Nintendo and the Pokémon Company’s lawsuit in Japan against PocketPair, makers of the hit game Palworld, is still ongoing. As we’ve reported previously, this isn’t the copyright or trademark lawsuit that everyone expected when Palworld was first released. Instead, probably knowing that they couldn’t get around the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright, at least, Nintendo filed a patent suit instead. The patents referenced covered several different gameplay mechanics for which there is plenty of prior art in video gaming, such as capturing creatures in a thrown object and transitioning from riding creatures or items in an open world setting. As this was all going on, PocketPair began both patching out some of those gameplay mechanics from Palworld, while also trying to invalidate the patents powering the lawsuit. And, most recently, PocketPair pointed to even more examples of prior art in other games and game mods for the very mechanics Nintendo had managed to patent.
But one key aspect in all of this is that several of the patents featured in this lawsuit are still in the application stage. And now one of those patents, which notably sits in between two other mechanic patents of Nintendo’s, has been rejected as unoriginal.
Nintendo’s ongoing legal campaign against Palworld developer Pocketpair has hit another roadblock. A key patent in Nintendo’s “monster capture” family, one that sits right between two patents, currently being asserted in the Tokyo District Court, has been rejected by the Japan Patent Office (JPO).
The decision cites a lack of inventive step, pointing directly to older games such as ARK, Monster Hunter 4, Craftopia, Kantai Collection, and Pokémon GO itself as examples of prior art.
I cannot read Japanese script, but here is a visual representation of how interrelated these patents are. The one in the red box was the applied for patent that was rejected. The two on either side of the equation are the already granted patents that are being wielded in court against PocketPair.
The newly rejected 2024-031879 application descends from Nintendo’s 2023 filing (JP7505852), which has already been granted and is one of the patents cited in Nintendo’s lawsuit against Pocketpair. Meanwhile, patent 2024-123560 (JP7545191) branches off, another granted patent also being used in court.
That means this isn’t some irrelevant side filing; it’s literally sandwiched between two patents central to the litigation. If the JPO finds that one member of the patent family lacks originality, it raises questions about the others.
As GamesFray notes, this “sibling-parent” structure makes the 2024-031879 rejection potentially significant. The same reasoning (lack of inventive step, obviousness based on prior art) could easily apply to the related patents Nintendo is wielding in court.
As far as the lawsuit is concerned, this could be a big freaking deal. As Windows Central notes, the same logic the JPO used to reject this specific patent can easily be applied to the two granted patents central to the suit. Combine all of that with the prior art used to reject this patent and you have a solid defense in court against patent infringement and, I would say likely, the invalidation of Nintendo’s existing patents.
In this case, the rejection undermines Nintendo’s claim that its patents protect truly original gameplay ideas. When Japan’s own patent authority says otherwise, that argument loses credibility fast.
The ruling also puts pressure on Nintendo’s third patent-in-suit, which, according to previous reports, has already been modified mid-litigation. A sign that Nintendo is getting desperate.
We’ll see if Nintendo attempts to amend these patents or appeal JPO’s decision. I imagine it will, given how desperate it has behaved at pretty much every turn in this lawsuit.
But my larger question for Nintendo is a simple one: is this really worth it? Palworld still exists and I haven’t seen any evidence that the Pokémon franchise is suddenly suffering a loss of revenue or worth. So other than the digging in of heels and refusing to back down, what are we accomplishing here?
Why do some people endorse claims that can easily be disproved? It’s one thing to believe false information, but another to actively stick with something that’s obviously wrong.
We aresocial psychologists who study political psychology and how people reason about reality. During the pandemic, we surveyed 5,535 people across eight countries to investigate why people believed COVID-19 misinformation, like false claims that 5G networks cause the virus.
The strongest predictor of whether someone believed in COVID-19-related misinformation and risks related to the vaccine was whether they viewed COVID-19 prevention efforts in terms of symbolic strength and weakness. In other words, this group focused on whether an action would make them appear to fend off or “give in” to untoward influence.
This factor outweighed how people felt about COVID-19 in general, their thinking style and even their political beliefs.
Our survey measured it on a scale of how much people agreed with sentences including “Following coronavirus prevention guidelines means you have backed down” and “Continuous coronavirus coverage in the media is a sign we are losing.” Our interpretation is that people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation – doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.
When meaning is symbolic, not factual
Rather than consider issues in light of actual facts, we suggest people with this mindset prioritize being independent from outside influence. It means you can justify espousing pretty much anything – the easier a statement is to disprove, the more of a power move it is to say it, as it symbolizes how far you’re willing to go.
When people think symbolically this way, the literal issue – here, fighting COVID-19 – is secondary to a psychological war over people’s minds. In the minds of those who think they’re engaged in them, psychological wars are waged over opinions and attitudes, and are won via control of belief and messaging. The U.S. government at various times has used the concept of psychological war to try to limit the influence of foreign powers, pushing people to think that literal battles are less important than psychological independence.
By that same token, vaccination, masking or other COVID-19 prevention efforts could be seen as a symbolic risk that could “weaken” one psychologically even if they provide literal physical benefits. If this seems like an extreme stance, it is – the majority of participants in our studies did not hold this mindset. But those who did were especially likely to also believe in misinformation.
In an additional study we ran that focused on attitudes around cryptocurrency, we measured whether people saw crypto investment in terms of signaling independence from traditional finance. These participants, who, like those in our COVID-19 study, prioritized a symbolic show of strength, were more likely to believe in other kinds of misinformation and conspiracies, too, such as that the government is concealing evidence of alien contact.
In all of our studies, this mindset was also strongly associated with authoritarian attitudes, including beliefs that some groups should dominate others and support for autocratic government. These links help explain why strongman leaders often use misinformation symbolically to impress and control a population.
Why people endorse misinformation
Our findings highlight the limits of countering misinformation directly, because for some people, literal truth is not the point.
For example, President Donald Trump incorrectly claimed in August 2025 that crime in Washington D.C. was at an all-time high, generating countlessfact-checks of his premise and think pieces about his dissociation from reality.
But we believe that to someone with a symbolic mindset, debunkers merely demonstrate that they’re the ones reacting, and are therefore weak. The correct information is easily available, but is irrelevant to someone who prioritizes a symbolic show of strength. What matters is signaling one isn’t listening and won’t be swayed.
In fact, for symbolic thinkers, nearly any statement should be justifiable. The more outlandish or easily disproved something is, the more powerful one might seem when standing by it. Being an edgelord – a contrarian online provocateur – or outright lying can, in their own odd way, appear “authentic.”
Some people may also view their favorite dissembler’s claims as provocative trolling, but, given the link between this mindset and authoritarianism, they want those far-fetched claims acted on anyway. The deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, for example, can be the desired end goal, even if the offered justification is a transparent farce.
Is this really 5-D chess?
It is possible that symbolic, but not exactly true, beliefs have some downstream benefit, such as serving as negotiation tactics, loyalty tests, or a fake-it-till-you-make-it long game that somehow, eventually, becomes a reality. Political theorist Murray Edelman, known for his work on political symbolism, noted that politicians often prefer scoring symbolic points over delivering results – it’s easier. Leaders can offer symbolism when they have little tangible to provide.
We know there’s a concerted effort to punish anyone who dares to show anything but complete, unqualified reverence for Charlie Kirk’s corpse. The man who made millions by denigrating anyone who wasn’t as white, straight, and “Christian” as he was is apparently above reproach now that he’s been murdered.
That would be stupid enough on its own. But government officials — ranging from local level officials to the Trump administration itself — have piled on, turning Charlie Kirk into a martyr and using their power to silence his critics.
Tennessee resident Larry Bushart Jr. personally found out how far certain Charlie Kirk fans are willing to go to punish people who aren’t fans of Charlie Kirk. Here’s how that went for him once the local sheriff got involved.
Bushart’s case raised a firestorm of controversy after he was arrested, jailed, and slapped with a $2 million bail for a social media post. His supposed crime: making a threat of mass violence against a school in a neighboring county. In reality, all he had done was repost a meme. On Saturday, September 20, he had visited a community page, “What’s Happening in Perry County, TN,” and trolled a thread about an upcoming vigil honoring Charlie Kirk.
Bushart’s crime? Directly quoting Donald Trump on this Facebook page.
One of his posts was a photo of President Donald Trump, along with the quote “We have to get over it,” drawing from his response to a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, in 2024.
That’s all it took for the local sheriff to get busy abusing his power. After all, Bushart had insulted one of his personal heroes.
The post caught the attention of Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems, who had publicly mourned Kirk and shared information about the vigil.
Weems abused a terrible Tennessee law that was written to curb school shootings but has more often been used to punish people for engaging in what should be protected speech. Law enforcement officers love to play ignorant when they’re confronted about apparently illegal arrests or searches. But Weems definitely knew this law could be used to toss a person he disagreed with in jail.
Claiming the post had resulted in “mass hysteria” in the area due to its reference to Perry High School (the one in Iowa, although there’s nothing in the meme specifying its geographic location), Sheriff Weems justified the arrest and the month Bushart spent in jail by, well, lying.
In his interview with NewsChannel 5, Sheriff Weems insisted all of this could have been avoided if Bushart had just deleted the meme that some people in Perry County found objectionable.
“Whenever we sent Lexington Police Department out to speak to him and he refused to do that, I mean, what kind of person does that?” Weems asked. “What kind of person just says he don’t care?”
He also referenced the public reaction to Bushart’s post, which the sheriff claims resulted in people thinking the post was about a shooting in the area. Those who actually viewed the post and the page have pointed out that no one commented on the meme with anything that resembled concern Bushart might be referencing the local high school.
Lexington police told The Intercept that Weems had lied when he told local news outlets that the forces had “coordinated” to offer Bushart a chance to delete the post prior to his arrest. Confronted with the bodycam footage, Weems denied lying, claiming that his investigator’s report must have been inaccurate, NewsChannel 5 reported.
Weems later admitted to NewsChannel 5 that “investigators knew that the meme was not about Perry County High School” and sought Bushart’s arrest anyway, supposedly hoping to quell “the fears of people in the community who misinterpreted it.” That’s as close as Weems comes to seemingly admitting that his intention was to censor the post.
You know you’ve fucked up when even those on the same side of the “thin blue line” are willing to call you a liar in public. Sheriff Weems, however, appears to have learned nothing from this experience. Every subsequent comment is just more doubling down on an already-disproved narrative.
And public records obtained from other sources make it clear the Sheriff’s claims of “mass hysteria” were just as free of facts — something made up to justify an apparently personal vendetta against a local man (and former police officer) who offended the sheriff himself with his social media posts.
Although the Perry County Schools District did not respond to messages from The Intercept, attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a series of open records requests with the school district asking for any communications to or from staff pertaining to the case — including terms like “shooting,” “threat,” and “meme.” In response, the director of schools wrote that there were no records related to Bushart’s case. “The Perry County Sheriff’s Department handled this situation,” he wrote.
It’s one thing when one of your neighbors thinks you’re kind of a prick. It’s quite another when that person happens to be the local sheriff. This bogus arrest — coupled with a ridiculous $2 million bail — cost Bushart 40 days of his life. That meant he not only missed the birth of his grandchild, but also lost his post-retirement job.
All that’s guaranteed now is that Sheriff Weems is getting sued. No doubt he’ll claim the state law can be read expansively enough to cover his actions and all the lies he told to defend them. And with a nation full of Charlie Kirk acolytes looking to take their anger out on anyone who doesn’t treat him like a minor deity, there will be more of this in the future.
60 Minutes is under new management and things are getting stupid faster than you might expect. Last night’s episode featured President Trump, which is currently being described as “nuts.” There are all sorts of crazy moments to call out, but let’s start with the recursively meta nonsense.
60 Minutes edited out a segment where Donald Trump tells them to edit out a segment in which he brags about getting CBS to pay him because of them editing out part of an answer by Kamala Harris, and he notes that CBS clearly did the wrong thing in editing Harris in the same fucking sentence he tells them to edit out what he’s saying.
It is so fucking stupid.
As you’ll no doubt recall, last year, Trump sued CBS over the show. Right before last year’s election, 60 Minutes had interviewed Kamala Harris. As every such news show does, it had edited the interview down to make it fit into the TV time slot. MAGA culture warriors, desperate for anything to culture war about, started screaming that 60 Minutes had edited Harris to sound more coherent. This was nonsense.
What had happened was that in one question, Harris had given a long answer. CBS broadcast part of the answer on 60 Minutes. But it had broadcast a different part of that answer during the CBS Sunday morning show, Face the Nation. This… happens all the time. The full answer was too long. They edited it down to a shorter bit. The two different broadcasts chose different parts. That’s basic, fundamental, editorial discretion.
Given how often Trump is edited to make him sound more coherent, he should appreciate this. But Trump will never, ever care about how much leeway he is given and will always seek to gain whatever advantage he can. So he sued, claiming it was “election interference,” which it wasn’t. And even if it was (it wasn’t) he still won the election.
But Trump’s censor in chief Brendan Carr made it clear that the only way he’d approve Paramount’s (owner of CBS) sale to Skydance was if they first bribed Trump by agreeing to settle this frivolous case. So they paid a $16 million bribe just to get the case settled, while agreeing to install a Trump lackey as an internal censor at the network.
Trump’s full interview was 73 minutes long, but 60 Minutes only aired 28 minutes of it. They then did release the longer interview online along with a transcript, which caused people to look at what was edited. And that included this segment:
TRUMP: And actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not– you have a great– I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great– from what I know.
I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person. But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me– a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening. I see–
NORAH O’DONNELL: Mr. President–
TRUMP: –I see good things happening in the news. I really do. And I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.
Again, I feel the need to repeat this because it is so incredibly stupid. Literally in the same sentence where he says CBS had to pay him “a lotta money” because it edited a 60 Minutes interview, he tells them to edit the interview not to air that section. Then he claims “you can’t have fake news.” Even though what he’s claiming is literally fake news. They didn’t pay him because they changed the answer. They paid him to get their merger done. Everyone knows it.
And, yes, I’m sure some people will try to defend this, but come on. There’s no defense. The President views everything in simple terms: “if it helps me, it’s good, if it doesn’t, it should be illegal.” It’s a narcissistic simpleton’s understanding of the world. And he’s in charge. It’s fucking crazy.
Speaking of fucking crazy, there were so many other crazy bits in the interview, but let’s just call out two. After all, the request to edit the section of the interview, while hypocritical, is nothing compared to the blatant corruption he admits to, or his desire to unleash the American war machine on American people.
Let’s start with this: just last week, MAGA loyalist Rep. James Comer released what may be the least self-aware report ever, screaming about how White House aides covered up Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline and because of that he didn’t know who he was pardoning, meaning those pardons should be null and void.
This comes the same week that people are raising serious questions about White House aides covering up the true nature of Trump’s physical and mental decline. And, now he’s admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning—the very thing the Comer report claims means the pardons are void.
Two weeks ago, Trump (or whoever within the White House) pardoned CZ, the founder of Binance, who had pleaded guilty to money laundering. Though, when asked about it that day, Trump appeared to have no idea who CZ was, even though he had also (just coincidentally) given billions to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business.
And even though he’d flubbed that question when he was asked about it right after the pardon was announced, when 60 Minutes asked him about it, he doubled down—seemingly proud of his ignorance. Which is bold, considering his administration’s entire argument against Biden’s pardons rests on the claim that Biden didn’t know who he was pardoning:
O'DONNELL: Why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?TRUMP: Are you ready? I don't know who he isO'DONNELL: His crypto exchange Binance helped facilitate a $2b purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin. And they you pardoned him.TRUMP: Here's the thing — I know nothing about it
From the full (unedited) transcript, which is way worse than that short clip above:
NORAH O’DONNELL: This is a question about pardons. The Trump family is now perhaps more associated with cryptocurrency than real estate. You and your son– your sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have formed World Liberty Financial with the Witkoff family.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Helping to make your family millions of dollars. It’s in that context that I do wanna ask you about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z. He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security”, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, are you ready?I don’t know who he is.
Trump’s own administration is claiming Biden’s pardons are invalid because he didn’t know who he was pardoning. And Trump just proudly announced, on camera, that he has no idea who CZ is.
Then he admits that his sons basically told him to do this for their crypto business:
My sons are involved in crypto much more than I– me. I– I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.
But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it.
By who? Who told you about it? A good reporter would have stepped in and asked that question, but this is the new Bari Weiss 60 Minutes where you won’t see follow-ups like that. Or if you did, they’d be edited out.
He continues:
I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.
Again, “who told you this?” is the next question any reporter should be asking. O’Donnell did not. Though she at least did point out that he pleaded guilty to allowing terrorist groups to engage in money laundering, which seems notable for a guy who keeps talking about fighting crime.
NORAH O’DONNELL: The government had accused him of “significant harm to U.S. national security”–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s the Biden government.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Okay. Allowing U.S. terrorist groups to, you know, essentially move millions of dollars around. He pled guilty to anti-money laundering laws. That was in 2023. Then in 2025 his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned C.Z. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, here’s the thing,I know nothing about it because I’m too busydoing the other–
Um. Isn’t that exactly why your administration is claiming Biden’s pardons don’t count?
NORAH O’DONNELL: But he got a pardon–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can only tell you that–
NORAH O’DONNELL: He got a pardon–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Norah, I can only tell you this.My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good– my one son is a number one bestseller now.
So here Trump admits (1) he doesn’t know who CZ is, then (2) admits that basically his sons are the ones into cryptocurrency and “not in government,” and effectively admits that (3) he pardoned CZ on the advice of his sons, who directly profit from the pardon through their cryptocurrency business, while claiming ignorance of the entire arrangement.
This isn’t just yet another example of the most corrupt pay-for-play administration in the history of the United States but one that literally does everything it falsely accuses past administrations of doing, but way worse. Just as they’re claiming that Biden’s pardons weren’t valid, Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons.
And I won’t even get into the frenzy MAGA continues to go through about Hunter Biden supposedly enriching himself by using his father’s name. Remember all those stories claiming payoffs to the “Biden family”? Funny how those folks are all silent about the Trump family (1) actually doing what they falsely accused Biden of doing and (2) doing it way, way, way worse.
Speaking of crime, another part of the interview involves the President falsely claiming that immigration enforcement is targeting criminals (leaving aside that he keeps pardoning criminals).
When O’Donnell asks about CBP’s tactics in Chicago—tear-gassing residential neighborhoods, smashing car windows—Trump’s response is to call for more violence:
O'DONNELL: Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?TRUMP: No. I think they haven't gone far enough.
NORAH O’DONNELL: More recently, Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the– by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama. We’ve been held–
NORAH O’DONNELL: You’re okay with those tactics?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, because you have to get the people out. You know, you have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown outta their countries because they were, you know, criminals. Many of them are people from jails and prisons. Many of them are people from frankly mental institutions. I feel badly about that, but they’re released from insane asylums. You know why? Because they’re killers.
Note the question: she’s asking him about ICE (actually CBP) tear gassing residential neighborhoods and smashing car windows. And he says “they haven’t gone far enough.” He literally thinks he should be able to have the military attack Americans.
And he’s completely full of shit about targeting “criminals and murderers.” The vast, vast majority of them are not. Over 90% of those being grabbed have never been convicted of a violent crime. We already know that Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller has told immigration officials to just grab anyone they can and to ignore any efforts to target actual criminals (because Miller knows there just aren’t that many in reality—it was all a myth they fed Fox News to get Trump elected).
But Trump is so disconnected from reality he doesn’t know that.
And speaking of disconnected from reality: he still thinks migrants “seeking asylum” means they’re literally from mental institutions. He’s been making this claim for years. No one has corrected him. No reporter has asked him to clarify. The President of the United States genuinely appears to believe that foreign governments are emptying psych wards and shipping patients to America because they’re “seeking asylum.”
So let’s recap: in a single interview, the President (1) suggests CBS edit out his complaints about CBS editing while simultaneously claiming CBS’s past editing was corrupt enough to sue over, (2) admits he pardoned someone he’s never met on the advice of unnamed people who are most likely his sons who profit directly from that pardon—the exact scenario his own party claims invalidates Biden’s pardons, and (3) endorses escalating violence against American citizens in residential neighborhoods while lying about who’s being targeted and seemingly unable to comprehend who the violence is actually being used against.
We have a President so catastrophically disconnected from reality that he’ll pardon anyone his sons tell him to, endorse any level of violence his advisors suggest, and contradict himself in the same sentence without noticing. The people around him—his kids, his advisors, his handlers—do the things they’ve spent years accusing others of doing (except way worse), and Trump happily goes along with it because he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. They get away with it, and they do it again, more brazenly.
The media that’s supposed to be holding him accountable has instead hired a Trump-approved censor to monitor their coverage and installed an inexperienced right-wing propagandist to run their newsroom. So when Trump sits down for an interview and admits on camera that he’s doing exactly what he’s claiming others should be jailed for… they don’t follow up or ask any tough questions.
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To say the irony was lost on them would be to assume they ever thought some irony might exist. DC resident Sam O’Hara came across a bunch of out-of-state National Guard troops and put his own spin on their Trump-enabled interloping. As he followed the troops through the neighborhood, O’Hara engaged in protected expression — that being the recording of government employees… with a little musical accompaniment.
In the Star Wars franchise, The Imperial March is the music that plays when Darth Vader or other dark forces enter a scene or succeed in their dastardly plans. It is also the soundtrack of Sam O’Hara’s protest against the National Guard deployment in D.C.
Those troops arrived in the District in August 2025, after President Trump decided to flood D.C. neighborhoods with National Guard members from around the country. A few weeks passed, and yet the troops remained. Given the roughly 200-year-old tradition of civilian law enforcement in the United States, Mr. O’Hara was deeply concerned about the normalization of troops patrolling D.C. neighborhoods. And so, he began protesting the Guard members’ presence by walking several feet behind them when he saw them in the community. Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played The Imperial March as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring. Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them.
O’Hara did not impede the troops’ movement. He did not attempt to close the several-foot gap between him and them. He just followed behind them, playing a theme song the Trump administration likely would have approved of. In fact, we already know it considers itself to be the Empire. After all, just weeks ago it posted a video that portrayed immigration enforcement efforts as Darth Vader “cleansing” a spaceship of rebel soldiers. (Skip to 0:52 if you’re impatient.)
If the government itself thinks it’s Darth Vader and the rest of us are just rebel scum, those participating in Trump’s invasion probably shouldn’t be so bothered someone’s willing to memorialize their unwanted presence with what I assume is the song they hear in their heads every time they start chasing a day laborer across a Home Deport parking lot.
The out-of-state National Guard wasn’t impressed, however. Instead, the person who should have been the adult in the room decided he was going to tattle:
Ohio National Guard member Sgt. Devon Beck was not amused by this satire. On September 11, 2025, […] In less than two minutes, Sgt. Beck turned around and threatened to call D.C. police officers to “handle” Mr. O’Hara if he persisted. Mr. O’Hara continued recording and playing the music. Sgt. Beck contacted the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Defendant MPD Officers Brown, Campbell, Reyes-Benigno, and Lopez Martinez came to the scene and, in essence, did what Sgt. Beck had threatened, putting Mr. O’Hara in handcuffs and preventing him from continuing his peaceful protest.
Adding to idiocy of this interaction is that O’Hara had done the same thing on three previous occasions. Those times he was either greeted with laughter and smiles from the National Guard troops or ignored entirely. It was only Sgt. Devon Beck who couldn’t handle this alleged “harassment,” which was so far short of every definition of the word that the MPD officers had to make up a bunch of bullshit to justify their detention of O’Hara.
Defendant Officer Campbell immediately walked up to Mr. O’Hara, without conducting any investigation. He said to Mr. O’Hara accusatorily, “[i]f you’re harassing them”—at which point Mr. O’Hara interrupted to ask for Defendant Campbell’s badge number. After providing that information, Defendant Campbell said, “if you are assaulting them,” which again prompted Mr. O’Hara to interrupt, this time to say that he was not assaulting the Guard members but rather peacefully protesting.
Mr. O’Hara was correct. He was not harassing or assaulting the Guard members. He was, in fact, standing several feet away, recording them and playing the March. Nor had Mr. O’Hara assaulted or harassed the Guard members at any point during his interaction with them.
Officer Campbell also accused Mr. O’Hara of standing in front of the entrance to a store when, in fact, Mr. O’Hara was standing to the side of the entrance and not blocking anyone’s passage.
In response to Mr. O’Hara’s statements that he was engaged in protest, Officer Campbell said, “That’s not a protest. You better define protest. This isn’t a protest. You are not protesting.”
That is some dumb shit. The MPD is not under any obligation to respond to calls by the National Guard. The National Guard deployment definitely isn’t in the clear, legally-speaking. And since it’s not engaged in law enforcement efforts (because it definitely can’t do that legally), the MPD is not its backup.
But cops are cops. And this group of cops just kept copping and coping. The dumb stuff said by Officer Campbell was repeated by other officers until the whole thing ended with O’Hara handcuffed and taken to the station. Eventually he was released when people who actually knew better realized they didn’t actually have any reason to keep holding him. And if they didn’t have that, they certainly didn’t have any reason to detain/handcuff him in the first place.
It’s already terrible enough that this administration has, in essence, declared war on cities the president doesn’t like. Using local police power to aid and abet the incremental roll-out of martial law isn’t helping.
The ACLU’s summary of the complaint is on point, albeit perhaps too confident in its assumption that Trump (and his loyal lapdog of a Supreme Court) haven’t already turned us all into residents of a mostly constructed Death Star:
The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures.
The Supreme Court has already made it clear that suing federal officers (which I imagine will be expanded to cover federalized National Guard units) is a non-starter. And the cops who showed up to perform the bogus arrest will likely be forgiven for being too professionally ignorant to comprehend the finer points of “not making shit up to excuse your actions” when they’re obviously unjustified. But there’s always a chance this actually ends in something comparable to justice. Let’s hope — for the sake of DC and the country itself — that’s the case here.
Much of the federal government is shuttered, but that’s not preventing the Trump administration from finding new ways to screw over struggling Americans.
Last week, the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr voted to indefinitely suspend efforts to impose new, lower price caps on predatory U.S. prison monopolies that would have prevented them from over-billing inmate families to the tune of hundreds of millions annually. The reforms, which literally took decades of activism and work to pass, were quickly sidelined via a 2-1 vote by the Republican FCC majority.
For decades, journalists and researchers have outlined how a select number of prison telecom giants like Securus have enjoyed a cozy, government-coddled monopoly over prison phone services, resulting sky high rates (at times upwards of $14 per minute at some prisons) for inmate families. States often get kickbacks based on the rates, which has stifled efforts at reforms.
There’s really no honest defense of weakening the price caps. But Brendan Carr, who originally voted for the new limits last year, has now reversed his position to appease the broader cruelty and bigotry inherent in the Trump administration. In a statement, Carr makes up some completely baseless claims that the caps were causing unforeseen public safety and security issues. From the New York Times:
“Brendan Carr, who was appointed F.C.C. chairman by President Trump and recently suggested broadcasting companies “take action” against the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, voted last year for the stricter caps, but has now reversed his position. In a statement, Mr. Carr said that the previous order had “negative, unintended consequences” and that the rates were dropped too low “for institutions to properly consider public safety and security interests.”
Again, there is absolutely zero evidence that the price caps had any such effect, but the Times can’t be bothered to mention that. This is being done specifically to aid telecom monopolies by a U.S. government that is increasingly too corrupt to function. Carr obviously can’t be honest about that, so we get this weird pantomime where Carr pretends that coddling corporate power serves the public interest.
Prison phone rates are much lower than they first were in 2013, when the FCC finally began imposing limits on calling rates. But the second Trump administration’s frontal assault on regulatory independence and the rule of law means that most government agencies can no longer pass new rules or enforce most of the ones currently on the books without being bogged down in often-fruitless legal fights.
That means that whatever FCC consumer protection efforts Carr hasn’t been destroying under the guise of “efficiency,” often can’t be enforced anyway. Like in the case of AT&T, which, after a five year legal battle, was recently allowed to wiggle out of all accountability for spying on and selling its customers sensitive location data courtesy of the Republican dominated Fifth Circuit.
Corporations and their covertly-funded Libertarian “free market” think tank friends repeatedly insisted this check on regulatory autonomy was necessary for a long list of made up reasons. But even when Congress carves out very specific legal authority for a regulator to take action (unlike net neutrality), the law is just ignored by the Trump administration.
Again, these are reforms mandated by Congress and broadly, democratically supported, that Brendan Carr simply isn’t implementing because he’s a weird little zealot captured by industry.
Consumer protection has never been America’s strong suit. But we’ve entered a new reality where the federal government is utterly abdicating its responsibility to protect the public, leaving them vulnerable to the kind of unchecked corporate power widespread U.S. corruption lets run amok. It’s still not clear to me that the public, much less the press and policy people, truly understand our new, much crueler reality.
