Tag: police state

Prairieland Verdict: Texas Man Found Guilty of Transporting Constitutionally Protected Pamphlets

A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas, convicted eight protestors on charges ranging from rioting to attempted murder after a noise demonstration turned violent outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Center last summer. Federal prosecutors claim the group was part of an “Antifa Cell” and provided “material support to terrorists.” First Amendment legal scholars have raised serious concerns about the chilling effect these prosecutions and convictions will have on future political dissent.

One man’s conviction emphasized just how far that chilling effect could go. Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada, the husband of one of the convicted protestors, wasn’t present at the time of the July 4 demonstration. After receiving a call from his wife, Maricela Rueda, from the Johnston County Jail, in which she told him to do “whatever you need to do” and “move whatever you need to move at the house,” officers began watching Sanchez-Estrada, according to the criminal complaint filed against him.

Shortly after, officers observed Sanchez-Estrada load and move a box from his home to another residence. Sanchez-Estrada was then arrested on state traffic offenses, and officers obtained a search warrant to locate and search the box. Inside, they found “numerous Antifa materials, such as insurrection planning, anti-law enforcement, anti-government, and anti-immigration enforcement documents,” according to a November indictment. Sanchez-Estrada was subsequently charged federally with corruptly concealing a document and conspiracy to conceal documents.

Sanchez-Estrada was convicted on both counts on March 13 and now faces up to 40 years in federal prison. But despite ICE proclaiming in a post on X that the contents of Sanchez-Estrada’s box contained “literal insurrectionist propaganda,” these controversial materials fall squarely under constitutionally protected speech.

“I feel like the U.S. lost here with this verdict and what it means for future defendants,” Christopher Weinbel, Sanchez-Estrada’s federal public defender and a U.S. Army veteran, told The Washington Post. “I feel like it turned its back on justice with this.”

The other eight protestors were charged and convicted of rioting, providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and using explosives after they set off fireworks outside the Prairieland ICE facility. Rueda was also convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents along with Sanchez-Estrada. Additionally, Benjamin Song was convicted of attempted murder of a U.S. officer and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence after he allegedly shot and wounded a police officer during the demonstration.

In response to the convictions, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the guilty “verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.” But First Amendment lawyers are wary of conflating constitutionally protected speech after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in September categorizing the loosely defined “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.”

Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive legal group, told the Associated Press that the government wants to “squash” opposition, and a case like this one creates fear, “hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting.” The U.S. district judge presiding over the case, a Trump nominee, Mark Pittman, also signaled First Amendment concerns, according to The Guardian, when he asked prosecutors about the relevance of including antifa in the jury instructions. “Whether it’s antifa or the Methodist Women’s Auxiliary of Weatherford, why does it matter?” Pittman asked during the trial, reported The Guardian.

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Homeschooling Families Push Back on Proposed Regulations in Connecticut

When Gina Stewart began homeschooling her oldest child 30 years ago, there were no regulations requiring her to notify the state if, how, or what she was teaching her son in their house.

Stewart, in the years that followed, informed her local district annually, as a courtesy, that her boys wouldn’t be enrolled in public schools.

One son later became a plumber, one enrolled in community college before he was even old enough to drive, and one will attend a police academy after he turns 21.

The youngest, 15, is still completing his high school curriculum, including pre-calculus.

Stewart recently began homeschooling her grandchild, but she said she fears that the educational freedom her family enjoyed for decades is under threat.

A proposed Connecticut state law would require homeschooling parents to provide their local school districts with proof of “equivalent” instruction annually.

It also requires school districts to notify the Department of Children and Families if a child is removed from public schools.

“I don’t want their curriculum,” Stewart, who attended Connecticut public schools and previously taught at a Catholic school, told The Epoch Times.

“I never originally intended to homeschool my kids. But I don’t think the schools are preparing kids to become productive citizens.”

Stewart was among hundreds of concerned parents who attended a legislative committee hearing last week on the proposed legislation.

The hearing went for about 19 hours, during which more than 300 people testified and 3,000-plus provided written opinions, a vast majority against the bill.

“I’d say it’s about 99-to-one against the bill,” Ralph Rodriguez, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, who also attended the hearing, told The Epoch Times.

“No regulation is acceptable. Today’s check-in can very easily encroach on other freedoms.”

The check-in and notification to the Department of Children and Families regulations are in response to the recent murder of an 11-year-old girl whose mother attempted to cover up the death by telling the local district that she was homeschooling her daughter.

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Brazil Launches Mandatory Age Verification Law for Online Platforms

Brazil’s Digital ECA (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente Digital) took effect today, March 17, requiring nearly every tech product accessible to children to clear a long list of compliance obligations.
Apps, operating systems, app stores, video games, social networks: all potentially covered, all facing fines of up to 50 million Brazilian reais (roughly US$9.44 million) or 10% of their Brazilian revenue for non-compliance.

As always, the framing is child protection. The infrastructure being built is a national age verification system woven into the fabric of internet access.

“Brazil has stepped forward as the first country in Latin America to pass a dedicated law to protect children’s online privacy and safety,” goes the official line.

Every major technology platform operating in Brazil must now determine how old its users are and restrict what they can see accordingly. The checkbox that said “I am over 18” is explicitly banned.

Article 37’s sole paragraph states that regulations “may not, under any circumstances, impose, authorize, or result in the implementation of mechanisms of massive, generic, or indiscriminate surveillance.”

Then Article 9 bans self-reported age. Article 12 demands “auditable” verification. The law prohibits the only mechanism that would make the law work.

Auditable, non-self-declaration age verification requires collecting something real about you.

The law permits a range of methods: government ID, biometric face scanning, behavioral pattern analysis that watches how you type and what you click, age inference from activity data, and educational history.

Every single one of these collects sensitive personal information and creates a record. There is no method on the approved list that doesn’t involve building exactly the kind of identity infrastructure Article 37 claims to forbid. The legislators either didn’t notice the contradiction or they noticed and didn’t care.

The obligation falls on platforms, not directly on every individual user. But the effect is the same. Platforms that want to comply need to verify who you are and how old you are before showing you restricted content. If you want to see it, you provide the data. If you don’t provide the data, you don’t get access.

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Liberals reject strengthening self-defence laws in Canada

On Monday’s Rebel Roundup livestream, David Menzies and Alexa Lavoie said the Liberals were, yet again, on the wrong side of an important issue.

“I love what Pierre Poilievre had to say after a few high-profile home invasions,” David said, recalling the Conservative leader’s pledge to “fix” self-defence laws by removing the caveat regarding “excessive force or unnecessary force, which nobody can define.”

Referring to an incident from Lindsay, Ont. where a man defended himself from an intruder armed with a crossbow, David said Canada’s current legal framework is “insane.”

Granting homeowners the right to use lethal force during a break in is “the right call,” he added.

“What are you talking about,” Alexa said in response to MP Sahota’s comments.

If someone, especially an armed criminal, enters into an individual’s private dwelling, then that person “should have the right to reply and defend myself and the people who live under my roof,” she said.

The justice system put in place by the Liberals is also releasing more dangerous offenders back onto the streets, putting ordinary citizens in at risk, Alexa continued.

“They should have the right to defend themselves,” she said, slamming politicians like Sahota for not “living in our reality.”

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Trump suggests treason charges for journalists as Iran war spins out of control

You know a war probably isn’t going well when the President starts threatening media outlets with treason charges.

This weekend, President Trump unleashed one of his infamous Truth Social rants. This one targeted the Wall Street Journal, for reporting an Iranian strike that hit five U.S. Air Force refueling planes at an air base in Saudi Arabia.

“The five U.S. Refueling Planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged, according to The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) false reporting, and others, are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies,” he wrote.

This assertion doesn’t refute any part of the reporting, as the WSJ story says the planes weren’t destroyed.

Trump’s post equates the WSJ report with AI-generated videos of U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln burning, which began spreading after the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy falsely claimed it had attacked the aircraft carrier. Outlets like the New York Times have debunked the authenticity of those videos, but Trump imagines that they have been shared by U.S. media in collusion with Iran’s government. He then suggested that these news organizations be charged with treason, which carries a maximum penalty of death.

“The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!,” wrote Trump. “The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they ‘win’ are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets.”

The President embraced the same narrative while talking to reporters aboard Air Force One. “Iran is known for a lot of fake news,” he declared. “I actually think it’s pretty criminal because our media companies, who have no credibility whatsoever, are putting out information that they know is false.”

Trump’s latest maniacal fantasy comes just days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to take away the broadcasting licenses of networks that failed to “operate in the public interest” while covering the war on Iran.

“The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves,” tweeted Carr. “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.”

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Decentralizing Defense: A $96 Guided Rocket Just Put Precision Warfare into the Hands of the People

In a world where the State spends trillions of dollars on bloated defense contracts to build “smart” weapons that often end up incinerating wedding parties or schools in the Middle East, a single individual with a 3D printer and $96 just shattered the monopoly on high-tech violence. A video, along with the plans, has recently surfaced showcasing “Project Canard,” an open-source, 3D-printed guided rocket system that recalculates its trajectory mid-air using a $5 sensor and some piano wire. The creator, operating under the GitHub handle novatic14, has essentially handed the keys to advanced surface-to-air defense to anyone with an internet connection and a spool of plastic filament.

The technical specifications of the build are a direct slap in the face to the military-industrial complex. The entire launcher and interceptor frame are printed in standard PLA and run off an off-the-shelf ESP32 microcontroller, proving that the barrier to entry for precision hardware has not just been lowered—it has been obliterated. The system even creates its own local Wi-Fi network, allowing the operator to monitor live telemetry and arm the “MANPADS” (Man-Portable Air-Defense System) prototype from a laptop. It uses a distributed camera node network to triangulate targets and update flight paths in real-time, a capability that, until about ten minutes ago, was the exclusive domain of governments with the power to tax their citizens into poverty.

Of course, the usual suspects in D.C. and the corporate press are likely already clutching their pearls, preparing the “public safety” scripts they use every time the people reclaim a sliver of their natural rights. We’ve seen this play out before with pioneers like Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed, who fought the State to a standstill over the right to share files for 3D-printed firearms. The reality is that this technology is about the decentralization of power. When a “precision weapon” costs less than a pair of designer sneakers, the era of the State using air superiority to crush dissent or occupy foreign lands is nearing its expiration date.

Indeed, the state has already begun mobilizing its legislative machinery to ensure that the “Project Canard” breakthrough remains a fleeting moment of defiance rather than a permanent shift in power. As we move through 2026, the regulatory landscape is shifting from targeting just the finished product to criminalizing the very tools and information that make decentralized defense possible. In a move that mirrors the most dystopian science fiction, lawmakers in states like California and New York are currently pushing bills that would force 3D printer manufacturers to install “firearm blocking technology” directly into the hardware.

Take California’s Assembly Bill 2047, for instance. This proposal would effectively turn every 3D printer into a government-monitored device, requiring mandatory “blueprint detection algorithms” to stop the production of “unlawful” parts. It’s not just about the plastic; it’s about the code. Under similar legislation like Colorado’s HB26-1144, the mere possession of digital instructions for a firearm or “firearm component” can now be classified as a crime if “intent to manufacture” is suspected. When a “component” can be as simple as a 3D-printed fin or a motor casing, the state has essentially granted itself the power to arrest you for having the wrong files on your hard drive.

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Russia’s Rumored Telegram Block Appears Underway As Outage Reports Surge

Reports are flooding in from across Russia that Telegram is suddenly going dark, fueling speculation that the Kremlin may already be testing a nationwide block ahead of a rumored planned crackdown next month.

“Over the last 24 hours, Telegram has effectively stopped working through some providers if you are using Russian IP addresses,” tech sector observer Vladislav Voytenko told Kommersant FM on Monday. “As for using Telegram via mobile internet, you can basically forget about it,” he added.

Russia’s Main Radio Frequency Center, an arm of media watchdog Roskomnadzor, said a surge of complaints began appearing over the weekend, with at least one-third coming from Moscow, followed by St. Petersburg and other cities spread across the country’s vast 11 time zones.

Regional media has tracked user reports on outage monitors such as Downdetector and Sboi.rf, which show complaints spiking sharply over the weekend as the app began failing across multiple regions.

Some Russian users have described the platform is barely functioning “in any form”. They complain the app won’t open, messages won’t send, and neither will photos and videos load.

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Tucker Carlson: “Throughout the West Criticizing the Netanyahu Government is Now a Crime Punishable by Imprisonment”

Tucker Carlson released his latest interview on Monday.

He invited longtime friend and fellow Israel critic Glenn Greenwald as his guest.

Tucker made this bold statement to his audience, “Throughout the West, criticizing the Netanyahu government is now a crime punishable by imprisonment.”

(You can listen to this at 1:02:10 in the video below.)

It’s not clear what he is referring to today.

Glenn Greenwald says that censorship of conservative voices in the West is not as big of threat on free speech as criticizing Israel and Jews.

This video interview comes out just days after Tucker said the CIA has been reading his text messages and is referring a criminal complaint against him.

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The FISA Surveillance Tool Is Up for Renewal, and the SAVE Act Is Riding Shotgun

Congress is about to stage one of its annual spectacles: reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Normally, this is an already messy affair, but President Trump has decided to spice things up by suggesting that Republicans attach the SAVE America Act to the must-pass FISA bill.

The result is a headache for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“Maybe you put them together, because a lot of people feel very strongly about FISA,” Trump told House Republicans at their retreat last week.

That might be the understatement of the year.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was created to let the US government collect intelligence on foreigners. In theory, it targets only non-US citizens abroad. In reality, it has become a tool for sweeping up Americans’ communications on a massive scale.

Section 702, the part now up for reauthorization, allows intelligence agencies to grab emails, texts, and calls from foreign targets and, in doing so, they routinely capture the American side of those conversations.

This incidental collection has become anything but incidental. The FBI treats Section 702 data as a domestic treasure trove, conducting millions of warrantless searches of Americans’ communications each year.

It effectively bypasses the Fourth Amendment, giving federal agencies legal cover to monitor Americans without warrants, often funneling the information into ordinary criminal investigations. FISA’s original promise of balancing security and privacy has been eroded by decades of routine overreach.

GOP leadership had been planning a clean extension, but Trump’s intervention opens the door for a faction of conservatives, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, to insist on a legislative package deal.

Luna didn’t vote to reauthorize FISA in 2024, but she and other SAVE supporters are already signaling they will use their leverage to shape the House floor debate.

Johnson likely has the votes to pass FISA with bipartisan support, but the rule vote, the procedural step determining how the floor debate proceeds, is the real landmine. Conservatives have yet to announce support, and procedural votes have long been the preferred weapon for those who want leverage without responsibility.

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Britain’s Business Registry Left Director Data Wide Open — Yet the Government Is Still Building a National Digital ID

Companies House in the UK briefly turned its own corporate register into a self-service fraud toolkit. A vulnerability in the dashboard of the UK’s official business registry let anyone access other companies’ private records by pressing the back button, no hacking required.

Directors’ home addresses, email addresses, and dates of birth were all sitting there, readable and editable by anyone who knew where to look.

Companies House is the government body where every limited company must register to legally exist. It holds the official record of who runs Britain’s businesses, including the personal details of every director. When you incorporate a company in the UK, your information goes into this register. There is no opt-out.

The timing is what makes this even more interesting. Since November 2025, all directors in the UK have been legally required to verify their identity through GOV.UK One Login to act in their roles, feeding passport scans, biometric data, and government credentials into the same Companies House infrastructure.

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