Tag: police state

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“Kids Off Social Media Act” Opens the Door to Digital ID by Default

Congress is once again stepping into the role of digital caretaker, this time through the Kids Off Social Media Act, with a proposal from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna that seeks to impose federal rules on how young people interact with the world.

The house companion bill (to go along with the senate bill) attempts to set national limits on who can hold social media accounts, how platforms may structure their systems, and what kinds of data they are allowed to use when dealing with children and teenagers.

Framed as a response to growing parental concern, the legislation reflects a broader push to regulate online spaces through age-based access and design mandates rather than direct content rules.

The proposal promises restraint while quietly expanding Washington’s reach into the architecture of online speech. Backers of the bill will insist it targets corporate behavior rather than expression itself. The bill’s mechanics tell a more complicated story.

The bill is the result of a brief but telling legislative evolution. Early versions circulated in 2024 were framed as extensions of existing child privacy rules rather than participation bans. Those drafts focused on limiting data collection, restricting targeted advertising to minors, and discouraging algorithmic amplification, while avoiding hard access restrictions or explicit age enforcement mandates.

That posture shifted as the bill gained bipartisan backing. By late 2024, lawmakers increasingly treated social media as an inherently unsafe environment for children rather than a service in need of reform. When the bill was reintroduced in January 2025, it reflected that change. The new version imposed a categorical ban on accounts for users under 13, restricted recommendation systems for users under 17, and strengthened enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, with Senate sponsorship led by Ted Cruz and Brian Schatz.

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Congress Suspects ATF Has Gun Registry With 1.1 Billion Records

A group of 27 members of Congress, led by Representative Michael Cloud of Texas are sounding the alarm on the expansion of ATF’s illegal registry of guns and gun owners.

According to a recently released letter, addressed to ATF Deputy Director Robert Cedaka, ATF has not responded to a previous inquiry regarding the expansion of the registry. These Congressmen are concerned that ATF may now have over a billion records in their registry.

Originally, in 2021, Gun Owners of America revealed that the ATF was “processing” over 54.7 million “out-of-business records” per year.

Following this revelation, a Congressional investigation was started. This investigation uncovered the shocking reality that ATF had over 920 million gun registration records in a centralized, searchable, digital database- in total violation of federal law.

In 1986, Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, or FOPA. A portion of this act bans the federal government from ever keeping a searchable database of gun owners.

The exact text of the law reads like this:

No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.

Every tyrannical government on earth has first disarmed its population before committing terrible atrocities upon them.

From Nazi Germany to Communist Russia, to even as recent as Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, once populations are disarmed the Government is free to do as it pleases, often at the great peril to its own citizens.

Knowing this, a provision banning the US Government from creating a centralized registry was placed into the Firearm Owners Protection Act.

But the bureaucrats at ATF didn’t like that and decided to go around the law and create a registry anyway.

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Florida Officials Miss Counting 54,000+ Signatures for Cannabis Legalization Petition

Florida election officials appear to have short-changed an adult-use cannabis legalization campaign by more than 54,000 valid signatures.

Local election officials from roughly half of Florida’s 67 counties validated more signatures for Smart & Safe Florida’s initiative petition than what state officials gave those counties credit for, according to a Cannabis Business Times analysis of Florida’s county supervisors of elections’ websites.

The state-versus-county discrepancies for valid signature tallies come after Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd’s office announced Feb. 1 that Smart & Safe Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment to allow those 21 and older to access cannabis failed to meet the signature requirements for placement on the 2026 General Election ballot.

According to the Florida Division of Elections’ website, Smart & Safe Florida filed 783,592 valid signatures ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline, coming 96,470 signatures short of the 880,062 needed to qualify for the ballot.

However, with the extra 54,000-plus signatures reported by local election officials and another 70,646 disqualified signatures being contested in court, Smart & Safe Florida could overcome that shortfall (more on the lawsuit below).

Smart & Safe Florida organizers challenged the state’s valid signature tally on Feb. 1, with a campaign spokesperson telling Florida Politics that the Division of Elections’ website doesn’t match what the 67 county supervisors of elections verified at the local level.

“We believe the declaration by the secretary of state is premature, as the final and complete county-by-county totals for validated petitions are not yet reported,” the spokesperson said. “We submitted over 1.4 million signatures and believe when they are all counted, we will have more than enough to make the ballot.”

The 67 county supervisors of elections’ websites now show that local officials validated more than 833,000 signatures and deemed roughly 900,000 invalid, meaning they reviewed more than 1.7 million signatures from Smart & Safe Florida.

At the time of Byrd’s Feb. 1 declaration that the campaign failed, some county supervisors of elections had yet to post signature tallies from their final week’s reporting periods.

Under Florida Statute Section 100.371(15), Byrd is responsible for “the purely ministerial duty of calculating the total number of verified signatures,” based on valid counts from the 67 supervisors of elections, Leon County Judge Jonathan E. Sjostrom ruled last month.

This prompted CBT’s 67-county analysis.

Nearly 48,000 of the 54,000 valid signatures from county websites that were not reflected in the state’s tally came from five counties: Broward, Seminole, Pinellas, Polk and Alachua.

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New Mexico Dems Could Pass Broadest Gun Ban in U.S. This Week

For the past several years, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has been demanding the Democrat-controlled legislature deliver an “assault weapon” ban to her desk, and each and every session her fellow Democrats have declined to do so. In Grisham’s last year in office, though, Democrats are poised to deliver exactly what she wants; a bill that would take almost every semi-automatic long gun off the market in the Land of Enchantment.

New Mexico is in the middle of a 30-day session that’s supposed to be limited to budgetary issues only. Instead, Democrats are pushing a number of policy proposals, including SB 17, which would ban the sale and transfer of every gas-operated centerfire rifle that can accept a detachable magazine (along with those guns that have fixed magazine capacity of more than ten rounds), detachable magazines that can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition, and .50 BMG rifles, along with imposing a host of new regulations and restrictions on federally licensed firearms retailers. 

On Saturday afternoon the state Senate approved SB 17 along mostly party lines and sent the constitutional abomination on to the House, where it could come up for a vote as early as this week. 

“We have data that shows a lot of the gun crime in New Mexico is coming from guns sold at our local dealers, and we want the state to be able to also regulate and ensure those sales at our gun dealers here are responsible, are not straw purchases, and are happening as they should,” said state Sen. Heather Berghmans.

She says it would require gun shops to have more security measures, more training, keep thorough reports of sales and inventory, and their employees must be 21 years or older.

Yes, most guns used in crimes were originally sold by an FFL. That doesn’t mean, however, that New Mexico gun stores are doing anything wrong. That figure accounts for guns that are stolen or given to criminals by family and friends, along with straw purchases (which also can and do take place without the willing involvement of FFLs). 

Imposting these new requirements on FFL’s isn’t about stopping criminals from getting ahold of guns. It’s about making the process of being a gun store owner more difficult to navigate, more expensive to conduct business, and more legally dangerous to help people exercise a fundamental civil right. 

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EU Law Could Extend Scanning of Private Messages Until 2027

The European Parliament is considering another extension of Chat Control 1.0, the “temporary” exemption that allows communications providers to scan private messages (under the premise of preventing child abuse) despite the protections of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive.

A draft report presented by rapporteur Birgit Sippel (S&D) would prolong the derogation until April 3, 2027.

At first glance, the proposal appears to roll back some of the most controversial elements of Chat Control. Text message scanning and automated analysis of previously unknown images would be explicitly excluded. Supporters have framed this as a narrowing of scope.

However, the core mechanism of Chat Control remains untouched.

The draft continues to permit mass hash scanning of private communications for so-called “known” material.

According to former MEP and digital rights activist Patrick Breyer, approximately 99 percent of all reports generated under Chat Control 1.0 originate from hash-based detection.

Almost all of those reports come from a single company, Meta, which already limits its scanning to known material only. Under the new proposal, Meta’s practices would remain fully authorized.

As a result, the draft would not meaningfully reduce the volume, scope, or nature of surveillance. The machinery keeps running, with a few of its most visibly controversial attachments removed.

Hash scanning is often portrayed as precise and reliable. The evidence points in the opposite direction.

First, the technology is incapable of understanding context or intent. Hash databases are largely built using US legal definitions of illegality, which do not map cleanly onto the criminal law of EU Member States.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) reports that close to half of all chat control reports are criminally irrelevant.

Each false positive still requires assessment, documentation, and follow-up. Investigators are forced to triage noise rather than pursue complex cases involving production, coercion, and organized abuse.

The strategic weakness is compounded by a simple reality. Offenders adapt. As more services adopt end-to-end encryption, abusers migrate accordingly. Since 2022, the number of chat-based reports sent to police has fallen by roughly 50 percent, not because abuse has declined, but because scanning has become easier to evade.

“Both children and adults deserve a paradigm shift in online child protection, not token measures,” Breyer said in a statement to Reclaim The Net.

“Whether looking for ‘known’ or ‘unknown’ content, the principle remains: the post office cannot simply open and scan every letter at random. Searching only for known images fails to stop ongoing abuse or rescue victims.”

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