Tag: nanny state

Children removed from Australian-British couple living off-grid in Italian forest

The children of an Australian mother living off-grid in an Italian forest have been removed by local authorities, after the family came under scrutiny when they were hospitalised due to eating poisonous mushrooms.

A juvenile court in the Italian city of L’Aquila ruled last week to place the three children of Australian woman Catherine Birmingham and her British husband Nathan Trevallion into protective care.

The court cited poor sanitary conditions at the family’s home in the mountainous Abruzzo region and unauthorised homeschooling of their eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old twin boys, according to AFP.

Ms Birmingham, a life coach and former horse riding teacher from Melbourne, bought the farmhouse in 2021 with Mr Trevallion, a former chef from Bristol.

They were raising the children in the woodlands home without mains electricity, water or gas, relying instead on solar power, well water and homegrown food.

“The members of the Trevallion family have no social interactions, no steady income,” the court said in its written ruling.

Keep reading

Texas: ID Will Be Linked to Every Google Search! New Law Requires Age Verification

Texas SB2420, known as the App Store Accountability Act, requires app stores to verify the age of users and obtain parental consent for those under 18. This law aims to enhance protections for minors using mobile applications and is set to take effect on January 1, 2026.

Texas has joined a multi-state crusade to enforce digital identification in America—marketed as a way to “protect children.”

Yet privacy experts say the real goal isn’t child protection—it’s control. 

Roblox insists its new “age estimation” system improves safety, but it relies on biometric and government data—creating the foundation for permanent digital tracking. With Texas now the fifth state to join the campaign, one question remains: how long before “protecting kids” becomes the excuse to monitor everyone?

From Reclaim the Net:

Texas Sues Roblox Over Child Safety Failures, Joining Multi-State Push for Digital ID

Texas has become the latest state to take legal action against Roblox, joining a growing number of attorneys general who accuse the gaming platform of failing to protect children.

The case also renews attention on the broader push for online age verification, a move that would lead to widespread digital ID requirements.

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on November 6, alleging that Roblox allowed predators to exploit children while misleading families about safety protections.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Keep reading

MAHA: Monitoring Americans’ Health Attributes — or CCP-style Digital Control Grid?

This summer, President Donald Trump unveiled a sweeping plan to “bring healthcare into the digital age.” He calls it the “Digital Health Tech Ecosystem.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also announced the launch of a digital health ID initiative in conjunction with Amazon, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The latter is an AI startup that received most of its $580 million seed funding from the now-bankrupt FTX under convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

This “Ecosystem” is part of the artificial intelligence (AI) venture Stargate Project, which Trump excitedly announced on his first day in office. Stargate is the reason you may have noticed large AI facilities springing up across the country, driving up energy prices with their unprecedented demand for electricity, and threatening aquifers with their unprecedented demand for water.

Trump declared Texas-based Stargate to be a $500 billion collaboration between leading tech companies that will make the United States the global leader in AI. Among investors are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. During the White House unveiling, Ellison bragged that Stargate’s AI would be able to produce cancer vaccines in 48 hours.

Microsoft and NVIDIA are two other U.S.-based investors, while Emirati state-owned MGX of Abu Dhabi and U.K.-based Arm Holdings, Inc. are also involved. Stargate’s chairman is Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who also chairs Stargate investor SoftBank.

Data Not Secure

Naturally, the healthcare component of this technological boom is supposed to help the little guy: improving patient care through earlier disease detection and — you guessed it — vaccinations. But are we to believe that this international consortium of businesses has our best interests at heart?

For that matter, do our own politicians? During testimony before Congress earlier this year, Kennedy admitted: “My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable [health-related monitor] within four years.” But he dodged a follow-up question about plans to secure that personal health data. That’s disconcerting, considering the vulnerability of personal information in federal hands. Remember the early 2025 reveal that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency gained illicit access to 19 sensitive U.S. Health and Human Services databases, exposing everything from electronic health records to Social Security and bank details? 

Wearables

The “wearable” health monitors would expand that data collection astronomically, creating a “digital twin” of yourself as government officials harvest vital signs, movement and sleep patterns, and other physical metrics in real time.

Moreover, Trump signed an executive order in March calling for data-sharing of personal information about Americans across federal agencies. His administration has since awarded more than $900 million in contracts to Peter Thiel’s data analytics company, Palantir, while even current and former employees have petitioned the company to pull out of the plans.

The HopeGirl Alternative News channel on Rumble depicts what healthcare in this modern Fourth Industrial Revolution will look like. Healthcare 4.0 works with a constant stream of data from wearable devices to analyze us — individually and population-wide — at every hour of the day in all settings. This system is already in operation. Starting in 2020, U.S. hospitals implemented “body area networks” (BAN) to deliver real-time vitals to the Pentagon’s Project Salus during the Covid “public health emergency.”

The REAL ID Connection

This helps explain why U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem finally enforced the REAL ID Act of 2005 this year. (Right now, it’s mandatory for domestic air travel and entering federal buildings, but the legislation allows for unlimited expansion of REAL ID requirements.) Until this year, various states stymied REAL ID, correctly labeling it a gross violation of Americans’ constitutionally protected rights. Now, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration boasts on its website about its biometric overhaul.

Indeed, the REAL ID Act allows states to collect biometric data (fingerprints, facial geometry, triangulated body measurements) on each of us. The Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) explains that the “purposes could include banking, employment or health care.”

CCHF warns: “REAL ID provides the digital and biometric infrastructure to implement a China-like control grid, where your access to services could depend on behavior, beliefs or health status.”

Keep reading

Asian nation introduces lifetime smoking ban for Gen Z and beyond

The Republic of Maldives has banned smoking for individuals born on or after January 1, 2007, becoming the second country in the world after New Zealand to implement a generational prohibition on tobacco. 

According to Maldives Health Statistics, tobacco consumption and exposure to secondhand smoke are among the leading causes of illness and death nationwide. This prompted President Mohamed Muizzu to launch an anti-smoking campaign last year, banning vapes and e-cigarettes while doubling import duties and taxes on cigarettes.

The new ban, affecting Generation Z first, was ratified as an amendment to the Tobacco Control Act in May and came into force on Saturday. It also reportedly applies to visitors to the island nation known for its luxury tourism.

Anyone born after January 1, 2007 is now prohibited from purchasing, selling, or using tobacco products in the Maldives. The restriction covers all forms of tobacco, and retailers must verify buyers’ ages. 

Keep reading

California Opens Public Comment on Online Age Verification ID

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has launched the preliminary phase of rulemaking for Senate Bill 976, the “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act.”

The legislation mandates that social media companies use “age assurance” systems to determine whether a California user is an adult or a minor.

The Attorney General has until January 1, 2027, to complete and adopt the final regulations.

The California Department of Justice (DOJ) will host a public meeting on November 5, 2025, to gather feedback from residents, experts, and organizations about how these rules should be structured.

The DOJ is seeking public comment on the potential effects of the proposed regulations.

Citizens can send their comments in written form to sb976@doj.ca.gov. Note that any information provided is subject to the Public Records Act. 

SB 976 was introduced to limit the impact of addictive online design features on minors. It requires the Attorney General to create standards for age assurance and parental consent that align with the Act’s stated purpose of child protection.

However, privacy advocates have raised alarms that the “age assurance” requirement could erode online anonymity, forcing individuals to hand over sensitive identification data to access social platforms.

Such systems could expose Californians to new risks of data collection, profiling, and potential misuse of personal information.

Keep reading

Consumer Protection Laws: Unconstitutional Controls That Hurt the Very People They Claim to Help

From rent caps to “price-gouging” laws, a new wave of so-called consumer-protection laws is sweeping state capitols. These measures are marketed as compassion in a crisis — or “fairness” in housing — but their substance is the same: command-and-control price fixing that violates the Constitution, tramples private-property rights, and sabotages the free market’s ability to allocate goods and services when people need them most.

Three recent bills illustrate the trend. Alabama’s House Bill 528 (HB528) and Virginia’s House Bill 1301 (HB1301) expand anti-gouging controls to more transactions and longer periods after emergencies. New Jersey’s Assembly Bill 3361 (A3361) imposes rent control on manufactured-home sites. Nebraska’s Legislative Bill 266 (LB266), however, is a rare bright spot, preempting local rent control and affirming property rights. Together, these bills spotlight the central question: Will states defend a constitutional, republican system rooted in liberty and voluntary exchange, or drift toward administrative despotism under the banner of “consumer protection”?

Protecting Property and Contract Rights

America’s Founders understood what modern lawmakers too often forget: Price controls are a form of compelled exchange that violates liberty. The U.S. Constitution safeguards that liberty in multiple places:

  • Fifth Amendment: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Price ceilings that force owners to sell below market value are regulatory takings in substance, if not in name.
  • Article I, Section 10: “No State shall … pass any … Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” When a legislature dictates the permissible price, term, or escalation of a private lease or service, it impairs the parties’ agreed-upon obligations.
  • Ninth and 10th Amendments: The people retain unenumerated rights, and powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. These clauses limit government; they do not license it to control every transaction.
  • 14th Amendment (due process and equal protection): Arbitrary economic edicts that single out owners for special burdens invite due-process and equal-protection concerns.

Consumer-protection statutes also collide with first principles. The Declaration of Independence identifies unalienable rights — life, liberty, and property — and charges government to secure them. Free exchange is a peaceful exercise of those rights, and upholds one’s pursuit of happiness. Substituting bureaucratic fiat for voluntary exchange undermines the moral basis of self-government.

Keep reading

FDA’s War on Commonsense Nicotine Regulation

Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.

Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.

In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.

Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.

Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.

The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards. 

The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.

Keep reading

Mom Placed on Child Abuse Registry for Letting 13-Year-Old Babysit

When single mom of two and home health aide Alice (a pseudonym) needed to run a brief errand, she tasked her 13-year-old brother (whom she is also the caretaker for) with babysitting her nearly 1-year-old child. For this, she was placed on the state’s child abuse registry.

Mariel Mussack, an attorney with Community Legal Services, told Alice’s story during testimony before the Pennsylvania House Children and Youth Committee in favor of H.B. 1873—known as Reasonable Independence for Children—on October 6. Similar bills have been passed in 11 states to date, clarifying that neglect is when a parent puts their child in obvious, serious danger, not anytime they simply take their eyes off of them. 

As in most of the other states, the Pennsylvania bill has bipartisan sponsors: Rep. Jeanne McNeill (D–Whitehall), who is majority chair of the committee, Rep. Rick Krajewski (D–Philadelphia), and Rep. David Zimmerman (R–Reinholds). Krajewski opened the hearing by noting that he’d grown up with a single mom who worked two or three jobs, and therefore, he had to get himself to school and help care for his younger sister. “It really does chill me to think that, in the eyes of our state statutes, that could be seen as neglect,” Krajewski said. 

Zimmerman recalled growing up on a farm. “We’d be gone all day,” he said. “And we really would look out for each other.” 

Peter Gray, a research professor of developmental psychology at Boston College and a co-founder with me of Let Grow, a nonprofit fighting for childhood independence, testified that an independent childhood helps inoculate kids against despair. 

“Over the last 60 years, we’ve seen a gradual but overall huge decline in children’s opportunities to play, roam, and generally engage in activities independent of adults,” Gray said, adding that “we’ve seen a gradual but overall huge increase in anxiety, depression, and…suicide among young people.” 

That’s due to a shrinking “internal locus of control,” the sense that you can handle things alone, said Gray. The way you build a robust internal locus of control is by being trusted to decide some things for yourself, like how to spend your time, and what you can handle on your own. “But,” Gray said, “we’re not allowing [kids] to do that.”

As constant adult supervision becomes the norm, more and more kids are being reported to the authorities. Diane Redleaf, a civil rights lawyer and Let Grow’s legal consultant, says that 37 percent of American children will be the subject of a hotline call—that number soars to 53 percent for African-American children.

Keep reading

I Lost My Freedom, Money, And Guns Based On No Evidence And With No Chance To Defend Myself

Three weeks. That’s how long I was separated from my daughter. No trial. No crime. No violence. Just a single sheet of paper — a Protection from Abuse Order, or PFA — a civil court order meant to prevent harm, often issued on little more than an accusation. It can strip someone of contact with his or her children, home, and firearms — without a criminal charge. That paper took my daughter away from me.

I was only 23.

My daughter was just a few months old. I was still learning how to be a dad — still learning the rhythms of fatherhood. Then she was gone. A sheriff handed me the order at my front door. I knew I was in for an uphill battle.

Over the next three weeks, I scrambled to find an attorney, build a defense, and dig through evidence to prove my innocence. Those weeks didn’t just take away my daughter. They took away my dignity. My voice. And for a time, my will to speak. 

The State of Exception

Legal theorist Carl Schmitt once wrote: “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.” In other words, the true power of the state lies not in making laws, but in deciding when the law no longer applies. The sovereign is the one who can suspend the rules in the name of security, order, or necessity. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben built on this idea, warning that modern states increasingly rule through exceptions — moments when the law suspends itself in the name of preserving order.

Most people think of these exceptions in cinematic terms, such as Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, the War on Terror and Guantanamo Bay, lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But a quieter kind happens in family court every day. No headlines. No outrage. Just a form, a sheriff, and silence.

That’s what a PFA is. It suspends due process, assumes guilt, and punishes before harm occurs. It creates what Agamben called a “zone of indistinction” — where someone is both inside the law and excluded from its protections. The man served a PFA becomes what Agamben called the Homo Sacer: not just punished without trial, but guilty until proven innocent.

This isn’t tyranny in jackboots. It’s softer. Bureaucratic. A form, not a trial. Control, not compassion. It’s preemptive punishment. 

Keep reading

Vancouver BANS gun-shaped novelty lighters during crime wave

Vancouver’s City Council, led by Mayor Ken Sim, is enacting a “gun grab” not on actual firearms, but on gun-shaped novelty lighters. 

While Vancouver grapples with rising violent crime, tent cities, repeat offenders, and stranger attacks, the council’s focus is on these lighters, which carry a $1,000 fine for possession. This initiative, referred to as “silly novelty barbecuators,” is presented as a solution to violent crime.

This mirrors a past Toronto initiative called “gunplay no way,” a toy gun buy-back amnesty that offered politically correct toys in exchange for toy guns. 

Critics argue that such policies are mere “feel-good optics” and do nothing to address the root causes of illegal firearm problems. 

Politicians, often elected through popularity contests rather than expertise, are accused of lacking topic knowledge and ignoring experts, instead focusing on “silly novelty things that have no credible impact on public safety.”

One panelist, who was shot by a real gun, deemed the Vancouver initiative “madness.” They highlighted the irony of focusing on lighters while illegal border crossings potentially smuggle real guns and drugs into the country. It’s argued that “illegal guns that are the issue and the criminals who are handling that.”

Another panelist living in Vancouver questioned the priorities of the Mayor and Council, especially given that Vancouver is considered the “fentanyl capital of the world.” 

The mayor himself has faced serious threats, including bomb threats and family intimidation from anti-Israel protesters. 

The effectiveness of this Vancouver bylaw was questioned, with doubts about whether it will lead to even “one charge against somebody in Vancouver for having a lighter in the shape of a gun” in a year’s time. 

Keep reading