Tag: police state

DHS Invokes Immigration Enforcement To Justify Gathering Americans’ DNA

Government agencies inevitably turn enforcement responsibilities into opportunities to extend the security state. Every initiative to document, monitor, track, or otherwise spy on Americans starts with a mandate to ensure that people are obeying some rule or law. So it is with immigration policies, which fuel government efforts to gather biometric information not just on those who want to enter the country, but on citizens born and raised here. Fortunately, the scheme is getting pushback.

Massive Data Sweep Hiding in a Proposed Rule Change

On November 3 of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule change allowing its agents to gather and store more biometric data on anybody associated with applications for “benefits” including family visas, Permanent Resident (green) Cards, and work permits. The DHS summary of the rule states, in part:

DHS proposes to require submission of biometrics by any individual, regardless of age, filing or associated with an immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, unless exempted; expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest; define “biometrics;” codify reuse requirements; codify and expand DNA testing, use and storage; establish an “extraordinary circumstances” standard to excuse a failure to appear at a biometric services appointment…

According to the proposal, the purpose of gathering biometric data, including fingerprints, photographs, signatures, voice prints, ocular images, and DNA (which is heavily emphasized by DHS) is “identity management” to verify that people are who they say they are.

Immigrants aren’t especially popular in certain U.S. circles at the moment, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that leniency towards those who want to enter the country is unpopular. But the rule change also ropes in lots of Americans. The proposal specifies that “by ‘associated,’ DHS means a person with substantial involvement or participation in the immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, such as a named derivative, beneficiary, petitioner’s signatory, sponsor, or co-applicant.”

As attorneys Alessandra Carbajal, Lee Gibbs Depret-Bixio, and Ryan Mosser  note in an analysis, the new rule would affect not just immigrants but “U.S. citizens, nationals, and lawful permanent residents, regardless of age.” They add that “signatories for employers that serve as sponsors/petitioners may potentially be subject to biometrics requirements. This would mark a departure from current practice, where only foreign nationals seeking benefits typically provide biometrics.”

“This data collection would not be limited to just immigrants, it would also impact millions of American citizens,” agrees Institute for Justice (I.J.) attorney Tahmineh Dehbozorgi. “DHS is claiming this DNA collection is meant to serve one narrow purpose, but realistically, it is creating a vast genetic dragnet that endangers the Fourth Amendment rights of everyone, all without Congress’ approval.”

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This Is What Tyranny Looks Like Now: No Crowns. No Coups. Just Unchecked Power.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet that gave voice to the discontent of a nation struggling to free itself from a tyrannical ruler who believed power flowed from his own will rather than the consent of the governed.

Paine’s warning was not theoretical.

Two hundred and fifty years later, we find ourselves confronting the same dilemma—this time from inside the White House.

When asked by the New York Times what might restrain his power grabs, Donald Trump did not point to the Constitution, the courts, Congress, or the rule of law—as his oath of office and our constitutional republic require. He pointed to himself.

According to Trump, the only thing standing between America and unchecked power is his own morality.

If our freedoms depend on Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed morality, we are in dangerous territory.

Over the course of his nearly 80 years, Trump has been a serial adulterer, philanderer, liar, and convicted felon. He has cheated, stolen, lied, plundered, pillaged, and enriched himself at the expense of others. He is vengeful, petty, unforgiving, foul-mouthed, and crass. His associates include felons, rapists, pedophiles, drug traffickers, sex traffickers, and thieves. He disrespects the law, disregards human life, is ignorant of the Bible, illiterate about the Constitution, takes pleasure in others’ pain and misfortune, and is utterly lacking in mercy, forgiveness, or compassion.

Christian nationalists have tried to whitewash Trump’s behavior by wrapping religion in the national flag and urging Americans to submit to authoritarianism—an appeal that flies in the face of everything the founders risked their lives to establish.

That whitewashing effort matters, because it asks Americans to abandon the very safeguards the Founders put in place to protect them from men like Trump.

Trump speaks in a language of kings, strongmen, and would-be emperors advocating for personal rule over constitutional government. America’s founders rejected that logic, revolted against tyranny, and built for themselves a system of constitutional restraints—checks and balances, divided authority through a separation of powers, and an informed, vigilant populace.

All of their hard work is being undone. Not by accident, and not overnight.

The erosion follows a familiar pattern to any who have studied the rise of authoritarian regimes.

Trump and his army of enablers and enforcers may have co-opted the language of patriotism, but they are channeling the tactics of despots.

This is not about left versus right, or even about whether Trump is a savior or a villain. It is about the danger of concentrating unchecked power in any one individual, regardless of party or personality.

This should be a flashing red warning sign for any who truly care about freedom, regardless of partisan politics.

The ends do not justify the means.

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Secret ICE Programs Revealed

Operations Benchwarmer, Tidal Wave, Abracadabra, Dust Off, Fleur De Lis — these are just a few of the secret programs recently undertaken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has become a self appointed bouncer for America under Donald Trump, enlisting tens of thousands of federal, state, and local police and intelligence departments and agencies to not just root out “illegals,” but also exploit them for intelligence, leaked documents show.

A Border Patrol official outraged by ICE’s conduct has leaked to me this and other documents providing an unprecedented glimpse into ICE’s undeclared activities across the country. Many of these operations and their codenames have not been previously reported.

A 15-page long document, marked “LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE,” details 21 different “major” ICE operations resulting, so it says, in 6,852 apprehensions since June. From Operation A, a covert effort to develop informants among immigrants in detention, to Operation Benchwarmer, which alone spans the deployment of 2,000 “intelligence assets” across the country, the document gives a sense of how aggressively ICE is scouring neighborhoods and developing sources to spy on immigrants and Americans alike.

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Australia’s New Hate Speech Bill Is Reckless, Contradictory, and Repressive

On January 12, Australia’s Attorney-General Michelle Rowland stepped to the podium and announced what she called “the toughest hate laws Australia has ever seen.”

The government plans to push its Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 through Parliament on January 20, turning Australia’s speech laws into something that reads more like a psychological test than a criminal code.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here (and the memorandum here.)

The same week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was praising Iranians “standing up for their human rights,” his government was preparing to criminalize speech at home even when no one’s rights or feelings had actually been touched.

The bill’s centerpiece is a new racial vilification offense. It bans “publicly promoting or inciting hatred” based on race, color, or national or ethnic origin, with penalties of up to five years in prison.

The measure’s core novelty is what it removes: proof of harm.

It’s “immaterial,” the draft says, whether “the conduct actually results in hatred” or whether anyone “actually” feels intimidated or fears harassment.

The courts will instead consider what a hypothetical “reasonable” member of the targeted group would feel, even if no such person exists in the case.

Prosecutors, the explanatory note clarifies, “would not be required to prove” any real fear at all.

The message: you can go to prison for causing theoretical discomfort in a theoretical person.

Rowland’s bill doesn’t stop at the town square or the street corner. It explicitly defines a “public place” to include any form of electronic communication, including social media, blogs, livestreams, recordings, and content posted from private property if the public can see it.

In other words, the living room webcam and the backyard podcast are now public arenas. A joke, a meme, or an overheard rant could be weighed for its impact on an imaginary “reasonable person” who never existed.

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Former South Korean President Faces Death Penalty by Current Pro-China Administration – They Already Have Him and His Wife in Prison

A special prosecutor has formally sought the death penalty against former President Yoon Suk Yeol, and life imprisonment against former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun.
The sole basis for this unprecedented move is the declaration of a state of emergency — an authority explicitly granted to the presidency under South Korea’s Constitution.

There were:

– No civilian deaths
– No armed clashes
– No ideological purges or mass repression

Yet prosecutors are now pursuing the maximum possible punishment.

This is not normal law enforcement. It is the retroactive criminalization of constitutional authority. If exercising emergency powers can later be reframed as a capital crime, no future leader will ever act decisively in a real national crisis. Political survival will replace national security judgment.

South Korea is a key U.S. ally. What happens here matters far beyond its borders. If a former president in an allied nation can face execution over a constitutional dispute with zero civilian casualties, it sets a precedent that should alarm every free society.

This is precisely the kind of story that deserves international scrutiny. Silence from the United States only emboldens the use of prosecutorial power as a political weapon.

The former President Yoon Suk Yeol is currently being held in prison by the pro-China regime that took power away from Yoon Suk Yeol and his party. A radical prosecutor has charged Yoon Suk Yeol with rebellion charges in connection with his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024.

Yoon Suk Yeol has been persecuted since the new leaders took control of the country.

This is a very serious situation that is not making headlines in the US.

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UK drops plans for mandatory digital ID for workers in latest U-turn, media reports

Britain is set to drop plans to make it mandatory for workers to hold a digital identity document, The Times newspaper, the BBC and other media reported on Tuesday, potentially marking another policy U-turn for the Labour government.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in September last year that his government would require every employee to hold a digital ID in an attempt to tackle illegal migration and reduce the threat from the populist Reform UK party.

The government said the digital ID would be held on people’s mobile phones and become a mandatory part of checks employers must make when hiring staff.

The plan drew criticism from political opponents, with some arguing it would not deter illegal migration and others warning it could infringe on civil liberties.

The Times said the government abandoned the plan amid concerns it could undermine public trust in the scheme, noting that when introduced in 2029, digital IDs would be optional rather than mandatory.

Other forms of documentation, such as an electronic visa or passport, would still be valid, The Times said.

“We are committed to mandatory digital right to work checks,” a government spokesperson said. “We have always been clear that details on the digital ID scheme will be set out following a full public consultation which will launch shortly.”

The spokesperson said current checks rely on a “hodgepodge” of paper-based systems, with no record of whether they were ever carried out, leaving the process open to fraud and abuse.

If plans for a mandatory digital ID are dropped, it would mark another policy climbdown for Starmer.

In December, the government scaled back a plan to raise more tax from farmers, months after it backed down on cuts to welfare spending and scaled back a proposal to reduce subsidies on energy bills for the elderly.

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Germany’s Latest War on Freedom

There is no censorship here in Germany,” according to Steffen Meyer, a top spokesman for the German government. In reality, Germans have freedom of speech except for ideas that politicians and government contractors and nonprofit activists don’t like. Germany is providing a road map for freedom that can be squashed throughout the Western world.

Germany was the scene of some of the 20th century’s worst tyranny but today’s German leaders have only noble intentions for oppression. Berlin’s Best and Brightest™ “improved” democracy by turning politicians into a privileged caste. After a conservative editor mocked a top German law enforcement official by posting a meme showing her holding a sign, “I hate freedom of opinion,” he was convicted and sentenced to seven months in jail for “abuse, slander or defamation against persons in political life.” The editor is on probation while the sentence is suspended but many other Germans have been locked up for similar offenses.

The US State Department Human Rights Report stated that German police “routinely raided homes, confiscated electronic devices, interrogated suspects and prosecuted individuals for the exercise of freedom of speech, including online.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz personally filed almost 5,000 complaints against his online critics, sometimes resulting in police raids against people he accused.

The German media are gung-ho for government censorship of average Germans. TheNew York Times noted, “Authorities in Lower Saxony raid homes up to multiple times per month, sometimes with a local television crew in tow.”  The Times reported that in 2022, “Christian Endt, a journalist in Berlin whose coverage of Covid drew a steady stream of insults online, reached a breaking point. After an anonymous Twitter user had called him ‘stupid’ and mentally ill, he embarked on a mission to see if he could get the person prosecuted.”

The Twitter account didn’t have a real name but Endt used an image search of his picture and tracked it down to a small-business owner. Local prosecutors fined that guy more than a thousand dollars. Endt told the New York Times, “I was not even sure if what this guy wrote was a crime or not. In the end, I’m happy they did something about it and this person got a signal that there are some limits on free speech.” But is there no limit to the cowardliness of some German journalists? Publicly admitting that you ran crying to the authorities after some dweeb called you stupid and crazy makes a journalist unfit for writing about anything that offends anyone.   

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‘Who is hiding behind these masks?’: Investigators want to know whether ICE is employing former Jan. 6 defendants, demand docs about ‘violent rioters’ hired by DHS

As controversies involving federal immigration agents pile up in multiple cities, congressional investigators are demanding to know whether the Trump administration has hired anyone who was previously pardoned for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In a four-page letter on Monday, House Judiciary Democrats put the question directly – and in plain terms – to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“How many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists have been hired by your respective departments?” the letter begins.

In the letter, Maryland Rep. and ranking member Jamie Raskin details how some in the orbit of Jan. 6 have since come to work for the DOJ itself in high-profile positions. Among such employees are pardoned ex-FBI supervisor Jared Wise, who now serves as senior adviser in the office of the Deputy Attorney General. Raskin also makes reference to “J6 enthusiast and defense counsel” Ed Martin, who currently serves as Associate Deputy Attorney General and the head of the DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group.”

Still, those references – to Wise and Martin – merely preface Raskin’s overarching concern.

“We know that some participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have been rewarded with high-ranking positions in the Department of Justice,” the congressman said in a press release. “However, it remains unclear how many more have been invited to join the ranks of this Administration, including among the masked Department of Homeland Security agents and officers that have dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, shot, and killed citizens and non-citizens alike in communities around the country.”

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No, ICE Agents Do Not Have ‘Absolute Immunity’ From State Prosecution

According to Vice President J.D. Vance, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis cannot be prosecuted for it by Minnesota officials. “The precedent here is very simple,” Vance declared. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action—that’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

But the precedent is not actually so simple. In an 1890 case known as In re Neagle, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a federal marshal named David Neagle was “not liable to answer in the Courts of California” after he fatally shot the would-be assassin of a Supreme Court justice named Stephen Field during an attack on Field that occurred on a train traveling through California (Neagle was present as Field’s official bodyguard). “Under the circumstances,” the Court said, Neagle “was acting under the authority of the law of the United States, and was justified in so doing.” Therefore, “he is not liable to answer in the courts of California on account of his part in that transaction.”

Vance may have been thinking of In re Neagle when he claimed that ICE agents possess “absolute immunity” from state prosecution. However, In re Neagle was not the Supreme Court’s final word on the matter.

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Multiple States Facing Marijuana Legalization Repeal Threats in 2026

Prohibitionist-led efforts are underway in multiple states to repeal voter-initiated adult-use marijuana markets.

In Maine and Arizona, campaigners are collecting signatures to place ballot questions before voters undermining those states’ cannabis legalization laws. If passed the Arizona initiative would repeal the state’s licensed retail marijuana market. The initiative in Maine would similarly wipe out the state’s regulated adult-use market, while also eliminating consumers’ ability to legally grow personal use quantities of cannabis at home.

In Massachusetts, campaigners have already collected the necessary number of signatures to place a similar repeal measure, titled An Act to Restore a Sensible Marijuana Policy, before voters. In Massachusetts and Maine, allegations persist that voters’ signatures in support of the proposals were fraudulently obtained.

“2026 is going to be a pivotal year for the marijuana reform movement,” NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. “If successful, these measures will wipe out regulated cannabis markets — eliminating tens of thousands of jobs, ballooning state budget deficits, and disrupting safe access to millions of consumers. How successfully we respond to these challenges today will determine the degree to which our movement continues to move forward tomorrow.”

Also, in Idaho, a constitutional amendment will appear on the November ballot that, if approved, will forbid voters from ever again having the opportunity to decide on statewide marijuana policies. State lawmakers voted last year to place the amendment on the 2026 ballot.

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