Tag: police state

New York Rolls Out Digital IDs Following New Online Digital ID Law

It’s surely just a coincidence that New York has passed its online digital ID law, just as the state has joined the ranks of states adopting mobile ID technology, enabling residents to convert their traditional driver’s licenses or non-driver IDs into digital formats.

As of this week, New Yorkers can download the New Longyear Mobile ID app from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. This digital version allows users to verify their identity at airports and other locations requiring ID. To set up their mobile ID, users must initially scan both sides of their existing physical ID card using their smartphone.

The launch was unveiled at a media event at LaGuardia Airport, where Robert Duffy, the federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, and other officials were present. During the briefing, it was stated that the introduction of mobile IDs is a significant step towards modernizing identity security and airport screening processes. Officials highlighted the optional nature of the digital IDs, noting they offer greater convenience without being mandatory.

Currently, there is no mandatory requirement for businesses or law enforcement to accept mobile IDs, and acceptance is entirely voluntary. Businesses, including bars, may begin accepting mobile IDs immediately, provided they install a state-sanctioned verifier application.

According to a press release from Governor Kathy Hochul’s office, the New York Mobile ID app is operational in nearly 30 airports nationwide, including all terminals at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports. New York is now among a growing list of states such as Arizona, Colorado, and Utah that have embraced mobile driver’s licenses.

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Seventh Grader and Sisters Expelled from School Following Principal’s Controversial Decision to Limit Free Speech Over Use of the Word ‘Patriotism’

A California seventh-grade student, Jimmy Heyward, who recently went viral after his principal censored his patriotic speech, has now been banned from attending the school next year.

The Gateway Pundit reported last month that Heyward was a student at Saint Bonaventure Catholic School, where Principal Mary Flock reportedly told him to edit his campaign speech for the role of Commissioner of School Spirit and Patriotism, instructing him to remove “all parts about patriotism.”

The incident was first shared by LibsofTiktok, who wrote, “This is Jimmy. A middle schooler in California… His principal allegedly made him change his speech and remove all mention of patriotism. When he refused, she reportedly didn’t allow him to give the speech and he was forced to sit there humiliated, and watch the other contenders give their speeches…”

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Government Raid Seizes $90,000 of Healthy Food Grown by Nourish Cooperative

There is a lot of fearmongering circulating in mainstream media about the “Avian Influenza”. In parallel to the fearmongering, there has been a large increase in the number of inspections and surveillance. Creating fear would certainly help better maintain control of the food system, wouldn’t it?

On Tuesday, May 28th, our farm co-op was randomly “inspected” (raided), and over $90,000 worth of product was put under “cease and desist” by the state of Michigan, including all raw dairy. As this is an evolving story, I will share what we know to be true thus far.

Nourish Cooperative is a farm cooperative that my sister, Sarah, and I started with a few other first generation regenerative farmers in September 2023. After several years of a steadily increasing demand for our farm fresh products (such as our raw milk, sourdough, and “needle-free” grass fed and/or corn- and soy-free meat), we simply could not keep up with the demand ourselves, which led us to create a “cooperative” (co-op) of several small, local regenerative farms.

Our goal is to produce the highest quality food possible while working with Mother Nature through the use of regenerative agriculture practices. This cooperative grew faster than we could ever imagine, and with that, I suppose, more problems arose, inevitably. If interested, you can read more about Nourish Cooperative here.

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George Clooney’s Foundation to Issue Arrest Warrant Requests for Journalists who say Nice Things About Russia

The Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket Project is pursuing secret arrest warrants for journalists in Europe whose reporting is favorable to Russia in a move that a Kremlin spokesperson has labeled “insane.”

By now, we’re all painfully aware that facts and truth don’t matter to a lot of people if they don’t align with their views, and now this foundation, which was founded by actor George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, is trying to use legal processes to stop professionals from doing their jobs.

The Docket Project’s legal director, Anna Neistat, recently told Voice of America radio that they are attempting to obtain the arrest warrants by appealing to the European countries that have laws against “war propaganda.” She announced: “We are submitting requests to initiate criminal proceedings in countries where this provision exists in the criminal code.”

She added: “If the warrant is issued, it essentially becomes an EU-wide warrant through Europol. This means journalists could potentially be arrested and extradited to the country investigating them.”

She would not disclose the names of the journalists they are targeting but did admit that they were focusing on “the most prominent Russian propagandists.”

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DeSantis Launches ‘Florida Freedom Fund’ To Oppose Marijuana Legalization Ballot Initiative, As Campaign Reports Millions In New Donations

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has launched a new political action committee to campaign against marijuana legalization and abortion rights initiatives that will appear on the state’s November ballot. At the same time, a newly released campaign finance report shows over $5 million in contributions supporting the cannabis measure have come in over the past two months.

As DeSantis continues his crusade against the marijuana legalization proposal, late last month he started what’s being called the Florida Freedom Fund, aimed at preventing adults from gaining the right to use cannabis. It’s being run by the governor’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier.

A spokesperson for DeSantis told Politico that the PAC “will be championing issues and candidates committed to preserving Floridians’ freedom.” How that stated mission squares with an attempt to restrict adults from accessing marijuana without risking a criminal record and potential jail time is unclear.

According to a Fox News poll released last week, two in three Florida voters support the cannabis initiative—with the issue proving more popular than the governor himself. The survey showed majority support for legalization across the political spectrum, too.

Despite his opposition to the marijuana legalization, DeSantis recently vetoed a bill to ban the sale of intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids in his state. The action came amid reporting that the governor planned to block the hemp prohibition legislation in hopes that the industry would return the favor by financially assisting in his effort to defeat the marijuana initiative.

The governor, who predicted voters will reject the marijuana initiative in November, has argued that the state shouldn’t go beyond the existing medical cannabis program and that broader reform would negatively impact the quality of life for Floridians. The Florida Republican Party also formally came out against Amendment 3 last month.

So far, DeSantis’s PAC hasn’t reported raising any money. The Smart & Safe Florida campaign behind the marijuana initiative, however, reported more than $5.2 million in new contributions from April 1 to May 31, with the bulk of that funding coming from the multi-state cannabis company Trulieve. That’s in addition to the $15 million the campaign raised in the first quarter of the year, a haul that included contributions from other cannabis companies such as Verano Holdings, Curaleaf, Ayr Wellness, Green Thumb Industries and Cresco Labs.

The new first quarter report shows that other marijuana firms are coming to the table in support, including Insa, which donated $144,000, Sunburn parent company Green Sentry Holdings, which chipped in $50,000, and Urban-Gro, which gave $25,000.

The report also shows dozens of small-dollar donations, too.

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Trudeau Pushes Online Censorship Bill To “Protect” People From “Misinformation”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week complained that governments have allegedly been left without the necessary tools to “protect people from misinformation.”

This “dire” warning came as part of Trudeau’s effort to have the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) – one of the most controversial of its kind pieces of censorship legislation in Canada of late – pushed across the finish line in the country’s parliament.

C-63 has gained notoriety among civil rights and privacy advocates because of some of its provisions around “hate speech,” “hate propaganda,” and “hate crime.”

Under the first two, people would be punished before they commit any transgression, but also retroactively.

However, in a podcast interview for the New York Times, Trudeau defended C-63 as a solution to the “hate speech” problem, and clearly, a necessary “tool,” since according to this politician, other avenues to battle real or imagined hate speech and crimes resulting from it online have been exhausted.

Not one to balk at speaking out of both sides of his mouth, Trudeau at one point essentially admits that the more control governments have (and the bill is all about control, critics say, regardless of how its sponsors try to sugarcoat it) the more likely they are to abuse it.

He nevertheless goes on to declare that new legislative methods of “protecting people from misinformation” are needed and, in line with this, talk up C-63 as some sort of balanced approach to the problem.

But it’s difficult to see that “balance” in C-63, which is currently debated in the House of Commons. If it becomes law, it will allow the authorities to keep people under house arrest should they decide these people could somewhere down the line commit “hate crime or hate propaganda” – a chilling application of the concept of “pre-crime.”

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New York Passes Online Age Verification Digital ID Law

Lawmakers in New York have passed the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the Child Data Protection Act.

Assembly Bill A8148A and Senate Bill S7694A (that became the SAFE Act) were introduced as aiming to prevent social platforms from showing minors “addictive” (i.e., algorithmically manipulated) feeds, among a host of other provisions.

Parental consent is now required for children to have access to the latter versions of the feeds – which in turn means that the controversial age verification for adults must be introduced into the mix.

The new rules will not prohibit children from searching for particular keywords but social platforms will not be able to send notifications to their phones “regarding addictive feeds” from midnight to 6 am – again, this will be possible, but only with parental consent.

Could this be the true impetus behind the two bills – to usher in age verification and digital ID, some skeptics might wonder.

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Appeals Court Upholds Ban on Student Wearing ‘Only Two Genders’ Shirt

A U.S. appeals court on June 9 upheld a ban preventing a Massachusetts middle school student from wearing a shirt reading “There are only two genders.”

Another prohibition by school administrators, this time blocking the same student from wearing the shirt with “only two” covered by tape, on which was written “censored,” is also allowed under court precedent, according to the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

“The question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them—educators or federal judges. Based on Tinker, the cases applying it, and the specific record here, we cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to us rather than to the educators closest to the scene,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron wrote for a unanimous panel of the court.

In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 ruled that a ban on students wearing armbands in protest against the Vietnam War violated the students’ First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani cited the ruling when in 2023 she ruled in favor of the administrators at the John T. Nichols Middle School (NMS) and Middleborough School District in Massachusetts against Liam Morrison (L.M.), the boy who wore the “two genders” shirt to school.

“[The school] permissibly concluded that the shirt invades the rights of others,” Judge Talwani said before quoting Tinker. “Schools can prohibit speech that is in ‘collision with the rights of others to be secure and be let alone.’”

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Tucker Carlson Investigation: FBI Interrogated and Purged Trump Supporters from Its Ranks – The Police State Is Real

The FBI is now a secret police organization that targets, humiliates, and severs ties with pro-Trump members in its ranks.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Tristan Leavitt who is the president of the group Empower Oversight in his latest interview.

Tristan Leavitt is representing an anonymous FBI whistleblower who was suspended indefinitely without pay after the Agency discovered he attended the protests on January 6, 2021 at the Ellipse and US Capitol.

Mr. Leavitt describes how Trump supporters were targeted and interrogated by the FBI for holding conservative beliefs.

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Most Consumable Hemp-Based Cannabinoid Products Would Be Banned Under Another GOP Committee’s New Bill

A GOP-led House committee has put forward a large-scale spending bill that contains language that would effectively ban most consumable hemp-derived cannabinoid products, including delta-8 THC and CBD items containing any “quantifiable” amount of THC.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies posted the text of the legislation on Monday—just one day before a scheduled vote.

If enacted into law, cannabinoids that are “synthesized or manufactured outside of the plant” would no longer meet the definition of legal hemp.

The language is virtually identical to a provision of the 2024 Farm Bill that was attached by a separate committee late last month via an amendment from Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL).

The proposed ban faced sizable pushback from the hemp industry, though certain key marijuana businesses have joined prohibitionists in supporting the proposed policy change.

Many observers expect that the timeline for advancing the Farm Bill will be pushed back until next year, however, so the hemp provision’s inclusion in a must-pass spending bill raises the stakes for hemp industry advocates.

Supporters of the ban have described the language as a fix to a “loophole” that was created under the 2018 Farm Bill that federally legalized hemp.

While they’ve focused on the need to address public safety concerns related to unregulated “intoxicating” cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC, some hemp industry advocates say the effect of the proposed language could be a ban on virtually all non-intoxicating CBD products as well, as most on the market contain at least trace levels of THC, consistent with the Farm Bill definition of hemp that allows for up to 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

Hemp industry stakeholders have recognized that there’s a need to address legitimate concerns related to the unregulated market that’s proliferated since hemp was federally legalized, but the solution they’ve put forward is to enact strategic regulations to ensure product safety and prevent youth access.

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