Tag: police state

FCC Bans Nearly All Wireless Routers Sold in the U.S.

This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively banned the sale of nearly all wireless routers in the U.S., in yet another example of the government making Americans’ consumer decisions for them.

Ninety-six percent of American adults use the internet, and 80 percent of them use wireless routers—devices that transmit a signal throughout your home via radio waves and allow you to get online without plugging into the wall.

In a Monday announcement, the FCC deemed “all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries” potentially unsafe. This followed a national security determination last week, in which members of executive branch agencies concluded that “routers produced in a foreign country, regardless of the nationality of the producer, pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.”

The Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 empowered the government “to prevent communications equipment or services that pose a national security risk from entering U.S. networks.” The law directed the FCC to “publish and maintain a list of such equipment or services,” and according to that agency, inclusion on the list “will prevent the marketing, sale, or operation of any such new ‘covered’ equipment within the United States.”

Since wireless routers transmit over radio frequencies, they must be authorized by the FCC to be sold in the U.S.; adding all new foreign-made routers to the “Covered List” means the FCC will not authorize those devices’ transmitters, effectively banning their sale or use.

The announcement specifies that this only applies to new consumer-grade devices and “does not prohibit the import, sale, or use of any existing device models the FCC previously authorized.” It also notes that manufacturers who apply for exemptions on new models can be “granted ‘Conditional Approval’ after finding that such device or devices do not pose such unacceptable risks.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ban will likely make it more difficult for Americans to get wireless routers.

The problem is that banning all foreign-made routers means banning practically all routers. Most manufacturers, including the three largest, make their products overseas.

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He Compared a Black Child to a Dog and Withheld Evidence in Death Row Cases. Now He’s Running for Judge.

Hugo Holland’s aggressive legal tactics made him one of Louisiana’s most renowned prosecutors and helped turn Caddo Parish, a majority Black community in the northwest corner of the state, into one of the nation’s leaders in death penalty convictions.

His nearly 40-year career, though, has been marked by controversies.

In at least two death penalty cases, Louisiana judges found that Holland withheld evidence. In a third, he secured the conviction of a Black 16-year-old, comparing the boy to a dog and telling the jury to “get rid of it”; prosecutors later admitted that Holland and his team had failed to turn over evidence.

Defense attorneys have also accused him of racism, pointing, for example, to a capital murder case several years ago in which Holland emailed one of them to say he was going to spend Veterans Day in his pickup truck looking for “a Black guy or a Mex-can.” Holland called it a joke.

Holland, 62, is now running for judge in the First Judicial District Court in Caddo Parish, and his nascent campaign appears to have substantial backing. He has raised more than $61,000 in less than two months, according to the first campaign finance report released in February — twice the amount many candidates running for the 1st Judicial Court spend in an entire campaign, said Jeffrey Sadow, an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University in Shreveport.

Holland’s donors include an assistant district attorney with the Caddo Parish DA’s office, the district attorney of neighboring Bossier and Webster parishes, a former state judge, and members of major law firms throughout the area.

Holland’s funding haul might prove to be so daunting that it scares off potential challengers, Sadow said, though candidates have until the end of July to enter the race. “It shows he’s got an awful lot of support and that he’s considered a quality candidate,” he said.

In addition to his robust campaign fundraising, Holland has been able to bring on the head of the local Republican Party, Matthew Kay, as his campaign chair. (Kay also served as an elector for Donald Trump in 2024.)

Holland declined multiple requests for comment about his candidacy and record as a prosecutor. Neither Kay nor nine of the 10 donors Verite News and ProPublica reached out to would respond or agree to speak about their support for Holland.

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OneTaste Founder Nicole Daedone Gets 9-Year Prison Sentence

Nine years in prison for preaching unpopular ideas about sexuality? That’s the sentence that a judge imposed today on Nicole Daedone of OneTaste, a company built on orgasmic meditation (OM) and other unconventional wellness practices. Daedone has also been ordered to forfeit $12 million—which is how much she got for selling the company in 2017—and to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution.

The government will say that this is about human trafficking. But that’s just a sign of how “human trafficking” has become a catchall term for sex-tinged antics that prosecutors want to punish.

In this case, no one has accused Daedone and her colleague/co-defendant Rachel Cherwitz of violence. No one has accused them of confining victims, or of withholding identity documents or other items that employees might have needed to get away.

The alleged victims in this case could come and go as they pleased. They were adult women. They had college degrees, outside professional opportunities, and sometimes even independent wealth. They testified in court that they remained affiliated with OneTaste—some as employees, some as volunteers, some simply as people who took classes from the company or lived in group houses that it maintained—because they believed in its mission, believed in Daedone and Cherwitz, or wanted to maintain social status within the OneTaste community.

The government’s assertions about how Daedone and Cherwitz employed “coercion” in this case are a huge affront to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Prosecutors suggested that the ideas Daedone and Cherwitz spread served as a form of brainwashing. These supposedly dangerous ideas include such things as being open to new sexual experiences and the notion that engaging in daily OM—a 15-minute, partnered, clitoral stroking session—could focus the mind and help empower practitioners, especially women. Daedone and Cherwitz appear to sincerely believe these ideas, which they saw as rooted in both Buddhism and feminism.

The government’s case was also a huge affront to the idea that women are fully agentic people capable of consent, sexual and otherwise. Prosecutors suggested that anxiety about being shunned by the OneTaste community was a harm so powerful that grown women were effectively “trafficked” by it. They argued that these women’s consent—to OM, to participate in sexual fantasy scenes, to enter into and out of relationships, to engage in sex acts with OneTaste members or donors, or to pay for OneTaste classes—was rendered null by the force of fear of social exclusion and/or fear that stopping OM and other OneTaste practices would have a negative impact on their lives.

Ultimately, the case portends a dangerous new standard for what counts as forced labor and what counts as harm under federal trafficking statutes.

Sentencing for Daedone started this morning, following a June 2025 conviction on one count of conspiracy to commit human trafficking. Cherwitz, convicted of the same, is scheduled to be sentenced this afternoon.

The government sought 20 years in prison for Daedone and more than 15 for Cherwitz—basing calculations in part on alleged conduct for which they were not even charged, let alone convicted. Judge Diane Gujarati denied the government’s request for a sexual abuse enhancement based on untried conduct.

The government’s star witness was to be a woman named Ayries Blanck, whose journals were a big part of the prosecutors’ case (and, also, of a Netflix documentary). Prosecutors would eventually disclose that Blanck had fabricated evidence, producing journals she said she had handwritten in 2015 but had actually composed much later. After heavily featuring Blanck and her journals in their arguments leading up to the trial, prosecutors declined to call Blanck as a trial witness and said they no longer believed in the authenticity of portions of her journals. The case nevertheless proceeded, and now a woman is heading to prison for nearly a decade.

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Beloved highschooler Lily Bova gunned down outside Chicago — and cops won’t say who did it

A 16-year-old girl was gunned down in a quiet Chicago suburb Saturday morning — and authorities have neither caught nor identified her suspected killer.

The victim, identified as high school sophomore Lilly Bova, was killed in the Cook County neighborhood of Glenview around 11 a.m., authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are searching for a person of interest but have revealed few details about who may have killed the well-liked teen.

“While we cannot share further details at this time, this was an isolated incident and does not appear to pose a risk to the general public,” the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement — without revealing further details about the murder that has shocked her loved ones in the peaceful, affluent village.

Bova was “bright, positive and mature beyond her years,” her school principal said in a message to students and parents viewed by Fox 32.

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Denver Imposes Water Restrictions, Orders Restaurants To Serve Only On Request

Restaurants in Colorado’s capital are only allowed to serve water to guests if they ask, according to new restrictions by the Denver Board of Water Commissioners.

“Restaurants and catering businesses shall serve water only upon request,” the mandatory irrigation restrictions read.

The rules were issued in the Mile High City after the commissioners declared a Stage 1 Drought and made plans to seek a 20 percent reduction in water use. City officials expect drought conditions to last until April 30, 2027.

The update will affect many businesses, including the hospitality industry.

“Lodging establishments shall not change sheets more often than every four days for guests staying more than one night, except for health or safety reasons or upon express request of guests,” the Denver Board of Water Commissioners stated.

Drivers who attempt to wash their car are told to use a bucket or a hand-held hose equipped with an automatic shut-off nozzle if they don’t use a commercial car wash.

Residents can water their grass only two days per week, according to the schedule provided by city officials, but it is prohibited between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., when the sun is up.

“Current conditions indicate that this is going to be an exceptionally challenging year for our water supply,” Nathan Elder, manager of water supply for Denver, said at a Denver Board of Water Commissioners meeting.

“Snow pack levels are at historic lows and are melting earlier and more rapidly than normal.”

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A Jury Approves Damages After 2 Texas Cops Snatched a Supposedly ‘Abandoned’ Girl From Her Home

More than seven years after two Texas cops kidnapped a teenaged girl they falsely claimed had been “abandoned,” a federal jury has concluded that the officers violated her Fourth Amendment rights by unreasonably seizing her from her home. In a verdict delivered last week, the jurors said that seizure also violated her parents’ due process rights under the 14th Amendment. And they agreed that one of the officers had violated the Fourth Amendment by searching the family’s kitchen without a warrant, consent, or exigent circumstances. In the second phase of the trial, the jurors approved $175,000 in compensatory damages and $125,000 in punitive damages.

The verdict validates constitutional claims that Megan and Adam McMurry made in a  federal lawsuit they filed in October 2020, two years after Officers Alexandra Weaver and Kevin Brunner, both of whom worked for the Midland Independent School District, visited their apartment and left with their daughter, Jade, then 14. That intervention, the jury concluded, was not justified in the circumstances, since Jade was not in any danger. The verdict “was vindicating after having our lives turned upside down and trampled through for the past seven and a half years,” Megan McMurry told KMID, the ABC affiliate in Midland.

The bizarre episode at the center of the case happened when Adam McMurry, then a member of the National Guard, was deployed to the Middle East, and Megan McMurry, a special education teacher at Abell Junior High School in Midland, was in Kuwait looking into a job that would have allowed the family to live near him. Megan McMurry had alerted her colleagues to her trip and had asked two neighbors, Vanessa and Gabe Vallejos, to keep an eye on Jade and her brother, Connor, then 12, who was a student at the school where McMurry worked.

On October 26, 2018, the guidance counselor who was supposed to take Connor to school was ill, so she texted Weaver, who lived in the neighborhood, asking if she could give Connor a ride. Although another Abell employee ended up bringing Connor to school, Weaver’s involvement did not end there.

Weaver was convinced that Jade had been “abandoned” and was in urgent need of a “welfare check.” Brunner, her supervisor, agreed, which is how they both ended up at the McMurrys’ apartment that morning.

Jade, who was homeschooled and in the midst of her online studies, did not understand what the cops were doing there. But within a minute, they had decided she needed to be rescued.

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Too High To Thrive: Excessive Cannabis Taxes Are Undermining Legal Markets

In recent piece, The New York Times editorial board called for a federal tax on cannabis and urged states to raise their own taxes to “dollars per joint, not cents.” That argument assumes cannabis is lightly taxed today—but across the country, the opposite is true.

Taxes on legal cannabis are higher than almost every industry in the United States and have generated nearly $25 billion since adult-use sales commenced in 2014. Despite these rates, efforts to increase cannabis levies are continuing to gain steam.

In 2025 alone, Maryland, Minnesota, Maine, Ohio, Michigan and California attempted to raise or expand cannabis taxes. This year, Colorado and Oklahoma are looking to do the same. Many of those proposals emerged as lawmakers confronted budget shortfalls and the expiration of federal pandemic aid. Cannabis has increasingly been treated as an untapped source of revenue.

In several large markets, cannabis taxes are layered on top of one another. Excise taxes are combined with state sales taxes, wholesale taxes, local taxes and, in some cases, potency-based taxes. In states such as Illinois, Michigan and Washington, the effective burden can exceed 40 percent. This is in addition to the federal tax burden cannabis businesses carry under §280E, which limits their ability to deduct ordinary operating expenses.

These structures are straining the legal market. High tax burdens are contributing to business closures (particularly among smaller operators) and pushing many consumers to the illicit market.

According to publicly available data, several highly taxed states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington, have experienced year-over-year declines in adult-use sales and industry job losses in recent years. At the same time, the illicit markets across these states remain entrenched. In California, one of the nation’s oldest legal cannabis markets, estimates suggest that roughly 60 percent of sales still occur outside the regulated system.

Higher taxes do not eliminate consumer demand. They simply change where consumers buy their cannabis.

Licensed businesses pay for testing, packaging, compliance systems, labor and sometimes local licensing. Unregulated sellers do not. When the legal price rises too far above the illicit alternative, price-sensitive consumers shift accordingly. That weakens the regulated market that legalization was intended to build. When tax increases take effect, the impact shows up quickly in wholesale pricing pressure, retailer margin compression, and shifts in purchasing behavior.

The cannabis industry is still new, but data tell us that the type of tax matters as much as the rate.

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Apple UK Age Verification Chaos: Users Face Failed Scans, Rejected Passports, and Forced Content Filters

Apple’s iOS 26.4 age verification system is failing UK users who don’t have a credit card or photocard driving license, leaving them with no way to prove they’re adults on devices they’ve owned for years.

The system arrived without warning, without explanation, and without any apparent consideration for the people who don’t fit Apple’s narrow assumptions about what a British adult looks like.

No Warning, No Communication

Apple sent no email. Included no mention of age verification in the iOS 26.4 release notes it shared publicly.

Unless you’d been following the developer beta track, where the feature appeared in February or reading Reclaim The Net’s earlier coverage, the first you knew about it was a prompt on your screen after restarting your phone.

That’s how 35 million UK iPhone users found out their devices now require identity documents to function normally. A “Confirm You Are 18+” label appeared at the top of Settings, and anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t comply got silently downgraded. Apple’s Web Content Filter switched on, blocking websites across Safari and every third-party browser. Communication Safety is activated, scanning images and videos in Messages and FaceTime for nudity. Features that worked fine the day before now require government-approved proof of adulthood.

A company that controls what software runs on every iPhone it sells decided overnight that UK users needed to hand over identity documents to keep using the devices they already paid for. And it didn’t bother to tell them it was coming.

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Utah Bans Polygraph Tests for Those Reporting Sexual Assault

For years, Utah allowed government officials to do something other states banned: ask a person who reports a sexual assault to take a polygraph test.

That will change soon. Earlier this month, state lawmakers passed a bill that prohibits police and other government officials from requesting polygraph tests for alleged sex assault victims. Gov. Spencer Cox signed it into law on Thursday, and it goes into effect in May. 

Experts say these tests are known to be especially unreliable with victims of sexual abuse. That’s because victims may have stress and anxiety recounting their assault that the polygraph may interpret as deception. Other states don’t allow them to be used with assault victims for this reason.

It took two years and three legislative sessions for Utah state Rep. Angela Romero, the House minority leader, to get the bill across the finish line. When she first sponsored it in 2024, she cited reporting from The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica as she told her fellow legislators the damaging effects polygraph tests can have on people who are reporting sexual abuse. 

In the case covered by the news outlets, state licensors asked a man to take a polygraph test after he reported that his therapist, Scott Owen, had touched him inappropriately. The test results indicated he was being deceptive, and that led the patient to drop his complaint. Owen was allowed to continue to practice for two more years, until others came forward with similar allegations. Owen is now in prison after admitting he sexually abused patients.

Romero said in a recent interview that she was determined to bring the bill back for that former patient.

“For me, it was really specifically for that one individual who was not believed,” Romero said, “and then their perpetrator went on to harm other people.”

Cox signed the legislation during a small ceremony at his office, telling Romero that she “has been such a champion, and made a difference and saved lives.” The governor also nodded to The Tribune and ProPublica’s reporting driving change.

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Friendly Fire: British Army to Punish Soldiers Writing Satirical Songs as Morale Plunges

British Army soldiers have been reprimanded for lampooning the low morale among troops amid warnings from the top brass that they would likely be wiped out if a major war broke out.

A British Army Major was “summoned for a telling off” after it was revealed that he created a satirical song reflecting on the official position of senior officers that, should a big war come, they in the “first echelon” would have to be quickly replaced with new recruits if the country had a hope of winning the conflict.

The song, which quickly spread among the personal mobile devices of serving soldiers, expressed in its chorus and final verse:

…we keep on getting told that wars are won by the second and third echelon, but fuck that because we’re in the first one.

But don’t worry about it… because we’re all dying in the first wave.

Don’t think about the tactics or question the plan, there’s no kit but the [NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps] all over it so bring back the glory days and earn the parade of our coffins…

The line speaks both to a recent remarkable speech by General Sir Patrick Sanders about the inevitability of the “first echelon” of the British Army being expected to suffer badly should a major war come, and the institutional memory of when exactly the same fate befell soldiers in the First and Second World Wars.

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