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Video Shows Border Patrol Threaten Legal Observer in Key Largo for Following Him

A U.S. Border Patrol officer threatened to arrest a legal observer in Key Largo, Florida, today for following the officer, video of the encounter posted on Instagram shows.

The video is another instance of federal immigration officers threatening and harassing legal observers for conduct that civil liberties groups and multiple federal circuit courts say is firmly protected First Amendment activity.

The observer and activist, a 64-year-old Key Largo man who requested that his name not be printed to avoid retaliation, tells Reason he is part of a local group that tracks federal immigration enforcement activity in the Upper Florida Keys. Key Largo was the scene of a Border Patrol stop in December that generated national headlines after officers dragged a U.S. citizen out of her car.

The observer says he was following an unmarked Customs and Border Protection (CBP) vehicle from a safe distance when the car turned into a restaurant parking lot. The observer says he parked well over 25 feet away from the CBP vehicle, at which point the Border Patrol officer got out of his car, put on a mask, and approached the observer’s car. 

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‘No one is above the law.’ Former New Haven police chief admitted to stealing at least $10,000, city officials say

The city of New Haven is freezing a police bank account used to fund its confidential informant program after former police chief Karl Jacobson admitted to stealing thousands of dollars from it.

City officials shared new details about the investigation Wednesday.

The scandal began on Monday, when a group of assistant chiefs questioned Jacobson about discrepancies in withdrawals from the city’s confidential informant fund.

Mayor Justin Elicker says the former police chief admitted to stealing $10,000 from the city, but the amount could actually be more.

“Everything I’ve heard from everyone is just how shocked they are,” Mayor Elicker says. “I want to make it clear: we do not know how much money was taken.”

Jacobsen oversaw the account as assistant chief.

Despite calls for him to relinquish control when he was promoted to chief, city officials say Jacobson continued to make authorized routine withdrawals of $5,000 each month from the account to pay confidential informants.

“What the chief had done was basically make it where he would be the sole holder of the money,” acting police chief David Zannelli says, “and what he would say to us commonly is that he was doing that to protect us from any kind of liability.”

The preliminary investigation uncovered two extra $5,000 withdrawals were made by Jacobson at the end of 2025: one in November, and another in December.

Mayor Elicker was originally going to place him on administrative leave, but Jacobson said he was retiring instead.

The confidential informant program has been paused as state investigators work to find out if any other city bank accounts were affected and if any other police officers were involved.

“No one is above the law, and we are all held accountable,” acting police chief David Zannelli says. “We will move forward as a police department.”

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UK to bring into force law to tackle Grok AI deepfakes this week

The UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government would also seek to make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create such images.

Speaking to the Commons, Kendall said AI-generated pictures of women and children in states of undress, created without a person’s consent, were not “harmless images” but “weapons of abuse”.

The BBC has approached X for comment. It previously said: “Anyone using or prompting Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

It comes hours after Ofcom announced it was launching an investigation into X over “deeply concerning reports” about Grok altering images of people.

If found to have broken the law, Ofcom can potentially issue X with a fine of up to 10% of its worldwide revenue or £18 million, whichever is greater.

And if X does not comply, Ofcom can seek a court order to force internet service providers to block access to the site in the UK altogether.

In a statement, Kendall urged the regulator not to take “months and months” to conclude its investigation, and demanded it set out a timeline “as soon as possible”.

It is currently illegal to share deepfakes of adults in the UK, but legislation in the Data (Use and Access) Act which would make it a criminal offence to create or request them has not been enforced until now, despite passing in June 2025.

Last week, campaigners accused the government of dragging its heels on implementing that law.

“Today I can announce to the House that this offence will be brought into force this week,” Kendall told MPs.

In addition to the Data Act, Kendall said she would also make it a “priority offence” in the Online Safety Act.

“The content which has circulated on X is vile. It’s not just an affront to decent society, it is illegal,” she said.

“Let me be crystal clear – under the Online Safety Act, sharing intimate images of people without their consent, or threatening to share them, including pictures of people in their underwear, is a criminal offence for individuals and for platforms.

“This means individuals are committing a criminal offence if they create or seek to create such content including on X, and anyone who does this should expect to face the full extent of the law.”

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OSU study: Compounds in hemp block COVID-19 from entering human cells

Compounds found in hemp “show the ability to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from entering human cells,” Oregon State University says.

New OSU research on hemp and COVID-19 was published Tuesday in the Journal of Natural Products.

Richard van Breemen, a researcher with Oregon State’s Global Hemp Innovation Center in the College of Pharmacy and Linus Pauling Institute, led the study.

According to OSU:

Hemp, known scientifically as Cannabis sativa, is a source of fiber, food and animal feed, and multiple hemp extracts and compounds are added to cosmetics, body lotions, dietary supplements and food, van Breemen said.

Van Breemen and collaborators, including scientists at Oregon Health & Science University, found that a pair of cannabinoid acids bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, blocking a critical step in the process the virus uses to infect people.

The compounds are cannabigerolic acid, or CBGA, and cannabidiolic acid, CBDA, and the spike protein is the same drug target used in COVID-19 vaccines and antibody therapy. A drug target is any molecule critical to the process a disease follows, meaning its disruption can thwart infection or disease progression.

“These cannabinoid acids are abundant in hemp and in many hemp extracts,” van Breemen said. “They are not controlled substances like THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and have a good safety profile in humans. And our research showed the hemp compounds were equally effective against variants of SARS-CoV-2, including variant B.1.1.7, which was first detected in the United Kingdom, and variant B.1.351, first detected in South Africa.”

OSU said those two variants are also known as alpha and beta.

According to OSU:

Characterized by crown-like protrusions on its outer surface, SARS-CoV-2 features RNA strands that encode its four main structural proteins – spike, envelope, membrane and nucleocapsid – as well as 16 nonstructural proteins and several “accessory” proteins, van Breemen said.

“Any part of the infection and replication cycle is a potential target for antiviral intervention, and the connection of the spike protein’s receptor binding domain to the human cell surface receptor ACE2 is a critical step in that cycle,” he said. “That means cell entry inhibitors, like the acids from hemp, could be used to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection and also to shorten infections by preventing virus particles from infecting human cells. They bind to the spike proteins so those proteins can’t bind to the ACE2 enzyme, which is abundant on the outer membrane of endothelial cells in the lungs and other organs.”

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EU Commissioner Calls for 100-Thousand-Strong Unified Standing Defense Forces

Kubilius is actually calling for a United States of Europe – and that’s not gonna fly.

As Europe goes around in a militaristic trance, with its member countries all involved in enlarging and reequipping their military forces, an EU commissioner is making a plea that sounds rational, but it’s actually unfeasible.

European Union Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has declared that the bloc ‘should consider’ forming a standing military force of 100,000 troops and – pay attention – ‘overhaul the political processes governing defense’.

Obsessed with their imagined ‘Russian aggression’ and with the US shifting its focus away from Europe, Kubilius wants to re-imagine Europe’s common defense.

Politico reported:

“’Would the United States be militarily stronger if they would have 50 armies on the States level instead of a single federal army’, he said at a Swedish security conference on Sunday. ‘Fifty state defense policies and defense budgets on the states level, instead of a single federal defense policy and budget? If our answer is ‘no,’ [the] USA would not be stronger, then — what are we waiting for?’”

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Malaysia, Indonesia Block Musk’s Grok Amid Explicit Content Scrutiny

Malaysia and Indonesia have announced a decision to block access to Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, amid scrutiny over the tool’s use to generate sexually explicit images, including ones that appear to depict minors.

The coordinated actions by the two Southeast Asian nations mark the strongest regulatory response yet against Grok, as governments across Europe and North America press X and xAI to explain how the system allowed the creation of sexualized and manipulated images.

In Indonesia, the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs said on Jan. 10 that it had temporarily suspended access to Grok to protect the public from “the risk posed by fake pornographic content” generated using artificial intelligence. The ministry said the decision was aimed at safeguarding women, children, and society at large.

“The Government considers the practice of non-consensual sexual deepfakes to be a serious violation of human rights, dignity, and the security of citizens in the digital space,” Communications and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid said in a statement.

The ministry also said it had requested representatives from X to clarify the negative impacts linked to Grok use.

Indonesia’s communications ministry said the temporary suspension was carried out under its existing regulatory authority. It cited a 2020 regulation governing private electronic system operators, which requires platforms to ensure their systems do not host or facilitate prohibited electronic content.

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Why Did Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego Just Lie About This ICE Officer?

A video has gone viral in leftist circles of two federal agents slipping on an icy sidewalk in Minnesota. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), took to social media to spin a lie about what the video truly shows.

Video showed the two agents crossing onto a sidewalk and quickly slipping on the ice. As one of the agents fell, the rifle-mounted flashlight illuminated for a brief second before the agent hit the ground. The agent’s hands were completely removed from the control surfaces of the firearm. The handrail of the firearm, which presumably hosts the pressure pad to activate the light, can be seen lightly striking the agent’s body at the moment of illumination.

Gallego, a Marine Corp veteran, took to X to claim that the agent irresponsibly committed a negligent discharge.

Conveniently for Gallego, the short clip doesn’t contain any audio that would immediately disprove that no round was ever fired. The remaining evidence, however, proves that he is entirely wrong. The direction in which the rifle was aiming was well within frame, and no impact from a round can be seen.

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KC police arrest volunteers serving free meals in Kansas City parking lot. Why?

Kansas City police arrested two volunteers with Kansas City Food Not Bombs on Sunday for trespassing in a parking lot where the group has long served meals, the group said.

Two people were charged in Kansas City Municipal Court on Monday with trespassing for alleged violations at the address where the group serves meals, according to court records.

The group — a volunteer, mutual aid organization that provides free, hot, vegan meals on Sundays in a parking lot in Kansas City’s Lykins neighborhood, near the intersection of Independence Avenue and Monroe Avenue — posted a video of the Jan. 4 arrests on social media Friday. The video shows a group of Kansas City police officers placing two people in handcuffs in a parking lot and shooing other people away from the area.

“I told you that you are on private property, and you’re trespassing,” one uniformed officer says as he secures handcuffs around one person’s wrists.

Later in the video, a voice can be heard addressing people gathered near the arrests: “You’re trespassing. Leave. Or you’re going to be in handcuffs too. Does everybody understand? This is your warning. You can film all you want, you’re welcome to, but you are trespassing, and if you don’t leave right now I’m going to arrest you.”

Kansas City Food Not Bombs said in a social media post Wednesday that police forced all of its volunteers to leave the area and dispersed anyone arriving for its meal under threat of further arrests.

“Food is a human right,” the group said. “We have the right to public spaces, and the right to demonstration.”

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Secret Service Finds “Suspicious Object” on Trump’s Motorcade Route at Palm Beach

A “suspicious object” was reported on President Trump’s Presidential motorcade route while the President was en route from Mar-a-Lago to Palm Beach International Airport on Sunday.

President Trump has faced numerous attempts on his life, including one at his golf club in West Palm Beach in September 2024, when a man was found in a sniper’s nest with a rifle aimed at the President.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, would-be assassin Ryan Routh was found by a jury guilty on five federal counts, including attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer, and other gun charges, in September 2025.

Previously, on July 13, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot President Trump in the ear from a nearby rooftop as he was speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One rallygoer was killed in the shooting, and two were injured.

Crooks was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper at the scene, and then-candidate Trump was rushed to the Hospital.

The President took a different route to the airport, and an investigation was launched, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“During advance sweeps of PBI airport, a suspicious object was discovered by the U.S. Secret Service,” Leavitt said in a statement on Sunday evening.

“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly.”

The motorcade took a “circular route around town,” and drivers in the motorcade were instructed to “keep it tight,” according to the White House press pool.  “Take off – at 6:48 pm – was fast and steep. A Secret Service agent was on the plane’s phone during take off,” the New York Post’s Emily Goodwin reported.

Further details on the incident are still unclear.

President Trump safely returned to the White House later on Sunday evening.

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Trump Says He Will Speak to Musk About Restoring Internet Access in Iran​

President Donald Trump said on Jan. 11 he was planning to speak with tech billionaire Elon Musk about restoring internet access in Iran after the regime blocked online services amid protests.

“As you know, he’s very good at that kind of thing. He’s got a very good company. So we may speak to Elon Musk, and heck, I’m going to call him as soon as I’m finished with you,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Musk’s SpaceX company offers the Starlink service, which allows users access to the internet without any wired connection via a constellation of satellites surrounding Earth.

The flow of information from Iran has been hampered by an internet blackout since Jan. 8.

Neither Musk, who also owns social media platform X and electric car company Tesla, nor Starlink has yet commented publicly on Trump’s statement about the use of the technology in Iran.

The Epoch Times contacted SpaceX for comment but received no comment by publication time.

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