuning Llama to “refuse to answer queries like: ‘reproduce the first three pages of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”’” One employee remarked that “torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right.”

It is easy to see why LibGen appeals to generative-AI companies, whose products require huge quantities of text. LibGen is enormous, many times larger than Books3, another pirated book collection whose contents I revealed in 2023. Other works in LibGen include recent literature and nonfiction by prominent authors such as Sally Rooney, Percival Everett, Hua Hsu, Jonathan Haidt, and Rachel Khong, and articles from top academic journals such as Nature, Science, and The Lancet. It includes many millions of articles from top academic-journal publishers such as Elsevier and Sage Publications.

by Alex Reisner, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Matteo Giuseppe Pani
[ed. Zuckerberg should have his own chapter in the Book of Liars (a notable achievement, given the competition). See also: These People Are Weird (WWL). But there's also some good news: First of its kind” AI settlement: Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion (ArsT):]

"Today, Anthropic likely breathes a sigh of relief to avoid the costs of extended litigation and potentially paying more for pirating books. However, the rest of the AI industry is likely horrified by the settlement, which advocates had suggested could set an alarming precedent that could financially ruin emerging AI companies like Anthropic." 

Universal Music Group is Going After Rick Beato

Just when you thought major labels couldn't get more stupid...

I lost faith in the music industry decades ago, and I’ll never get it back. You will have an easier time convincing me that Elvis still lives in Graceland or Santa Claus delivers gifts from an Amazon truck.

I’ve heard too many horror stories and I’ve seen too much firsthand. I eventually came up with my “Idiot Nephew Theory” to explain why major record labels seem so much more stupid than other businesses.

Here’s how I’ve described it:

THE IDIOT NEPHEW THEORY: Whenever a record label makes a strategic decision, it picks the option that the boss’s idiot nephew thinks is best.

And what do idiot nephews decide? That’s easy—they always do whatever the company lawyer recommends.

But just when I think I’ve seen it all, some new kind of stupid comes my way via the music biz.

And that’s the case right now. Universal Music Group has gone to war with Rick Beato.

If UMG were wise, they would thank Mr. Beato, who works tirelessly to grow the audience for their recording artists. Rick is smart and trustworthy, and is probably the most influential music educator in the world right now.

He does his work on YouTube, where he has more than five million subscribers. I’m one of them. I learn a lot from Rick’s videos, and have been fortunate to be his guest on two occasions (here and here).

He offers sharp commentary, and has conducted smart interviews with Sting, Pat Metheny, Rick Rubin, David Gilmour, Ron Carter, George Benson, Keith Jarrett, Michael McDonald, Jimmy Webb, and many other legends. These artists open up with Rick, because he is so knowledgeable, with big ears and a big heart.

So why is Universal Music upset?

Like any music educator, Beato plays a few seconds of the songs he discusses on these videos. But he’s very careful to limit himself to just a short extract—and this is allowed by law.

It’s called fair use. And it’s part of our copyright law.

Universal Music can’t change fair use standards. But it can file a constant stream of copyright infringement complaints with YouTube. And this puts Beato in a difficult situation—because he will get banned from YouTube after just three copyright strikes.

If that happens, his 2,000 videos disappear from the web—including all those historic interviews. His five million subscribers lose a trusted voice.

That may be what Universal Music wants. Listen to Beato explain this dire situation:

Universal Music is making surprising claims. On a short 42-second video on Olivia Rodrigo, Beato included just ten seconds of a song. But UMG still charged him with copyright violation—although this seems a straightforward example of fair use.

Beato pushes back and successfully defends his fair use rights—but the disputes keep coming. He showed us his email box on the recent video.

Rick has been forced to hire a fulltime lawyer to handle the endless stream of infringement claims. He has won repeatedly—but maybe that’s what gets the label so upset.

“We have successfully fought thousands of these now,” Rick explains in the video. “But it literally has cost me so much money to do this. Since we’ve been fighting these things and have never lost one, they still keep coming in….And they’re all Universal Music Group.”

“It looks to me like Rick Beato was targeted,” claims lawyer Krystle Delgado, who runs the Top Music Attorney channel on YouTube. “What the major labels have said in their closed door meetings to me is nothing short of shocking.”

“If you try fighting them, they get upset,” she adds. “And that’s when this thing starts to escalate.” She notes that her other clients run into this problem and one company—Universal Music Group—is the leading instigator. (...)

I could share many other videos expressing support of Beato. But you get the idea—the wider community of music educators and commentators is alarmed.

This is sad confirming evidence for my Idiot Nephew Theory. Maybe some corporate lawyer thinks this is a smart strategy for UMG. But people who care about music see it differently—they know how destructive this kind of behavior really is. (...)

His audience knows how much good Beato does. We see how much he loves the music and how much he supports the record labels and their artists. They should give him their support in return.

by Ted Gioia, Honest Broker |  Read more:

Image: YouTube/Rick Beato

[ed. Everyone knows about Rick, right? If you don't, choose any musical artist that comes to mind and you'll probably find an interview or analysis of their music on his channel. A great educator, historian, and fine musician in his own right. Also, for an additional dose of stupidity, see: We've Reached the Sad Cracker Barrel Stage of Cultural Evolution (HB):]

***

"Hey, I love American traditions as much as the next bumpkin. But Cracker Barrel isn’t a tradition by any stretch of the imagination. The company was founded on September 19, 1969. That’s exactly one month after the end of Woodstock.

Even Jed Clampett could sniff out the phoniness at this chain restaurant.

Cracker Barrel is a postmodern pastiche of rural tropes. Jean Baudrillard would call it a simulacrum. By that he means that it’s a symbol disconnected from reality—it merely refers vaguely to other symbols.

So you can’t bring back my grandpa’s Cracker Barrel—because my paw-paw never saw a Cracker Barrel. (...)

The biggest shareholder is BlackRock. Did you think it was Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson?"

August 25, 2025: Federal Assault on American Cities - This Week, Chicago

This morning, President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters as he signed several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the reporters. Also as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the right, seemingly to hide a large bruise.

Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with creating “specialized units” in the National Guard that will be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,” apparently setting them up to take on domestic law enforcement as part of Trump’s attempt to take control of Democratic-run cities.

At the press opportunity, Trump claimed that he saved Washington, D.C.—where crime was at a 30-year low before he took control of the Metropolitan Police Department and mobilized the National Guard—from such rampant crime that no one dared to wear jewelry or carry purses. “People,” he said, “are free for the first time ever.”

Although in 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that burning a flag is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute anyone who burns a flag, claiming they would automatically go to prison for a year (he has no authority to make such an order). After seven European leaders rushed to the White House to stabilize the U.S. approach to Russia after Trump’s disastrous meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15, Trump claimed that the seven leaders actually represented 38 countries and that they refer to Trump as “the president of Europe.”

Calling Chicago, Illinois, a “a disaster” and “a killing field,” Trump referred to Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker as “a slob.” Trump complained that Pritzker had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator. Trump went on: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities, and then you send in troops instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over the Republic. These people are sick.”

This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.

He began by saying: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”

He acknowledged that “[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”

Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago’s mayor had received any communications from the White House. “We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?”

“Let me answer that question,” he said. “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”

Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had “hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines” and “invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs.” Those actions have cut violent crime down dramatically. Pritzker pointed out that “thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”

If Trump were serious about combatting crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? “Trump,” Pritzker said, “is defunding the police.”

Then Pritzker turned to the larger national story. “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country,” he said, “I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”

Pritzker continued: “Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.’”

The governor called out the president for his willingness to drag National Guard personnel from their homes and communities to be used as political props. They are not trained to serve as law enforcement, he said, and did not “sign up for the National Guard to fight crime.” “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.”

Pritzker said he hoped that Trump would “reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city's sovereignty” and that “rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days.”

But if not, he urged Chicagoans to protest peacefully and to remember that most members of the military and the National Guard stationed in Chicago would be there unwillingly. He asked protesters to “remember that they can be court martialed, and their lives ruined, if they resist deployment.” He suggested protesters should look to members of the faith community for guidance on how to mobilize.

Then Pritzker turned to a warning. “To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”

He went on: “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”

“Finally,” he said, “to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually.

“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”

by Heather Cox Richardson, Notes From An American |  Read more:

Image: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh; via

[ed. A speech for the ages, summarizing nicely where we are and how we got here (and echoed by others (below). I think this country is primed for a massive disobedience event. It would be a good bookend to Woodstock (and provide some atonement for what we've done to this world, our lives, and future generations). Democracy Day(s): D-Day.]

via:

Constitutional Collapse in Real Time

This morning, FBI agents raided the home of John Bolton—former National Security Advisor, lifelong Republican, and one of the most establishment figures in American foreign policy. His crime? Writing a book critical of Donald Trump and opposing the president’s surrender summit with Vladimir Putin. The justification? A “national security investigation in search of classified records”—the same bureaucratic language once used to investigate Trump’s actual document theft, now weaponized against Trump’s critics.

We are no longer operating under constitutional government. We are witnessing its systematic dismantlement by the very people sworn to preserve it. This is what constitutional collapse looks like in real time—not dramatic overthrow or military coups, but the patient corruption of every institution designed to constrain power until they serve only to protect it.

Nobody wants to admit this reality because admitting it requires confronting what it means for everything else we’ve assumed about American democracy. But that comfort is a luxury we can no longer afford. The Bolton raid isn’t an aberration—it’s observable evidence that we’ve already crossed the line from constitutional republic to authoritarian protection racket.

The Bitter Irony of False Equivalence

There’s a devastating irony in Bolton becoming one of the first high-profile victims of Trump’s weaponized Justice Department. Throughout the 2024 election, Bolton and many establishment figures operated from the “anti-anti-Trump” position—treating both candidates as equally flawed, seeing no meaningful moral distinction between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, flattening existential differences into ordinary political disagreements.

Bolton couldn’t bring himself to endorse Harris despite understanding perfectly well what Trump represented. Like so many sophisticated voices, he was too committed to maintaining his independent credibility to make the obvious moral choice that democratic survival required. He performed the elaborate intellectual gymnastics necessary to avoid acknowledging the clear distinction between a candidate committed to constitutional governance and one openly promising to dismantle it.

Now Bolton experiences personally the constitutional crisis he refused to prevent politically. The FBI agents who ransacked his home weren’t rogue actors—they were following orders from an administration he couldn’t oppose when it mattered. His decades of public service, his genuine expertise, his legitimate policy concerns—none of it protected him once he crossed the regime he helped normalize through sophisticated neutrality.

This pattern extends far beyond Bolton. Across the political spectrum, intelligent people convinced themselves the stakes weren’t really that high, that institutions would constrain Trump’s worst impulses, that the “adults in the room” would prevent constitutional catastrophe. The anti-anti-Trump stance provided permission structure for millions of Americans to vote for authoritarianism while telling themselves they were making a normal political choice.

By flattening the moral difference between Harris and Trump, these voices enabled the very outcome they claimed to fear. Harris represented continuity with constitutional governance—flawed and frustrating, but operating within democratic frameworks. Trump represented systematic destruction of constitutional governance—openly promising to weaponize federal power and eliminate civil service protections. These weren’t equivalent positions requiring sophisticated analysis to distinguish.

The Propaganda Function of “Objectivity”

The most insidious aspect of this false equivalence is how it masquerades as intellectual sophistication while functioning as authoritarian propaganda. When someone with a platform responds to Trump’s systematic weaponization of federal law enforcement by invoking the “Biden Crime Family,” they’re not demonstrating objectivity—they’re selling surrender.

What exactly is the “Biden Crime Family”? Hunter’s laptop? Business dealings investigated by Republican committees for years that produced no criminal charges? Meanwhile, we have documented evidence of Trump selling pardons, accepting foreign bribes, conducting government business at his properties, and now using the FBI as his personal revenge service. These aren’t comparable phenomena requiring balanced analysis—they’re manufactured distractions designed to normalize actual criminality through false equivalence.

When public figures invoke “both sides” rhetoric during an active constitutional crisis, they’re not rising above partisanship—they’re providing cover for the side that systematically benefits from confusion and paralysis. They’re giving their audience permission to remain passive while democracy dies, to treat the collapse of constitutional government as just another partisan disagreement where reasonable people stay neutral.

This sophisticated-sounding neutrality serves the same function as “just asking questions” or “maintaining balance”—rhetorical devices that sound reasonable but provide cover for unreasonable things. The “Biden Crime Family” talking point in response to the Bolton raid essentially argues: “Well, both sides weaponize law enforcement, so this is just normal political hardball.” But one side investigated actual evidence through proper channels, while the other raids former officials for writing books critical of the president.

Authoritarians don’t need everyone to support them actively—they just need enough people to remain confused and passive while they capture the machinery of state. When people with influence treat constitutional governance and authoritarian rule as equivalent, they’re not maintaining objectivity—they’re actively participating in the normalization of authoritarianism.

The Observable Reality of Systematic Collapse

We need to stop pretending this is normal politics conducted by unusual means. The evidence of constitutional collapse surrounds us daily: the executive branch operates through fake emergency declarations to bypass Congressional authority. Trump conducts trade policy through personal decree, ignoring constitutional requirements for legislative approval. The Supreme Court creates immunity doctrines that place presidents above accountability. Congress suspends its own procedures to avoid constitutional duties.

Federal law enforcement has become a revenge machine targeting political opponents while providing protection services for regime loyalists. ICE operates as domestic surveillance apparatus building algorithmic dossiers on American citizens. The FBI raids critics while ignoring documented crimes by allies. The Justice Department empanels grand juries to investigate Barack Obama while dropping cases against Trump.

This is the systemic destruction of a government constrained by law. Not merely political dysfunction. The people orchestrating this understand exactly what they’re building: a protection racket masquerading as constitutional government, where loyalty determines legal consequences and opposition becomes criminal activity.

The Bolton raid demonstrates this logic perfectly. FBI Director Kash Patel, Trump’s personal enforcer now wearing federal authority, tweeted “NO ONE is above the law” while his agents searched the home of a man whose crime was exercising First Amendment rights. Attorney General Pam Bondi amplified: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.” This is justice as theater, law enforcement as performance art, federal power as instrument of personal revenge.

by Mike Brock, Notes From The Circus |  Read more:

Image: Shutterstock.com

[ed. For real. See also: Who Are the “Real” Americans Here? (NFTC); and, We Used to Think the Military Would Stand Up to Trump. We Were Wrong (NYT).]

This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built

No one on the Supreme Court has gone further to enable Donald Trump’s extreme exercise of presidential power than the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts. Associate justices have also written some important opinions shaping executive power, and the Court has issued ever more important unsigned orders, but the most transformative opinions—the opinions that directly legitimize Trump’s unprecedented uses of power—are Roberts’s handiwork. This is not happenstance. Under Supreme Court practice, the most senior justice in the majority—which is always the chief justice when he so votes—determines who will write the main opinion. Roberts reserved these milestones for himself.

And what milestones they have been. Roberts upheld the first Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” on the grounds that the president’s national-security role precludes courts from taking account of the bigotry undergirding an immigration order. He remanded a lower court’s enforcement of a congressional subpoena for Trump’s financial information, writing that “without limits on its subpoena powers,” Congress could exert “imperious” control over the executive branch and “aggrandize itself at the President’s expense.” He has come close to giving the president an untrammeled right to fire any officer in the executive branch at will. And he took the lead in inventing a presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that could exempt the president from accountability for even the most corrupt exercises of his official functions.

Going beyond the precise holdings in these cases, Roberts’s superfluous rhetoric about the presidency has cast the chief executive in all-but-monarchical terms. The upshot is a view of the Constitution that, in operation, comes uncomfortably close to vindicating Trump’s: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Trump’s confidence is surely bolstered also by the Roberts Court’s unsigned per curiam opinions blocking even temporary relief from his sweeping actions. In May, the Court held that Trump orders removing two federal officials at key independent agencies could remain in place while the issue of their legality makes its way through the judiciary. In June, it allowed the administration to proceed with so-called third-country deportations—that is, deporting undocumented noncitizens summarily to countries to which they had no prior connection, but where they might well face torture. On July 8, the Court effectively allowed Trump to proceed with a massive restructuring of the federal executive branch, notwithstanding that the power over executive-branch organization belongs to Congress, not the president. On July 14, the conservative majority allowed the sabotaging of the Department of Education to proceed. Trump’s use of executive power is not a distortion of the Roberts Court’s theory of the presidency; it is the Court’s theory of the presidency, come to life.

What America is witnessing is a remaking of the American presidency into something closer to a dictatorship. Trump is enacting this change and taking advantage of its possibilities, but he is not the inventor of its claim to constitutional legitimacy. That project is the work of John Roberts.

by Peter M. Shane, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Image: The Atlantic

[ed. See also: Trump officials accused of defying 1 in 3 judges who ruled against him (WaPo);

President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.

Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to carry out actions that have been blocked.

and, On the Supreme Court's Constitutional Vandalism in Service of Inherited Wealth (NFTC):]

Peter Shane's devastating analysis in The Atlantic has performed the invaluable service of documenting what many suspected but few could prove: that Chief Justice John Roberts has systematically dismantled American constitutional government while claiming to restore it. But Shane's meticulous account of Roberts's "proto-authoritarian canon" reveals something even more damning—the entire Unitary Executive Theory project is essentially an exercise in motivated reasoning designed to render the New Deal's democratically popular reforms conveniently unconstitutional on behalf of oligarchic wealth.

The timeline makes the con obvious. This "ancient constitutional wisdom" mysteriously emerged in the 1980s—Shane notes Roberts was clerking for Rehnquist when Reagan won in 1980, then joined the administration that accelerated this theory's mainstreaming alongside the founding of the Federalist Society. But why did American intergenerational wealth suddenly need a constitutional theory that could dismantle regulatory agencies without the messy business of democratic politics?

Simple: the New Deal had created institutions that could actually constrain oligarchic power—agencies that could regulate business, tax wealth, and impose democratic accountability on concentrated capital. These programs remained politically popular, making them difficult to eliminate through normal democratic processes. So oligarchs funded a decades-long legal project to declare them constitutionally illegitimate instead.

“Unitary Executive Theory” is the solution: if the president must have absolute control over all executive functions, then independent regulatory agencies become unconstitutional by definition. If Congress cannot protect agency officials from presidential firing, then democratic constraints on oligarchic power become structurally impossible. The theory isn't derived from constitutional text or historical understanding—it's reverse-engineered from the political goal of eliminating democratic accountability.

Shane's documentation reveals how Roberts has systematically implemented this oligarchic wish list while maintaining the fiction of constitutional principle. Presidential immunity, unlimited firing power, subordinated Congress—each decision applies whatever interpretive framework serves the ultimate goal of making New Deal-style democratic constraints constitutionally impossible. (...)

The beauty of the scheme is that it sounds so respectably academic. "Unitary Executive Theory" rolls off the tongue with such scholarly authority that one almost forgets to ask why this crucial constitutional principle remained hidden from legal scholars for two centuries, only to be discovered by the same people who needed it to eliminate the regulatory agencies that threatened their inherited fortunes.

The funders and promulgators of this theory? American intergenerational wealth, channeled through think tanks, law schools, and the Federalist Society itself. The same oligarchs who needed a legal framework to dismantle New Deal constraints funded decades of constitutional scholarship to provide that framework, then acted surprised when their handpicked judges discovered that the Constitution had always forbidden democratic accountability.

Shane's analysis reveals the most contemptible aspect: not the transparent self-interest—oligarchs have always served their own interests—but the army of legal academics, federal judges, and constitutional scholars who've spent decades providing intellectual respectability for what amounts to a billionaire's constitutional shopping list. They've turned constitutional law into a protection racket for inherited wealth while maintaining the fiction that they're engaged in neutral jurisprudential analysis. 

Border Patrol Wants Advanced AI to Spy on American Cities

The recent passage of Trump’s sprawling flagship legislation funnels tens of billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security. While much of that funding will go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to bolster the administration’s arrest and deportation operations, a great deal is earmarked to purchase new technology and equipment for federal offices tasked with preventing immigrants from arriving in the first place: Customs and Border Protection, which administers the country’s border surveillance apparatus, and its subsidiary, the U.S. Border Patrol.

One page of the presentation, describing the wishlist of Border Patrol’s Law Enforcement Operations Division, says the agency needs “Advanced AI to identify and track suspicious activity in urban environment [sic],” citing the “challenges” posed by “Dense residential areas.” What’s considered “suspicious activity” is left unmentioned. (...)

The reference to AI-aided urban surveillance appears on a page dedicated to the operational needs of Border Patrol’s “Coastal AOR,” or area of responsibility, encompassing the entire southeast of the United States, from Kentucky to Florida. A page describing the “Southern AOR,” which includes all of inland Nevada and Oklahoma, similarly states the need for “Advanced intelligence to identify suspicious patterns” and “Long-range surveillance” because “city environments make it difficult to separate normal activity from suspicious activity.”

Although the Fourth Amendment provides protection against arbitrary police searches, federal law grants immigration agencies the power to conduct warrantless detentions and searches within 100 miles of the land borders with Canada, Mexico, or the coastline of the United States. This zone includes most of the largest cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, New York, as well as the entirety of Florida.

The document mentions no specific surveillance methods or “advanced AI” tools that might be used in urban environments. Across the Southwest, residents of towns like Nogales and Calexico are already subjected to monitoring from surveillance towers placed in their neighborhoods. A 2014 DHS border surveillance privacy impact assessment warned these towers “may capture information about individuals or activities that are beyond the scope of CBP’s authorities. Video cameras can capture individuals entering places or engaging in activities as they relate to their daily lives because the border includes populated areas,” for example, “video of an individual entering a doctor’s office, attending public rallies, social events or meetings, or associating with other individuals.”

Last year, the Government Accountability Office found the DHS tower surveillance program failed six out of six privacy policies designed to prevent such overreach. CBP is also already known to use “artificial intelligence” tools to ferret out “suspicious activity,” according to agency documents. A 2024 inventory of DHS AI applications includes the Rapid Tactical Operations Reconnaissance program, or RAPTOR, which “leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance border security through real-time surveillance and reconnaissance. The AI system processes data from radar, infrared sensors, and video surveillance to detect and track suspicious activities along U.S. borders.”

The document’s call for urban surveillance reflect the reality of Border Patrol, an agency empowered, despite its name, with broad legal authority to operate throughout the United States.

“Border Patrol’s escalating immigration raids and protest crackdowns show us the agency operates heavily in cities, not just remote deserts,” said Spencer Reynolds, a former attorney with the Department of Homeland Security who focused on intelligence matters. “Day by day, its activities appear less based on suspicion and more reliant on racial and ethnic profiling. References to operations in ‘dense residential areas’ are alarming in that they potentially signal planning for expanded operations or tracking in American neighborhoods.”

by Sam Biddle, The Intercept |  Read more:

Image: Jenny Kane/AP
[ed. See also, via The Intercept:]

***

~ Guess Who’s Eligible for Student Loan Forgiveness: New ICE Agents

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday it will offer student loan forgiveness and repayment options to new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits — along with a $50,000 signing bonus.

The announcement comes as the Trump administration works to limit the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for groups the president considers political enemies.

***

~ National Guard Ordered to Do ICE Paperwork at Immigration Facilities in 20 States

The Trump administration authorized the deployment of National Guard troops to immigration facilities in 20 states beginning early next month, further entwining the military in civil and law enforcement functions.

The move undermines long-standing prohibitions on the use of the armed forces in domestic operations, sidestepping the Posse Comitatus Act and accelerating the U.S. transition into a police state, experts said.

The National Guard will be deployed in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, among other states, according to a defense official who was not authorized to disclose the information. (...)

Guard members will assist ICE officials in “alien processing” – administrative work preceding detention — in 20 states while ICE leadership will “direct” troops assigned to the mission, which will begin in early August, according to a memo first revealed on Wednesday by the New York Times.

***

~ “Intense Culture of Fear”: Behind the Scenes as Trump Destroys the EPA From Within

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency had taken “significant actions” to protect public health and the environment while working “to Power the Great American Comeback.” The agency said it was also working to fulfill Trump’s promises to revitalize the auto industry, “restore the rule of law,” and give decision-making power back to the states.

In practice, the agency has done the opposite, several EPA staffers told The Intercept. 

Under Zeldin’s leadership, the EPA announced a set of new core priorities that includes making the U.S. the artificial intelligence capital of the world and revitalizing the auto industry. (...)

“A lot of us are really confused about what our new mission is, when they’re coming out with these pillars of serving the auto industry and bringing back auto industry jobs,” Hagen said. “I don’t know how we fit into that.”

The EPA’s role is not to create jobs; it’s to regulate and protect people from pollution, she said.

“Our mission is not to promote AI or energy dominance,” she said. “That’s not our mission.” (...)

Last week, the agency said it is planning to dissolve the Office of Research and Development, which does life-saving research on toxicity and developing sampling protocols, and helped in emergencies after the East Palestine train derailment in Ohio and the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, more than 1,500 scientists will have to compete for 300 jobs, Hagen said.

“It’s essentially like lobotomizing our agency. If we don’t have the brain — the research behind protecting the environment — we can’t do that effectively, and I think that’s exactly what they want,” she said. “They’re doing all this under the guise of efficiency, but what they really are doing is dismantling this agency from doing its job.”

Silence on SNAP

Poverty and hunger will rise as a result of the Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to the US federal “food stamps” program, according to experts. Low-income workers who rely on the aid are braced for dire consequences.

Katie Giede, a single mother and waitress in Conyers, Georgia, is one of the 42 million Americans who use the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap). Even with the maximum benefit permitted, she struggles to afford food for her and her child.

She makes $3 an hour plus tips at the fast-food chain Waffle House, where she has worked for 11 years. The company deducts meals from workers’ pay check per shift, regardless of whether they eat one or not.

“Our pay is already so little that we’re struggling with everything,” Giede told the Guardian. “Single mothers like myself are reliant upon the benefits like Snap and Medicaid. So when you go and you cut that as well, now you have mothers out here that are not only worried at night because they already can’t afford housing or a vehicle, but we’re also worried what is our kid is going to eat? Because we no longer have help.”

Giede said she received $450 a month for her and her child. She said working too many hours or receiving too much income was a constant concern, due to eligibility cut-offs.

According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, at the end of 2024, even the maximum Snap benefit would not cover the cost of a modestly priced meal in 99% of all counties in the US.

“I dread that trip to the grocery store every week, because you have to sit down and you really have to budget,” said Giede. “Every time you go, you’re having to make the choice between something that’s healthy or something that’s cheaper, just so you can get enough to last all week.

“There are so many people in this country that rely on these benefits, and with these cuts, half of the people that are surviving right now off of this are going to lose their benefits. That’s not even just people not eating a little bit. They’re already not eating enough, so we’re going to lose lives over this. It’s those of us at the bottom that are really feeling it.”

Waffle House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” set the stage for significant cuts to Snap by shifting higher administrative costs to each state, expanding work reporting requirements and imposing restrictions on non-citizen eligibility.

Many lower-wage workers have grown more reliant on Snap in recent years. US food prices rose by 23.6% between 2020 and 2024, according to official data. While inflation has since moderated, grocery costs remain high.

As a result of the latest Snap changes, states will be responsible for 75% of administrative costs of handling the program from 2027, up from 50% cost-sharing with the federal government, which is likely to strain state budgets.

From 2028, for the first time states will be forced to pick up some of the multibillion-dollar bill for Snap benefits. The state of New York, for example, faces a budget impact of about $1.2bn, according to the Food Research and Action Center (Frac), a non-profit advocacy group.

While such shifting costs have raised fears that states will cut back Snap support, expanded work requirements have sparked concern that few people will be eligible. Analysis by the Urban Institute found about 22.3 million US families are set to lose some or all of their Snap benefits.

“This is a very targeted, well-thought-out plan of dismantling the Snap program that federal policy makers won’t take responsibility for, because it is the states, it is the governors who will have to cut resources for Snap, who will have to cut the program in order to say we can’t operate this because of what’s happening at the federal level,” said Gina Plata-Nino, Snap deputy director at the Frac.

“Snap is a very important ecosystem at the local level, at the state level and the federal level, because billions of dollars go into states, and this federal money supports local economies,” she added. “All of these proposals threaten this very delicate balance.”

The White House deferred comment to the office of management and budget, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

States across the US are braced for stark consequences. “We’re going to have worse hunger and ultimately, worse poverty,” said Seth DiStefano, policy outreach director at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “There are entire regions of West Virginia where there aren’t 20 hours a week [expanded Snap work requirement] of anything to apply for. What do you tell those families?

“We’re talking families with kids now that are going to be subjected to these harsh work reporting requirements. We’re talking folks in their 60s, literally in communities where there are no jobs, none, and ripping away the one outlet to their basic needs that’s available to them.”

Among the employers with the most workers reliant on Snap is Walmart, the largest private employer in the US, as much of its workforce receives only part-time hours.

Christina Gahagan, 66, has worked at Walmart for a decade in western New York at several stores. She is currently based at a store in Geneseo, New York.

“I would say at least 50% of the people in my store rely on food stamps to make ends meet for their families,” said Gahagan. “They’re always trying to figure out where the best deals are, coupon clipping at lunch and reading circulars to see who’s got the best deal on whatever, just to make their money stretch.” (...)

“Walmart is the largest employer in the US. We rival Amazon almost dollar for dollar in what we do. You would think a company like that could shell out a little bit more money per hour for associates in the store across the board, so that there aren’t people who are having to depend so heavily on public assistance.”

Walmart did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

by Michael Sainato, The Guardian | Read more:
Image:Richard Levine/Alamy
[ed. No one wants to comment on a new bureaucracy to process and administer oversight requirements? Jobs! Remember who did this the next time you vote.]

Why Jolly Ranchers Are Banned in the UK but Not the US

On June 11, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued an alert declaring several candies manufactured by The Hershey Company “unsafe to eat.” Four products from the flagship Jolly Rancher brand—Hard Candy, “Misfits” Gummies, Hard Candy Fruity 2 in 1, and Berry Gummies—contain mineral oil hydrocarbons, banned from food in the UK.

The offending substances are mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) and mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH). Both are derived from crude oil and are often used in confectionery to reduce stickiness and enhance the candy’s shine. “Consuming mineral oil regularly and over time could pose a risk to your health,” says Tina Potter, head of incidents at the FSA. “If you’ve eaten them, there is no need for concern, but don’t eat any more.”

Nevertheless, the FSA has branded the consumption of these sweets a “toxicological concern.” MOSH have been found to accumulate in the tissue of certain species of lab rat, causing adverse effects in the liver. But MOAH are more concerning—the UK’s FSA, alongside the European Union, considers some of these compounds to be genotoxic carcinogens—substances that can cause cancer by altering cells’ genetic material. (...)

Enforcement will likely take time. But in the US, MOAH remain permitted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “The key takeaway from all of this is [that] mineral oil is allowed and deemed safe for use in food in the US,” says Todd Scott, senior manager of communications at The Hershey Company. “Mineral oil is not an ingredient in the recipe. We use it as a processing aid to keep the candy from sticking to the mold.”

MOAH are just one of a number of chemical compounds banned by the UK and EU that are deemed safe for Americans. Much of the discrepancy lies in the FDA’s “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) loophole. In the US, any new food additive is subject to premarket review and approval by the FDA—unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use.

These assessments, however, are often completed in private labs and sometimes even by the manufacturer of the chemicals themselves—and manufacturers aren’t required by law to submit their GRAS determination or supporting data to the FDA. The assessments don’t require third-party experts, either. In a 2023 study of 403 GRAS notices filed by the FDA between 2015 and 2020, an average of 30 percent relied on the opinion of a manufacturer’s in-house employee.

Adopted in 1958, the GRAS exemption was intended to cover the use of commonplace ingredients, explains Jensen Jose, regulatory counsel for the nonprofit watchdog Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, DC. “It was so you wouldn’t require a new piece of legislation every time you added salt to a sandwich.”

However, as the food industry’s appetite for additives grew over the following decades, the GRAS rule came to cover a widening array of ingredients—with the manufacturers of these additives left effectively to govern themselves. “The hope is that they conduct scientific studies of their own,” says Jennifer Pomeranz, a public health lawyer and associate professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “But legally speaking, no one’s checking.” In theory, Pomeranz says, “a company can add a new ingredient and not even list its chemical compound on the packet.”

The result is that a host of additives, recognized as safe under FDA regulations, are banned by other governments over safety fears. “Compounds are added to food for shelf life, aesthetics, and convenience,” says Lindsay Malone, a registered dietitian nutritionist and instructor in the Department of Nutrition at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. “Even down to how easily food comes out of the plastic container.”

Compounds that carry health risks line the shelves of US grocery stores, consumed by Americans every day. Take butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), for example, a preservative that has been linked to hormone disruption. It’s often found in cereals, dried snacks, and packaged cake mixes. Meanwhile a packet of chewing gum, potato chips, or processed meat may include butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), a probable carcinogen. Both are exempt from FDA regulations through the GRAS loophole.

In isolation, compounds like BHT, BHA, and MOAH aren’t necessarily dangerous. Public health advocates are more concerned about their cumulative effect—a lifetime of eating common, addictive, harmful compounds. 

by Alex Christian, Wired |  Read more:

Image: Washington Post/Getty

[ed. Clear as mud. I like JRs, and the stated risks seem fairly low. It's almost impossible to find hard candies anymore (check out your local shelves). Everything's soft, gummy, chewy, or sour. Ack.]