Tag: police state

Report: Brazilian National in CA Was Arrested for Domestic Violence, Became a Cop, Now Accused of Rape

California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2022 removing a requirement for police, highway patrol, and corrections officers in the state to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. 

Now, a foreign national Felipe Gomes, who was hired by the Belmont Police Department after the law went into effect in 2023, was arrested last week on suspicion of rape, The Blaze reported. The Brazilian national was reportedly hired despite a previous arrest in 2017 for domestic violence. 

Redwood City Police arrested Gomes at the Belmont Police Department headquarters on April 22, RCPD Sgt. Victor Figueroa said. Gomes is accused of violating penal code 261 (a)(1), which is “knowingly having sexual intercourse with an individual incapable of giving consent because of a mental disorder or developmental or physical disability,” according to the report. 

Gomes was subsequently booked into the San Mateo County Office Main Jail and released on $100,000 bond. Belmont Police Lt. Pete Lotti said Gomes was terminated the day after his arrest, the report states. 

Gomes was sworn in on Dec. 10 at a Belmont City Council ceremony. At the ceremony, Belmont Police Chief Ken Stenquist said Gomes was in the Brazilian Air Force and worked as air force police.

“He was a full-time police soldier and left that position when he moved to the United States. He enjoys practicing jiu jitsu and attending church when he’s not working,” Stenquist added.

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and the East Palo Alto Police Department allegedly warned Chief Stenquist about Gomes before he was hired. Both law enforcement agencies said they had rejected his application due to a 2017 domestic violence arrest, KGO-TV reported. 

“The charging affidavit reviewed by KGO alleged that one year into his marriage, Gomes — who is not an American citizen but apparently has a U.S. work permit — brutally beat his wife, striking her repeatedly in the face and stomach. Gomes had allegedly done so after seeing text messages on his wife’s phone from her ex-boyfriend,” according to the report. 

An officer at the time said he saw a “large bruise that covered most of (his wife’s) left cheek and scratches to her right cheek.”

“The state attorney reportedly factored in Gomes’ claims that his wife hit and scratched him first, charged both husband and wife with battery/domestic violence, and ultimately dropped the charges,” the report details. 

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Texas House Committee Approves Senate-Passed Bill To Ban Cities From Decriminalizing Marijuana

A Texas House committee has approved a Senate-passed bill that would prohibit cities from putting any citizen initiative on local ballots that would decriminalize marijuana or other controlled substances—as several localities have already done despite lawsuits from the state attorney general.

About a week after clearing the full Senate, members of the House State Affairs Committee advanced the legislation from Sen. Charles Perry (R) in a 9-6 vote on Wednesday. That same panel recently held a hearing on a House companion version that has not moved, indicating that lawmakers have opted to use the Senate bill as the vehicle to enact the ban on local cannabis reform.

Under the proposal, state law would be amended to say that local entities “may not place an item on a ballot, including a municipal charter or charter amendment, that would provide that the local entity will not fully enforce” state drug laws.

The latest version of the legislation, as previously amended in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, would also specifically bar localities from putting initiatives on the ballot that would contravene the state’s consumable hemp laws.

It would also require the attorney general to create a form for people to report violations of the law. And it’d expedite legal proceedings to challenge any city, mandating that an appellate court “render its final order or judgment with the least possible delay,” a legislative analysis says.

Cities found to be in violation of the law by placing a decriminalization initiative—or any measure that conflicts with state or federal drug laws—would be subject to a $25,000 civil fine for a first offense and a $50,000 fine for any subsequent offense.

“In the last few years several local governments have adopted policies and ordinances that are designed to decriminalize controlled substances or instruct law enforcement or prosecutors not to enforce our state drug laws,” Perry said in a statement of intent.

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Congress Keeps Trying to Overturn State Agriculture Laws

Whatever you think of tariffs, it should be clear that now is not the time to introduce more uncertainty into agricultural markets. The “Food Security and Farm Protection Act” (S. 1326) — recently introduced in the United State Senate — would do exactly that, giving foreign adversaries like China an even bigger chokehold on American agricultural production while harming producers and principles of state sovereignty in the process.

S. 1326 is the latest iteration of 2023’s Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act. It would create a private right of action for anyone “affected” by another state’s agricultural regulation to bring suit and invalidate it.

S. 1326, like EATS before it, is largely targeted at laws like California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’s Question 3, which set animal welfare standards for certain animal products (like pork) sold in the state. Over a dozen other states — including Florida, Michigan, Oregon, Maine, Arizona and Colorado — have similar statutes addressing animal confinement and farm practices.

Proponents of S. 1326 have characterized such laws as part of a “war on breakfast.” Their solution: introducing legislation that could nullify more than 1,000 state-level agriculture laws that support our economies and feed our people.

Soon after Proposition 12’s passage in 2018, the National Pork Producers Council brought suit against California — with the fight eventually reaching the Supreme Court. Writing in support of the Golden State, Justice Gorsuch said: “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list.”

Whatever you think of these laws, they fall well within the states’ reserved powers under the U.S. Constitution. They were democratically approved by voters, who are allowed to promulgate statutes regulating their own health and safety and reflecting their own ethical standards. We either believe in states’ rights or we don’t. But outside groups have not given up the fight, pushing bills like EATS and S. 1326 to create a legal backdoor for overturning the will of the American people.

The elephant in the room amidst all this discourse is Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, which is owned by a Chinese holding company that operates in coordination with the Chinese government. As such, the timing of S.1326’s introduction — April 8, 2025 — could not have been more darkly ironic. It’s the same day that China and the U.S. entered into an all-out trade war.

As the Chinese attack us from the outside, do we really want to give them an internal mechanism to also invalidate state laws they don’t like?

Then there’s the issue of stability. Proposition 12, which mandates that pigs raised for food have enough space to turn around during their pitiable lives, passed nearly seven years ago. Companies have largely adapted to California’s new requirements — including more than 230 out-of-state distributors and even large producers like Tyson Foods, JBS and, yes, Smithfield. Why, then, the need to create a vague, catchall mechanism to overturn not just state pork laws, but any state agriculture law? And do we really want to tell farmers that have retrofitted their operations to conform with new state requirements that their investments are worthless?

Add to that the fact that the USDA recently cancelled two programs giving food banks and schools funding to purchase from small farmers and ranchers. Passing S. 1326 will kill whatever competitive advantage these producers — who are more likely to employ traditional husbandry practices — have left. It will lead to even more consolidation in the food industry and more power for the biggest players. The administration is already considering a farm bailout, which cost taxpayers $23 billion the last time we did it. Creating new mechanisms to disrupt entrenched state regulations is a good way to make ever more handouts a necessity.

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UK: Ofcom Appoints “Experts” to Advisory Committee on “Disinformation” Under New Censorship Law

UK’s regulator Ofcom, which is tasked with enforcing the sweeping online censorship and age verification law, the Online Safety Act, has appointed members of its “Online Information Advisory Committee” (formerly known as “Advisory Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation”), which will advise Ofcom on “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Lord Richard Allan, who was last November appointed a non-executive director of Ofcom’s Board for a four-year term, now chairs the Committee, comprised of five members – most of whom have prominent track records as pro-censorship advocates.

One is Jeffrey Howard, a political philosophy professor at University College London (UCL), whose website’s research page includes an upcoming article titled, “The Ethics of Social Media: Why Content Moderation is a Moral Duty.”

Howard says the article defends platforms’ “moral responsibility” to “proactively” moderate “wrongfully harmful or dangerous speech” as one of justifications for platforms to censor out of a sense of “moral duty.”

Elisabeth Costa, Chief of Innovation and Partnerships at the Business Insights Team (BIT, which started off as the “Nudge Unit“) is another Committee member.

Costa should feel right at home helping enforce the Online Safety Act, given that BIT has close ties to many governments and international organizations that push for the kinds of censorship like “prebunking.”

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Biden’s Lawfare Nearly Ripped This South Dakota Ranching Family Apart

South Dakota ranchers Charles and Heather Maude are no longer bracing for their lives to be crushed by a terrifying federal government that attempted to imprison them for 10 years each, leaving their children essentially orphaned, over a simple land dispute. The Trump Administration announced this week it has dropped criminal charges of “theft of federal property” against the ranchers that were brought by the Biden Administration. It is a case that highlights the stark contrasts between how the Biden and Trump administrations treat citizens and solve problems.

 It was clear Wednesday during a Washington, D.C., press conference that this family’s liberty and livelihood hinged on which party won the White House.

“We’re standing here with a fifth-generation rancher, with their two young children who are great Americans, who’ve never done anything wrong, that the Biden administration was actively working to put in prison,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said during that press conference. “While at the same time, many of those same elected officials on the other side are actively working to get out of prison gang members, illegal aliens, etc. We are not the same.”  

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British Royal Marine Held Under “Terrorism Act” For Questioning DEI Policies

In 2015 the US Marines carried out a study to discern if women could fulfill combat duty roles within mixed gender units.  The study followed an aggressive push by the Pentagon and the Obama Administration to expand female participation on the front line.  This included the much hyped inclusion of women in Army Rangers training – The program was later exposed for giving special treatment to the female trainees and lowering their fitness standards.  In essence, it was the beginning of DEI within elite units in the military.

However, the Marines study relied on merit based standards and was not skewed to make the Pentagon brass happy.  It told the truth:  Women and mixed gender units offer dismal performance in the field under pressure.

Data collected during a months-long experiment showed Marine teams with female members performed at lower overall levels, completed tasks more slowly and fired weapons with less accuracy than their all-male counterparts. In addition, female Marines sustained significantly higher injury rates and demonstrated lower levels of physical performance capacity overall, officials said.  Any unit with women was dragged down.

DEI is a disaster for most endeavors, but it is especially deadly in the military where performance and merit determine life and death.  It also causes divisions and distrust; if a soldier cannot be counted on to perform tasks to a certain level of expertise then they can put the entire unit at risk.

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan Cites Southport Stabbing to Justify Targeting Online “Conspiracy Theories” and “Misinformation”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced an £875,000 ($1,170M) expansion of his Shared Endeavour Fund, using the tragic mass stabbing and murders in Southport to justify an intensified campaign against what he describes as “online conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced an £875,000 ($1,170M) expansion of his Shared Endeavour Fund, using the tragic mass stabbing and murders in Southport to justify an intensified campaign against what he describes as “online conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

More: Southport Tragedy Becomes Starmer’s Stage for Big Brother Britain

Despite the gravity of the Southport attacks, Khan appeared to frame the event more as a case study for the dangers of social media rather than focusing on the violence itself, saying: “The Southport disorder and chilling hate crime attacks that followed shocked our nation and showed how false information on social media spread like wildfire with devastating consequences.”

The move directs a significant portion of the new funding toward policing online speech under the guise of protecting “vulnerable young Londoners from radicalization and misinformation online.” This expansion fits within the Mayor’s broader £15.9 ($21.31M) million anti-extremism agenda, the largest of its kind initiated by a London mayor.

According to the official press release, the Southport incident highlighted “increased concern about online radicalization and the spread of misinformation,” even while admitting that overall hate crime incidents have been declining across London.

Nevertheless, the Mayor maintains that the numbers, despite dropping, are still “too high,” justifying the fresh wave of funding and monitoring efforts.

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Pro-gun Texas? The large print giveth and the small print taketh away

Actions speak louder than words. Put your money where your mouth is. I’ll believe it when I see it. A few common phrases that describe one idea: It doesn’t matter what you say if you don’t act accordingly — a concept that Texas state officials do not seem to understand.

Texas claims to be a bastion of liberty in the United States. Texas also claims to be unabashedly pro-gun — a state where people are free to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. But the state’s actions show those claims are just words.

In reality, Texas has several laws that prohibit individuals from carrying arms in certain locations. The most notable of these laws is a ban on carry in locations that derive 51% or more of their proceeds from the sale of alcohol. While some might immediately react that it seems like a good thing to keep guns out of bars, they miss the actual effect and application of the law.

First, the law applies to any and all businesses that derive 51% or more of their proceeds from the sale of alcohol — not just bars. This includes several other venues and restaurants within the state — places where people take their families and have a right to be able to protect them.

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U.S. Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It’s Coming Home.

Rita Murad, a 21-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel and student at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, was arrested by Israeli authorities in November 2023 after sharing three Instagram stories on the morning of October 7. The images included a picture of a bulldozer breaking through the border fence in Gaza and a quote: “Do you support decolonization as an abstract academic theory? Or as a tangible event?” She was suspended from university and faced up to five years in prison.

In recent years, Israeli security officials have boasted of a “ChatGPT-like” arsenal used to monitor social media users for supporting or inciting terrorism. It was released in full force after Hamas’s bloody attack on October 7. Right-wing activists and politicians instructed police forces to arrest hundreds of Palestinians within Israel and east Jerusalem for social media-related offenses. Many had engaged in relatively low-level political speech, like posting verses from the Quran on WhatsApp or sharing images from Gaza on their Instagram stories.

When the New York Times covered Murad’s saga last year, the journalist Jesse Baron wrote that, in the U.S., “There is certainly no way to charge people with a crime for their reaction to a terrorist attack. In Israel, the situation is completely different.”

Soon, that may no longer be the case.

Hundreds of students with various legal statuses have been threatened with deportation on similar grounds in the U.S. this year. Recent high-profile cases have targeted those associated with student-led dissent against the Israeli military’s policies in Gaza. There is Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, taken from his Columbia University residence and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. There is Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts disappeared from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, by plainclothes officers allegedly for co-authoring an op-ed calling on university administrators to heed student protesters’ demands. And there is Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia philosophy student arrested by ICE agents outside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office where he was scheduled for his naturalization interview.

In some instances, the State Department has relied on informants, blacklists, and technology as simple as a screenshot. But the U.S. is in the process of activating a suite of algorithmic surveillance tools Israeli authorities have also used to monitor and criminalize online speech.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the State Department was launching an AI-powered “Catch and Revoke” initiative to accelerate the cancellation of student visas. Algorithms would collect data from social media profiles, news outlets, and doxing sites to enforce the January 20 executive order targeting foreign nationals who threaten to “overthrow or replace the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands.” The arsenal was built in concert with American tech companies over the past two decades and already deployed, in part, within the U.S. immigration system.

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House passes “Take it Down Act,” sending revenge porn bill backed by Melania Trump to president’s desk

The House passed a bipartisan bill Monday that makes it a federal crime to post real and fake sexually explicit imagery online of a person without their consent, sending the legislation that was backed by first lady Melania Trump to the president’s desk. 

The bill, known as the “Take It Down Act,” cleared the lower chamber in a 409-2 vote. The two “no” votes came from Republicans. The Senate unanimously passed the measure in February. 

The legislation requires social media companies and other websites to remove images and videos, including deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence, within 48 hours after a victim’s request. 

“If you’re a victim of revenge porn or AI-generated explicit imagery, your life changes forever,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said at a March 3 roundtable promoting the bill. 

Cruz, who introduced the bill, recalled the experience of a teenage victim, Elliston Berry, whose classmate used an app to create explicit images of her and then sent them to her classmates. Berry’s mother had tried unsuccessfully to get Snapchat to remove the images for months before she contacted Cruz’s office for help. 

“It should not take a sitting senator or sitting member of Congress picking up the phone to get a picture down or video down,” Cruz said. 

The first lady, who rarely appears in public, attended the March discussion at the U.S. Capitol to advocate for the bill’s passage in the House. 

“It’s heartbreaking to witness young teens, especially girls, grappling with the overwhelming challenges posed by malicious online content like deep fakes,” she said. “This toxic environment can be severely damaging.” 

The first lady applauded Congress after its passage and said the bipartisan vote made a “powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children.” 

“I am thankful to the Members of Congress — both in the House and Senate — who voted to protect the well-being of our youth,” she said in a statement. 

According to the FBI, in recent years there have been an alarming number of cases where victims have been extorted that have ended in suicide. Lawmakers said they hope the bill will save lives by providing recourse for victims. 

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