Let’s Be Clear: The Rioting In LA Is By The Cops, Not The Protestors

Say That Again

from the firing-back dept

I already wrote about the GOP’s bloodthirsty desire to use the military on Americans. They manufactured a nonsense “crisis” by over-aggressively sending in ICE agents to grab people off the streets, leading to protests, which were focused on provoking protestors into violence, which would then be used to justify an even more violent crackdown.

Given that, it’s crucial to get actual reports from what’s actually happening on the street, rather than relying on questionable media framing by those not actually there. Laura Jedeed, at The Nation, reports from the actual protest itself that the only “riot” happening is by the cops looking to provoke a response to justify their initial volley of violent activity:

I spent Sunday from about 4 pm until very late inside the LA protests, and this is what I saw. Yes, cars were set on fire in one part of the sprawling, multi-block protest. Yes, fireworks were launched at cops—a handful, sporadically. But it should be noted that these were launched long after these police officers began unloading flash bang after flash bang, rubber bullet after rubber bullet, into a largely peaceful crowd. (Flash bangs are stun grenades that produce a flash of light and deafening noise.)

The idea that cops were just reacting to protester provocation is absurd. Cops occupied intersections in an attempt to split the protest, then occasionally charged the protest lines that surrounded them to force the crowds to temporarily retreat. These assaults seemed unrelated to protester action or lack thereof. At one point, while the cops were unloading round after round of blue-tipped rubber bullets into a crowd hunkered down behind a barricade, a different group of protesters approached from the side and threw a firework into the center of the police line. The cops turned their fire against the group, which ran off, but did not pursue them. Thirty seconds later, the cops were back to shooting at the barricade.

We have heard a lot about the assault of police officers during these protests. Why haven’t we seen it? Where’s the body cam footage showing protesters injuring cops, striking them, putting them out of commission? I saw a police officer struck by a water bottle thrown by protesters in a barrage launched around 7:30 pm after those protesters spent hours absorbing “less lethal” rounds and being deafened by flash bangs, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, we’ve got drone footage of a mounted officer using his horse to trample a protester, who lies prone on the ground, surrounded by mounted police. We’ve got cops beating protesters with truncheons, cops deploying tear gas, cops bringing box after box of ammunition to the line so they could fire again and again and again into crowds of protesters exercising tremendous restraint throughout the day.

This pattern—police initiating violence, protesters responding minimally, police escalating further—isn’t accidental. It’s that fascist playbook all over again: manufacture the violence to justify the violence you initiated.

We should all be calling it out for what it is.

Tragically, most of the media are failing at that and are instead accepting the narrative the administration wants. Jadeed details how badly the media is failing:

“Pockets of LA descending into chaos,” an ABC news anchor declared in an extremely typical news segment on Monday. “Protesters setting cars on fire, dumping bikes and scooters on police cruisers on the highway. Law enforcement firing hundreds of flash bangs and non-lethal projectiles and making dozens of arrests.” In the background, footage of these atrocities: cops beating protesters with truncheons, tear gas, a car on fire. A shirtless masked man waving a Mexican flag atop a wrecked Waymo, cops firing into a crowd at close range. The only active violence in these clips comes from the cops, but no matter. That fire is what you should be worried about: the fire and nothing else.

While some organizations reported from inside the protest itself, most did not: They set up camp behind the police line, or reported using drone footage, or simply asked the cops what to say. “Dozens of people were arrested Sunday and accused of attempted murder, arson and other crimes during a day of violence and protests in Los Angeles,” NBC Los Angeles declared in an article based exclusively on LAPD sources. It’s an understandable decision on their part. Just look at Lauren Tomasi, a reporter for the Australian Channel Nine news service who got “caught in the crossfire” and struck with a rubber bullet while reporting—by which I mean an LA police officer aimed directly at the reporter from close range and shot her. She reports being “sore, but OK,” which is more than photographer Nick Stern can say: The day before, a “less lethal” round punctured his leg and required emergency surgery. As of Tuesday morning, the LA Press Club documented over 30 injuries to members of the press. Easier and safer to parrot police talking points than face down their guns.

The systematic targeting of journalists isn’t incidental—it’s designed to control the narrative by ensuring that most coverage comes from behind police lines, where reporters can only see what law enforcement wants them to see.

One of the most egregious examples of this that I saw was the NY Times posting an image of a shopping cart on fire and claiming that “the police are firing back”—as if a burning shopping cart constitutes such a direct threat to heavily armored officers hundreds of yards away that it justifies “returning” fire into crowds of people.

The Trump regime is manufacturing a fake riot to justify their own actions. They’re pushing for violence to justify more violence. The violence and attacks we’re seeing are almost entirely initiated by the cops, and yet are being falsely framed as protesters “rioting” despite the lack of evidence to support it.

The media’s willingness to amplify this manufactured narrative isn’t just journalistic malpractice—it’s complicity in the very authoritarianism they should be exposing.

So let’s be clear about what’s happening. If it’s a riot, it’s the police who are rioting. If there’s an “invasion” of LA, it’s the US military that is invading. Kudos to Jedeed and The Nation for calling this out while so much of the media is rewriting history in real time.

As the driver pointed out—as protesters around me would later point out—the president’s not wrong: LA is under invasion. But the invading force isn’t the immigrants who live and work here. It’s ICE attempting to abduct children from elementary schools by claiming their parents authorized the pick-up, or rolling up to Home Depot to abduct people doing the most American thing imaginable: pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, hiring themselves out as day laborers to make a better life for themselves and their families. It’s the Marines deployed against their fellow citizens by an administration that’s fantasized about quelling First Amendment activity by force for half a decade now. These are the un-American hordes descending on Los Angeles.

Trump can call these protests invasions all he wants: I know what I saw. As the sun began to set, riot cops from the LA county sheriff’s department showed up on trucks, fully kitted out with shields and gas masks. The rapidly shrinking protest saw the writing on the wall and, rather than confront these militarized enforcers, turned and walked away, into the night and into the city. For hours they marched, blasting mariachi music and old-school West Coast rap and chanting their simple, reasonable demand: “No ICE in LA!”

As the protesters marched, they chanted something else: “Whose streets? Our streets!” It wasn’t a declaration of war or a challenge to others who might lay claim to the city, but a statement of obvious fact. As these several hundred protesters marched the wrong way up a one-way street, completely stopping traffic, an overwhelming number of drivers honked and cheered. They rolled down their windows to fist-bump the protesters and take pictures and shout their approval.

From the very beginning of this regime, we’ve been saying over and over and over again that the most important thing is telling the truth. As Mike Brock keeps saying, “two plus two equals four” and you can’t let them get away with telling you otherwise.

This isn’t just about getting the facts straight for their own sake. When media coverage systematically misrepresents who is initiating violence and who is responding to it, it provides cover for further escalation. Each cycle of distorted coverage makes the next round of police violence more politically palatable.

The people are not rioting. The police are. Immigrants are not invading. The US military is.

We have to be clear on what ground truth is, and that requires that the media stop accepting propagandist framing.

Filed Under: california, ice, invasion, la, lapd, manufactured crisis, media, national guarde, propaganda, protests, riots, truth

The Data On Immigration & Terrorism Don’t Support Trump’s Travel Ban

Policy

from the who-would-have-thought-it? dept

The Trump administration on June 4, 2025, announced travel restrictions targeting 19 countries in Africa and Asia, including many of the world’s poorest nations. All travel is banned from 12 of these countries, with partial restrictions on travel from the rest.

The presidential proclamation, entitled “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” is aimed at “countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the entry or admission of nationals from those countries.”

In a video that accompanied the proclamation, President Donald Trump said: “The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted.”

The latest travel ban reimposes restrictions on many of the countries that were included on travel bans in Trump’s first term, along with several new countries.

But this travel ban, like the earlier ones, will not significantly improve national security and public safety in the United States. That’s because migrants account for a minuscule portion of violence in the U.S. And migrants from the latest travel ban countries account for an even smaller portion, according to data that I have collected. The suspect in Colorado, for example, is from Egypt, which is not on the travel ban list.

As a scholar of political sociology, I don’t believe Trump’s latest travel ban is about national security. Rather, I’d argue, it’s primarily about using national security as an excuse to deny visas to nonwhite applicants.

Terrorism and public safety

In the past five years, the U.S. has witnessed more than 100,000 homicides. Political violence by militias and other ideological movements accounted for 354 fatalities, according to an initiative known as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, which tracks armed conflict around the world. That’s less than 1% of the country’s homicide victims. And foreign terrorism accounted for less than 1% of this 1%, according to my data.

The Trump administration says the U.S. cannot appropriately vet visa applicants in countries with uncooperative governments or underdeveloped security systems. That claim is false.

The State Department and other government agencies do a thorough job of vetting visa applicants, even in countries where there is no U.S. embassy, according to an analysis by the CATO Institute.

The U.S. government has sophisticated methods for identifying potential threats. They include detailed documentation requirements, interviews with consular officers and clearance by national security agencies. And it rejects more than 1 in 6 visa applications, with ever-increasing procedures for detecting fraud.

The thoroughness of the visa review process is evident in the numbers.

Authorized foreign-born residents of the U.S. are far less likely than U.S.-born residents to engage in criminal activity. And unauthorized migrants are even less likely to commit crimes. Communities with more migrants – authorized and unauthorized – have similar or slightly lower crime rates than communities with fewer migrants.

If vetting were as deficient as Trump’s executive order claims, we would expect to see a significant number of terrorist plots from countries on the travel ban list. But we don’t.

Of the 4 million U.S. residents from the 2017 travel ban countries, I have documented only four who were involved in violent extremism in the past five years.

Two of them were arrested after plotting with undercover law enforcement agents. One was found to have lied on his asylum application. One was an Afghan man who killed three Pakistani Shiite Muslim immigrants in New Mexico in 2022.

Such a handful of zealots with rifles or homemade explosives can be life-altering for victims and their families, but they do not represent a threat to U.S. national security.

Degrading the concept of national security

Trump has been trying for years to turn immigration into a national security issue.

In his first major speech on national security in 2016, Trump focused on the “dysfunctional immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country.”

His primary example was an act of terrorism by a man who was born in the U.S.

The first Trump administration’s national security strategy, issued in December 2017, prioritized jihadist terrorist organizations that “radicalize isolated individuals” as “the most dangerous threat to the Nation” – not armies, not another 9/11, but isolated individuals.

If the travel ban is not really going to improve national security or public safety, then what is it about?

Linking immigration to national security seems to serve two long-standing Trump priorities. First is his effort to make American more white, in keeping with widespread bias among his supporters against nonwhite immigrants.

Remember Trump’s insults to Mexicans and Muslims in his escalator speech announcing his presidential campaign in 2015. He has also expressed a preference for white immigrants from Norway in 2018 and South Africa in 2025.

Trump has repeatedly associated himself with nationalists who view immigration by nonwhites as a danger to white supremacy.

Second, invoking national security allows Trump to pursue this goal without the need for accountability, since Congress and the courts have traditionally deferred to the executive branch on national security issues.

Trump also claims national security justifications for tariffs and other policies that he has declared national emergencies, in a bid to avoid criticism by the public and oversight by the other branches of government.

But this oversight is necessary in a democratic system to ensure that immigration policy is based on facts.

Charles Kurzman, Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Filed Under: donald trump, immigration, racism, terrorism, travel ban

The GOP Is Way Too Fucking Excited About Using US Troops On American Protestors

Say That Again

from the war-criminals-in-office dept

On the latest episode of the always excellent “The Bugle” podcast, comedian Alice Fraser amusingly describes the horror of what’s happening in Los Angeles the following way:

So let’s just clarify: this is arguably unlawful deployment of military force to enforce peace on peaceful protests over illegal arrests of illegal immigrants.

Here’s what actually happening in LA: Trump’s racist advisor Stephen Miller deliberately manufactured this controversy, directing ICE officials to raid Home Depots where migrant workers pick up day labor jobs, knowing it would provoke protests.

Direct orders from Stephen Miller ignited the Los Angeles protests, leading to the precarious, highly militarized situation the city is currently facing. 

The plan from the beginning was to create confrontations that could justify crushing dissent with military force—even though the LAPD itself has repeatedly said the protests are peaceful and they don’t need military backup. But hey, why let reality get in the way of a good authoritarian power fantasy? Trump and his cronies are gonna fabricate “riots” whether they exist or not because they’ve been dreaming of using the military on Americans for years.

Now we have the manufactured result: Trump has sent both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles in what California is correctly suing over as illegal federal seizure of state resources. Make no mistake about what’s happening: MAGA Republicans are declaring war on anyone who disagrees with them, and they’ll use military force against Americans to silence dissent.

And on Tuesday, Senator Tom Cotton underscored the point, rehashing his controversial, horrifying New York Times op-ed from five years ago for the Wall Street Journal, advocating for the use of the US military on American protesters. Cotton has literally recycled the same authoritarian playbook, using nearly identical language to justify military force against protesters—proving this has nothing to do with the specific circumstances in LA and everything to do with a long-standing terrifying authoritarian desire to illegally use the US military to crush dissent coming from the American citizenry.

Some of you will likely recall that almost exactly five years ago, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, the warmongering, hate-filled Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas took to the pages of the NY Times to advocate for bringing in the US military to shoot at American protesters and to silence them for their speech.

That 2020 op-ed caused a massive controversy when the NY Times published advocacy for using the US military against US citizens. Some very stupid people tried to turn it into a “censorship” debate when people criticized the Times for platforming such dangerous ideas. But as we pointed out then, the Times’ editorial decisions are their own free speech, not censorship.

The real issue that got lost in that debate was why bloodthirsty MAGA leaders are so eager to turn the US military on American protesters. Then, as now, Cotton’s justification was based on wildly exaggerating isolated incidents amid largely peaceful demonstrations to justify military intervention.

But Cotton obviously kept that op-ed in his pocket all these years, just waiting until he could run it again, this time with an assist from Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. And it’s just as horrific as last time.

Violent insurrectionists turned areas of Los Angeles into lawless hellscapes over the weekend, with anarchists setting fire to vehicles, throwing scooters and debris at police, and looting businesses—all while waving foreign flags.

Here’s where Cotton’s entire argument immediately falls apart: the LAPD itself—historically no friend to protesters—has directly contradicted his claims. The department issued an official statement calling the protests peaceful, and LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell explicitly said they didn’t need military assistance and that deploying Marines would likely make the situation worse.

When even the LAPD—an agency with a long history of aggressive tactics—says military intervention is unnecessary and counterproductive, Cotton’s premise is exposed as pure fiction.

What we’re seeing from Cotton is textbook fascist authoritarian rhetoric: take isolated incidents from largely peaceful protests and paint them as citywide chaos. The reality is that protests were confined to a few blocks of downtown LA, with the most significant “violence” being some Waymo cars set on fire (which were likely as much about protesting “big tech” as about protesting ICE). Cotton transforms this into “lawless hellscapes” by non-existent “anarchists” (MAGAs’ favorite imaginary boogeyman) to justify military deployment.

The protests all began and remained mostly peaceful, with music playing, people dancing, vendors selling food and more. The only “violence” tended to come when law enforcement showed up in threatening military gear and provoked responses.

Again, this was entirely part of the plan. And Stephen Miller and Tom Cotton know that this is nonsense, and they don’t care. Their entire goal is to provoke and incite violence in order to justify much worse violence that they’ve wanted to inflict for years. The fact that Cotton is recycling nearly identical language from 2020 proves this isn’t about current circumstances—it’s a pre-written template for justifying military force against any protest he dislikes.

Despite the rising chaos, Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose office likened the riots to a Philadelphia Eagles playoff victory celebration, and Mayor Karen Bass, who refuses to support federal law enforcement, haven’t taken sufficient action to restore law and order.

Oh, fuck all the way off on that. There’s a very, very simple way to “restore law and order” which is to stop sending militarized federal cops into LA and provoking confrontations. Again, Los Angeles didn’t have any problems (or even protests) before Miller sent these goons into a Home Depot parking lot.

Meanwhile, incredibly, Democrats and the liberal media have again called this outbreak of violence “mostly peaceful protests,” while in the same breath blaming the riots, arson, and looting on President Trump for enforcing immigration law. The New York Times described “largely peaceful” riots with fireworks fired at police, cars set on fire, and more than 150 arrests.

Yes, because they have been mostly peaceful.

The threat from the radical left is clear: Don’t enforce immigration laws. If you do, left-wing street militias will burn down cities, and Democratic politicians will back the rioters. The president is absolutely right to reject this threat, enforce immigration laws, and restore civil order.

No, that’s not what is being said. Tom Cotton is stoking fear and nonsense because he’s trying to provoke outrage to get what he wants: the chance to use the US military on the American public. No city is being burnt down. There are no riots. No one is backing “rioters.” What they want is for the US government to stop grabbing people off the street for no reason other than the color of their skin.

From there, Cotton continues the myth-making, pretending that because these sweeps picked up a small number of actual criminals it means that everyone they’re arresting are murderers and child beaters.

Again, Cotton is playing the typical MAGA game of fearmongering by using the rare example to pretend it’s representative, just like I could point to the fact that the leader of Cotton’s party is a convicted criminal (on 34 counts!). Should we thus assume that everyone in the Republican party is a felon who should be sent to jail? It’s one or the other. Either Cotton thinks it’s okay to cherry pick a few people with criminal records and tar everyone associated with them with a broad brush, or he doesn’t.

But, of course, Tom Cotton lives by the motto “it’s okay for Republicans to do this, not anyone else.” Indeed, it’s even worse, because for everyone else he doesn’t even want basic rights or constitutional protections. He wants to send in the military:

The solution now is the same as I said then: an overwhelming show of force to end the riots.

THERE ARE NO RIOTS.

This is just blatant propaganda used to justify the force Cotton has always wanted to use against Americans he doesn’t like. They manufactured every bit of this. They provoked unnecessary confrontations, sending in heavily armed, militarized law enforcement where none was needed, following months of extreme policies and attacks on due process.

Once there, once people started to protest, they ramped up the provocation. And when there were a few rare examples of violence, they falsely labeled them as riots and used them as justification to ramp up the provocation even further.

It’s the “why are you hitting yourself?” school of governance, except with Marines.

There are no riots. No cities are burning. And sending in the military won’t stop the protests, because the protests are about this horrific and dangerous abuse of power.

As always, local police are the first line of defense, but when the police can’t restore order—or aren’t allowed to by Democratic mayors—the National Guard must be called out.

Again, the police have said everything’s fine. The protests have been mostly peaceful. They don’t need to “restore” order, because there is order. They’re not being held back by the mayor or the governor. The only parts of the government they’ve complained about are the federal government sending unnecessary military personnel without any attempt at coordination.

Ask yourself this: to whose benefit is it to pretend that the LAPD has lost control and to blame it on Democratic politicians? Is it to the people of LA? Not at all. It is to Tom Cotton and his fascist buddies.

Cotton wastes no opportunity to further lie:

Mr. Newsom—incompetent and ideological all at once—refused to mobilize the National Guard, leaving Mr. Trump little choice but to federalize the California Guard to protect federal law-enforcement agents and restore order.

This is another outright lie. Reports indicate that Trump called Newsom late Friday night/early Saturday morning, and when Newsom asked about the National Guard, Trump changed the subject. Newsom was never formally asked to mobilize state forces. Trump simply seized control of California’s National Guard without going through proper channels—hence California’s lawsuit over the illegal federal takeover.

So again, you have to ask, why is Cotton lying, other than to get what he wants: the US military to conduct operations on American protestors? It’s pure blood lust against people calling out his bloodthirsty campaign of vengeance.

This is the fascist playbook. Lie, generate controversy, provoke people to protest, insist that their protests are “violent riots,” use that to justify an overly aggressive violent response completely out of proportion to what’s happening.

The end goal is not peace. It’s subjugation and suppression of speech—turning America into the kind of place where questioning Dear Leader gets you a visit from the 82nd Airborne (who, coincidentally, Trump addressed today, an event he used to mock California and cheer on military occupation of an American city).

And the worst part? They’re doing this while wrapping themselves in the flag and calling themselves patriots. Real patriots don’t send Marines after Americans holding signs. But these aren’t patriots—they’re just fascists who figured out red, white, and blue makes better branding than brown shirts.

Don’t let them get away with it.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, dhs, donald trump, free speech, ice, immigration, la, la protests, marines, protests, stephen miller, tom cotton

Daily Deal: Academy of Educational Engineering

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Academy of Educational Engineering is a premier platform tailored for aspiring and professional geeks. This all-in-one educational ecosystem is designed to empower you with expert-level knowledge and hands-on experience across embedded systems, electronics, IoT, and software development. As a premium member, you’ll access comprehensive tools, engaging projects, personalized feedback, and direct mentorship, helping you elevate your career in the tech industry. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, this is your ultimate gateway to mastering the future of technology. It’s on sale for $50.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Lindsey Graham Thinks It Should Be Illegal To Identify ICE Agents

Legal Issues

from the more-new-rights-for-the-powerful dept

We’re just supposed to assume that the masked person brandishing a gun and ordering us to get into an unmarked vehicle is a federal agent, rather than a criminal. We’re just supposed to buy into this new, hideous version of immigration enforcement that utilizes military gear, long guns, and a complete lack of identification as normal stuff Americans should just put up with.

But various gods forbid we actually expect public servants to be a bit more forthcoming about their public duties. Using apparently completely made-up stats about “increases” in “attacks” on ICE agents, ICE’s enablers justify the complete erasure of public accountability — something that starts with informing people you are actually a law enforcement officer by… you know… behaving like a law enforcement officer. Your agency should be named prominently. Your face — unless you’re engaging in a truly covert operation — should be visible.

Raiding homes and businesses to round up anyone looking kind of Hispanic in broad daylight isn’t a covert operation. Do your job right or get the fuck out of the business. If you’re in public, you assume the risks. But lots of people in or orbiting the Trump administration seem to think the government should be allowed to spend tax dollars without feeling obligated in any way to the people paying their salaries.

Enter someone who definitely hasn’t earned his publicly-funded paycheck, Senator Lindsey Graham.

If you can’t read/see the embed, it’s a Xtwit from Lindsey Graham, which says he wants to make it illegal for anyone to name/shame ICE agents.

I will soon introduce new legislation that would increase penalties for existing statutes — or if necessary create new statutes — designed to protect ICE agents or other law enforcement officers involved in covert operations.

[…]

Disclosing ICE agents’ identities, as threatened, could put the agents and their families in danger.

This is Senator Graham’s response to comments made by House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries during a press briefing last week.

Democrats and immigration rights advocates have criticized ICE agents for wearing masks, likening them to enforcers from fascist and communist regimes.

“This is America. This is not the Soviet Union,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a press briefing on June 3.

“We’re not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s. And every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will of course be identified.”

Everything Jeffries said is true. We’re not behind the Iron Curtain. We’re not Hitler’s Germany. We should not have secret police. So, it stands to reason, officers carrying out federal government programs should be immediately identifiable via name tags, marked vehicles, and prominent display of the federal agency they’re working for. We expect this from regular law enforcement. Federal law enforcement shouldn’t be given a special exception to this assumption.

The only reason anyone would advocate for this is because they want to distance their stormtroopers from any form of accountability. When rights are violated (and they are… all the time) during migrant raids, masks and stripping of agency emblems makes it all but impossible to file complaints, much less lawsuits, against government agents who have violated rights. It also ensures officers won’t be named and shamed.

It also protects officers from any internal attempts at accountability, however unlikely they might be under this administration. Ensuring officers always remain unidentifiable hamstrings internal investigations by making any outside recordings of public interactions with officers completely useless.

Any speculation about the danger posed to ICE agents’ “families” is exactly that: speculation. There is no evidence suggesting this sort of threatening is so commonplace it justifies the continuous hiding of agents’ identities. If it was, you’d expect to see more protesters or undocumented migrants facing criminal charges for these threats.

This is Graham, once again, rolling over to show Trump his exposed belly. And that would be fine if it only ensured Graham was beholden to Trump as long as Trump remains in power. But this move affects everyone. And it’s hard to believe it would survive a review by the courts, despite the pre-loading of federal courts Trump performed during his last term.

This is cowardice in service of cowards who claim to fear for their safety even as they wage a war of terror on migrant-heavy neighborhoods and businesses. If you want to wear the jackboots, you should be willing to take everything that comes with it, including the fact that you’re still a public servant carrying out your duties in public. If you don’t like that part of the job or your obligations to the American public, you’re more than welcome to leave the job. And the country.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, lindsey graham, mass deportation, public records, secret police

Trump Plan To Redirect Billions In Broadband Subsidies To Elon Musk Starts Seeing Blowback From States

Broadband

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

After spending election season whining that the program was taking too long, Republicans have been introducing massive new changes to a $42.5 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program (BEAD) that not only don’t serve the public interest, but could also introduce years of potential new delays.

Their changes are twofold: one, they want to strip away requirements that the resulting taxpayer-funded broadband is (gasp) affordable to poor people. Two, they want to slather Elon Musk’s low-earth-orbit satellite service Starlink with billions in new subsidies, redirecting that money away from other, higher-capacity, better alternatives (like community-owned open access fiber).

Speaking last week to a Senate Appropriations Committee, Trump administration Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed that the NTIA will “soon” issue a new Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) that states will have 90 days to respond to. That will require states to basically reboot years of work in developing their state broadband plans, something outside groups say could take years.

It’s important to understand that numerous states were just a few steps away from deploying next-generation fiber to communities that had never had internet access before when Republicans decided they’d “fix” the program by shifting billions in funds to Elon Musk’s expensive, congested, environmentally problematic satellite service. This while the press writes numerous stories about “Elon Musk leaving politics” and he and Donald Trump have their public falling out (which has now been more muted).

The Western Governor’s Association was quick to send a polite letter to Lutnick noting that “significant required alterations to state and territory plans could cause further delays by up to 12 months,” which again seems like a generous estimation. Senate Democrats also wrote a very polite May 30 letter to Lutnick lamenting the unnecessary delays:

“States have already developed plans to address these needs, and restarting or slowing down the process will only hold back progress,” the Democrats’ letter said. “States must maintain the flexibility to choose the highest quality broadband options, rather than be forced by bureaucrats in Washington to funnel funds to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which lacks the scalability, reliability, and speed of fiber or other terrestrial broadband solutions.”

When the former boss of the BEAD program, Evan Feinman, left his post in March he noted how numerous states were just steps away from launching their massive fiber expansions. Feinman wasn’t subtle about his belief that the revisions are a cronyistic hand out to Elon Musk that will actually harm the goal of bringing affordable, reliable, and fast internet access to the masses.

“Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” Feinman said.

The original BEAD program prioritized fiber investment because high-capacity, future proof fiber is the best use of taxpayer money. Ideally you want to drive fiber into as many areas as possible, then fill in the rest with 5G wireless and fixed wireless. After that, you can fill in any remaining gaps with LEO satellite broadband options.

Again though, LEO satellite lacks the capacity to scale to actually address U.S. broadband gaps, and is too expensive for the rural Americans most in need of access. Not only is Starlink expensive and increasingly congested, it harms scientific research and there’s evidence that the disposable nature of the satellites as they burn up in orbit may ultimately erode the ozone layer.

But because Elon Musk runs the company, Republicans think Starlink is some kind of magic. Unfortunately for many Trump supporters, money directed to Starlink is money directed away from better options, including the cooperatives, city-owned utilities, and municipal broadband operations providing locals gigabit fiber, sometimes for as little as $55 a month.

“What this probably means is that most states will have to re-write their grant proposals and rerun their grant programs from scratch, and then NTIA will have to approve them,” Gigi Sohn, the Director for the American Association for Public Broadband, said in a post to LinkedIn. “This makes disbursement in 7 months largely a fantasy.”

Forcing your constituents to use shittier, more expensive broadband is very on brand for Republicans, who, in just the last year, have declared that the government helping poor people afford broadband is unconstitutional, killed a popular program providing $30 broadband discounts for low-income Americans, effectively banned holding your broadband ISP accountable for literally anything, and even banned schoolkids from getting access to free Wi-Fi hotspots.

In its place is basically a federal policy that rubber stamps every last whim of terrible regional monopolies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. And rich benefactors like Elon Musk. Anybody consciously voting for this level of sleazy self-serving corruption shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery.

Filed Under: bead, broadband, corruption, fcc, fiber, gigabit, grants, infrastructure, states
Companies: spacex, starlink

RFK Jr. Fires Every Single Member Of CDC’s Immunization Advisory Committee

Stupidity

from the comrade's-massacre dept

As RFK Jr. has presided over the decimation of the Health & Human Services department he runs, along with HHS’ child agencies, his anti-vaxxer stance has shown through. And, really, his appointment, confirmation, and subsequent actions should fully put to bed any question of the utility of congressional approval of cabinet positions. During those hearings, in which Kennedy spent most of the time either refusing to answer perfectly legitimate questions or else demonstrating that he had zero understanding how the programs he would be running actually work and are funded, Kennedy also voiced his support for vaccines generally, particularly for children. This flew in the face of the decades Kennedy has spent blaming vaccines for autism rates increasing, among other things. The consequences for what was a spectacular fail-job of a confirmation hearing was his appointment to Secretary of HHS.

Since his confirmation, Kennedy has helpfully put his incompetence on full display. He has bungled a measles outbreak that is the 2nd largest in three decades and still expanding, prattled on about chemtrails, committed to knowing the cause of autism this year only to walk that back, and at least attempted to pull back CDC guidance on COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women. All of this should have laid to bare for government leaders that Kennedy is anti-science, anti-vaccine, and grossly incompetent to run a small medical clinic, never mind HHS.

But in case you needed an example the contrast turned all the way to 100%, Kennedy this week decided to fire every single member of the CDC’s immunization advisory panel. This decision was announced not in a press conference, nor in a congressional hearing, but by an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

In an opinion piece published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, Kennedy announced that he had cleared out the committee, accusing them of being “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and a group that has “become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy added.

The committee—CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—meets periodically to publicly review, evaluate, debate, and make recommendations on immunization practices. The CDC typically adopts the committee’s recommendations. The CDC’s vaccination schedules and recommendations set clinical standards for the country and determine insurance coverage.

The group is pretty damned important, in other words, when it comes to how the CDC, clinicians, and insurance companies throughout the country organized their parts of various vaccination programs throughout the country. Programs that Kennedy has historically railed against, regularly engaging in conspiracy theories. And you really do have to couple this news with Kennedy’s rejection of the germ theory of disease, which has been powering modern medicine for the past century or so. Put more simply: a man who has spent decades railing against modern vaccine practices and who rejects the cornerstone of modern medicine conducted his own less directly violent version of the Comrade’s Massacre, with the public ouster of these experts coupled with a public declaration of their being unfit to serve.

If you think that comparison is too harsh, you aren’t paying attention to the authoritarian playbook, which Kennedy has obviously adopted. Worse than accusing ACIP members of being purposefully corrupt, Kennedy outlines why they simply can’t help but be corrupted. There’s no agency in any of this among those he ousted. They are corrupt by a combination of any connection Kennedy could draw to the medical industry and his own declaration that they are so.

In Kennedy’s article, he criticized ACIP and FDA advisors for being in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. However, he argued that the “problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt.”

“Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it,” he wrote. “The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”

In Kennedy’s op-ed, he indicates that new ACIP members will be appointed who “won’t directly work for the vaccine industry. … will exercise independent judgment, refuse to serve as a rubber stamp, and foster a culture of critical inquiry.”

Read all of this any way you like, but it’s fairly straight forward. Kennedy thinks that ACIP was working for the big pharma industry against the interests of the American people and their health, particularly when it comes to all things vaccines. He purged them and will replace them with his own hand-picked advisors that will almost certainly be plagued by similar misguided views. And that group, currently populated by nobody at all, will meet in 2 weeks to talk about immunization programs according to Kennedy.

Critics of this purge abound, as you would expect. And, because they come from the very medical experts and industries that Kennedy claims are conspiring against us all in order to, I guess, sell vaccines, they can be easily dismissed by his cadre of sycophants.

Kennedy’s move was quickly rebuked by a number of doctors groups. A statement released by the American Medical Association said it “upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives.” The American Academy of Pediatrics called it part of an “escalating effort by the Administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines.”

“This is horrifying,” a CDC official said of Kennedy’s move.

The American Public Health Association denounced it as an undemocratic “coup” of the process. The Infectious Disease Society of America called it “reckless, shortsighted and severely harmful.” The American College of Physicians accused Kennedy of having “circumvented the standard, transparent vaccine review processes” at the CDC.

If you thought that Kennedy would be allowed to retain his position, one for which he is hopelessly unqualified, and the extent of the fallout from it would be a mere measles outbreak, conspiracy talk, and maybe a handful of dead bodies, it really could get so, so much worse than that. A change in the government’s immunization guidance that deviates from actual medical science can’t help but filter down to some percentage of doctors and the public.

And people will get sick, and indeed some will die, as a result. In fact, that has already started to happen. The only question now is just how large a body count Kennedy will manage to rack up.

Filed Under: acip, advisory committees, death of expertise, expertise, health, health and human services, rfk jr., vaccines

The U.S. Army Embraces ‘Right To Repair.’ At Least Superficially.

Surprises

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

U.S. consumer protection (or what’s left of it after several devastating Supreme Court rulings and Trump executive orders) is on life support. But one bright spot continues to be the “right to repair” movement, which is working to fight repair monopolies and make it cheaper and easier to repair the tech you own.

Washington state recently became the eighth state to pass right to repair legislation with additional states (like Ohio) looking promising. And the U.S. Army continues to indicate it’s starting to take right to repair reforms seriously after decades of concerns. At least superficially.

Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll recently committed to including right-to-repair requirements in all existing and future contracts with manufacturers, a change, Sen. Elizabeth Warren tells The Verge, that will “put an end to our dependence on giant defense contractors who charge billions of dollars and take months to repair critical equipment.”

In an April 30 memo, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the Army secretary to “identify and propose contract modifications for right to repair provisions where intellectual property constraints limit the Army’s ability to conduct maintenance and access the appropriate maintenance tools, software, and technical data.”

The shift is promising but limited. At the moment, only the Army is interested in embedding such language in their contracts. Assuming they follow through.

There’s also a matter of enforcement: of the eight states that have passed right to repair laws, not a single one has bothered to take any sort of meaningful enforcement action. There’s certainly no limit of bad actors engaging in all sorts of bad behavior (“parts pairing,” obnoxious DRM, making parts and manuals hard to find, actively working to kill or acquire competing repair companies).

But America’s strong suit has never been standing up to consolidated corporate power. That’s going to be increasingly true of states that are facing unprecedented, costly legal challenges during the Trump administration on everything from health care and climate to immigration. Not many are going to be keen to start expensive new battles with corporations with bottomless budgets.

Whether the Trump-managed Army will do any better is an open question. We’ve seen decades of stories where (like the consumer and health care markets) the Army couldn’t repair essential hardware they owned because of weird restrictions imposed by big corporations trying to monopolize repair. Despite this potentially costing lives, it took until 2025 to even consider doing anything about it.

Language in a contract (or a state law) hinting that this sort of thing is bad is one thing. But enforcement and holding companies accountable is something else entirely. And a Trump administration that’s busy utterly destroying the federal government’s ability to hold corporations accountable isn’t going to have the leverage necessary to stop corporate power from being obnoxious on right to repair.

Still, progress is progress, and even having discussions about reforms is progress. But sometime soon activism needs to pivot some of its collective energy on this subject toward complaining about a lack of enforcement, if we’re to take rhetoric and reforms on right to repair seriously.

Filed Under: army, consumer rights, military, military equipment, pete hesgeth, repair, right to repair, state law