Blog

Brazil Charges Woman for 2020 Social Media Posts Under Court-Defined “Transphobia”

Brazil is preparing to put a woman on trial for words she typed online nearly five years ago, a case that illustrates how speech regulation now functions through judicial interpretation rather than legislation.

Isadora Borges, a resident of Paraíba, is accused of committing the crime of “transphobia” after posting comments on social media in November 2020 about sex, biology, and gender identity.

Her full name is Isadora Borges de Aquino Silva. She is 34 years old, a veterinary student, and is a self-described feminist.

Federal prosecutors argue that those posts warrant criminal prosecution. If convicted on all counts, Borges could receive a prison sentence ranging from four to ten years.

The posts appeared on X, then operating as Twitter, during a period of intense online debate over gender theory. One message stated that “transgender” women “were obviously born male.”

Another said: “A person who identifies as transgender retains their birth DNA. No surgery, synthetic hormone, or clothing change will change this fact…” The remarks were widely shared and circulated beyond Borges’s own account.

After the posts gained traction, a complaint was filed with federal police by Erika Hilton, a politician and transgender woman, who has been central to other similar free speech cases. That complaint initiated a criminal process that remained dormant for years.

Borges learned in September 2025 that prosecutors had formally charged her with two counts of “transphobia,” each carrying a possible sentence of two to five years. Her first court hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, February 10.

She is being represented with the support of ADF International. Julio Pohl, legal counsel for the organization, said the case reflects a deep problem in how Brazil now treats political and social expression. “No one should face a decade behind bars for expressing an opinion on a matter of public concern,” he said, in a press statement sent to Reclaim The Net. “Weaponising Brazil’s expansive ‘transphobia’ laws to punish peaceful expression is a profound violation of freedom of speech.”

Borges has spoken publicly about why she addressed the subject in the first place: “I commented on the issue because I care about the truth and protecting women. No one should ever fear going to prison for recognizing biological reality. I hope that my case can serve as a turning point in fighting censorship in Brazil. Brazilians deserve the freedom to speak openly without punishment.”

Federal prosecutors argue that publishing and amplifying those views constitutes criminal conduct. A conviction would bring fines and incarceration. Even without a guilty verdict, the legal process itself imposes high financial and personal costs.

The charges rely on a legal structure created by Brazil’s pro-censorship Supreme Court rather than by Parliament.

Keep reading

Florida spent $4 million in opiate settlement to defeat marijuana legalization

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration spent $4 million in cash from a national opiate crisis settlement to defeat a 2024 adult-use marijuana legalization initiative.

DeSantis officials never told the statewide advisory board – set up to determine how to spend that money – that it would go toward an anti-cannabis political campaign, the Orlando Sentinel reported on Sunday.

In all, Florida spent $35 million on television ads and other campaign efforts to defeat Amendment 3, an adult-use legalization constitutional amendment that also had an endorsement from Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, the Sentinel reported.

The measure had 56% voter support but needed 60% to pass.

Keep reading

Labour MSP defends ‘loyalty and care’ friendship with convicted paedophile that cost her the party whip

A Labour MSP has defended her relationship with a twice-convicted paedophile after she was suspended from the party.

Pam Duncan-Glancy said she was ‘deeply disappointed’ by Scottish Labour’s decision to remove the whip and said it was not yet clear why the party chose to do so now.

Party leader Anas Sarwar told reporters at Holyrood that the Glasgow MSP had been suspended after ‘new information’ came to light.

It is not yet clear what the information is or when the party found out about it.

Ms Duncan-Glancy was sacked as Scottish Labour’s shadow education secretary by Mr Sarwar in December following revelations about her friendship with Sean Morton, a former Labour councillor in Moray who held indecent images of children.

In 2017, he was convicted for possessing indecent child images as well as extreme pornography of animals.

He was convicted again in January 2025 for possessing indecent images of children and breaching a sexual offences order and was given a 16-month sentence.

In her statement, Ms Duncan-Glancy said that while she did not condone Morton’s crimes, he remains someone who is vulnerable and in need of support.

She said: ‘I am deeply disappointed that the Party have taken the decision to remove the whip. The details of their decision to do this now are not yet clear to me.

‘My personal relationship with someone who grew up with me, who stayed with my family for periods of time during our childhood, and who is to all intents and purposes, family, has never affected my work.

‘When he was convicted of these very serious crimes, the justice system, rightly, dealt with him. I have never condoned his crimes and have always been clear that his actions were wrong.

‘He, however, was and remains someone requiring support, and my family and I, as is often the case, ensured his welfare.

‘There is no doubt this is difficult. I accept that not everyone will understand my reasons for doing what I did.

‘My actions arise from loyalty and care. I was providing support to a highly vulnerable person. Loyalty and care are values that I think make me a good representative and for which I believe others know me for.

‘I am also hugely grateful for the outpouring of support I have been shown, from constituents, colleagues, family, friends and indeed strangers alike.

Keep reading

Top GOP official is arrested over claims he ‘WATERBOARDED’ his terrified 16-year-old daughter

A GOP leader in Utah was arrested on Tuesday after his 16-year-old daughter accused him of ‘waterboarding’ her as a punishment for not cleaning her room.

David Nephi Johnson, the chair of the Republican Party in Wasatch County, has been charged with aggravated child abuse for the alleged drowning incident in January.

The vice chair of county GOP, Patty Sprunt, told KSL News Radio that she had only ever observed a healthy relationship between Johnson and his family. She said people should not jump to conclusions.

The investigation into Johnson, 54, began on January 21, when the Herber City Police Department was informed that a teenager had been interviewed by the Utah Division of Child and Family Services.

The girl told authorities that her father, Johnson, got upset with her about two weeks earlier because she went out with her friends before making sure her bedroom was ‘spotless to his expectations’, according to a police affidavit.

When she got home, Johnson allegedly grabbed her by the back of her neck and ‘took her into the bathroom while the sink was filling with water,’ the affidavit stated.

Johnson ‘dunked her head under, brought it out, splashed water in her face, then dunked the victim’s head under again,’ the affidavit stated.

The girl couldn’t recall how long she had been under water but claimed she wasn’t able to breathe for ’20 to 30 seconds,’ according to the affidavit.

Though the girl described what her father allegedly did to her as waterboarding, there was no claim that her father carried out waterboarding in the strict sense of the torture method, which involves covering someone’s mouth with a cloth and pouring water through the cloth and into the mouth.

The teen said that after she was allegedly attacked, her immediate thought was that she was at fault and that she should have cleaned her room, according to the affidavit. She also reported having trouble breathing afterwards and feeling sick.

She told investigators that Johnson abused her and her siblings on other occasions, according to police.

‘The victim described one incident a few years prior involving her now 8-year-old brother, stating that after a minor argument, David became upset, grabbed her brother by the neck, took him into the bathroom, and forced his head under the water,’ the affidavit stated. 

‘The victim stated that David removed her brother from the water, splashed water on his face and nose, knocked him down, and repeated the act multiple times. Following the incident, the now 8-year-old sibling ran upstairs to his bedroom, crying,’ it continued.

Additionally, the girl recalled a time when Johnson allegedly ‘backhanded her on the torso because she wasn’t compliant to do something’, according to the affidavit.

Johson was then accused of making fun of her for crying,’ the affidavit alleged.

‘I don’t feel very safe. When I go to bed, I feel like I can’t sleep because I don’t feel safe. When my dad’s not home, I feel fine. But when he’s home, I never feel safe because I feel like something is going to happen,’ the girl said to investigators.

Keep reading

ICE is cracking down on people who follow them in their cars

Becky Ringstrom was heading home after following federal immigration officers in her gray Kia SUV in suburban Minneapolis when she was suddenly boxed in by unmarked vehicles. At least a half-dozen masked agents jumped out to arrest her, one knocking on her windshield with a metal object as if threatening to use it to break her window.

After the arrest, captured on bystander video verified by Reuters, the 42-year-old mother of seven later said she was transported to Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis where an officer gave her a citation charging her under a federal law that criminalizes impeding law enforcement. The official said her name and photo would be added to a government database.

The arrest of Ringstrom became the latest detention of one of thousands of local activists for violating Title 18, Section 111 of the U.S. Code, a catch-all charge for anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes” with a federal officer conducting official duties. The statute can be charged as a felony or misdemeanor. As a felony, it carries up to 20 years in prison, but penalties beyond eight years are reserved for people who use “a deadly or dangerous weapon” or cause an injury.

A Reuters review of federal court records found that the Trump administration has prosecuted at least 655 people under that charge across the U.S. since a series of city-focused immigration crackdowns began last summer. That’s more than double the prosecutions during the same period in 2024-2025, according to a review of publicly available criminal filings in Westlaw, a legal research database owned by Thomson Reuters.

Keep reading

A Tiny Alabama Town Ran an Outrageous Speed Trap. Now It Will Pay $1.5 Million To Settle a Lawsuit.

The hamlet of Brookside, Alabama, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit three years after local news investigations revealed that it was running a predatory speed trap.

The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that sued Brookside in 2022 on behalf of motorists who said they were framed and swindled by the town, announced on Monday that it had reached a settlement agreement that would require substantial transparency and policing reforms, in addition to payments to the class members.

Brookside became a national news story in 2022 after the Birmingham News reported that the small town’s unusually large police force was bankrolling the city budget by fining people traveling through and towing their cars under what motorists claimed were fabricated charges.

It was one of the worst cases of profit-motivated policing in recent memory: The news investigation found that Brookside, a place with no traffic lights and one commercial property, a Dollar General store, “collected $487 in fines and forfeitures for every man, woman and child.” By 2020, two years after Brookside expanded its police force from one officer to nine and began aggressively pursuing traffic enforcement, income from fines and forfeitures comprised 49 percent of the town’s budget. Motorists alleged that they were getting pulled over for fake traffic violations, slapped with bogus charges, then forced to pay thousands in fines and towing fees after being convicted in Brookside’s municipal court.

The investigations led to the resignation of the Brookside police chief, a Pulitzer Prize for the reporters, and a class action lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice.

“Police are supposed to protect and serve, not ticket and collect,” Chekeithia Grant, one of the named plaintiffs in the case, said in an Institute for Justice press release Monday. “When that gets flipped around, people suffer. We brought this case to remind Brookside of that, and to get the town on the right track. This settlement should do that. And it should be a warning to other towns.”

According to the lawsuit, Grant and her daughter were both arrested by Brookside police following a traffic stop and falsely charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, obstruction of government operations, and resisting arrest. Both were convicted in the Brookside Municipal Court, but town prosecutors agreed to dismiss all the charges after the two women appealed to a county court. But by then, they had already paid roughly $2,000 in fines and fees to Brookside.

Brookside’s racket was so outrageous that the Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” in support of the Institute for Justice’s lawsuit, noting the perverse profit incentives that such schemes create:

Judges should not profit from their decisions in cases. Nor should funding for prosecutors or police officers depend substantially on unnecessarily aggressive law enforcement aimed at generating income through fines and fees. Criminal justice systems tainted by these unreasonable incentives stand to punish the poor for their poverty and put law enforcement at odds with the communities they are meant to serve.

However, Brookside was just a particularly odious example of the classic American speed-trap town, a municipality that survives by latching onto a nearby highway and gorging itself, like a bloated tick, on traffic enforcement revenue.

States have often responded to negative publicity from speed-trap towns with legislative reforms, and Alabama was no different. A few months after Brookside’s practices were exposed, the Alabama state legislature passed a bill capping the revenue municipalities can keep from fines to just 10 percent of their general operating budgets.

In addition to the $1.5 million payout to the lawsuit class, the proposed settlement will require Brookside to end many of the financial incentives tied to its traffic enforcement, such as repealing its fee to retrieve towed cars. The Brookside Police Department would also stay off the nearby interstate for the next 10 years, except for emergency response, and there would be 30 years of strict caps on how much revenue the town could keep from policing and code enforcement.

Keep reading

Oregon Lawmakers Consider Banning Marijuana Edibles With More Than 10 Milligrams Of THC

Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill to prohibit the sale of individual edibles that have more than 10 milligrams of THC.

The proposal, Senate Bill 1548, comes as lawmakers grapple with responding to increasing reports of children seeking medical attention after consuming edibles resembling cookies, brownies and gummies. In 2023, children aged 0 to five made up one-third of all cannabis-related cases reported to the Oregon Poison Center.

And in May, experts recommended lawmakers implement a THC cap to cannabis products, similar to alcohol and tobacco, as data shows most Oregon youth believe there’s little to no risk in smoking marijuana once a month.

“We need to reckon with this a little bit,” said Sen. Lisa Reynolds, a Portland Democrat and pediatrician who chairs the Senate Early Childhood and Behavioral Health Committee. The committee met Tuesday morning for a public hearing on the bill.

Reynolds said the topic is of particular interest to her because she believes her brother’s habitual marijuana use in the ’70s contributed to his admission into psychiatric hospitals nearly 50 times throughout his life. He now lives in a nursing home with severe schizophrenia, she said.

Four doctors testified in favor of the bill, including Dr. Rob Hendrickson, the medical director of the Oregon Poison Center. Hendrickson shared an example of a toddler he cared for recently who consumed two muffins that contained 50 milligrams of THC each. Within an hour, the child turned blue and unconscious. She had a seizure and was put on life support for 36 hours.

There’s strong evidence that the policy would reduce child poisonings, according to Dr. Julia Dilley, a Multnomah County epidemiologist who has been leading research on the public health effects of cannabis legalization in Oregon and Washington.

Oregon’s bill is similar to a 2017 Washington law requiring that single servings of edibles don’t exceed 10 milligrams. That law was associated with 75 percent fewer hospitalizations and half as many poisonings reported to poison centers, Dilley told the committee.

Four people in the cannabis industry testified in opposition to the bill, including business owners and cannabis manufacturers who said many products already have child-resistant packaging, as well as meet marketing and advertising standards to make sure products aren’t attractive to children.

Keep reading

Jesse Strang, 18, named as Canadian school shooter who murdered eight before dying by suicide

A gunman who murdered nine people in the second deadliest school shooting in Canadian history has been named as Jesse Strang, who is reported to be transgender. 

Strang, 18, opened fire in the library at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia on Tuesday afternoon, a parent whose son attends the school told the Daily Mail. Six people were killed at the school and a seventh died en route to the hospital. 

Strang took his own life at the school. He killed his mother Jennifer and brother Emmett at their home beforehand, CTV News reported. 

Strang was named by police on Wednesday as Jesse Van Rootselaar. He is understood to have used his mother’s name, Strang, socially and at school. 

Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Strang killed a female teacher, three girls and two boys aged between 13 and 17. They added that a tenth victim reported to have died after being rushed to hospital actually survived their injuries.  

The parent, who requested to remain anonymous, said his son knew Strang’s family and played sports with one of his siblings. 

His son was at the academic institution Tuesday when Strang carried out the deadly massacre. He is now ‘afraid to go back to school’, his father added.

Juno News and Western Standard News were among the first publications to identify Strang and described the shooter as a biological male who identifies as a woman named Jess. 

Royal Canadian Mounted Police refused to confirm Strang’s identity and whether he was transgender after being contacted by the Daily Mail. Authorities have only identified the shooter as a ‘female in a dress’.

Six people were killed and 25 injured at the school and an additional victim died on the way to the hospital, police said. Two more people were found dead at a nearby home believed to be connected to the deadly attack. 

Sources told the Daily Mail that Strang lived at the home with three relatives. 

Strang’s uncle Russell, who told Juno News she was responsible for the shooting, said the suspected shooter was ‘transgender’. 

Keep reading

State Cannabis Legalization and Psychosis-Related Health Care Utilization

This study included 63 680 589 beneficiaries followed for 2 015 189 706 person-months. Women accounted for 51.8% of follow-up time with the majority of person-months recorded for those aged 65 years and older (77.3%) and among White beneficiaries (64.6%). Results from fully-adjusted models showed that, compared with no legalization policy, states with legalization policies experienced no statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related diagnoses (medical, no retail outlets: rate ratio [RR], 1.13; 95% CI, 0.97-1.36; medical, retail outlets: RR, 1.24; 95% CI, 0.96-1.61; recreational, no retail outlets: RR, 1.38; 95% CI, 0.93-2.04; recreational, retail outlets: RR, 1.39; 95% CI, 0.98-1.97) or prescribed antipsychotics (medical, no retail outlets RR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.88-1.13; medical, retail outlets: RR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.87-1.19; recreational, no retail outlets: RR, 1.13; 95% CI, 0.84-1.51; recreational, retail outlets: RR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.89-1.45). In exploratory secondary analyses, rates of psychosis-related diagnoses increased significantly among men, people aged 55 to 64 years, and Asian beneficiaries in states with recreational policies compared with no policy.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this retrospective cohort study of commercial and Medicare Advantage claims data, state medical and recreational cannabis policies were not associated with a statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related health outcomes. As states continue to introduce new cannabis policies, continued evaluation of psychosis as a potential consequence of state cannabis legalization may be informative.

Keep reading

The Heavy Pot Taxes Favored by The New York Times Would Undermine Legalization

The New York Times embraced legalization of recreational marijuana in 2014, two years after Colorado and Washington became the first states to take that step. By that point, most Americans opposed pot prohibition, and that majority has grown since then.

Although the Times does not regret endorsing legalization, its editorial board now says stricter regulation and heavier taxation are necessary to curtail the costs associated with marijuana abuse. Those recommendations elide two inconvenient facts: Cannabis is still federally prohibited, and states are still struggling to replace unauthorized pot peddlers with government-licensed marijuana merchants.

The Times emphasizes that “occasional marijuana use is no more a problem than drinking a glass of wine with dinner or smoking a celebratory cigar.” But while marijuana “is safer than alcohol and tobacco in some ways,” the Times says, “it is not harmless.”

Frequent cannabis consumption has increased substantially in recent years, the Times notes, and roughly one in 10 marijuana users “develops an addiction.” Even nonaddicted cannabis consumers “can still use it too much,” it says, since “people who are frequently stoned can struggle to hold a job or take care of their families.”

The Times also mentions cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, “marijuana-linked paranoia,” and the danger posed by stoned drivers. “Any product that brings both pleasures and problems requires a balancing act,” the Times says, which means “personal freedom” must be curtailed to protect “public health.”

That formulation is inherently paternalistic, since the “public health” burden to which the Times refers is borne mainly by cannabis consumers themselves. And the moral logic of the hefty marijuana taxes that the Times favors is questionable.

Those taxes would add to the difficulties that some heavy consumers face while punishing the occasional use that the paper says is no big deal. Although “adults should have the freedom to use” marijuana, the Times says, they must pay the government for that privilege.

A tax-based “balancing act” also raises practical difficulties. “The first step in a strategy to reduce marijuana abuse should be a federal tax on pot,” the Times says, gliding over the point that Congress cannot impose an excise tax on marijuana products unless it is prepared to legalize them.

The editorial does not explicitly acknowledge the need for that step. To the contrary, it implicitly criticizes President Donald Trump’s decision to reclassify marijuana under federal law, which falls far short of legalization.

Keep reading