Tag: police state

Moment Border Patrol use huge explosion to blast their way into house with woman and two children

A California mother-of-two was left in tears after Border Patrol agents used a massive explosion to blow down her front door during a terrifying early-morning raid caught on camera.

The shocking scene unfolded in Huntington Park, Los Angeles, where Jenny Ramirez and her two young children, ages one and six, were jolted awake by a deafening blast before a dozen armed agents in full tactical gear stormed the home.

Surveillance footage obtained by NBC Los Angeles shows agents planting an explosive device on the door before detonating it – shattering a window and sending shockwaves through the quiet neighborhood.

Moments later, around a dozen federal agents charged toward the house with weapons drawn.

Inside were Ramirez, her boyfriend Jorge Sierra-Hernandez, and their two children. Speaking through tears, Ramirez told NBC it was one of the loudest explosions she’d ever heard.

‘I told them, ‘You guys didn’t have to do this, you scared by son, my baby,’ Ramirez told NBC. 

Ramirez said she was given no warning about the raid and insisted that everyone in the home is a U.S. citizen.

According to Ramirez, the agents said they were searching for her boyfriend, who she claims was recently involved in an accidental collision with a truck carrying federal officers.

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Student Visa Applicants Will Now Be Forced To Make Their Social Media Accounts Public

In a Monday announcement, several U.S. embassies stated that student visa applicants will be required to turn the settings on their social media accounts to “public” in order to facilitate scrutiny of their posts, presumably for ideological screening. The change is part of a recent string of crackdowns on international students, which has targeted many who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests or expressed anti-Israel views.

In a social media post, the U.S. Embassy in London wrote that “every visa adjudication is a national security decision,” adding that applicants for several kinds of student visas would be required to “adjust the privacy settings on all of their personal social media accounts to ‘public’ to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States.” Several other embassy social media accounts also posted the statement.

The directive comes after months of ramped-up efforts to ideologically filter prospective international students. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio began canceling the visas of some college students who participated in anti-Israel protests—or, in one student’s case, simply wrote an op-ed. In one March press conference, he estimated that his office had canceled more than 300 visas.

“Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.” Rubio said. “At some point, I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them, but, we’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.”

A domestic cable sent to embassy officials in May telegraphed this latest development, ordering officials to scour social media posts from prospective Harvard students, noting that the order “will also serve as a pilot for expanded screening and vetting of visa applicants” and “will be expanded over time.” Last week, additional policy updates directed embassy officials to review F, M, and J visas (which are common student visas) for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States.”

This latest move in the Trump administration’s mission to prevent students with disfavored views from studying in the U.S. is nothing less than outright viewpoint discrimination. While the U.S. has a national security interest in vetting visa applicants for affiliations with outright terrorist groups, merely opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza hardly approaches that line. And, as many free speech advocates have pointed out, this precedent can easily be utilized to punish many other viewpoints.

“There is nothing stopping this or another administration from using that authority tomorrow against critics of other countries, whether they’re protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s oppression of Uyghurs,” reads a recent statement from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment group. “That’s wrong. Requiring foreign students and faculty to self-censor their views about American foreign policy in order to stay in the country violates American principles of free speech and the First Amendment.”

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Victim Blaming: UK Judge Uses Violence Committed Against Man as Evidence of His Guilt

A man in London was convicted of a “religiously aggravated public order offense” after HE was attacked by a triggered radical.

Hamit Coskun, a Kurdish-Armenian asylum seeker, was fined over $300 after burning a Quran outside the Turkish consulate as a protest against Turkey’s Islamist government.

Moussa Kadri attacked Coskun with a knife, knocked him down, and kicked him.

But it is Coskun, the victim of a physical attack, who is being punished.

The Westminster Magistrates’ Court held Coskun responsible, citing the violent reaction as evidence of his guilt.

Judge John McGarva stated, “Burning a religious book, although offensive, to some is not necessarily disorderly.”

“What made his conduct disorderly was the timing and location of the conduct and that all this was accompanied by abusive language. There was no need for him to use the ‘F word’ and direct it towards Islam.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) noted the irony of the attacker’s actions being used to convict the victim.

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A Police State Coming to a Town Near You

We have seen this before.

A foreign entity attacks American persons or property and the government warns that its sleeper cells have infiltrated the United States and it is somehow necessary to expand the powers of the government and shrink protections for civil liberties — and this shrinkage will somehow keep us all safe.

The premise of this deeply flawed argument is that less liberty produces more safety. That premise is historically and morally erroneous. Even if we had cops watching us on every street corner or F.B.I. agents virtually in every home, who will keep us safe from them? And who would want to live, who could be private and free, in such an environment?

Here is the backstory.

When James Madison referred to the creation of the American republic as an inversion, he must have been met with quizzical looks and curious laughter. He meant that throughout history, popular governments came about by monarchs and despots — the sovereign — begrudgingly giving up power. This was, to Madison, power giving liberty.

In America, however, Madison argued — following his neighbor and good friend Thomas Jefferson, who maintained that individual persons are sovereign — the government came about by an inversion of the old way. In America, liberty gave power.

Thus, at the end of the American war for independence, which began 250 years ago, there was no central government here. The king’s agents and soldiers had been chased back to England, and many of his judicial and administrative officials retreated into private life or suddenly became patriots.

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Supreme Court Greenlights Online Digital ID Checks

With a landmark ruling that could shape online content regulation for years to come, the US Supreme Court has upheld Texas’s digital ID age-verification law for adult websites and platforms, asserting that the measure lawfully balances the state’s interest in protecting minors with the free speech rights of adults.

The 6-3 decision, issued on June 27, 2025, affirms the constitutionality of House Bill 1181, a statute that requires adult websites to verify the age of users before granting access to sexually explicit material.

Laws like House Bill 1181, framed as necessary safeguards for children, are quietly eroding the rights of adults to access lawful content or speak freely online without fear of surveillance or exposure.

Under such laws, anyone seeking to view legal adult material online (and eventually even those who want to access social media platforms because may contain content “harmful” to minors) is forced to provide official identification, often a government-issued digital ID or even biometric data, to prove their age.

Supporters claim this is a small price to pay to shield minors from harmful content. Yet these measures create permanent records linking individuals to their browsing choices, exposing them to unprecedented risks.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

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White House Announces Withdrawal Of Trump’s Drug Czar Nominee Who Embraced Medical Marijuana

The White House has notified Congress that President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)—who has publicly backed medical marijuana access—is being withdrawn.

About three months after Trump picked Sara Carter to become the next White House drug czar, the administration told lawmakers on Thursday that she’s no longer up for consideration for the position.

It’s currently unclear whether Carter withdrew from consideration herself or if it was a decision made by the president. Marijuana Moment reached out to the White House for comment, but a representative did not respond by the time of publication.

The notice published in the Congressional Record about the withdrawal of the nomination reads:

“WITHDRAWAL

Executive Message transmitted by the President to the Senate on June 26, 2025 withdrawing from further Senate consideration the following nomination:

SARA CARTER, OF TEXAS, TO BE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, VICE RAHUL GUPTA, RESIGNED, WHICH WAS SENT TO THE SENATE ON MAY 6, 2025.”

There was some enthusiasm about Carter’s nomination among cannabis reform advocates, as she’s previously called medical marijuana a “fantastic” treatment option for seriously ill patients and said she doesn’t have a “problem” with legalization, even if she might not personally agree with the policy.

Given the role of ONDCP director in setting and carrying out the administrative agenda on drug policy issues, the fact that Carter went on the record enthusiastically endorsing medical cannabis represented a welcome development for advocates amid Senate confirmations of other officials with a mixed bag of marijuana records.

Under longstanding federal statute, the drug czar is prohibited from endorsing the legalization of Schedule I drugs in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), including marijuana. However, Democratic congressional lawmakers in April filed a bill that would remove that restriction.

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Sweden plans to remove citizenship from people seen as threat to state

Sweden’s political parties have agreed that dual citizens who commit crimes that threaten national security should lose their citizenship.

A cross-party committee recommended that the change could be applied to anyone who had used bribes or false information to obtain their citizenship; and also if they committed crimes that were a threat to the state or came under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

But it stopped short of proposals by the minority government for gangsters to have their citizenship revoked.

Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said Sweden was dealing with “violent extremism, state actors acting in a hostile manner towards Sweden, as well as systemic organised crime”.

Under Sweden’s constitution, revoking citizenship is currently not allowed and a vote will take place next year in parliament on changing the laws.

Centre-left opposition parties say that revoking gang criminals’ citizenship would be a step too far, as deciding how to define the law would be difficult. Two opposition parties, the Left and the Greens, said they could not back removing citizenship at all.

However, Sweden’s centre-right governing parties, backed by the more radical anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, want the changes to tackle the dramatic rise in gang crime and the high rate of gun killings.

“The proposals I received today will not give us the possibility to take back Swedish citizenship from gang leaders in criminal networks sitting abroad, directing shootings and bombings and murders on Sweden’s streets,” Strommer told Swedish Radio.

The government points to neighbouring Denmark, where citizenship can already be removed because of an act that is “seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the state”. The law was recently extended to include some forms of serious gang crime.

Sweden’s minority government has also moved to tighten rules on applying for citizenship.

Migration Minister Johan Forssell said that last year police reported 600 cases of people applying who were considered a threat to national security.

From June 2026, anyone seeking a Swedish passport will generally have to have lived in the country for eight years instead of five at the moment. Tests on Swedish language and society would also be included.

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Nebraska Medical Marijuana Regulators Approve Emergency Rules Banning Flower Access For Patients

The Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission on Thursday approved emergency regulations to begin accepting medical cannabis applications as soon as Gov. Jim Pillen (R) gives his final green light.

State law requires him to do so by Tuesday.

The emergency regulations, unveiled for the first time minutes before the 10 a.m. meeting, largely mirror a legislative proposal that lawmakers stalled on last month. The regulations would take effect for up to 90 days, pending Pillen’s approval. The two medical cannabis-related laws that voters approved mandate that applications must start being accepted no later than July 1.

Commissioner Lorelle Mueting of Gretna, an addiction prevention specialist through Heartland Family Service, affirmed that commissioners want public feedback on the emergency regulations through July 15, to inform future, formal regulations.

Public comments may be submitted to lcc.frontdesk@nebraska.gov, the repository for the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, which will forward the messages onto the state’s new Medical Cannabis Commission.

“The input that the public provides on these emergency regulations will help us immediately begin drafting the regular regulations,” Mueting said Thursday.

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The Coming Police State

A foreign entity attacks American persons or property and the government warns that its sleeper cells have infiltrated the United States and it is somehow necessary to expand the powers of the government and shrink protections for civil liberties – and this shrinkage will somehow keep us all safe.

The premise of this deeply flawed argument is that less liberty produces more safety. That premise is historically and morally erroneous. Even if we had cops watching us on every street corner or FBI agents virtually in every home, who will keep us safe from them? And who would want to live, who could be private and free, in such an environment?

Here is the backstory.

When James Madison referred to the creation of the American republic as an inversion, he must have been met with quizzical looks and curious laughter. He meant that throughout history, popular governments came about by monarchs and despots – the sovereign – begrudgingly giving up power. This was, to Madison, power giving liberty.

In America, however, Madison argued – following his neighbor and good friend Thomas Jefferson, who maintained that individual persons are sovereign – the government came about by an inversion of the old way. In America, liberty gave power.

Thus, at the end of the American war for independence, which began 250 years ago, there was no central government here. The king’s agents and soldiers had been chased back to England, and many of his judicial and administrative officials retreated into private life or suddenly became patriots.

The 13 states were the only meaningful governments, and all persons – actually, all land-owning adult white males – were recognized as sovereign. I say “recognized” because Jefferson’s theory of the primacy of the individual over the state was his understanding of Natural Law Theory, and the natural law is color- and gender- and wealth- and status-blind. It teaches that all human beings possess equal natural rights from birth, recognized at the age of reason, and exercisable upon earliest adulthood.

Hence, because of perverse racial attitudes about Africans and Native Americans and antediluvian attitudes about women and wealth, Jefferson’s iconic language in the Declaration of Independence that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” makes no sense unless it is understood to mean that all persons are created equal.

This uniformity of equality, which colonial society here limited to adult, white, landowning males, nevertheless was voluntarily exercised so as to create a limited government. When the Constitution was ratified by voters in the states – in numerous conventions, town meetings and political gatherings – it literally consisted of liberty giving power. This was Madison’s inversion.

But the power that individuals morally gave – legally, the power that the states delegated to the new central government – was not without limits. And those limits were reduced to writing in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Basically, the Constitution established the new federal government, and the Bill of Rights restrained it. In the late 1860s, new amendments were added to the original Constitution that essentially applied the Bill of Rights to states and local governments.

The premise of the Bill of Rights – purely Jeffersonian and Madisonian – is that because our rights come from the Creator, they are inalienable; and hence each of us is sovereign. The Bill of Rights does not create rights; rather it restrains the government from interfering with them.

The key amendments for this discussion are the First (restraining the government from interfering with religion, assembly, speech and writings) the Fourth (guaranteeing the right to be left alone, and prohibiting searches and seizures unless by warrant issued by judges based on probable cause of crime), and the Fifth and 14th, which together guarantee fair trials to all persons whenever the government seeks their lives, liberties or property.

Now back to the coming police state.

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B.C. government realizes EV mandates not achievable: leaked slideshow

The Energy Futures Institute released a copy of a government slideshow presentation on Tuesday (June 24) that reveals the B.C. government is considering easing electric vehicle mandates due to slumping sales.

“It’s been obvious for a long time that B.C.’s electric vehicle targets were unattainable,” said Barry Penner, Energy Futures Institute chair and former B.C. Liberal environment minister, in a news release. 

B.C. passed the Zero Emission Vehicles Act in 2019, becoming the first jurisdiction in the world to mandate 100 per cent electric vehicle sales by a specific target date. The target is only for vehicles under a certain weight category. By 2026, 26 per cent of vehicle sales must be for electric models. By 2030, this must be 90 per cent and by 2035, 100 per cent.

Automakers selling cars in B.C. are required to demonstrate they are meeting the targets.

The slideshow, dated June 18 and presented by Nat Gosman, an assistant deputy minister from the Energy and Climate Solutions ministry, acknowledges that electric vehicle sales in B.C. have “levelled off” and reaching the mandated targets at this point will be “challenging.”

According to the presentation, sales were at 15.3 per cent in April after averaging 18.5 per cent in the first three months of 2025 and 22.4 per cent in 2024.

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