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Tag: police state
Nonconsensual Drug Testing Has Criminalized Tens of Thousands of Pregnant People
New York had the chance to make history in more arenas than basketball this June. Earlier this month, the New York Senate passed the Maternal Health, Dignity and Consent Act, becoming the first legislative chamber in the country to pass legislation that would require informed consent for drug testing of pregnant people. But despite that promising step, the state has once again failed to protect some of its most vulnerable residents from unjust criminalization.
There was a broad coalition of support for this legislation, including researchers, health care providers, and advocates. Several prominent medical and legal groups supported the legislation, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the New York City Bar Association. However, despite the wave of support for the legislation, the victory in the New York Senate was short-lived. The Maternal Health, Dignity and Consent Act died when it didn’t get a vote in the Assembly.
This isn’t the first time this kind of legislation has failed to pass in New York; advocates have been trying for seven years to ban nonconsensual drug testing of pregnant people and have failed every year. This legislation, which has repeatedly been reintroduced only to fail, would have prohibited health care providers in the state from drug testing pregnant or postpartum people and their newborns without explicit verbal and written informed consent. The legislation would have, however, allowed for health care providers to override the ban if there was a significant and immediate medical emergency.
While drug and alcohol use while pregnant can present complications for a newborn, nonconsensual drug testing of pregnant people doesn’t solve the issue at hand. It erodes trust between the health care provider and the patient, a core tenet in any health care relationship. And it does nothing to treat addiction as the disease that it is. This practice has been shown to force pregnant people to delay prenatal care, afraid of the potential criminal consequences of being drug tested against their will. Moreover, nonconsensual drug testing could trap the birthing parent in a web of criminalization that, at best, hinders family bonding, and at worst, irrevocably tears families apart — all because of a disease.
Mandatory, nonconsensual drug testing has put more than 70,000 pregnant people in 21 states into the criminal legal system over a six-year period, according to a landmark study by the Marshall Project, and that is likely a significant undercount. This violation criminalizes pregnant people who are dealing with addiction. It does nothing to treat their addiction or support them and their newborn as they transition to this next phase of life. Instead, for too many pregnant people, it can tear their family apart at the most fragile time and force Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement, which can make recovery for birthing people even less likely in the wake of trauma.
Trump Turns the Tables, Says He Will Not Approve FISA Extension Without Save America Act – Pulte Will Remain as Acting DNI Until US Attorney Pick is Approved
President Trump checkmated the Democrats and RINOs early on Wednesday morning, announcing that the Senate hearing on Jay Clayton to serve as Director of National Intelligence will be canceled, and that Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte will remain in place to serve as acting DNI.
This comes amid the ongoing debate over FISA Section 702, which the Intelligence Community uses for warrantless surveillance on national security threats– as well as innocent Americans.
“The Republicans agreed with Dumocrats to remove very fair, and talented, William Pulte, from serving as Acting DNI in return for getting FISA approved by the Dumocrats,’ Trump said in a statement this morning.
“However, the Republicans moved so fast with the hearings of the Great Jay Clayton, current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, that Pulte would be gone before the Dumocrats would vote on FISA. Now, the Dumocrats are saying they will vote against FISA — So, the Republicans wound up having fulfilled their commitment, but Dumocrats broke the Deal.”
UK’s Renewed Ban on Palestine Action Confirms Legal Overreach in the Designation of Terrorism
In a dispiriting ruling yesterday, the Court of Appeal in London overturned a ruling in February, by the High Court, that the government’s proscription of the direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, which was passed by Parliament last July, was unlawful.
The High Court’s ruling, in response to a judicial review submitted by Huda Ammori, one of Palestine Action’s two co-founders, repudiated the two counts on which the High Court had ruled the proscription unlawful.
Garden Court Chambers, whose barristers represented Huda Ammori at the judicial review in February, explained that these two counts were, firstly, that the Court “upheld the Claimant’s challenge that the Home Secretary failed to comply with her own policy when making the decision to proscribe Palestine Action”, and, secondly, that “proscription breached the rights of Freedom of Expression and Assembly as protected under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
The Court of Appeal shamefully reinstates the terrorism proscription
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal overturned both. The repudiation of the first was a long and detailed analysis of the home secretary’s powers regarding proscription, in which it was noticeable that, in dismissing it, the Court of Appeal not only poured scorn on the High Court, declaring that they had “adopted an excessively analytical approach to the interpretation of the Proscription Policy”, but also showed repeated and obsequious deference to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary at the time of the proscription, and her “expert” advisers from the police and the intelligence services.
At one point, for instance, the judges described how they were “required to attach special weight to the judgments and assessments of a primary decision-maker with special institutional competence” — yes, that really is a fawning description of Yvette Cooper! — and elsewhere, in deference to the executive branch of government, they noted that “The Proscription Decision lies in the area of national security which, before the Human Rights Act 1998, would have been regarded as unsuitable for judicial scrutiny at all.”
On the ECHR issues, described by the Court of Appeal as “questions of proportionality and the fair balance between the rights of individuals (free speech and freedom of assembly) and the rights of the community (national security and the rights of others)”, the Court acknowledged difficulties involving “the rights of the many law-abiding citizens wishing peacefully to protest, hold placards and otherwise support Palestine Action”, over 3,500 of whom have now been arrested — although they did also note that all of them ought to have been aware that doing so had become a “criminal act.” They also acknowledged “the ‘chilling effect’ that proscription may have upon those wishing to support the Palestinian cause, but who may be dissuaded from doing so by fear of committing offenses under the 2000 Act.”
Gun Shops File Lawsuit Against Colorado’s ‘Warrantless Searches’ and Gun Registry Requirements
A lawsuit brought by firearms dealers in Colorado is challenging a new law which implements “warrantless searches” and requires Federal Firearm License holders (FFLs) to maintain a gun registry.
The Courthouse News Service noted that the plaintiffs in the suit includes “the Centennial Gun Club, five firearms dealers and organizations.”
Defendants are Gov. Jared Polis (D), Attorney General Phil Weiser (D), and Colorado Department of Revenue executive director Heidi Humphreys.
The suit centers on HB26-1126, which Polis signed into law on June 2, 2026. The new law requires an FFL to also have a state firearms permit in order to transfer guns and broadens record-keeping requirements, so as to “apply to all retail transactions.” The record must contain “the name of the person that received the firearm and the recipient’s age and address.” This record-keeping becomes the registry and partial motivator for the current lawsuit.
Under HB26-1126, law enforcement can visit the FFL’s store and check the records and “the dealer shall make the records…available at all times for inspection by a duly authorized peace officer.”
The Courthouse News Service noted that “dealers who refuse to allow their records to be inspected can be charged with a class 2 misdemeanor.”
Moreover, in the lawsuit filed by the Centennial Gun Club and others, plaintiffs claim the searches violate privacy rights: “The Fourth Amendment broadly protects businesses from warrantless searches, including businesses engaged in commerce with customers who exercise no independent constitutional rights.”
Additionally, the lawsuit says: “The regime…injures plaintiffs’ customers, who face the prospect that their lawful firearms purchases will be surveilled without warrant protections, chilling the exercise of constitutionally protected rights.”
Telegram Founder Warns UK Social Media Ban Is Digital Iceberg About To Sink The Free Internet
Telegram founder Pavel Durov told the Freedom Forum audience in Oslo that Western societies have already struck the iceberg and started sinking – yet most citizens remain in their cabins, convinced the ship of personal freedoms is unsinkable.
His remarks arrive precisely as Keir Starmer’s government rams through a social media ban for under-16s that functions as the perfect pretext for mandatory digital ID, device-level scanning on every phone, and the practical elimination of anonymous speech online.
The policy is dressed in the familiar language of child protection. In practice it requires every major platform to verify ages with facial scans, passports or credit card data. What starts as a restriction on minors rapidly becomes a national system of internet passports.
Encrypted messaging apps currently sit outside the ban, but the same Online Safety Act framework already contains the levers to demand backdoors later. Tech executives who refuse to turn every smartphone into a government scanner face up to five years in prison.
Durov drew on two decades running major platforms and direct experience with state pressure in Russia, the EU and France. The core message was unmistakable.
“Our ship has already hit the iceberg. We have already started to sink without even realizing it. And I’m talking about the ship of our personal freedoms.”
UK Tech Minister Hints at Potential VPN Ban to Enforce Social Media Restrictions
The British government has suggested it may ban VPN services as it seeks to enforce its upcoming social media ban for children under 16.
The censorious left-wing UK government said that it will announce plans for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) next month amid growing questions about how it intends to ensure that children do not subvert the upcoming social media prohibition.
Critics have warned that the social media ban for under-16s will require the state to implement a digital ID system to verify internet users’ ages, potentially impacting the privacy of all citizens, including law-abiding adults.
Others have also questioned what the government intends to do about children who simply use VPNs to mask their IP addresses and access the internet from countries that don’t prohibit children from using social media sites.
While VPNs were once mostly used by people in authoritarian countries like Communist China, Islamist Iran, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia to unblock vast swathes of the internet, they have grown in popularity in Western countries in recent years amid rising state censorship.
Indeed, according to data collected by the IT Asset Management Group, Google searches for “VPN” rose by 165 per cent after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer formally announced plans to ban social media for those under 16 on Monday, City AM reported.
Technology Minister Liz Kendall told the BBC on Tuesday morning that the government will “make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions.”
Robert Anton Wilson on divide and conquer…
US Is Terrorizing Its Own Citizens With “Less-Lethal” Weapons, Victim Says
n March 28, 18-year-old University of Southern California student Tucker Collins documented a protest outside the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.
“I didn’t even see any of the officers who had their weapons out,” Collins told Truthout. “[I was] standing back from the crowd and, you know, focused on trying to frame up the crowd, and then the next thing I know, I can’t see anything.”
A federal agent shooting from behind a fence struck Collins in his right eye with a .68 caliber FN 303 projectile, destroying Collins’s eyeball and fracturing his orbital bone.
While often mislabeled as common pepper balls, FN 303 projectiles carry more than just the chemical irritants found in typical paintball-style rounds. They have a hard plastic casing and a metal front payload, adding weight and kinetic energy to “temporarily disable” targets with “a sufficiently dissuasive level of pain,” according to their manufacturer.
“Less-lethal” weapons are broadly defined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as weapons or instruments that are “designed or intended to be used in a manner that is not likely to cause death or serious bodily injury.” Such weapons include pepper balls, rubber bullets, tear gas, and more. While many of these weapons have the capacity to kill, they are often referred to as “less-than-lethal,” according to DHS.
UK’s Social Media Ban: The Monumental Pretext For Total Digital Surveillance
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement of a social media ban for under-16s represents one of the most sweeping advances of the surveillance state in modern British history.
Framed as “giving children their childhoods back,” the policy demands that big tech implement mandatory age verification across major platforms. In reality it forces every adult in the UK to surrender identity documents, facial scans, passports or credit card details simply to post, scroll or communicate online.
What begins as a restriction on minors quickly becomes a national digital ID regime, device-level monitoring on every phone and tablet, and the effective end of anonymous speech.
The move builds directly on years of incremental power grabs and aligns with identical efforts now rolling out in Canada, Australia and the EU. It ignores the government’s own evidence of no causal harm from social media while accelerating the very infrastructure that hands the state permanent visibility into private lives.
This is not reform. It is the construction of a permissioned internet where access itself requires state-approved identity.
The scale is breathtaking. Age verification will not stop at one app. It will require systems capable of checking every user on Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
Additional rules turn off livestreaming and stranger communication by default for under-18s on gaming platforms, and impose overnight curfews plus infinite-scroll ‘breaks’ for under-18s.
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