Tag: police state

Feds Storm Skid Row with a 100-Vehicle Convoy to Take Down Drug Network Operating in Tents and Storefronts

Federal agents and Los Angeles police raided Skid Row before dawn Thursday, serving dozens of warrants in a takedown of dealers supplying fentanyl, meth, cocaine, and PCP to the blocks of homeless encampments that plague downtown Los Angeles.

Authorities called the raid Operation Skid Row, and targeted more than two dozen suspected street dealers and suppliers after a three-month investigation.

The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the LAPD used phone taps, undercover officers, and drones to build the cases.

By morning, agents had arrested 28 people.

A convoy of roughly 100 law enforcement vehicles cordoned off blocks and parks around Fifth and Crocker streets, trapping dealers who had been working the sidewalks.

Investigators said the dealers were not standing on corners in the open. Some sold from a Mercedes. Some posed as homeless men living in tents that were in fact drug dens. Others used storefronts or posed as social workers and homeless-services providers.

Drugs were also stashed in single-room-occupancy units and low-income housing.

Agents seized narcotics, guns, and luxury cars.

Officials said homeless people were not the target. The warrants were for dealers, and multiple gang members are among those facing charges.

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Ohio Journalist Goes on Trial for Sending Picture of ‘Shrek’s Penis’ to GOP Lawmaker — Faces Up to Six Months in Prison

An Ohio political blogger will go on trial Thursday for allegedly sending a state lawmaker a picture of Shrek with an erect penis.

D.J. Byrnes, 39, publisher of the Ohio political newsletter The Rooster, has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor telecommunications harassment over the bizarre exchange with Republican State Sen. Jerry Cirino.

The saga began after Cirino gave up his bid to become president of the Ohio Senate.

Byrnes, a committed leftist who nicknamed Cirino the “Young Mussolini,” allegedly sent him a taunting message celebrating his political setback.

“Good to see you finally made your humiliation public, Young Mussolini. THE PATRIOTS CAUCUS sends its regards!!!!!!!!!!!” Byrnes wrote, according to court filings.

“I don’t know who this is but I am certain you are a moron,” Cirino responded.

Byrnes allegedly sent the senator a digitally altered image depicting the famous green ogre fully nude with an exposed and erect penis.

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Haiti Postpones Elections Indefinitely amid Political Instability and Gang Violence

The Provisional Electoral Council of Haiti (CEP) announced Wednesday that elections scheduled for December have been postponed indefinitely.

The statement did not indicate the exact reason for the postponement, but few Haitians expected the elections to be held on time, due to ongoing instability and rampant gang violence.

“Following consultations with political actors and in view of the adoption, in the Council of Ministers, on October 5, 2026, of the amendments made to the Electoral Decree of June 2, 2026, certain deadlines of the electoral process are being rescheduled,” the CEP said.

“This measure is intended in particular to allow candidates and the political structures concerned to have the necessary time to complete the formalities required under the legal and regulatory framework in force,” the statement added.

The CEP did not provide an estimated date for rescheduled elections, but said the plan would be “made public as soon as possible,” once the “technical and operational requirements of the process, as well as the conditions necessary for the proper conduct of the various stages” have been addressed.

Haiti has not held elections since 2016. The winner of the 2016 presidential election, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated at his home in July 2021. Executive power was then taken by Prime Minister Ariel Henry, until he was driven out of Haiti by gangsters and resigned under pressure in April 2024.

The government was subsequently run by a nine-member presidential transition council, which was wracked by infighting and allegations of corruption, while gang violence grew steadily worse. The council was dissolved in February 2026, leaving interim Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime with sole executive authority.

An agreement reached in April led to elections being scheduled for December 13, with a cutoff date of October 9 for candidate registration and other documentation to be completed. The cutoff date was extended to October 31 before the CEP canceled the election entirely.

In addition to the constant threat of violence in the streets, the election plan was assailed by various political factions in Haiti as unfair, arbitrary, or rigged. Detractors of Fils-Aime accused the interim prime minister of plotting to rig the election in favor of himself and his cronies.

A member of the CEP told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that December 13 “no longer stands” as the election date, and the council is “working on a new timetable.”

The council member said that only 769,000 voters have been registered since July, far short of the 3-4 million voters needed to hold a reasonably comprehensive national election.

Haitians have been pessimistic about the election schedule for months. The Miami Herald found considerable skepticism among the populace in September, as voter registration lagged far behind schedule, the CEP reshuffled its leadership for the third time in two years, and international observers said it would be nearly impossible to hold a fair election amid the violent chaos of gang-infested Haiti.

The Miami Herald noted that large swaths of Haiti were completely inaccessible to election workers because they are controlled by heavily armed gangs, and gang violence has turned nearly 1.5 million Haitians into Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) – refugees in their own country who would have a very difficult time establishing residency or getting registered to vote.

No one who talked to the Herald seriously expected Haiti’s notoriously inaccurate voter rolls to be cleaned up in time for a December election.

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New York Teen Forced Out of School Again After 3 More Doctors Argue Vaccines Would Harm Her

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Doe is back in court seeking emergency federal court intervention so she can stay in school after three more doctors said the teen shouldn’t get the last two vaccines the state requires for school attendance.

The three medical opinions add to the seven the school district has received over the last two years. In each case, doctors argued that Sarah qualifies for a medical exemption. They said forcing Sarah to get the vaccines would put her already precarious health at increased risk.

In an emergency motion filed late last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Sarah and her mother Jane Doe asked for a temporary restraining order allowing the high school senior to attend school pending the district’s review of a new medical exemption request relating to a third hepatitis B (Hep B) shot and the meningococcal vaccine.

Children’s Health Defense is funding Sarah’s case.

The emergency motion followed a Sept. 23 ruling by U.S. District Judge Gary Brown. Brown declined to extend Sarah’s previous medical exemption, for the 2024-2025 school year, to the current school year. The district expelled Sarah from school the next day, Sept. 24.

A few days later, the district readmitted Sarah pending the outcome of a blood test, ordered by her doctor, to determine if she has hepatitis B titers from the first two shots she received, according to her attorneys.

However, Sarah still needed a medical exemption from the meningococcal vaccine — even though the district didn’t require proof of meningococcal vaccination for any student until Sept. 30. Many states don’t require this vaccine for secondary school.

At the time, Sarah had a medical exemption request pending from Dr. Michael Miller, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who also concluded that she shouldn’t be vaccinated.

On Sept. 28, the district denied Miller’s exemption request, according to court documents, citing three unsuccessful attempts by its reviewing physician to reach him by telephone.

According to Sarah and her mother, the court gave no other reason for denying Miller’s request. They said the school never sent Miller a HIPAA form, which he would need in order to share Sarah’s medical information with the district’s reviewing physician.

School officials notified Sarah’s family that as of Oct. 1, they again would not allow her to attend school unless she provided proof of vaccination or a valid medical exemption.

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New Mexico Found a Way to Fine Platforms for Speech It Didn’t Delete

A civil jury has found Meta liable for violating New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, and now the judge is being asked to order the company to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion.

At a hearing on October 1 in Santa Fe, special prosecutor Randi McGinn asked Judge Francis Mathew of the First Judicial District Court to order Meta to pay this amount, while a lawyer for the social media giant said such a penalty would be “an astronomical” one, violating “a host of constitutional provisions.”

Meta is being punished for making false statements about user privacy, and also for not removing “hate speech” and “misinformation” fast enough.

The verdict was delivered on September 25, finding Meta had made 26 false or misleading statements, resulting in nearly 43.9 million violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act.

This would translate to a maximum of $5,000 per violation, or $219 billion in all – more than the $206 billion the tobacco industry had to pay in a settlement in 1998. The state asked for about 20% of this amount.

The number of violations was arrived at by counting the number of people in New Mexico, and the number of Facebook users in the state, and then multiplying these numbers by the number of times Meta made false statements in news outlets and on its own platforms.

The state had to show only that harm was likely, not that it actually occurred.

Meta is being punished for lying about how it handled user data, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw a third party harvest data from about 87 million profiles. The company is also being punished for not removing “hate speech” and “misinformation” fast enough – and the number of violations in this category is about a quarter of the total.

The New Mexico case is not the only one where Meta is being forced to pay up – in March, a Santa Fe jury ordered it to pay $375 million in a case involving child safety on Facebook and Instagram, and in August, the judge in that case added another $567 million for a youth mental health fund.

In August, 47 states reached a settlement with Meta, along with other social media companies, that will see them pay $17 billion. Judge Mathew mentioned this during the October 1 hearing, saying that due process suggests he should opt for a much lower amount than what the state of New Mexico is asking for.

During the hearing, Meta’s lawyer Matt Nicholson described the case as “about 26 statements over 11 years” and said that the state “made absolutely no showing that anyone in the state of New Mexico ever saw them, relied on them or were harmed by them in any way.”

McGinn countered that “the one thing you didn’t hear from counsel is an apology.”

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DOJ Moves to Strip Citizenship from Criminals in ‘Largest Denaturalization Effort in Modern History’

The Department of Justice announced on Monday that it had filed denaturalization actions against 40 people accused of serious crimes or acting as agents for foreign governments.

The actions were filed in various U.S. district courts, with one individual being accused of committing aggravated sodomy against a special needs man, according to a Justice Department news release.

The DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs said the complaints, filed between Aug. 21 and Oct. 2, 2026, amount to “the largest volume of complaints submitted in a single period under the Trump administration.”

“Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized U.S. citizen’s citizenship may be revoked, and certificate of naturalization canceled, if the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation,” the release noted.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history.”

“From an individual convicted of espionage to others convicted of sexual offenses against minors, these defendants concealed critical facts from the U.S. government and represent serious criminal offenders,” he continued.

Blanche added, “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice will continue to employ the denaturalization process to maintain our national security and protect the American people.”

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Doctor suspended over ivermectin importation, Medsafe threats and vaccine claims

A doctor who tried to import 2000 unapproved Covid-19 treatment tablets, threatened health officials, and sent alarmist vaccine claims to a media executive has been suspended from practice.

Timaru general practitioner Dr Tracy Anne Chandler was suspended for three months by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal after it found her guilty of professional misconduct across nine allegations.

The Tribunal found Chandler committed malpractice and negligence during the Covid-19 pandemic between August 2021 and August 2022.

Her conduct included attempting to bulk-import 2000 tablets of unapproved ivermectin from India without specific patients in mind, while telling Medsafe she needed them for “an epidemic of patients with parasites unresponsive to usual treatments”.

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New Report Confirms Biden’s DOJ Did Target Parents Who Spoke Out At School Board Meetings

The Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group released a report Monday concluding that former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4, 2021 school board memo grew out of pressure from the Biden White House and turned the department’s law enforcement powers on parents.

The report describes how DOJ officials under President Joe Biden looked for ways to bring federal cases against parents and protesters who addressed school boards and school officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also contains the Working Group’s formal acknowledgment that the prior administration’s actions “chilled the exercise of parental and free speech rights, parents who lawfully exercised their parental rights and freedom of speech were often targeted by members of the educational establishment.”

Garland addressed the memo to the FBI director, the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, the director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, and U.S. attorneys nationwide. The memo told its recipients that “in recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence,” even though, according to the report, he had seen very little evidence of actual violence or violent threats against school administrators or at school board meetings when he signed it.

The Working Group traces the memo’s ideological origin to a letter the National School Boards Association sent to Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, five days before Garland acted. That letter asked the federal government to consider that “these heinous actions” “could be equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Records cited in the report show that leadership at the Biden White House and the DOJ pressed for a memo that would locate a federal “hook” for prosecuting parents and charging protesters with federal crimes.

“Among the most egregious findings, exhibits show that individuals in the Biden White House and Attorney General Garland’s advisors wanted to involve federal law enforcement and prosecutors in matters involving parents and school boards,” a DOJ press release explains.

Further, the Memo established a task force to find federal enforcement options for investigating and prosecuting parents, and the FBI opened 25 “Guardian assessments” on parents. One FBI whistleblower disclosed that a mother was investigated because she “is a gun owner” and belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group.”

Internal communications and investigative records show that more than a dozen DOJ and FBI personnel raised concerns about the memo and its directive. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” one employee wrote. Another wrote that “they might as well rename the damn thing the Anti-MAGA Task Force.” Several of the objections centered on the law. One staffer warned that the directive was “challenging from a First Amendment perspective,” and another said it placed the department on “potentially dangerous ground.” Other employees focused on how the directive would reflect on the department. One wrote that the memo “look[s] political.” Another called it “a partisan exercise aimed at those who do not support the Administration,” and a third cautioned that it would “tarnish reputation as an apolitical law enforcer.” One described the effort as “very messy and political.” Shorter reactions in the record include “ridiculous,” “horrible,” and “confusing.”

Emails cited in the report show that Garland issued the memo over those objections and that White House officials influenced his decision.

The department announced a series of remedial steps alongside the findings. Parents and other school board meeting participants who became subjects or targets of a Guardian assessment because of the memo will have the opportunity to review their assessment. The FBI has closed or discontinued most of those files, and each one will now carry a disclaimer stating that the memo raised serious constitutional concerns and that readers should treat the assessment with caution.

The DOJ will also review the file of every person investigated under the memo. Where reviewers identify a constitutional violation, the department will issue a formal apology and adopt internal controls intended to prevent a recurrence.

Leaders of the DOJ and the Department of Education sent letters on parental rights to the attorneys general of all 50 states. The department said Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump administration have made securing parental and First Amendment rights a top priority.

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UK Police Arrest 15-Year-Old Over Posts Mocking Politician

Good news for those in the UK who were worried that their country’s police might have been getting a little too comfortable with the idea of going after people for what they say online.

No such luck.

We now learn that four officers, from the West Midlands force, were dispatched to the home of a 15-year-old, to arrest him. And this was no dawn raid to take in some dangerous terrorist suspect – it was a 15-year-old boy who had been making fun of a local councillor’s attire.

And the police seized his phone and laptop.

The whole thing started when the teenager, a Reform UK party activist, posted on Facebook about Conservative councillor Simon Bennett’s conduct and dress at council meetings in Wolverhampton.

Bennett reported the teenager to the police, saying that the posts were “quite personal about my appearance.”

One of the posts compared Bennett’s appearance to that of a “rent boy.” Another one said, “Why do some councillors rock up at a scrutiny committee in shorts and t-shirt in trainers? So unprofessional.”

And then there was one where the teenager Photoshopped rabbit ears onto a picture of Bennett, with the comment, “Nibble… nibble… crunch… crunch Can you hear it? That’s the sound of a rabbit devouring the last remaining shreds of Wolverhampton Conservatives’ credibility.”

Half asleep when the police came for him, the boy recalls the officers telling him that the arrest was for harassment, malicious communications, or a hate crime – or some mix of these. One officer said it was “to do with social media.”

The teenager, who has only been identified as Fraser, was taken in for questioning, and after that, he was bailed and banned from attending council meetings in Wolverhampton.

The police have not explained why four officers were needed to make the arrest.

“The police have not arrested for no reason,” he said. “There were a number of posts that targeted me…It was unpleasant and I was targeted by a child I had no way of dealing with.”

And the councillor also revealed that he had asked the council for advice on what to do, “and they thought it best to report it to the police.”

The police, in turn, “thought it merited arresting him,” Bennett said.

The Free Speech Union has taken up the case and intends to sue the police for “wrongful arrest” and “false imprisonment.”

Meanwhile, the group’s lawyers have written to the police to say that “plainly there has been no offence and the arrest and investigation represent an egregious interference with his rights.”

Fraser, who says he was more active online in criticizing the local Labour Party (which runs the council) than the Conservatives, is still waiting to learn if he will be charged.

This latest incident may just take the cake. Four officers, a laptop seized, and a teenager hauled off – for making fun of a councillor’s outfit. And the police wonder why they are losing the trust of the public.

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Retired Police Officer Convicted and Fined Over £1,000 for Sharing Bacon Meme About Child Marriage — Warns ‘Blasphemy Law Is Back’

Britain’s relentless crackdown on so-called “offensive” speech has produced yet another astonishing criminal conviction, this time against a retired police officer who spent nearly three decades serving the public.

Stephen Gray, 65, served nearly 30 years with Cleveland Police. He and his wife Alex, 62, have fostered children. None of that mattered once a neighbor he was already feuding with over a sewage pipe tipped off police about two posts Gray had reshared.

According to The Telegraph and the Free Speech Union, Gray was interviewed under caution, the Crown Prosecution Service initially decided there was no realistic prospect of conviction, and the neighbor then used the Victims’ Right to Review scheme to force the case back on. The neighbor was not Muslim.

At Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court in April 2026, District Judge Steven Hood split the difference in the way only two-tier Britain can.

One post, “time for mass deportation,” paired with a caption about a supposed “12-year-old Mohammed” who wanted donors to move him from a three-star hotel to a five-star hotel with a better halal menu, free Wi-Fi, Sky, and a location nearer a girls’ school, was treated as politics.

The judge said it concerned an issue already debated in Parliament and acquitted Gray.

The second post was the one that counted. It showed a rasher of bacon next to a man in a turban, with the caption: “Fun facts about bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”

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