The same nonsense is playing out again with the Trump FCC’s ban of Chinese drones, which quietly went into effect during the Christmas holiday, intentionally ensuring that a lot of people missed it.
In short, the Trump administration added Chinese drones to its Covered List, which it says are communications equipment and services “deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons.” Soon Americans will no longer be able to buy new drones from some of the most successful and popular companies in the space, like DJI.
“UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] and UAS critical components, including data transmission devices, communications systems, flight controllers, ground control stations, controllers, navigation systems, batteries, smart batteries, and motors produced in a foreign country could enable persistent surveillance, data exfiltration, and destructive operations over US territory, including over World Cup and Olympic venues and other mass gathering events.”
To be clear, you can continue to use DJI drones you already own. And you can buy DJI drones currently approved by the FCC already for sale. But you soon won’t be able to buy new versions of these drones as they’re released. Which is a shame because DJI generally leads the drone field with a 70 percent market share and their drones are very good, very popular, and less expensive than U.S. alternatives.
The ban was imposed with zero transparency after “an Executive Branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise that was convened by the White House.” Which is gibberish when you consider the Trump administration is stacked to the rafters with odd zealots and unqualified weirdos who are basically just propping up a wide assortment of shady grifts.
You’re supposed to believe this is about protecting Americans from nefarious Chinese drone surveillance. In reality, this is about protecting U.S. drone manufacturers from having to compete with better, more popular technology. But because it’s so easy to get xenophobic lawmakers and our lazy press so ginned up about China, that truth gets buried in news reports and the policy weeds.
I’ll just randomly note here that Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., coincidentally owns stock in and advises several aspiring drone startups that have received billions in loans and subsidies from the Pentagon. That’s before you get to the countless other MAGA orbit folks and tech companies with personal investment in military drone and surveillance hardware.
I think in their heads guys like Junior probably think they’re cleverly building functional, domestic alternatives to Chinese tech, but their corruption and incompetence generally blinds them from reality and our broader failures on privacy and national security.
Truly shoring up national security and U.S. privacy requires standing up to domestic corporations first and foremost (with say, data broker regulation and a privacy law that holds execs personally accountable for lax security), which none of them want to actually do. Because in their heads, government should only exist to make them personally richer at other peoples’ expense.
Superficially the Trump administration loves putting on a veneer that it’s protecting U.S. interests and national security, but as we’ve seen elsewhere this is hollow cack. Trumpism is just pay-to-play kakistocracy and a bottomless well of assorted lazy hustles and grifts. These are not serious people.
Some U.S. drone makers asked daddy to protect them from global market competition and he did. Now U.S. consumers have to pay twice as much money for much shittier technology, and instead of translating the proceeds into new jobs, better tech, or lower prices, the executives at the companies responsible will simply pocket the proceeds. All while the New York Times and large corporate media blows smoke up your ass about this being good for national security and American labor.
This administration is in the midst of failing the American people in so many ways, of course, but if you need one stark example of that failure then you can find it in measles. When I wrote this post way back in March of this year, it was our first Techdirt post done on the disease in over 11 years. In other words, this is how it started:
And from there we were off and running. It took roughly a month for us and many others to begin warning what would be inevitable if RFK Jr. wasn’t axed from his role as Secretary of Health and Human Services. A virulent anti-vaxxer leading the charge on a measles outbreak was always going to result in a lackluster response at best, but the real embarrassment would come in the form of America losing its measles elimination status. That status was hard won in 2000 via a concentrated and government led vaccination campaign beginning in the late 70s and early 80s. 12 months of continuous spread from connected outbreaks loses us elimination status and we began predicting this would happen eight months ago.
So that’s how it started. How are we looking at present? We now sit at 2,012 confirmed cases of measles in America for 2025. And those numbers are both incomplete for the year and almost certainly significantly underreported. Add to that the fact that we are enduring current outbreaks in multiple states and we are set up for a banger of a 2026.
Measles cases nationwide have reached 2,012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported last week, as outbreaks in Arizona and South Carolina continue to grow and three other states alert the public about airport exposures.
The US total reflects 54 new cases, as the country teeters on the brink of losing its measles elimination status—which it earned in 2000—next month. This year’s total is the nation’s highest since 1992, when officials reported 2,200 cases. Coordinated vaccination efforts led to a precipitous drop in cases in the ensuing decades, but vaccine skepticism in recent years has spawned the disease’s resurgence.
In those numbers are 3 deaths, including two children, and 227 hospitalizations. More frightening is that, while 93% of infections have occurred among the unvaccinated, 7% have not, including 4% that had two MMR vaccine doses. That sure sounds like we’re experiencing an increase of breakthrough infections, which itself is an indication that we are losing herd immunity protections.
So it’s not really a question of if we’re going to lose the measles elimination status. The game is already over, we’re just waiting for the clock to run out. The real question is whether that embarrassment is going to spur anyone in positions of power to do anything about it. And the only real thing to do here is get RFK Jr. the hell out of his cabinet secretary role.
Nothing this administration does is subtle. Nothing about its anti-migrant purge has been anything less than brutish. As if to drive the point home that the bigots were running the shop, Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify the stripping of due process from people whose only crime was usually just a civil infraction: being undocumented. Anyone who knows the history of that Act knows it was last used for the same purpose: to round up a bunch of non-white people and imprison/deport them.
As fast as it could, the administration rounded up anyone that looked Latino, tossed them on airplanes, and sent them to whatever country would take them. For more than 100 deportees, the final destination was El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison, known mainly for its inhumane abuse of anyone unfortunate enough to end up there.
Judge James Boasberg has seen plenty from this administration already. He’s the judge who was received one of the first fuck you’s from the Trump anti-migrant machinery. The administration blew off his order to stop sending migrants to El Salvador, pretending it couldn’t do anything about the flights it had hurriedly sent airborne the moment it seemed Boasberg might issue an injunction.
Boasberg continues to thwart the administration’s unlawful actions. And because he’s chosen to do his job (rather than slip himself into Trump’s pocket like too many members of the Supreme Court), he’s been targeted personally by the administration. Earlier this year, Trump’s team filed a completely bogus misconduct complaint against him because he expressed very legitimate concerns about the current administration during a US court system judicial conference: that there was far more than a non-zero chance Trump’s administration would simply refuse to comply with court orders.
It wasn’t just a legitimate concern. This has actually happened more than once. Judge Boasberg has personal experience with the administration’s refusal to comply with the letter and/or spirit of his court orders.
A federal judge on Monday said the U.S. government denied due process to the Venezuelan men it deported to a prison in El Salvador in March after President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act.
[…]
Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in his order agreed that they deserved the right to a hearing — whether by bringing them back to the U.S. or allowing them to pursue legal remedies from abroad.
“On the merits, the Court concludes that this class was denied their due-process rights and will thus require the Government to facilitate their ability to obtain such hearing. Our law requires no less,” Boasberg wrote in his opinion.
Lest we forget (as the Trump administration definitely wants you to), this is how this all began. I quote directly from the ruling [PDF] because this document ensures the government can’t claim ignorance of its own bullshit as this case continues to move forward:
These men were given “no advance notice of the basis for their removal,” nor were they informed that they could challenge their designation. The only reason that this Court was made aware of these impending removals was because a few of the men moved to El Valle had been able to contact their lawyers the day before, who rightly surmised that such a Proclamation either had secretly issued or was about to issue and thus filed this action at 1:12 a.m. on March 15. The Court granted the five named Plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order that same morning, which enjoined their removal, and it scheduled an emergency hearing for 5:00 p.m. that day to consider the Motion to Certify a Class.
Just an hour before the hearing, the Proclamation was made public. Less than two hours after the Proclamation was published, and while the emergency hearing was ongoing, the Government flew 252 Venezuelan men, including 137 putative class members, out of the United States.
The Trump administration thought if it violated due process rights fast enough, no one would be able to do anything but offer up a resigned shrug. Boasberg has refused to do this. He saw this happening and moved on it. The administration efforts to stay ahead of easily foreseeable adverse rulings may now result in a lot of deportations being undone.
As for the government’s last-ditch argument that the Court has no jurisdiction because the hastily deported people are no longer in the custody of US federal officers, the court has this to say:
In a statement to the U.N. Office, El Salvador expressly disclaimed responsibility for the detainees, contending instead that “the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons l[ay] exclusively with the competent foreign authorities.”
So, it’s no use pretending the people denied their due process rights are still not under the control of the United States government. On top of that, there’s plenty of documentation on the public record that shows the Trump administration not only asked El Salvador’s government to accept whatever people it chose to dump into CECOT, but paid it nearly $50 million to offset whatever expenses El Salvador might rack up while violating the human rights of Trump’s deportees.
And the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act doesn’t change anything. Only under very narrow circumstances can due process rights be nullified. None of that is happening here. To pretend the government’s vague assertions about foreign powers and threats to national security are all that’s needed to negate the constitutional rights extended to anyone who happens to reside in this country, no matter how temporarily.
The remedy must thus adapt to meet the injury that has occurred. The Court finds that the only remedy that would give effect to its granting of Plaintiffs’ Motion would be to order the Government to undo the effects of their unlawful removal by facilitating a meaningful opportunity to contest their designation and the Proclamation’s validity. Otherwise, a finding of unlawful removal would be meaningless for Plaintiffs, who have already been sent back to Venezuela against their wishes and without due process. Expedited removal cannot be allowed to render this relief toothless. If secretly spiriting individuals to another country were enough to neuter the Great Writ, then “the Government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.”
Those are the words of someone who not only knows the law, but respects it. These are words of the Trump administration:
“Once again Judge Boasberg issued an order that has no basis in law and undermines national security,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to NPR.
Amazing. This death cult of an administration is also a murder cult and kidnapping cult. National security interests can still be served while respecting due process rights. It’s not either/or, no matter how many people we murder in international waters. But this initial statement makes it clear the administration will do everything it can to continue violating these rights, no matter what the courts say about the issue.
Donald Trump has an enemies list. Not a secret one, either. It’s actually been published at the official White House website. But he has plenty of enemies beyond that. And ever since his return to office, he’s been engaged in acts of vengeance. Federal agencies have been purged of anyone who isn’t a MAGA loyalist. Journalistic entities have been threatened, sued, and — most recently — been placed under the “leadership” of people who serve Donald Trump, rather than their actual employers or the journalistic standards they’re supposed to uphold.
He’s also gone after a number of law firms who’ve represented people suing Trump and the administration. He’s also targeted lawyers who represent people he personally doesn’t care for, like the FBI agents who investigated the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt by his supporters.
Mark Zaid has represented a number of clients, including national security whistleblowers during the Obama years. In contrast to Trump’s opportunistic thuggery, Zaid doesn’t have a political ax to grind when he chooses to represent someone in court. All Trump has is political axes in need of grinding. Since he can’t fire Zaid directly, he’s doing what he can to make it more difficult for him (and others on the president’s neverending shitlist) to represent current and former government employees.
Eisen and Zaid, the lawyers representing the FBI agents, themselves became the target of a presidential memorandum in March that revoked their access to classified material. Both have aggravated Trump for years. Zaid represented a whistleblower who helped bring about Trump’s first impeachment.
Zaid sued to restore his security clearance in May, in a case that is ongoing. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, is a high-profile defense attorney who left Winston this spring in order to form his own firm. Lowell said his goal is to represent those “unlawfully and inappropriately targeted.” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a fraud judgment against Trump and is now a target of his DOJ, was one of his first clients.
Fortunately for Zaid, he’s one step closer to getting his security clearance restored. DC federal court judge Amir Ali says [PDF] what’s immediately obvious: the president can’t just revoke security clearances simply because he doesn’t like a lawyer’s clientele. That’s a violation of First Amendment rights and that still doesn’t fly here in the US, despite Trump’s continuous efforts to make every right dependent on loyalty to the president.
It’s so obviously a violation of rights that even the government doesn’t try to rebut Zaid’s main argument. Instead, it tries to argue that the president is pretty much a king and can do whatever he wants when it comes to determining who gets to do what in this nation:
This case involves the government’s retribution against a lawyer because he represented whistleblowers and other clients who complained about the government, carried out by summarily canceling the attorney’s security clearance without any of the process that is afforded to others. In defending its actions, the government does not meaningfully rebut that the decision to deny this attorney the usual process was based on his prior legal work for clients adverse to the government.
The government instead asserts, emphasizes, and repeats that the executive branch has exclusive power to determine who meets the requirements for security clearance. […] That is well established, but does not answer the question in this case. It is equally well established that the executive branch’s exclusive power to determine who satisfies the eligibility criteria for security clearance does not mean it can conduct that determination however it wants and free from the Constitution’s limits.
If you need more evidence that this is nothing more than blatantly unconstitutional vindictiveness, you’ll find it in Judge Ali’s 39-page opinion. Zaid, who has held a security clearance for the last two decades, first angered Trump in 2019, bringing forward a whistleblower complaint that led to the House filing articles of impeachment. Here’s how Trump reacted to that:
When Zaid’s representation of the whistleblower became public, the President publicly rebuked him, including by showing Zaid’s photo at a 2019 rally and calling him a “sleazeball.” The President later said: “And [the whistleblower’s] lawyer, who said the worst things possibly two years ago, he should be sued and maybe for treason. Maybe for treason, but he should be sued. His lawyer is a disgrace.”
Here’s how things were going earlier this year, when Zaid again crossed Trump’s angry radar:
More recently, in February 2025, Zaid filed a lawsuit against the government on behalf of several Federal Bureau of Investigation employees to protect them from being targeted for work they did investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Four days later, a news source reported the President was planning to target Zaid, among others, by revoking his security clearance. The next month, the Director of National Intelligence announced on social media that she had revoked Zaid’s and others’ security clearances and access to classified information. And on March 22, 2025, the President issued a presidential memorandum to executive agency heads that included Zaid among a list of people for whom access to classified information was “no longer in the national interest.”
The government insisted the administration has the unilateral right to revoke clearances. The court agrees… to a point. But when clearances are revoked (or even denied), there’s a process involved that allows the person on the receiving end of this clearance stripping to appeal or challenge that decision. At the very least, they’re allowed to ask why. This summary stripping of security clearance from multiple lawyers at one time is obviously a rights violation (due process) that compounds the other alleged rights violation (free speech).
Based on the preliminary injunction record, the court finds the government has not conducted any individualized assessment of Zaid’s eligibility for security clearance. It instead denied Zaid the process and individualized assessment afforded to others because of his prior representation of whistleblowers and other clients in matters that were adverse to the government.
[…]
Because Zaid’s claims all challenge the legality of revoking his security clearance without meaningful process, they go only to the “methods used” to revoke his clearance.
The government pretends this is simply about denying access, which it can do. But it isn’t. It’s about selectively removing access, which isn’t really about the security clearance process, but whether or not the government can use the process to engage in retaliatory action against people it doesn’t care for.
So it tried this:
As mentioned, the government’s principal approach here has been to offer an expansive reading of the cases it likes (Egan and Lee) and to leave out the cases it doesn’t (Greenberg and Rattigan).
And ends up with this after Judge Ali parses the cited cases the government really wishes he wouldn’t have read so closely:
[E]ven the cases the government selectively quotes from recognize the line between “ends and means.
Furthermore, the court practically invites every other lawyer named in the White House memo to get busy suing over their stripped clearances:
The government, second, asks the court to just construe the presidential memorandum as an individualized national security assessment. But the court finds the memorandum was not based on any such assessment. It is undisputed that no government agency conducted an assessment of Zaid’s eligibility for clearance, and the memorandum itself does not purport to make any national security assessment—in fact, it does not mention national security at all. The memorandum instead directs agencies to summarily revoke Zaid’s clearance based on the “national interest,” which courts have consistently recognized as distinct from and more nebulous than a particular determination about national security.
Zaid wins, for now. The government has until December 30 to challenge the injunction. If it can’t raise a better argument than it has here (and there’s no reason to believe it can), Zaid’s clearance will be un-revoked on January 13, 2026. And the others who were targeted by the White House memo need to lawyer up and get their clearances back too. Certainly, the administration will try to get the Supreme Court to undo this, but for now, the clock is ticking.
Apparently that struck a nerve. A (actually very good) journalist for a billionaire-owned news org complained, suggesting that it was unfair of me to call out other media organizations for choosing to annoy people for money. Which billionaire? Does it matter? The list is long enough that you could throw a dart.
The crux of the argument seemed to be that there just aren’t that many ways for news orgs (billionaire-owned or not) to make money these days, and thus I shouldn’t call out those who have chosen an “annoy people until they pay” method.
I disagree.
One of the very earliest areas of coverage on Techdirt was about the changing music industry, and how the record labels’ Napster-era strategy of disrespecting music’s biggest fans by accusing them of all being thieves was not in their long-term best interests. Rather, working on finding a better business model that enabled fans to enjoy more music would be the better, more sustainable strategy. Today I would argue that I was correct.
I think the same is true in the news business. Insisting that the only way that a news org can make money is to be actively hostile to your readers/watchers/listeners strikes me as unsustainable and going down the wrong road.
Tragically, one thing that we’re seeing is that the news orgs with the least community-hostile approach tend to be right wing MAGA shitpost factories. They’re running on dark money or extracting cash from the perpetually credulous, but either way they’ve figured out that not actively pissing off your audience creates loyalty. It’s a depressing lesson in how the worst actors sometimes understand community dynamics better than legacy institutions.
But it would be nice if we could show the world a better way. That you can have a publication that does, in fact, respect its community. That doesn’t want to annoy you into paying. That doesn’t want to only make its content shareable if you have a subscription or if you first give up all sorts of private data about yourself.
And that’s where you come in. While Techdirt will accept donations year-round, if you want to get one of these cool new commemorative challenge coins, you have until Monday, January 5th, to make your donation. On Tuesday we’ll be submitting our order of how many coins get minted, so we’re down to our final week if you want in.
Help show the world that a good, thoughtful news site can be reader supported, but without having to use tactics that disrespect its community to do so.
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This administration runs on vengeance. If it’s not Donald Trump aiming the DOJ at his personal enemies, it’s the DOJ itself taking a shotgun approach to justice (read: filling it full of holes) by filing as many criminal charges against anti-ICE protesters as possible. The charges have been transparently bogus — an obvious attempt by the administration to intimidate protesters into silence. And juries — even extremely submissive grand juries — have refused to buy what the government can’t even be bothered to sell properly.
Every loss by this administration is a win for what’s left of America and its constitutional ideals. Here’s one to cherish, just because the DOJ decided to brag about this supposed slam dunk a couple of months before a California jury went Wembanyana and swatted this shot halfway across the court.
A tow truck driver from South Los Angeles has been arrested on a federal criminal complaint alleging he illegally towed a government vehicle used by law enforcement during an immigration-related arrest.
An affidavit filed with the complaint states that on Aug. 15, Nunez interfered with federal law enforcement officers conducting immigration enforcement in downtown L.A. This particular case involved a 23-year-old Colombian woman named Tatiana Mafla-Martinez, whose vehicle was boxed in by two government vehicles, preventing her from getting away.
Here are some more details about the case, albeit supplied solely by the government:
While the second man was being addressed by the officers, Nunez allegedly got into his tow truck and towed one of the government cars blocking Mafla-Martinez’s car. Per the DOJ, the car he towed had its keys inside and also had a firearm, although it was locked in a safe.
“Addressed” of course means “arrested.” And while the officers were otherwise occupied, Nunez towed their vehicle away because it was blocking access to the apartments. Nunez apparently resided at these apartments. The government says it found the tow truck “parked in its assigned parking space” two days after this incident (August 17). Somehow, it didn’t get around to arresting him for another two weeks.
“Apparently he thought it would be funny to interfere with our immigration enforcement operations,” he wrote on X in September. “Now he can laugh behind bars while he faces justice. Nunez is looking at up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted.”
Whether or not the tow truck driver, Bobby Nunez, thought this was funny remains (like the rest of the case) an unproven allegation. But it is objectively funny, as this recording clearly demonstrates:
Essayli should know better than to run his mouth in public. His career with the Trump administration has basically been a long run of failures in courts while pursuing federal charges against protesters, journalists, and anyone else the administration thinks needs to be vindictively prosecuted.
The South Los Angeles tow truck driver who was arrested in September on a federal criminal complaint charging him with “stealing government property” after he towed a government vehicle whose occupants were making an immigration arrest in DTLA was acquitted last week, prosecutors say.
We see what Essayli said about this. Nunez’s lawyers — both public defenders — pointed out the actual facts of the situation:
Deputy Federal Public Defenders Rebecca Harris and David Menninger, argued that the law enforcement vehicle was blocking the driveway to the apartment complex and that their client moved it only one block away to stop the impediment of traffic in the high-density apartment complex. It was returned less than 15 minutes later, they argued.
The jury apparently agreed: no (lasting) harm, no foul. The government suffered some temporary embarrassment but it still managed to carry out its arrests even if one of its cars was now located a few hundred feet away from where officers had (deliberately and carelessly) parked it.
Bill Essayli managed to handle the loss with whatever grace he has left in his body, simply stating that Nunez had been found not guilty and that he had no further comment. Local abhorrent/Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, of course, had to get up on his bitchiness horse and ride off into the sunset of his own humanity:
“Another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city,” Miller wrote on X on Sunday. “The justice system depends on a jury of peers with a shared system of interests and values. Mass migration tribalizes the entire legal system.”
Good luck trying to parse whatever the fuck that is. I’ve tried multiple times and the best I’ve come up with is “Froth froth froth froth blue city froth.” Complaining about jury nullification is something someone does when they don’t like the outcome. And what makes this nullification more “blatant” than any other goes unexplained, although we all know it just means that it happened in Los Angeles.
If the DOJ is going to insist on being Trump’s vengeful marionette, things are never going to improve. Juries can be swayed easily, but they also tend to know when the government expects them to be the kangaroos in the court. The more extreme the government’s actions, the less likely they are to be complicit in obvious bullshit. No one in the administration is learning anything from this, which means they’re doomed to repeat their own recent history ad infinitum.
I’ve written repeatedly about how Republicans effectively rewrote the 2021 infrastructure bill (they voted against) to ensure that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded broadband grants (intended to be spent on affordable, next-generation fiber) was stolen from local communities, and instead given to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for expensive, congested satellite service.
I’ve also explained in detail why that’s a problem: These networks may be initially cheaper to deploy, but the networks lack the capacity to actually scale to meet demand. Data indicates they harm astronomy research and the ozone layer. They’re ultimately more expensive for consumers than fiber deployments, especially if those fiber deployments are by cooperatives or community owned.
In short, taxpayer money directed toward Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is also money directed away from higher-capacity, faster, locally-owned (and usually cheaper) fiber and wireless alternatives. And it’s money given to billionaires for technology they already had deployed or would have deployed anyway. It’s a coordinated hijacking of taxpayer money that will actually undermine affordable internet access.
Enter the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which aggressively lies about all of this all of this in a new, comically terrible editorial. The headline starts with an outright lie about how Trump somehow “unbroke the Internet”:
How did Trump “unbreak the internet?” Well again, he basically hijacked a huge chunk of the billions we planned to spend on next-generation fiber upgrades to schools, rural communities, and under-served areas, and gave it to Elon Musk for expensive satellite service he (again) already planned to deploy. This, according to the Wall Street Journal, is positively ingenious!
There’s no need to spend money on affordable gigabit fiber, the Journal informs us, because existing wireless and satellite is simply good enough:
“Congress appropriated $42 billion in the 2021 infrastructure bill for states to expand broadband to “unserved” and rural communities. The spending was unnecessary since satellite services like SpaceX’s Starlink and 5G fixed wireless services were rapidly closing the so-called digital divide. Upward of 99% of households already had high-speed internet.”
Again, these services are expensive. They’re congested. They’re spotty. They’re heavily monopolized by a handful of giant companies. They get slower as more people use them. Yes, you’ve technically “connected the public,” but you’ve done a piss poor job of it. Claiming it’s “unnecessary” to push fiber deeper in to more places shows the author is either lying or has no idea what they’re talking about.
The Journal is particularly incensed that the original infrastructure bill actually bothered to consult with local states, communities, and tribes to best determine their needs. Positively outrageous!
“States receiving funds had to consult with unions, native American tribes and “local community organizations” on their plans to expand broadband. This gave liberal special interests a veto and let them extort developers.”
Calling tribes “Liberal special interests” is very weird and gross, but no matter. The Journal is also extremely upset that the original plan for your taxpayer money was to ensure that the resulting fiber access was affordable. Republicans have already destroyed those efforts, but the Journal is still, somehow, very mad about it months later:
“Providers applying for funds were also advised to offer “low-cost” plans and provide “nondiscriminatory access to and use” of their networks on a “wholesale basis to other providers . . . at just and reasonable wholesale.” This was a back-door way to impose utility-style rate regulation on internet providers.”
The Trump administration not only has gutted all broadband consumer protection at the FCC, and destroyed all efforts to make sure taxpayer-funded broadband is actually affordable, they’ve illegally threatened states that they’ll lose already-awarded taxpayer money if they challenge the administration. This excites the very serious Wall Street Journal editorial board very much!
The real issue here is that the government engaged in some very light efforts to try and ensure broadband was affordable. This upsets regional telecom monopolies that have worked tirelessly to erode all local competition so they can rip you off. The idea that the government might come in and functionally prevent monopoly predation is unthinkable to these weirdos and Rupert Murdoch.
From here, the Wall Street Journal pushes a bunch of lies about how the corrupt Republican and Elon Musk hijacking of the program is saving taxpayers all sorts of money (several of the figures here are just foundationally incorrect):
“The average cost for each new household or business connected in Louisiana fell to $3,943 from $5,245. Louisiana’s most expensive project had run at $120,000 per connection under the Biden rules—almost as much as a starter home—but the Trump team brought the cost down to $7,547 per connection. Similar savings have occurred in other states.”
Again, many communities were going to get high capacity, gigabit fiber, in some cases as low as $60-$70 a month. Instead, they’re getting Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband access, which is not only much slower (which also gets worse as more people use it), but costs also upwards of $120 a month (plus hundreds of dollars in up front hardware costs, and in some cases, congestion fees).
Yes, that technology is cheaper to deploy, and useful in areas with no access, but it’s nowhere near as good as “last mile” fiber right to your doorstop.
It’s slower. It’s more expensive to use. And the primary company benefitting it is run by an overt white supremacist. Again, this all very much excites the Wall Street Journal editorial board, but it’s not going to be exciting to the millions of Americans who realize (hopefully) they got ripped off by a bunch of bullshitters three years from now.
Anyway, this is all to say that the Wall Street Journal is very excited that we redirected billions in taxpayer dollars away from affordable local fiber access and instead gave it to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for expensive, congested, satellite service that destroys the ozone layer, ruins astronomy, and isn’t affordable for most of the Americans who actually need it:
“The broadband program illustrates how the Biden combination of spending and regulation created market distortions and raised costs. It would be better if Congress let markets allocate capital, but the Trump Administration is ensuring taxpayer funds are spent in a more cost-effective way that does less economic harm.”
That Republicans hijacked a promising program to thrown billions of taxpayer dollars at billionaires for inferior product will be clearly borne out by data in the years to come. At which point the authors of this Wall Street Journal editorial will either be dead or have moved on to lying about something else.
For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines.
He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a book by a discredited doctor promoting an unproven and dangerous treatment for autism and a host of ailments: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching.
Kory has said there’s a globally coordinated campaign by public health agencies, the drug industry and the media to suppress evidence of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His book, according to its website, contends that the “remarkable molecule” works “to treat everything from cancer and malaria to autism and COVID.”
The book jacket features a prominent blurb from Johnson calling the doctor’s treatise: “A gripping tale of corruption and courage that will open eyes and prompt serious questions.”
Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that has a range of applications, including as a disinfectant and deodorizer. Food processing plants apply it to sanitize surfaces and equipment. Hospitals use it to sterilize medical devices, and some municipalities use low levels to treat public water supplies. Paper mills rely on it to whiten wood pulp. Safety experts advise those who handle it to work in well-ventilated spaces and to wear protective gloves.
Concentrations in drinking water systems higher than 0.8 milligrams per liter can be harmful, especially to infants, young children and fetuses, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Still, for many years people in online discussion groups have been promoting the use of chlorine dioxide in a mixture that they call a “miracle mineral solution,” ingested to rid people of a host of maladies. The Food and Drug Administration has warned that drinking these chlorine dioxide mixtures can cause injury and even death.
It is not medicinal, despite Kory’s contention. “It is all lunacy. Absolutely, it’s 100% nonsense,” said Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society in Montreal and an expert on the threat of pseudoscience. Schwarcz has written articles about the so-called miracle mineral solution, calling it “a poison” when it’s in high concentrations.
Kory’s book, set to be released to the public in January, argues that word of chlorine dioxide’s effectiveness has been suppressed by government and medical forces that need people to remain perpetually ill to generate large profits. The use of the word “war” in the title is fitting, Kory said in a recent online video on his co-author’s Substack. “In the book I detail many, many assassination attempts of doctors who try to bring out knowledge around chlorine dioxide,” he said.
Johnson confirmed to ProPublica in an email that he authorized the statement on the cover. “After reading the entire book, yes I provided and approved that blurb,” he said. “Have you read the book?”
ProPublica asked Kory and his co-author, Jenna McCarthy, to provide an advance copy, an interview and responses to written questions. Kory did not respond. McCarthy wrote in an email to ProPublica that she was addressing some of the questions on her Substack. (She did not send a book or agree to an interview.)
The book “is a comprehensive examination of the existing evidence and a plea for open-minded inquiry and rigorous research,” she wrote on Substack. She dismissed warnings about chlorine dioxide’s toxicity in high concentrations, writing: “Everything has a toxic dose — including nutmeg, spinach, and tap water.”
She said that chlorine dioxide is being studied in controlled settings by researchers in the United States and Latin America and that “the real debate is how it should be used, at what dose, and in which clinical contexts.”
Johnson did not agree to an interview and did not answer questions emailed to his office by ProPublica, including whether he views chlorine dioxide as a world-changing medical treatment and whether he believes the FDA warnings are false.
“It’s Called Snake Oil”
Johnson has been an advocate of Kory’s for years, calling the doctor as an expert witness in two 2020 Senate hearings. In one, Kory championed taking the drug ivermectin, an antiparasite medicine, to treat COVID-19.
In 2021, an analysis of data from clinical trials concluded that ivermectin could reduce deaths from COVID-19 and may produce other positive effects. McCarthy cited that analysis in her Substack response.
In 2022, however, the American Journal of Therapeutics, which had published the study, warned that suspicious data “appears to invalidate the findings” regarding ivermectin’s potential to decrease deaths.
Later clinical trials have found no beneficial effect of ivermectin for COVID-19, and the FDA has warned that taking large doses can be dangerous. The drug’s manufacturer has said it hadn’t found any scientific basis for the idea that ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19. Kory, though, continued advocating for ivermectin.
In 2024 the American Board of Internal Medicine, which credentials physicians in certain specialties, revoked Kory’s certifications in internal medicine, pulmonary disease and critical care for making false and misleading public statements about the ability of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Hospitals and many insurance networks typically require doctors to be board certified.
Kory vigorously fought the disciplinary action, arguing to the ABIM that he provided substantial medical and scientific evidence to support his recommendations for addressing COVID-19, though not the “consensus-driven” approach. He also sued the board in federal court, citing his free speech rights in a case that is still progressing in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Substack, McCarthy excoriated the ABIM, saying it “bullies physicians” and “enforces ideological conformity.”
In 2022, Johnson and Kory penned a Fox News op-ed opposing a California bill that would strip doctors’ licenses for espousing misinformation about COVID-19. The bill became law but was repealed after a court fight. A federal judge found the statute’s definition of misinformation to be too vague, which could infringe on doctors’ right to free speech.
Johnson, who has been in Congress since 2011, has a history of advocating for experimental treatments and viewing the government as an impediment. Dr. Peter Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public health advocacy group, said that among members of Congress, Johnson was “an early adopter of anti-science ideas.”
Lurie said that Johnson is no longer an outlier in Washington, which now has many more elected lawmakers whom he considers anti-science. “What may have started off as the cutting edge of an anti-science movement has now turned into a much more broader-based movement that is supported by millions of people,” he said.
Earlier this year, Johnson held a hearing highlighting a flawed study claiming that vaccinated children had an increased rate of serious chronic diseases when compared to children who were not vaccinated. The conclusion questions the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe. The study’s researchers chose not to publish it because of problems they found in their data and methodology.
HHS did not respond to requests from ProPublica about Kennedy’s views on chlorine dioxide. At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy praised President Donald Trump for his wide search for a COVID-19 remedy in his first term, which Kennedy said included vaccines, various drugs, “even chlorine dioxide.”
Kory’s publisher is listed as Bella Luna Press, which has issued at least two other titles by McCarthy. “Thanks to the Censorship Industrial Complex, you won’t find The War on Chlorine Dioxide on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble. We had to design and build this website, figure out formatting and printing and shipping, and manage every aspect of order processing ourselves,” the book’s website states. (A representative for Bella Luna could not be reached for comment.)
As this new book is released, the autism community is also grappling with another controversy: the unsubstantiated assertion by Kennedy that Tylenol use by pregnant women poses an increased risk of autism. In addition, under Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its website in November to cast doubt on the long-held scientific conclusion that childhood vaccines do not cause autism.
Some parents of children with autism, desperate for a remedy, have long reached for dubious and at times dangerous panaceas, including hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation therapy, used for the treatment of heavy metal poisoning. Neither method has been proven effective.
Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University, said Johnson has “acted extremely irresponsibly” in lending his name to a book making claims about chlorine dioxide treating autism.
“Wisconsin is filled with experts — clinical experts, medical experts, scientists — who understand and have studied autism and treatments for autism for many many years,” she said. “He’s chosen to completely ignore the clinical and the scientific community.”
People with autism may take medication to reduce anxiety, address attention problems, or reduce severe irritability. Many benefit from behavioral interventions and special education services to help with learning and functional abilities. But there is no cure, said Tager-Flusberg.
Referring to chlorine dioxide, she said: “We have had examples of this probably throughout the history of medicine. There’s a word for this, it’s called snake oil.”
In her response on Substack to ProPublica, McCarthy wrote that “chlorine dioxide is being used to treat (nobody said ‘cure’) autism with life-changing results.”
The Search for Miracle Cures
The mother of an autistic son, Melissa Eaton of North Carolina, heard Kory reference his book in early November on The HighWire, an internet talk show hosted by Del Bigtree, a prominent vaccine skeptic and former communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign. She then looked up the book online and noticed Johnson’s endorsement.
Eaton for many years has worked to expose people who peddle chlorine dioxide and to report apparent injuries to authorities. She monitors social media forums where parents discuss giving it to their children orally or via enemas. Sometimes the families reveal that their children are sick. “They’re throwing up and vomiting and having diarrhea and rashes,” Eaton said.
Some adherents advise parents that the disturbing effects indicate that the treatment is working, ridding the body of impurities, or that the parents should alter the dosage.
“Most of these kids are nonverbal,” Eaton said. “They’re not able to say what’s hurting them or what’s happening to them. The parents feel they’re doing the right thing. That’s how they view this: They’re helping to cure autism.”
The idea that chlorine dioxide can be a miracle cure began to spread about 20 years ago when a gold prospector, Jim Humble, wrote a book claiming his team in Guyana fell ill with malaria and recovered after drinking safe amounts of chlorine dioxide.
Humble later co-founded a “health and healing” church in Florida with a man named Mark Grenon, who called himself an archbishop and sold a chlorine dioxide solution as a cure for COVID-19. They described it as a “miracle mineral solution,” or MMS.
Grenon went to prison in 2023 for conspiring to defraud the United States by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug. The scheme took in more than $1 million, according to prosecutors.
An affidavit in the case filed by a special agent with the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations noted: “FDA has received numerous reports of adverse reactions to MMS. These adverse reactions include hospitalizations, life-threatening conditions, and death.”
Grenon, who is now out of prison, told ProPublica that he too is writing a book about chlorine dioxide. “My book will tell the truth.” He declined further comment.
Chlorine dioxide is currently used in many ways that are not harmful. It is found in some consumer products like mouthwashes, but it is not meant to be swallowed in those instances. (One popular mouthwash warns to “keep out of reach of children.”) It’s also available to consumers in do-it-yourself packages where they combine drops from two bottles of different compounds — commonly sodium chlorite and hydrochloric acid — and add it to water. Hikers often carry the drops, or tablets, using small amounts to make quarts of fresh water potable.
But numerous online shoppers post product reviews that go further, referring to it as a tonic. Various online guides, some aimed at parents of autistic children, recommend a shot-glass-size dose, sometimes given multiple times a day and even hourly. That can far exceed the threshold the EPA considers safe.
McCarthy, addressing ProPublica on Substack, wrote: “You point to various online guides that offer what could be considered dangerous dosing instructions. We agree, the internet is a terrifying wasteland of misinformation and disinformation.”
In the Substack video, Kory said he felt compelled to spread the word about chlorine dioxide much as he did about ivermectin, even though it cost him professionally.
He no longer has a valid medical license in Wisconsin or California, where he did not renew them, according to the Substack post. His medical licenses in New York and Michigan are active.
“I like to say I was excommunicated from the church of the medical establishment,” he said in the Substack video. As a result, he said, he turned to telehealth and started a practice.
In the Nov. 6 HighWire episode hosted by Bigtree, the discussion included talk not just of chlorine dioxide’s medicinal potential but also of how cheap and easy it is to obtain.
“On Amazon, it’s literally, you get two bottles, well, it comes in two,” Kory started to explain, before stopping that train of thought.
Walled Culture has written a number of times about the true fans approach – the idea that creators can be supported directly and effectively by the people who love their work. As Walled Culture the book explains (available as a free ebook), one of the earliest and best expositions of the concept came from Kevin Kelly, former Executive Editor at Wired magazine, in an essay he wrote originally in 2008. The true fans idea is sometimes dismissed as simply selling branded t-shirts to supporters. That may have been true decades ago, but things have moved on. For example, Universal Music Group has recently opened retail locations that cater specifically for true fans. In addition to shops in Tokyo and Madrid, there are new outlets in New York and London. Here’s what the latter will offer, as reported by Music Business Worldwide:
Located in Camden Market, the London-based space will “serve as a creative hub where music, fashion, and design collide,” UMG said.
The announcement added that the shop was “designed to capture Camden’s rebellious spirit and deep musical roots”.
The store will feature exclusive artist collections, immersive installations, and live performances, along with a Vinyl Lounge, DJ booth, and recording studio-inspired Sound Room that “allows fans to experience music like never before”.
That is a fairly conventional extension of the “selling branded t-shirts to supporters” idea. A post on the Midia Research blog points out a more radical development in the true fans space involving the latest generative AI technology:
AI is best considered as an accelerant rather than something entirely new, intensifying pre-existing trends. AI music absolutely fits this trend. Over the course of the last decade – including a super-charged COVID bump – accessible music tech has enabled ever-more people to become music creators. AI simply lowered the barriers to entry even further. The debate over whether a text prompt constitutes creativity will continue to run (just like the same debate still runs for sampling), but what is clear is that more people are now making music because of AI.
Thanks to genAI, true fans are not limited to a passive role. They can actively participate in the artistic ecosystem brought into being by their musical heroes, through the creation of new works based on and extending the originals they love. The fanfic world has been doing this for many years, so it is no surprise to find the use of generative AI there even more advanced there than in the world of music. For example, the DreamGen site lists no less than nine “AI fanfic generators”, including its own. It offers a good description of how these systems work:
1. You give it a prompt: This could be something like “Harry Potter and Hermione go on a space adventure” or “Naruto meets Spider-Man in New York.”
2. The AI takes over: It uses its knowledge of language and storytelling to write a story based on your idea. It fills in the details, such as dialogue, action, emotions,and plot twists.
3. You can guide it: Want more romance? More drama? A surprise ending? You can tweak the prompt or add instructions, and the AI will adjust the story.
4. You get a full fanfic: Some tools write it all at once, others let you build it paragraph by paragraph so you can shape the story as it goes.
As that indicates, the new AI-based fanfic generators are so easy to use, anyone can use them. The only limit is the imagination and the ability to put that into words. That’s an incredible democratization of creativity that takes the idea of participatory fandom to the next level. And, of course, it can be applied in other domains too, such as “fan art”, which Wikipedia defines as follows:
Fan art or fanart is artwork created by fans of a work of fiction or celebrity depicting events, character, or other aspect of the work. As fan labor, fan art refers to artworks that are not created, commissioned, nor endorsed by the creators of the work from which the fan art derives.
As with other uses of genAI, this raises questions of copyright, some of which have already found their way to court. Perhaps surprisingly, Disney has just announced its embrace of this use of AI by fans, in a partnership with OpenAI:
The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform, bringing these leaders in creativity and innovation together to unlock new possibilities in imaginative storytelling.
As part of this new, three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing from a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, including costumes, props, vehicles, and iconic environments. In addition, ChatGPT Images will be able to turn a few words by the user into fully generated images in seconds, drawing from the same intellectual property. The agreement does not include any talent likenesses or voices.
There’s a billion-dollar investment by Disney in OpenAI, as well as the following:
OpenAI and Disney will collaborate to utilize OpenAI’s models to power new experiences for Disney+ subscribers, furthering innovative and creative ways to connect with Disney’s stories and characters.
Presumably, Disney hopes to gain more Disney+ subscribers and drive more revenues with these short-form, fan-generated videos, plus whatever “creative ways” of using AI that it comes up with. OpenAI, meanwhile, gains some handy investment, and a showcase for its Sora genAI video platform.
Although this deal is a welcome sign that some major copyright companies are starting to think imaginatively and positively about genAI, and how it can actually boost profits, the new service will doubtless be rather limited, not least in terms of what kind of videos can generated. The press release emphasises:
OpenAI and Disney have affirmed a shared commitment to maintaining robust controls to prevent the generation of illegal or harmful content, to respect the rights of content owners in relation to the outputs of models, and to respect the rights of individuals to appropriately control the use of their voice and likeness.
That means that there will always be room for edgier, smaller sites producing fanfic, fan art and fan videos that don’t worry about things like good taste or copyright. As more fans discover the delights of building on and extending the creative ideas of their idols in novel ways using genAI, we can expect a corresponding rise in the number of legal actions trying to stop them doing so.
