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.
At long last, El Salvador native Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released from custody. Abrego Garcia was among the hundred-plus migrants rounded up by ICE and shipped to El Salvador’s infamous torture prison, CECOT. Months of litigation ensued. The Trump administration was ordered (multiple times) to bring him back from El Salvador, with the court finding Garcia’s due process rights (along with most of those sent to CECOT) had been violated.
The government has done everything since then to make Abrego Garcia miserable. Once Garcia was returned to the US, he was immediately jailed as the government dreamed up a bunch of serious crimes to charge him with. According to multiple statements (mainly tweets and such) made by DHS and the administration, Garcia is an MS-13 gang member and human trafficker. Those charges were somehow extracted from a years-old traffic stop where Garcia was released and never charged with anything, much less placed into the deportation pipeline.
Garcia has fought the government every step of the way. And, in return, the government has been vindictively combative. Costa Rica’s government has agreed to allow Garcia to be deported there. But the government wants a head on a spike to intimidate other migrants, so it has given Garcia the option of being prosecuted (while remaining in jail the entire time) or being booted out of an ICE plane in extremely dangerous places like Liberia or Uganda.
If this all looks like a petty group of administration officials trying to punish someone for fighting back, it also looks that way to the court handling the criminal case brought against Abrego Garcia. Not only has the court released Garcia pending his trial, it is now about halfway towards dismissing the case entirely if the government can’t come up with an explanation that doesn’t sound like revenge.
The federal judge overseeing the human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia has canceled an upcoming January trial.
In lieu of that proceeding, the court will hold a one-day evidentiary hearing dedicated to ferreting out whether or not the Maryland man was vindictively and selectively prosecuted by the government.
This week, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, a Barack Obama appointee, slammed the brakes on the controversial prosecution in a relatively terse four-page order – a decided victory for the father of three and an equally stinging loss for the Trump administration.
In the ruling, the judge said the evidence provided by the defense had turned the case in Abrego Garcia’s favor long ago – at least on the due process issue of whether the prosecution is vindictive.
As the order notes, the court is doing the DOJ a favor here. There’s apparently already enough on the record that supports Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution allegation. But the government will get one chance to rebut this early next year.
According to Abrego, the Government has already shown that it cannot [rebut his allegations], given what Abrego asserts to be troves of evidence in the record indicating that his prosecution is actually vindictive. (See Doc. No. 275 at 11–15). Based on this record, Abrego argues that the Court could rule on his Motion without an evidentiary hearing or the testimony of Blanche, McHenry, and Singh.
Nevertheless, the government asserts it can rebut the presumption, and that the evidence does not show actual vindictiveness. To rebut the presumption, the government intends to rely on the testimony of Supervisory Special Agent John VanWie (“SA VanWie”) of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) Baltimore and Special Agent Rana Saoud (“SA Saoud”) of HSI Nashville, and, perhaps, the testimony of Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire.
Considering this landscape, and Abrego’s insistence that the current record alone warrants dismissal in his favor, whether the Court needs to hear testimony from Blanche, McHenry, and Singh, is questionable. Still, for the sake of thoroughness and to make sure that all parties are fully heard, the Court finds it prudent to proceed with an evidentiary hearing on Abrego’s Motion In doing so, it will limit the hearing to only the second step of the prosecutorial vindictiveness analysis: whether the government can produce objective, on-the-record explanations for Abrego’s prosecution that rebuts the presumption of vindictiveness. If the government can rebut that showing, the Court will revisit the government’s Motion to Quash…
Apparently the government thinks it can win this battle by bringing some mouths to a document fight. Abrego Garcia has already obtained plenty of damning information (which the Trump administration adds to on nearly a daily basis) that makes it clear this is all about punishing him for daring to object to his deportation to CECOT.
I’m sure everyone called to testify will say things about how this is all an extremely normal way to handle someone who asserted their due process rights. But maybe the government should just give up on this one. If the testimony manages to raise questions about the alleged vindictiveness, it doesn’t let the government off the hook. All it does is open it up to further discovery via Abrego Garcia’s pending subpoenas.
And I’m sure the judge will have something to say about the DHS’s actions over the weekend, where it took to social media to complain about a gag order while simultaneously violating it.
The Department of Homeland Security’s complaint about being under a gag order on Saturday in its case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump administration illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this year, likely violated the court order.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS, said that Abrego Garcia being able to make viral TikTok posts was unfair in a rant on X: “American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system.”
If you can’t read/see what McLaughlin reposted, it’s an X post by MAGA grifter/podcaster Benny Johnson that reads:
MS-13 terrorist Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released by a rogue judge and is now making TikToks.
To be clear, the gag order doesn’t prevent Abrego Garcia from making videos of himself lip-synching to Christian songs. The gag order targets the Trump administration because it has spent the last several months attacking Abrego Garcia on social media and smearing him with unproven allegations. Since this obviously affects Garcia’s right to a fair trial, the judge reasonably ordered the government to knock it off.
And it has responded by reposting a smear and bitching about an “activist judge” — the same judge it will have to answer to late next month. Odds are the government is going to be called to court well ahead of this deadline to explain why it thinks it doesn’t need follow orders handed down by federal judges.
Last week, Marco Rubio and the State Department revoked visas for five Europeans—including Imran Ahmed, a legal permanent resident in the US married to a US citizen—because they don’t like their speech about disinformation. The State Department’s justification? This form of speech suppression is necessary to protect free speech.
This is merely the latest episode in what will go down as the most anti-free speech, censorial presidential administration in history. Remember when Trump’s first executive order claimed to “restore free speech and end federal censorship“? We’ve since seen the administration repeatedly attack and punish people for their speech, but the Rubio move takes the hypocrisy to a new level: using government power to punish people for their speech while claiming to fight censorship.
The U.S. government just banned five people from entering the country because it doesn’t like their speech. This ban, according to the State Department, is necessary to protect free speech.
If that sounds insane to you, congratulations on your reading comprehension.
For the record: I’ve been a vocal critic of both Ahmed’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, which does ridiculously shoddy research (they once claimed photos of gum were “eating disorder content”), and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, about whom I’ve never said anything nice. But when the U.S. government bans people from the country for their speech, the quality of their work becomes irrelevant. Breton, admittedly, did try to abuse the law to censor Americans, but the EU spit him out and rejected such abuse immediately:
The most instructive case here is Breton himself. He did, in fact, try to abuse the DSA to suppress speech. In August 2024, he sent Elon Muska threatening lettersuggesting that Musk’s planned livestreamed interview with then-candidate Donald Trump could violate the DSA. It was a blatant attempt at censorship.
And here’s what happened: The EU rejected him. Completely. EU officials went on recordcondemning the letter, his fellow commissioners distanced themselves from his threats, and within weeks heresignedto avoid being fired. As EU free speech experts noted in arecent open letter: “Politically, the EU’s checks and balances worked.”
So even when Breton actually tried to censor Americans, the EU’s institutions rejected it. Meanwhile, Rubio is retaliating against Breton for that failed attempt by exiling him from the country—actual government punishment for speech.
But the truly egregious bit of the State Department’s move here was that they had Under Secretary Sarah Rogers go on X and claim that these bans were necessary to prevent “Murthy-style speech suppression,” which is an incredible admission, given that the ruling in the Murthy case showed there was no actual evidence of speech suppression.
As I wrote in the piece, this is bizarre revisionist history of a ruling that just came out last year:
Rogers is referring tothe Murthy v. Missouricase mentioned above, where two states and a collection of angry social media influencers sued the Biden administration, claiming social media platforms censored content at the government’s direction. The Supreme Courtrejected those claims6-3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s opinion finding the plaintiffs had no standing because there was no evidence the government suppressed anyone’s speech. The platforms, Barrett noted, were simply enforcing their own rules.
Even worse, in a damning footnote, Justice Barrett highlighted that the lower court’s finding that there was censorship was based on a “clearly erroneous” reading of the evidence.
So the State Department is citing a case that disproved government censorship as evidence of government censorship. That’s not even creative lying — it’s just citing your own loss as precedent.
As I wrote in that piece, this goes beyond routine lying. The State Department is weaponizing a Supreme Court case that explicitly rejected claims of government censorship to justify actual, unambiguous government effort at punishing people for their speech. They’re inverting the legal record—taking a ruling that said “no, the government didn’t suppress speech” and using it as precedent to suppress speech.
The State Department is literally using the judiciary’s rejection of censorship claims as permission to punish people for their speech. When an administration twists a loss into a win by doing exactly what the court said they didn’t do, we’re not just dealing with censorial hypocrites. We’re watching them test how far they can push before anyone stops them.
For what it’s worth Ahmed quickly went to court seeking a temporary restraining order on this decision, which he feared would be used to eject him from the country where he lives with his family. On Christmas day, the judge issued the TRO, with orders for a telephone conference later today to discuss further issues in the case.
Again, there are few things that Ahmed and I agree on (he’s spent months insisting that Section 230 needs to be repealed, based on his direct misrepresentation of 230). I think he’s wrong on a wide variety of issues, and that his advocacy is dangerous for speech and the open internet. But I’ll stand up and defend his right to say such things any day, without the US government punishing him for it.
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The Trump administration, for all intents and purposes, declared war on Chicago back in September. It was inevitable that Chicago and the state of Illinois would eventually be targeted by Trump, what with its Democratic leadership and Trump’s faux concerns about gun violence. Less than a month into his second presidential term, the administration sued the state and city of Chicago in hopes of forcing it to aid and abet Trump’s mass deportation programs.
The unofficial declaration of war (albeit one that specifically stated in an Truth Social that “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR”) was followed by even more extreme bullshit by the president: a call for the arrest of Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson for “failing to protect [ICE] officers.”
Meanwhile, ICE just kept losing. Its tactics in Chicago violated prior consent decrees, which led to judges freeing detainees almost as fast as ICE could detain them. On top of that, ICE, CBP, and an assortment of federal officers violated rights on a daily basis, resulting in even more rulings against the administration.
But all of these lower court rulings are pretty much meaningless if they’re just going to be overturned by the Trump’s ace in the hole: the fully compromised majority of the Supreme Court. The state sued the administration to block its commandeering of Illinois National Guard troops. The administration lost at the lower levels, prompting a review by the nation’s top court.
We can breathe a bit easier for the moment. SCOTUS says the administration can’t take control of the National Guard… at least not with the arguments it’s currently making. The government argued that its definition of the term “regular forces” in support of its National Guard takeover referred to “civilian law enforcement officers,” i.e., federal officers from ICE, CBP, Federal Protective Services, etc. The Supreme Court says the government is using the wrong definition. From the decision [PDF]:
We conclude that the term “regular forces” in §12406(3) likely refers to the regular forces of the United States military. This interpretation means that to call the Guard into active federal service under §12406(3), the President must be “unable” with the regular military “to execute the laws of the United States.”
Because the statute requires an assessment of the military’s ability to execute the laws, it likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws. Such circumstances are exceptional: Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from “execut[ing] the laws” “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” 18 U. S. C. §1385. So before the President can federalize the Guard under §12406(3), he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be “unable” with those forces to perform that function.
The circumstances aren’t what the administration claims they are. And if they are getting close to meeting Trump’s exaggeration of anti-ICE protests, etc., then he has the obligation to bring this before Congress, rather than unilaterally declaring everything to be so completely out of control, he’s practically obligated to take control of local National Guard units.
Despite his constant blustering and endless social media rants, the administration has yet to justify this bold, unprecedented use of military force to help handle immigration enforcement.
At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois. The President has not invoked a statute that provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act. Instead, he relies on inherent constitutional authority that, according to the Government, allows him to use the military to protect federal personnel and property. But the Government also claims—consistent with the longstanding view of the Executive Branch—that performing such protective functions does not constitute “execut[ing] the laws” within the meaning of the Posse Comitatus Act. If that is correct, it is hard to see how performing those functions could constitute “execut[ing] the laws” under §12406(3).
That means the injunction delivered by the Illinois federal court remains in place. The government is welcome to make other arguments at the lower level in hopes of getting this injunction lifted. But for now, Trump has lost at the highest level — and the one he most expected to have his back no matter what.
There are additional opinions attached to this very short majority ruling. The first is Justice Kavanaugh’s rather bitter concurrence. The most remarkable part of his addition to this ruling is a footnote that makes it pretty clear he’s chafing a bit after becoming part of the unofficial legal parlance. An earlier ruling of his said it was perfectly fine for federal officers to treat skin color or accented English as reasonable suspicion for a stop. The kind of stops ICE performs most frequently are now known as “Kavanaugh stops,” now that the Supreme Court (actually just Kavanaugh spouting off in the shadow docket) has determined “Terry stops” are too respectful of rights.
The State and the Government disagree about whether the immigration officers have violated the Constitution in making certain immigration stops and arrests. The basic constitutional rules governing that dispute are longstanding and clear: The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity. Cf. Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 813 (1996) (“[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race”).
Hmm. That’s certainly not what he said just a couple of months earlier. Oh, and Kavanaugh thinks the majority goes too far in its narrow reading of the statue. He proposes a hypothetical that sure sounds a whole lot like what went down in DC on January 6, 2021:
Consider a hypothetical example. Suppose a mob rapidly gathers outside the U. S. Courthouse in Philadelphia in response to an unpopular decision (or to influence the outcome of a pending matter). Suppose also that the mob is threatening to storm the courthouse and attack the federal judges, prosecutors, and other personnel inside, and to damage or burn down the building, thereby preventing the execution of federal law. Suppose further that U. S. military forces cannot readily mobilize to deploy to the site in time, that the local police and federal court security officers are outnumbered, and that the President wants to federalize National Guard units to protect the courthouse and the judges, prosecutors, and other personnel. Under the Court’s order today, even in those circumstances the President presumably could not federalize the National Guard under §12406(3).
Come on, Brett. Don’t play dumb. The storming of a federal buildingalready happened and it was never a question of whether Trump could do anything about it, but rather a question of if he would do anything about it. We already have that answer, so this speculative theory only works when a president is more concerned about protecting people other than himself when the shit goes down. And if the administration reads between the lines of this hypothetical, it’s going to see a way to wash its hands of any responsibility if the next election results in the Democratic party taking back the Oval Office.
For now, the administration isn’t allowed to send National Guard units to Chicago. It has also already been blocked from doing so in Portland, Oregon. If Trump wants to use military troops to backstop his massively unpopular mass deportation efforts, he’s going to have to start declaring war on some “red” states, where he’s more likely to find state officials willing to deploy troops on his behalf. If he really wants this martial law thing to take off, he’s going to have to do it everywhere, rather than just in places run by people he doesn’t like.
These are things that will cause generational harm to markets, consumers, and the public interest. We’ve discussed at length about how Carr’s “leadership” has involved the complete decimation of corporate oversight as part of his cutesy-named “delete, delete, delete” agenda, which attempts to disguise regulatory capture and wholesale corruption as a government efficiency initiative.
When this stuff was fleetingly mentioned at the hearing, it was by the likes of men like Ted Cruz, who helped prop up the lazy idea that Carr’s just “clearing regulatory underbrush:”
“On day one of the new administration, the FCC, under Chairman Carr, hit the ground running and already has an impressive list of accomplishments to show. These include the Delete, Delete, Delete docket, which continues to clear out the regulatory underbrush.”
The stuff Carr is doing is the stuff consolidated industry lobbyists asked him to do. Virtually none of it is actually in the public interest. We’ve had corrupt revolving door FCC leaders many times before, but never to the level of Carr’s extremism. To her credit, a tiny portion of this stuff was brought up by Senator Maria Cantwell, but it was clearly a hearing afterthought with no serious follow up.
In his responses, Carr was repeated allowed to take a page from Elon Musk’s playbook and pretend that his dismantling of oversight of shitty broadband monopolies and large media conglomerates is an act of modernized efficiency:
“…the FCC is now pursuing the largest deregulatory effort in the agency’s history. To date, we’ve teed up for removal over 1000 rules or regulations and terminated a record 2000 inactive proceedings. Eliminating those costly regulations is part of our affordability work too. For instance, we shut down a Biden era plan that could have spiked the price of internet for millions of Americans living in apartments by up to 50%.”
That last bit? Where Carr claims to have lowered broadband costs for apartment dwellers? He’s actually referring to a Trump FCC action at the beginning of the year to kill rules preventing your landlord and your local ISP from colluding to strike predatory deals that block other competitors from doing business in your building, driving up broadband access costs. It was a complete lie, with no follow up.
Carr is, as we’ve well covered, a shameless opportunist and liar who’ll do whatever he’s told by industry or Donald Trump. If Donald Trump was a brony, you’d see Carr immediately prancing around in a velour zebra onesie. It’s not actually clear Carr believes in much of anything outside of a general disdain for corporate oversight and his post-FCC revolving door career opportunities, which likely involve being a telecom sector lobbyist so he can continue basically doing the same “work.”
Carr’s juggling two jobs at the moment; one involving keeping the party’s radical authoritarians happy with censorship and a frontal assault on what’s left of U.S. journalism and public media. But his primary job, the one he’s been groomed for by industry for decades, is in destroying whatever’s left of the FCC’s ability to rein in unchecked corporate power in all of its various forms.
In some ways, the more headline grabbing (and genuinely problematic) authoritarian censorship operates as cover for corruption. While the former role gets oodles of attention, the latter gets summarily downplayed if not outright ignored. There were no serious congressional follow up questions about Carr’s efforts to destroy functional consumer protection. It was generally congressional oversight kayfabe.
I was also struck by press coverage of Carr’s testimony. More specifically, how literally none of the press coverage could be bothered to mention any aspect of Carr’s brutal destruction of what’s left of U.S. consumer protection. Even in passing.
As a life long consumer protection reporter, it often feels like I’m Roddy Piper living in the 1988 film They Live, facing a broad, existential threat while the public and press (and even many policy folks) stumble around obliviously drinking cappuccino.
Again the harms here are generational. Whether it’s letting predatory telecom monopolies run amok and off the public, or it’s scaling back robocall protections because they might upset a “legit” telemarketer, Carr is doing generational, lasting damage to the public interest, and even in the rare instance we feign to hold him accountable before Congress, it’s treated as some kind of distant afterthought.
The implications and scope of this corruption are incalculable. Yet you’ll notice, across the vast majority of the consolidated corporate press (and even many policy circles), the decimation of consumer protection and corporate oversight is treated as a distant, boring, anecdotal tangent if not outright ignored completely.
As we announced a few weeks ago, it’s nearly time for the latest installment in our series of public domain game jams, Gaming Like It’s 1930! It’s an extra special jam this year as we begin a brand new decade of works entering the public domain, and as always it will begin on New Year’s Day (a.k.a. Public Domain Day, a.k.a. this Thursday!) and run until the end of January.
Head on over to the game jam page on Itch to sign up and read the full rules. There are also some ideas there for works that you could draw on, but we encourage you to go do some digging of your own, especially if you want to compete for the Best Deep Cut prize (personally, I suggest searching the Internet Archive for things dated 1930 to find some truly unexpected treasures). For extra inspiration, you can have a look at last year’s winners and our series of winner spotlight posts that take a look at each year’s winning entries in more detail.
