Tag: police state

Federal Judge Rules Houston Violated First Amendment Rights of Food Not Bombs Activists

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the city of Houston violated the First Amendment when it tried to stop activists from giving away free food outside a downtown library and issued more than 100 tickets to them.

U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Texas Andrew S. Hanen found that Houston’s enforcement of an ordinance prohibiting charitable food giveaways in public was unconstitutional as applied to the Houston chapter of Food Not Bombs (FNBH), a volunteer group that distributes free food in cities worldwide.

The ruling is the latest in a series of legal battles between Food Not Bombs chapters across the country—who argue that feeding the needy is expressive conduct under the First Amendment—and city officials, who say that unpermitted food distribution creates safety, liability, and litter problems.

“This week’s ruling confirms what we have known all along: feeding our neighbors should not be a crime,” Randy Hiroshige, a staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a press release. “In the face of the City’s cruel crackdown on charitable feeding, Food Not Bombs Houston had the courage to continue sharing its message and sharing meals, and we are proud to see that courage vindicated today.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project filed a First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of the FNBH in 2024, a year after Houston police started issuing citations to FNBH members for violating a 2012 ordinance that outlaws providing free food to more than five people “in need” at outdoor locations without permission. The suit argued that Houston’s anti–food sharing ordinance was unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to the FNBH by imposing an invalid prior restraint on the activists’ First Amendment rights.

FNBH activists had operated at a downtown public park for more than a decade without incident—until 2023, when Houston officials wanted the FNBH to move to a city-approved parking lot for all homeless services. The activists insisted they had a First Amendment right to give out free food in public, with or without the city’s permission. Houston police ultimately issued 111 citations for violating the ordinance.

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Brazil arrests woman over disputed remarks about trans colleague, citing racism law

Military Police in Indaial, Santa Catarina, Brazil, arrested a 48-year-old woman at her workplace on Monday, November 2, on suspicion of transphobia, after a 28-year-old supervisor who identifies as a woman complained about remarks concerning use of the women’s bathroom.

Officers gave her “voz de prisão” (a verbal order of arrest) around 7 a.m. in the Benedito neighbourhood and took her to the Civil Police in Blumenau. What she said is in dispute.

The two sides disagree on what was said. According to the supervisor, the woman called the colleague “um homem vestido de mulher” (our translation: “a man dressed as a woman”). According to the woman, she “só disse que a líder era uma pessoa transgênero” (our translation: “only said the leader was a transgender person”).

The headline of local station RC FM quotes the words “Você não deveria estar aqui” (our translation: “You should not be here”). The page does not say who actually spoke them.

The case was registered “em tese” (provisionally) as transphobia under Brazil’s racism law. The Supreme Federal Court extended that law to homophobia and transphobia in 2019, by 8 votes to 3.

Article 20 of the law sets a penalty of “reclusão de um a três anos e multa” (our translation: one to three years’ imprisonment and a fine) for practising, inducing or inciting discrimination or prejudice.

One outlet, Portal RBV, gives a range of one to five years. The law’s text says one to three.

An arrest is not a conviction.

Reduxx, an English-language outlet, also reported the case. Witnesses reportedly declined to give statements, and no camera footage was reported.

No officer or police chief is named in any report, and the person who decided to record the case as transphobia has not been identified.

It is also not known whether she has been released, or whether a formal arrest in the act (flagrante) was recorded. One outlet says she was arrested “em flagrante,” and others do not use the term.

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OH GOODY: Rep. Jamie Raskin Already Talking About Creating a National GUN REGISTRY

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin is apparently going to be the chair of the House Judiciary Committee when Dems take power in January and he is already talking about creating a national gun registry.

There’s only one reason why he and other Democrats would want to do that, and it has nothing to do with protecting your Constitutional rights.

These people are not even in power yet and they are already salivating about all of their pet issues.

From the Baltimore Banner:

As chair, Raskin said his priorities would include legislation requiring background checks on private gun sales, not just purchases from licensed dealers. Republicans have argued that such bills are unnecessarily restrictive on hobbyists and people selling firearms to their friends or from their personal collections.

Raskin also said legislation is needed to increase scrutiny of antitrust settlements, which he accuses the Trump administration of using in a “pay-to-play” system that rewards politically connected corporations.

In the wake of their victories, it’s in Democrats’ best interest to “focus very heavily on getting some visible things done,” said Roger Hartley, a professor at the University of Baltimore College of Public Affairs. “And then very smartly pick the right battles to hold the administration accountable — to show off what damage they did and then repair it.”

Democrats told voters they were all about lowering prices. They lied.

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What Has the Government Done to Our Freedoms?

Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? We pay its taxes, obey its laws and regulations, finance its wars and submit to its surveillance. We are told that all of this is necessary for personal safety, collective prosperity and national security. Yet the government has become totalitarian while individuals have become powerless.

The very institution established to protect our natural rights has become our greatest threat.

The Fourth Amendment protects the right to privacy by prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and requiring judicial warrants supported by probable cause. Yet the National Security Agency has developed a surveillance apparatus capable of intercepting and examining all electronic communications traveling through the fiber-optic cables that carry the world’s internet traffic.

The NSA literally captures every keystroke and telephonic conversation of every person in America. It subjects Americans who are suspected of absolutely nothing to continuous surveillance. The distinction between collecting information first and examining it later offers little comfort to someone whose private life has become government property.

Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is a natural right protected by the Constitution. The burden belongs to government to establish probable cause before invading the privacy of an individual, not to its victims to demonstrate afterward why they deserved privacy before the government stole it.

And the loss of privacy produces fear. People who believe their conversations, correspondence, internet searches, medical, legal and banking records, and political associations are being monitored become less willing to be candid. They hesitate before criticizing or challenging government officials, or associating with controversial organizations. They begin self-censorship.

This is how surveillance destroys freedom without ever having to prosecute anyone.

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Biden’s COVID Censorship Machinery ‘Built to Last,’ New Documents Show

The Biden administration’s surgeon general created a “misinformation tiger team” to place “maximum pressure” on social media platforms to censor COVID-19 “misinformation.”

But newly surfaced documents show that the team also had bigger plans: establish a permanent censorship apparatus targeting health and medical “misinformation.”

The documents, published last month by the Daily Caller News Foundation, show that former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s team developed COVID-19 talking points for Murthy, which advised him to “avoid” discussing concerns about vaccine safety or the regulatory process for rolling out the vaccines to the public.

The talking points also included suggesting that the unvaccinated “present problems” for themselves, family members and colleagues, and advising Murthy to present the COVID-19 shots as the only public health intervention that would “stop the spread.”

Murthy’s team also instructed him to respond to questions about the censorship of online content questioning COVID-19 vaccines, mandates and lockdowns as the “opposite” of “cancel culture.” The team told Murthy to tell the public that removing “misinformation” would give people unfettered access to “science and evidence-based health information.”

Federal government’s censorship ‘machinery was built to last’

The documents were obtained in 2021 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Protect the Public’s Trust, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

The Daily Caller described the revelations as an example of the Biden administration’s “Censorship-Industrial Complex” — one with “grander ambitions than controlling just what Americans said about COVID-19.”

“These documents show an administration consumed by its campaign against what it termed ‘misinformation,’ potentially at the expense of other priorities, and intent on controlling what Americans could say,” said Alexa Moutevelis, communications director for Protect the Public’s Trust, in a statement to the Daily Caller.

Naomi Wolf, Ph.D., CEO of DailyClout and author of “The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity,” said it is “chilling to see how systematically and with what bureaucratic smugness the official leaders of ‘the science’ and of ‘public health’ were willing to lie to the public” and suspend Americans’ First Amendment rights.

Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo, said the documents show that “COVID-19 was the test run” and that the federal government’s censorship “machinery was built to last” beyond the Biden administration’s term in office.

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Americans Lost Key Medical Freedom Rights During Pandemic, as Courts Quietly Dismantled Constitution

During the pandemic, government officials and the courts quietly dismantled the U.S. Constitution, stripping Americans of key constitutional protections, according to Florida resident Brian Ward.

In a 29-page letter to Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), Ward said that through a series of legal rulings and government actions related to COVID-19 mandates, Americans may have lost the ability to refuse medical interventions, protect their private biomedical information and seek justice when their rights are violated.

Ward accused the courts of nullifying one of the Constitution’s most fundamental protections — the right to due process — and modifying the Constitution without a formal amendment.

Ward’s accusations stem in part from a lawsuit he filed in July 2025 against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and then-FDA Commissioner Martin Makary.

Ward challenged 21 C.F.R. Section 50.22, an FDA rule that allows certain clinical investigations to proceed without participants’ informed consent. He argued that the rule violated his constitutional rights to bodily autonomy and due process and his right to be free from involuntary servitude.

The court dismissed the lawsuit, finding that Ward lacked standing to bring the claims.

On a recent episode of the “DarkHorse Podcast,” hosts Bret Weinstein, Ph.D., and Heather Heying, Ph.D., discussed Ward’s argument and why its implications extend far beyond COVID-19 or vaccine mandates.

“What Mr. Ward is advancing here is a very exhaustive discussion of the way in which our rights have been substantially altered,” Weinstein said. “He argues that, effectively, the Constitution is modified without the process that is supposed to be required to modify the Constitution.”

At the center of Ward’s argument is the due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th Amendments, which protect Americans from government actions that deprive them of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Weinstein explained the principle in simple terms: “The upshot is that they can’t just take stuff from you.”

In his letter, Ward argues that court rulings have eroded that protection, allowing government officials to override individual rights while leaving people with little recourse. Ward copied Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others on the letter addressed to Moody.

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The Politics of Denial: When Americans Stop Seeing the Warning Signs

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live

The spectacle of public executions. Deadly military strikes on foreign countries. Innocent civilian lives lost to war. Aggressive ICE raids. Government officials accused of using their powers to intimidate political opponents. Public office increasingly entangled with private financial interests.  Government leaders who glorify violence, spew hatred, stir up racial prejudice, provoke civil unrest, and stoke discontent.

This is what it looks like when a nation loses its way.

When cruelty is mistaken for courage, vengeance for justice, and the taking of human life for a demonstration of strength.

When government officials tell you not to believe your own eyes and ears about the state of the world around you, when they insist that the truth is a lie and the lie is truth, you’ve stumbled into a dystopian reality in which, as John Lennon rightly concluded, the government is “being run by maniacs for maniacal ends.”

When so-called Christians and self-professed defenders of morality insist that we must accept the lesser of two evils based on exaggerated fears of what might happen if their political opponents gain power, rather than confront the abuses unfolding before our eyes, remember this: the lesser of two evils is still evil.

This is not simply about Donald Trump.

The machinery of the American police state has been assembled over decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Presidents have expanded executive authority, waged undeclared wars, authorized drone killings, built surveillance networks, militarized domestic policing, and invoked national security to justify extraordinary powers.

What makes the present moment so troubling is the extent to which the public is encouraged to accept increasingly aggressive exercises of government power as necessary demonstrations of strength and resolve.

The Constitution was never intended to protect only the innocent, the popular, the patriotic, or the politically acceptable. Its restraints on government power matter most when the government is dealing with people whom society has already condemned.

Yet what happens when the public becomes so accustomed to government overreach, corruption and brutality that it no longer recognizes them as warning signs? What becomes of a constitutional republic when its leaders and citizens stop asking whether government actions are lawful, justified or necessary, and concern themselves only with whether those actions punish their enemies, advance their political interests or preserve their sense of security?

We are witnessing a political culture in which demanding due process for an accused criminal is treated as defending criminality, questioning a military strike is equated with sympathy for the enemy, and opposing government cruelty is portrayed as weakness.

The government doesn’t have to abolish the Constitution outright when it can persuade the public that certain people should no longer be entitled to its protections.

That is how constitutional rights cease to be rights at all and become privileges granted or withdrawn at the government’s discretion.

And that is how a population becomes conditioned to accept the unacceptable.

We’re living in two worlds.

There’s the world we see—or are made to see—and then there’s the one we sense and occasionally catch a glimpse of, which bears little resemblance to the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by those in power and amplified through an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from the reality of a nation where economic inequality persists, government power continues to expand, and freedom is increasingly subjected to the demands of surveillance, security and control.

All is not as it seems.

Monsters with human faces walk among us.

Some of them wield extraordinary government power.

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Charges dropped against Pinellas deputy who ran 381 ALPR inquiries on woman

Prosecutors say they are dropping charges against a disgraced Pinellas County deputy after they found that Florida law does not support criminal charges for his reported conduct.

In a September press conference, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Karl Gwynne, 57, used the agency’s automated license plate reader database to run 381 searches for one license plate, 207 of which were made while off duty.

The vehicle was registered to a 35-year-old woman whom Gwynne arrested in 2010 and had reconnected with through social media in 2024. Gwynne initially told detectives he repeatedly searched her license plate for official purposes, but eventually admitted that she had rejected his romantic advances.

Gwynne was arrested and charged with official misconduct and four counts of accessing a computer network or electronic device without authority.

However, the State Attorney’s Office for the Sixth Judicial Circuit filed a No Information on Oct. 30, saying the current Florida Statutory provisions do not address Gwynne’s reported conduct.

According to the Florida Senate’s website, a person commits an offense against users of electronic devices without authorization when they access the device knowing it is unauthorized, or their manner of use exceeds authorization.

The court document said the state attorney’s office will seek to have the legislature “correct this situation” in the next legislative session, which is scheduled to begin in 2027.

In a Thursday press conference announcing the arrest of a deputy who allegedly used official systems to track his estranged wife, Gualtieri commented on the recent developments in Gwynne’s case.

The sheriff said he was working with the state attorney’s office on Gwynne’s case, noting “disagreements about interpreting the elements of the statute,” but saying he believed they could work through it.

“They filed that No Information last Friday on Gwynne; I wouldn’t have arrested Scott today unless I knew that the elements had been established,” Gualtieri told reporters.

The sheriff also said the state attorney’s office could charge Gwynne a second time.

“Just because they filed a No Information doesn’t mean that they can’t file an Information,” Gualtieri said. “They’re looking at it, and I’m comfortable that it’ll get to the right place.”

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45 Attorneys General Urgently Want Congress to Push Platforms Toward Age Checks

A bipartisan group of 45 attorneys general from 42 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands have asked Congress to pass the Senate’s Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) censorship law, and make sure the bill’s duty of care provision is included.

The letter, sent on November 3 and announced by Hawaii on November 4, was signed by the attorneys general of these 45 US jurisdictions, led by Hawaii’s Anne Lopez, Ohio’s Andy Wilson, Tennessee’s Jonathan Skrmetti, and Connecticut’s William Tong.

The same group, although smaller by five at the time, sent a similar letter to Congress in February, when 40 attorneys general urged Congress to pass the Senate version of KOSA, again, with its duty of care in place.

We have been tracking the progress of KOSA, and explained that the duty of care makes social media platforms responsible for shielding minors from content that a regulator decides is harmful, which in reality pressures sites to censor lawful speech to avoid legal action.

As for the House version, it makes everyone, regardless of age, prove it to social media companies.

The letter now makes the case for the bill, S. 1748, as a way to protect children from online harm by imposing “minimum safety standards on all social media and gaming platforms.”

In addition, the attorneys general are promoting KOSA as a way to future-proof these standards, as they say the bill’s duty of care provision would “establish a lasting standard that extends beyond the term of the settlement and adapts as technologies and design features evolve.”

The letter also reveals that the attorneys general view the bill as a way to cement the impact of a huge settlement reached with Meta earlier this year.

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Britain’s Online Censorship Law Now Comes With a Crisis Plan for Your Posts

The Online Safety Act – the UK’s censorship law – is getting its “crisis” machinery in place, and in full. As of Monday, November 2, big platforms in the country are expected to have in place a censorship plan that will be waiting in the wings, ready to be launched at a moment’s notice, or even before that – if a crisis is merely “likely to occur.”

This is what the regulator’s own paperwork, released on October 12, reveals, with the rules coming into force three weeks later. The crisis rules are part of amendments to two Ofcom codes – the Illegal Content Codes and the Protection of Children Code.

A crisis is defined as “an extraordinary situation in which there is a serious threat to public safety in the United Kingdom” that is highly likely to cause, or have come from, a surge in certain content. Ofcom also said that “local or regional crises may still meet the definition” and “an overseas event may also meet the definition.”

What is covered is content related to terrorism, hate, harassment, stalking, threats and abuse, and what is referred to as “the foreign interference offence” – which is a reference to the National Security Act, and a “misrepresentation” that “may” include “presenting information in a way which amounts to a misrepresentation, even if some or all of the information is true.”

As for the effect of such “misrepresentation,” the Act says it can influence political processes or decisions, and a foreign power can be not only a state, but also its head or government.

The posts that are at risk of being taken down are described by Ofcom as “the most highly protected forms of expression,” including “political speech.”

When a crisis hits – or is about to – these will be the first to go. “A higher risk of false positives is likely to be proportionate,” Ofcom says.

To be able to do all this, platforms must now have in place a crisis protocol, which they “need not publish” – and watch their own warning indicators.

Then, they should send in a senior crisis team “as soon as reasonably practicable if the provider determines that a crisis is occurring or is likely to occur.” Reviewing the situation afterwards should also be done in secret.

Large services will also open “a dedicated channel for law enforcement to contact the provider on matters related to the crisis.” No court order is necessary for this police hotline to be activated.

All this applies to large services (those with over 7 million monthly UK users) that are considered to be at medium risk, and any service that is at high risk. The rules cover user-to-user content on social media, messaging apps, forums, dating apps, games, marketplaces, and some AI tools.

The government has said that these steps “are not mandatory in themselves” – but a platform that follows them “will be treated as having complied” with the law. In other words, anyone who decides to go another way will have to prove to Ofcom that their method is equally effective.

It’s optional – in the British sense of the word.

And don’t worry, Ofcom has more reassurances: “The measures do not enable Ofcom to declare a crisis, nor do they introduce emergency powers.” But the Secretary of State can direct Ofcom to send a public statement notice to platforms, and they should take this into account when deciding whether a crisis is indeed taking place.

Ofcom has been working on the crisis protocol for a while, finalizing it on June 9 – the same day riots spread through Belfast after a stabbing on the Shankill Road. We reported about it then.

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