Last week we noted how the BBC has been tripping over itself to apologize to Donald Trump for some edits made to a BBC documentary. Admittedly the edits weren’t the best idea; they effectively cobbled together two different parts of Trump’s January 6 speech 54 minutes apart not to misrepresent, but to make it more clear that Trump actively encouraged an open, violent insurrection that resulted in fatalities.
Obviously our mad, idiot king didn’t much like that.
“US President Donald Trump says he intends to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion “probably sometime next week” despite the broadcaster’s apology to him over a documentary Trump’s lawyers described as defamatory.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated … They cheated, they changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
Again, the edits didn’t entirely “change the words coming out of Trump’s mouth,” because he actively did vocally support a violent insurrection against the government. They did however cobble together two different parts of a speech to make it sound like they were said all at once, something the documentary editors should have known better than to do given king dingus’ litigious nature.
Granted Trump may not have as much fun in British courts, where Justices and Judges are likely to be less receptive to Donald’s incoherence. UK defamation laws are also an entirely different affair, with Trump being particularly challenged by the fact the BBC edits occurred more than twelve months ago, and defamation action in UK courts must occur within twelve months of the alleged offense.
Last week we noted how the BBC’s over-groveling undermined the most important thing: that Donald Trump really did actively incite a violent insurrection resulting in $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol, 174 assaulted police officers, and four belated law enforcement suicides. And he’s abusing the courts to stifle journalism critical of his radical extremist authoritarianism.
It sounds like BBC leadership isn’t entirely invertebrate. While BBC officials like Chair BBC chair Samir Shah admit the edits were an “error of judgment” (unlike executives at CBS) it appears they’ll actually be putting up a fight in court of Trump follows through:
“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”
As Trump’s health, power, and influence wanes, this sort of bullying is only going to become less and less effective and more and more toothless. In the interim, it would be nice if some major media institutions could dig deep and find a little backbone; especially given how many lawyers and donors would be happy to help fund a pro bono acceleration of Donald Trump’s inevitable collapse.
To say the irony was lost on them would be to assume they ever thought some irony might exist. DC resident Sam O’Hara came across a bunch of out-of-state National Guard troops and put his own spin on their Trump-enabled interloping. As he followed the troops through the neighborhood, O’Hara engaged in protected expression — that being the recording of government employees… with a little musical accompaniment.
In the Star Wars franchise, The Imperial March is the music that plays when Darth Vader or other dark forces enter a scene or succeed in their dastardly plans. It is also the soundtrack of Sam O’Hara’s protest against the National Guard deployment in D.C.
Those troops arrived in the District in August 2025, after President Trump decided to flood D.C. neighborhoods with National Guard members from around the country. A few weeks passed, and yet the troops remained. Given the roughly 200-year-old tradition of civilian law enforcement in the United States, Mr. O’Hara was deeply concerned about the normalization of troops patrolling D.C. neighborhoods. And so, he began protesting the Guard members’ presence by walking several feet behind them when he saw them in the community. Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played The Imperial March as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring. Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them.
O’Hara did not impede the troops’ movement. He did not attempt to close the several-foot gap between him and them. He just followed behind them, playing a theme song the Trump administration likely would have approved of. In fact, we already know it considers itself to be the Empire. After all, just weeks ago it posted a video that portrayed immigration enforcement efforts as Darth Vader “cleansing” a spaceship of rebel soldiers. (Skip to 0:52 if you’re impatient.)
If the government itself thinks it’s Darth Vader and the rest of us are just rebel scum, those participating in Trump’s invasion probably shouldn’t be so bothered someone’s willing to memorialize their unwanted presence with what I assume is the song they hear in their heads every time they start chasing a day laborer across a Home Deport parking lot.
The out-of-state National Guard wasn’t impressed, however. Instead, the person who should have been the adult in the room decided he was going to tattle:
Ohio National Guard member Sgt. Devon Beck was not amused by this satire. On September 11, 2025, […] In less than two minutes, Sgt. Beck turned around and threatened to call D.C. police officers to “handle” Mr. O’Hara if he persisted. Mr. O’Hara continued recording and playing the music. Sgt. Beck contacted the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Defendant MPD Officers Brown, Campbell, Reyes-Benigno, and Lopez Martinez came to the scene and, in essence, did what Sgt. Beck had threatened, putting Mr. O’Hara in handcuffs and preventing him from continuing his peaceful protest.
Adding to idiocy of this interaction is that O’Hara had done the same thing on three previous occasions. Those times he was either greeted with laughter and smiles from the National Guard troops or ignored entirely. It was only Sgt. Devon Beck who couldn’t handle this alleged “harassment,” which was so far short of every definition of the word that the MPD officers had to make up a bunch of bullshit to justify their detention of O’Hara.
Defendant Officer Campbell immediately walked up to Mr. O’Hara, without conducting any investigation. He said to Mr. O’Hara accusatorily, “[i]f you’re harassing them”—at which point Mr. O’Hara interrupted to ask for Defendant Campbell’s badge number. After providing that information, Defendant Campbell said, “if you are assaulting them,” which again prompted Mr. O’Hara to interrupt, this time to say that he was not assaulting the Guard members but rather peacefully protesting.
Mr. O’Hara was correct. He was not harassing or assaulting the Guard members. He was, in fact, standing several feet away, recording them and playing the March. Nor had Mr. O’Hara assaulted or harassed the Guard members at any point during his interaction with them.
Officer Campbell also accused Mr. O’Hara of standing in front of the entrance to a store when, in fact, Mr. O’Hara was standing to the side of the entrance and not blocking anyone’s passage.
In response to Mr. O’Hara’s statements that he was engaged in protest, Officer Campbell said, “That’s not a protest. You better define protest. This isn’t a protest. You are not protesting.”
That is some dumb shit. The MPD is not under any obligation to respond to calls by the National Guard. The National Guard deployment definitely isn’t in the clear, legally-speaking. And since it’s not engaged in law enforcement efforts (because it definitely can’t do that legally), the MPD is not its backup.
But cops are cops. And this group of cops just kept copping and coping. The dumb stuff said by Officer Campbell was repeated by other officers until the whole thing ended with O’Hara handcuffed and taken to the station. Eventually he was released when people who actually knew better realized they didn’t actually have any reason to keep holding him. And if they didn’t have that, they certainly didn’t have any reason to detain/handcuff him in the first place.
It’s already terrible enough that this administration has, in essence, declared war on cities the president doesn’t like. Using local police power to aid and abet the incremental roll-out of martial law isn’t helping.
The ACLU’s summary of the complaint is on point, albeit perhaps too confident in its assumption that Trump (and his loyal lapdog of a Supreme Court) haven’t already turned us all into residents of a mostly constructed Death Star:
The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures.
The Supreme Court has already made it clear that suing federal officers (which I imagine will be expanded to cover federalized National Guard units) is a non-starter. And the cops who showed up to perform the bogus arrest will likely be forgiven for being too professionally ignorant to comprehend the finer points of “not making shit up to excuse your actions” when they’re obviously unjustified. But there’s always a chance this actually ends in something comparable to justice. Let’s hope — for the sake of DC and the country itself — that’s the case here.
Techdirt has long lamented how in the modern era, you don’t really “own” what you buy. That game console, smart lock, or smart refrigerator can quickly become less useful (or completely useless) with a firmware update, bankruptcy, or addition of annoying subscription paywall.
The problem is particularly bad when it comes to digital rentals. In streaming video, you often have the option to “rent” or “buy” a video. But the latter is misleading given you don’t really “own” the purchase; you’re given a license — subject to the whims of an amoral, giant corporation — that can be revoked or changed by profit-seeking executives with an eye on enshittification.
That recently appears to have gotten Amazon in trouble via a new lawsuit that alleges that Amazon is misleading consumers by misrepresenting the word “buy.” From the lawsuit:
“On its website, Defendant tells consumers the option to ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ digital copies of these audiovisual works. But when consumers ‘buy’ digital versions of audiovisual works through Amazon’s website, they do not obtain the full bundle of sticks of rights we traditionally think of as owning property. Instead, they receive ‘non-exclusive, nontransferable, non-sublicensable, limited license’ to access the digital audiovisual work, which is maintained at Defendant’s sole discretion.”
Ars Technica notes that a similar lawsuit was filed in the same court back in 2020, but was dismissed in 2021 for lacking standing. The website notes this new lawsuit stands a slightly better chance of success thanks to a new California law that bans the the sale of a “digital good to a purchaser with the terms ‘buy,’ ‘purchase,’ or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental.”
The fight has parallels to efforts to hold telecom giants accountable for abusing the dictionary definition of words like “unlimited,” by promising users unlimited data, then imposing restriction, caps, and overage fees to drive up profits.
Such cases generally struggle due to companies that hide such restrictions in overlong fine print, then successfully argue this constitutes an effective and clear warning for consumers. In this instance, plaintiffs have to prove that it was clearly communicated to them that they would enjoy permanent, restriction-free “ownership” in perpetuity, and were harmed when that ownership was taken away.
Last year Trump Republicans killed a popular program that provided poor people with $30 off of their monthly broadband bill. The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) had broad, bipartisan support, and more than 23 million Americans received the discount at its peak.
At the time, the GOP claimed they were simply looking to save money. The real reason, of course, was that the ACP was popular with their constituents (the majority of ACP participants were in red states) and they didn’t want Dems to use it as an election season issue. Follow up studies showed the program more than paid for itself via other benefits (like reduced health care costs).
When Republicans killed the program, it immediately resulted in millions of struggling Americans suddenly facing much higher broadband costs. This, in turn, resulted in a lot of folks ditching their broadband access entirely. At some major providers, like Charter (Spectrum), the impact was fairly significant.
Now Charter is facing a class action lawsuit by an investor who claims that Charter executives misrepresented the impact that the death of the ACP would cause the cable giant. The lawsuit claims that Charter CEO Christopher Winfrey and CFO Jessica Fischer made “materially false and misleading statements” downplaying the scope of the ACP-related losses:
“Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the impact of the ACP end was a material event the Company was unable to manage or promptly move beyond; (ii) the ACP end was actually having a sustaining impact on Internet customer declines and revenue; (iii) neither was the Company executing broader operations in a way that would compensate for, or overcome the impact, of theACP ending”
The Charter investor who filed the complaint (Mark Sandoval) isn’t much of one; he bought just two shares of Charter in April and 2 shares in May, then sold the shares on June 9. Charter has been bleeding cable broadband subscribers due to the popularity of 5G home Internet and modest improvements in fiber deployments (many from city utilities or municipalities).
Charter lost 140,000 cable broadband customers during the last quarter of last year. Last quarter Charter lost 117,000 broadband subs, which included roughly 50,000 ACP-related disconnections. Charter’s stock has been down up to 20 percent this year as investors respond to the losses. As per telecom tradition, Charter’s focus is primarily in greater consolidation via a proposed merger with Cox.
Like many telecoms, Charter is a heavy campaign contributor to Trumplican lawmakers who seem dedicated to making the entire sector worse by destroying functional corporate and consumer protection, gutting already modest programs aimed at helping the poor (and rural students), or rubber stamping terrible deals that make U.S. broadband less competitive and more expensive in the first place.
The lawsuit also points out that Trump’s FCC and agency boss Brendan Carr have “acted favorably on several Starlink initiatives,” and recently opened a dodgy “investigation” into Dish Network, which the suit alleges is flimsy cover to force Dish to sell its valuable spectrum holdings to Elon Musk and Starlink.
The lawsuit also claims that the Trump FCC violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by wrongfully withholding records on DOGE’s activities at the FCC.
The Judge managing the lawsuit apparently doesn’t think much of Trump and Brendan Carr’s FCC responses to the inquiry so far. The plaintiffs in the case filed a motion for preliminary injunction last week (hat tip, Ars Technica) and received a quick ruling from US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the District of Columbia.
While Jackson said the plaintiffs failed to meet the legal requirements for an injunction, she did take time to point out that Trump’s FCC is stonewalling on providing documentation:
“On July 2, 2025, the Court ordered that defendant “must file a dispositive motion or, in the alternative, a report setting forth the schedule for the completion of its production of documents to plaintiff, on or before July 23, 2025.” However, defendant’s July 23, 2025 status report provided no timeline, and it was vague and uninformative. Further, the anticipated “initial production” defendant referred to [in] that filing, amounted to only 35 pages.”
DOGE has also provided flimsy “innovation efficiency” cover in the press for the brutal dismantling of both corporate oversight and the social safety net, in addition to just generally being a wasteful, costly mess all by itself. What’s left of federal consumer protection and corporate oversight really is being summarily executed by radical assholes, and the impact will be massive and generational. Yet, with scattered exception, most U.S. journalists, politicians, and policy folks don’t seem particularly interested.
Back in 2023 we wrote about how regional Polish rail company and a train manufacturer NEWAG had taken to using DRM to lock down trains that are repaired by independent technicians, in a bid to both monopolize — and drive up the costs of repair. This kind of effort to monopolize repair is common across numerous industries, driving an organic, grass roots “right to repair” reform movement.
The original story by 404 Media noted that NEWAG put code in their train’s control systems preventing them from running if a GPS tracker detected that it spent any time at an independent repair company, and if certain parts had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number. Some independent companies responded by hiring a white hat hacking group dubbed Dragon Sector to bypass the DRM and get the trains running again.
Two years later and it sounds like NEWAG has taken all the wrong lessons from the experience.
The folks at iFixit note that the company has now sued both the Polish repair service SPS that fixed those original trains, and has also gone after the individual members of ethical hacking group Dragon Sector for helping them. NEWAG is looking for $1.7 million for copyright violations and “unlawful competition” in one court, and $1.36 million for unlawful competition and infringement of personal rights in another.
Like most unethical companies trying to monopolize repair, NEWAG tries to insist that this isn’t about making more money, but about the public’s safety. But iFixit notes that the company’s case has several major inconsistencies, including both claiming that the hacking group did and didn’t modify their software:
“Newag claims that the Dragon Sector team endangered passengers’ safety by modifying the software without proper experience. But Newag then turns right around and claims that Dragon Sector did not modify the software at all. They point out that EU law only allows reverse engineering of software in order to fix bugs. And if Dragon Sector did not actually modify the software, it cannot have fixed any bugs, in which case their reverse-engineering must be illegal.”
The Biden FTC under Lina Khan issued a report stating that such safety claims were almost always bullshit; a useful bogeyman used by companies trying to justify anti-competitive, anti-consumer behaviors.
The problem for companies like NEWAG is the harder they try to monopolize repair and bully independent repair shops, the greater public attention and animosity is. The greater public attention and anger becomes, the more likely companies are to see “right to repair” legislative reform forcing them to do what was the right thing in the first place.
Still, there’s no shortage of companies across a dozen different industries which seem to think it’s a good idea to try and monopolize repair through DRM, making parts and manuals hard to find, or engage in “parts pairing” that makes it impossible to simply replace individual “unsanctioned” parts.
The destructive force that is DOGE still somehow manages to exist, despite it not being (depending on which claim is made and when) an official federal agency and/or overseen by anyone specifically identifiable as the head of DOGE.
Until recently, everyone — including Donald Trump — knew (and said as much in public) that DOGE was both a government agency andheaded by Elon Musk. When the lawsuits started flying, the backtracking began by the administration, which apparently thought it could cover its tracks by walking backwards in its golf-cleated clown shows.
Trump’s love for DOGE has managed to undercut the protections DOGE hoped it would be able to avail itself of when the FOIA requests began pouring in and the discovery demands started hitting federal dockets.
The administration is now attempting a Hail Mary play, albeit one that hails Thomas and Alito (and possibly, Roberts), rather than the patron saint it’s named after. Given the makeup of this current court, it probably has a far better chance of success than simply hurling the ball into the air and hoping someone on their own team manages to come down with it. (And, indeed, it has already scored a temporary stay, thanks to an emergency order issued by Chief Justice John Roberts.)
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has been suing DOGE ever since it rejected its FOIA requests for the agency’s operational documents. The Trump Administration is now fighting back, albeit with at least one hand inadvertently tied behind its back, as Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney report for Politico:
The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Wednesday urging the high court to put a hold on a judge’s orders giving a watchdog group access to documents detailing firings, grant terminations and other actions proposed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which was overseen by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Solicitor General John Sauer is also asking the Supreme Court to block a deposition of the obscure official the Trump administration has identified as the leader of the budget-cutting drive: DOGE administrator Amy Gleason.
The crux of the administration’s opacity argument [PDF] is this: DOGE is nothing more than an advisory entity that lacks the power to make independent decisions. Obviously, everything about DOGE says otherwise, as it has propelled massive staffing and funding cuts across multiple agencies, participated in extremely careless (and possibly illegal) data exfiltration, and done pretty much whatever it wants since it materialized as the barely-sentient wet dream of a guy who insists on wearing a baseball cap to every Oval Office meeting.
But that has been undercut by Trump himself, who has stated the agency definitely can do everything the administration is now claiming in court it can’t do, as well as thrown someone under the DOGE bus to act as the recipient for the negative attention (and FOIA requests, and deposition demands) Trump managed to successfully shield his fascist-saluting man-child from since his return to the Oval Office.
This trouble has been brewing for a few months:
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found there were strong indications that DOGE was actually directing cuts and layoffs at numerous federal agencies. That substantive operational role suggests DOGE’s activities fall under the Freedom of Information Act, the judge wrote.
Now that a judge is saying stuff we’ve all been able to clearly observe since DOGE’s inception, the administration now wants the Supreme Court to declare that the public (and multiple litigants) shouldn’t be allowed to believe their own eyes.
Making matters worse for the administration’s anti-transparency efforts is the fact that it has finally decided to put someone’s name on the top of the department’s letterhead: DOGE administrator Amy Gleason. (From what’s known about Gleason, it seems clear she’s being used to catch bullets meant for Trump/Musk, rather than actually direct DOGE operations.)
While this will probably keep Musk and his mouth out of court, it does make it clear that DOGE not only acts on its own impulses (rather than just offer mass termination “guidance”) but that someone will ultimately have to answer questions about DOGE’s actions in court, should discovery requests manage to secure some depositions.
Obviously, the normal court processes and determinations in litigation against DOGE cannot be allowed to stand. That’s why the administration wants the judges it bought to give it a free pass on destroying the federal government while simultaneously preventing the public from learning anything more about the salt-the-earth tactics being spearheaded by DOGE. And it really doesn’t matter whose name is currently at the top of the org chart in terms of destruction. But it does matter when it comes to FOIA litigation and the administration’s insistence DOGE is limited to simply suggesting moves the administration might want to make.
There’s no telling how this desperation move will work out. The Supreme Court has played both sides of the encroaching fascism line in recent weeks, giving Trump some free passes while occasionally shutting down the administration’s efforts to vanish constitutional rights into the anti-immigration cornfield.
Let’s hope this will end up being one of the latter. What’s already known about DOGE and its operations is extremely disturbing. Perhaps the exposure of more internal information will help more people realize the government they chose to elect is actively trying to destroy many of the things they still hold dear and propel some opposition from citizens who never thought they’d be #NeverTrump. We can only hope.
The city of Detroit finally revamped the rules for police department use of facial recognition tech last July. We’ll have to wait and see whether adding guardrails will result in fewer false arrests, but what may end up being too little definitely arrived too late for a Detroit woman who was falsely arrested by the same police department that had already done this three times previously.
Last year, Detroit police wrongly arrested LaDonna Crutchfield after facial recognition software incorrectly identified her as the culprit of a shooting, according to a lawsuit filed on February 21. While police did not even have a warrant for Crutchfield’s arrest, they handcuffed, detained, and jailed her anyway. The officers had conducted no investigation, relying fully on a facial recognition database. Police released Crutchfield only when it became obvious that they had arrested the wrong person.
Just like the previous three bogus arrests, cops went after people based solely on facial recognition matches without bothering to verify anything else about the supposed suspects. And just like those previous cases, the images used to perform these searches were far less than ideal. Crutchfield’s lawsuit [PDF] contains the images the Detroit PD used as [re-reads lawsuit] the entirety of its probable cause determinations.
The first image is far from ideal for facial recognition matches, given the low quality of the source image:
The second was even worse. If you’re relying on facial recognition tech to help you narrow down the list of suspects, it might help to have another photo that actually contains the alleged suspect’s face:
Sure, pedants might argue this does contain a face. But it doesn’t contain a useful image of a face. If this were actually useful, you’d think someone would have already knocked together an Alfred Hitchcock-based algorithm to identify people using only profile images.
In addition to the bad match, the officers actually didn’t have an arrest warrant when they arrested Crutchfield. All they had was permission to try to talk her into an interview with the detective (Marc Thompson) as a person of interest in the alleged shooting.
When Detective Thompson did finally interview the now-arrested Crutchfield, he offered up this embarrassing interaction completely unprompted:
PLAINTIFF noticed that the photos contained a heavy-set black woman wearing a bonnet, and DEFENDANT THOMPSON asked PLAINTIFF if that was her.
PLAINTIFF immediately stated “no” and explained to DEFENDANT THOMPSON that she does not wear bonnets.
DEFENDANT THOMPSON jokingly stated to PLAINTIFF that, “you got to admit it – that looks like you, and PLAINTIFF replied, “Why? Because I am fat and black like her?”
Not a great look for any officer from any American law enforcement agency, where racial profiling and long histories of biased policing are the norm. Crutchfield was finally released more than six hours after she was first arrested after she explained she couldn’t have been involved in the shooting because she had been at work and could prove it. At that point, both Detective Thompson and the other officer present during the interrogation agreed Crutchfield wasn’t the suspect they were looking for.
Even though it was only six hours, it still matters. It meant Crutchfield wasn’t able to go to her first job and was only barely able to get to work on time for her second job. And she spent the night at her second job traumatized by this bogus arrest, meaning she was of little use to the mentally challenged adults she cared for at that job.
On top of that, it’s clear no other investigation was performed before Crutchfield was warrantlessly arrested. The only thing officers relied on was a questionable match kicked out by an algorithm that had been fed even more questionable source images.
Hopefully, Crutchfield will secure a swift settlement from the city. The city has already had to pay out more than once for “detective” work that involved nothing more than someone running a cursory search and turning bad math into words and deeds that illegally deprived residents of their rights. Sure, the cops involved in this one won’t feel it hit their paychecks and will likely learn nothing from this, but the lack of deterrent shouldn’t prevent the city from compensating someone for wrecking up their life, if only temporarily.
Last October, Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense.
CBS/Paramount is looking for regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance (run by Larry Ellison’s kid David). Trump and his FCC boss Brendan Carr quickly zeroed on on this, and began using merger approval as leverage to bully CBS into even more feckless coverage of the administration.
At first, there were signs that CBS, like ABC, was going to let Trump bully the company and settle the complaint. But there’s some indication that Carr and Trump’s behavior has finally pissed off CBS and Paramount enough for them to develop something vaguely resembling a backbone. Maybe.
Last week CBS/Paramount lawyers began indicating they may fight the FCC, with CBS lawyers throwing all kinds of things at the wall, including claims those suing violated fine print arbitration requirements and that the Trump administration is engaged in pretty obvious judge shopping:
“Its multipronged legal strategy revolves around arguments that Trump is judge-shopping, choosing to file the lawsuit at a court where a sympathetic judge is likely to oversee the case, and the possibility that those suing the company agreed to arbitration clauses when they used services hosted by the entertainment conglomerate.”
Earlier in February, Trump revised the complaint to add Republican U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, his former doctor who lives in Texas, to keep the case in Trump-friendly federal court in the Northern District of Texas. CBS wants the case transferred to its hometown of New York for what should be obvious reasons:
“U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who’s overseeing the litigation and is the only judge in the Amarillo division of the court, was nominated to his position by Trump in 2017 and has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2012. In his five years on the bench, he’s issued rulings against several initiatives implemented by former President Joe Biden, some of which were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Republicans have been seeding their friendly news outlets (like the NY Post) with the bullshit narrative that CBS is in legal trouble because it has a “left wing bias.” In reality, Trump’s FCC boss is a power-abusing extremist, who wants to bully all media companies into kissing Trump’s ring.
The great irony in all of this is that like so many media giants, CBS had already responded to authoritarianism by making its journalism gentler to Republican ideology years earlier, in response to the all-pervasive lie that the corporatist, center-right U.S. press has a “liberal bias.”
It’s worth noting that CBS’ attempt to appease extremist right wingers has only resulted in more harassment by said right wing, providing useful lessons to other media companies considering throwing their journalistic standards and the First Amendment in the trash in order to kiss the ring.
On the morning of January 10, 2020, a parent complained to school officials about a sketch N.B. and other students had drawn in response to another student bullying N.B. The parent unreasonably insisted that school officials call the police.
After arriving on school grounds, police interrogated 10-year-old N.B., handcuffed her with excessive force, arrested her without probable cause, and transported her to the police station—all without letting N.B. see or speak with her mother. The police and school officials took these traumatizing actions despite the fact that N.B. was cooperative and did not pose any danger to any person or herself—and without accommodating N.B.’s disability, which was documented with the school.
The problem was a drawing another student didn’t like. The bigger problem was the response. Instead of calling in the child’s parent first to discuss a drawing another student felt was insulting and/or threatening, the school decided to involve law enforcement first and consider the consequences of this action later.
Obviously, bullying is a serious problem. But calling the cops over an allegedly “threatening” drawing is ridiculous, especially when the “target” of the drawing had no opinion whatsoever about the picture and that cops were only involved because the parents of another student decided to go full Karen about it.
Even assuming the complaining parent wanted to press charges—and assuming there were valid charges that could be brought against N.B.—N.B. could have easily been surrendered to her mother who was at the school. No one else involved in the drawing incident was arrested or interrogated. No charges were ever brought against N.B., who as a ten year old did not intend to commit a crime with a drawing she did not draw alone and did not even want to deliver. N.B.’s detention and false arrest without probable cause violated her rights to be free from unreasonable seizures under the Hawai‘i and U.S. Constitutions.
Because of this chain of events, the district court had no problem denying immunity to the cops involved in this handcuffing. Neither did the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court when the city of Honolulu decided to press the issue. In its decision, it not only pointed out that the police department felt THREE officers were needed to handle a 10-year-old armed only with crayons, but that a whole bunch of precedent made it clear this use of force — even as limited as it ultimately was — was unconstitutional.
In C.B. v. City of Sonora, we held that the “use of handcuffs on a calm, compliant, but non-responsive 11-year-old child was unreasonable.” We also determined that the “decision to leave [the child] in handcuffs for the duration of [a] half-hour commute to his uncle’s business—a commute that took place in a vehicle equipped with safety locks that made escape impossible—was clearly unreasonable.” Following Sonora, no reasonable official could have believed that the level of force employed against ten-year-old N.B. as alleged in Plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint—namely, placing her in adult handcuffs to transport her to the police station—was necessary. Like the eleven-year-old child in Sonora, N.B. was calm and compliant, was questioned in a secluded office surrounded by adults, and did not resist arrest or attempt to flee.
Thanks to two consecutive shutdowns by federal judges, the city of Honolulu has wisely decided to cut a check, rather than let a jury tell it to cut a presumably much larger check. Here’s the latest from Courthouse News Service:
Honolulu settled a civil rights lawsuit brought by the mother of a Black girl who was a 10-year-old elementary school student when police arrested her because of a drawing she made that was deemed threatening to another student.
[…]
The total settlement amount is $175,000, including $150,000 from the city and $25,000 from the Hawaii Department of Education, said Mateo Caballero, an attorney representing the mother.
That’s a bargain. And it’s the sort of bargain only an impending loser can strike. Even if this seems a bit small-ball when compared to the LITERAL ARREST AND HANDCUFFING OF A STUDENT THAT DREW A PICTURE THE PERSON IT SHOULD HAVE OFFENDED WASN’T ACTUALLY OFFENDED BY, the bigger, better part of this is that this state-enabled BS won’t be following the student around for the rest of her (minor) life:
The arrest record of the child will be expunged as part of the settlement, the attorney said.
Good. That’s the least the city could do. I mean, on top of the settlement, which still seems pretty low but will have to do until the city’s cops violate more rights in a more unforgivable fashion.
Look, I understand not all disciplinary problems can be handled by school staff. Actual violence involving actual weapons actually happens in schools. But when the dispute is over a drawing, the best way to take this on is to involve parents, students, and administrators. There’s no reason to call dispatch to see how many bored, under-utilized officers it might be able to spare. Cops only understand immediate compliance and the tactics they can use to ensure this. That’s how 10-year-olds end up shackled in adult handcuffs. And that’s how taxpayers get shit on for having the misfortune of living in a city where cops can’t control themselves when faced with “perps” less than half their height and more than half their age.
