Tag: police state

Missouri Police Officer Shoots, Kills Blind & Deaf Dog …Community Outraged

A police officer in Missouri shot and killed a blind and deaf dog this week … and while the department’s saying the cop feared contracting rabies — the community’s calling BS.

Teddy — a five-year-old, 13-pound shih tzu mix was killed in Sturgeon, Missouri after escaping his yard. The owner gave the dog some water and called the police … who The Washington Post reports shot the dog twice within minutes of arriving.

Check out the body cam footage … little Teddy’s running around the field — away from the officer at first before turning around and moving toward him, though not seemingly in an aggressive way.

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Court rules Mississippi’s social media age verification law can go into effect

A Mississippi law that requires social media users to verify their ages can go into effect, a federal court has ruled. A tech industry group has pledged to continue challenging the law, arguing it infringes on users’ rights to privacy and free expression.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overruled a decision by a federal district judge to block the 2024 law from going into effect. It’s the latest legal development as court challenges play out against similar laws in states across the country.

Parents – and even some teens themselves – are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media use on young people. Supporters of the new laws have said they are needed to help curb the explosive use of social media among young people, and what researchers say is an associated increase in depression and anxiety.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued in a court filing defending the law that steps such as age verification for digital sites could mitigate harm caused by “sex trafficking, sexual abuse, child pornography, targeted harassment, sextortion, incitement to suicide and self-harm, and other harmful and often illegal conduct against children.”

Attorneys for NetChoice, which brought the lawsuit, have pledged to continue their court challenge, arguing the law threatens privacy rights and unconstitutionally restricts the free expression of users of all ages.

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New Utah law requires license for hiking and biking in wildlife areas

A new law in Utah might surprise even seasoned RVers. As of May 2025, anyone over 18 venturing onto certain Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) for hiking, biking, trail running or wildlife viewing needs a valid hunting or fishing license.

If you’re RVing into the Beehive State planning to explore its renowned trails, you want to pay attention.

What changed (and when)

• Effective date: May 7, 2025.

• Who’s affected: All non‑commercial users age 18+ entering WMAs in Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber counties.

• Activities covered: Non‑consumptive uses like hiking, biking, trail running, birdwatching and photography now technically require a hunting or fishing license on WMAs.

While WMAs remain open to public recreation, the twist is that their upkeep has historically been funded by dollars from hunters and anglers. This law simply aligns all users with the cost of managing these specialized wildlife areas.

Why licenses

• Equitable contribution: Non‑consumptive trail users were benefiting from habitat conservation financed solely by hunting and fishing fees. Lawmakers deemed it only fair that everyone accessing WMAs pitch in.

• Federal matching funds: Hunting dollars are matched under the Pittman‑Robertson Act; fishing dollars under the Dingell‑Johnson Act. More licenses sold means more federal grants for habitat and species conservation. These benefits extend beyond WMAs themselves.

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Academic Warns Banning German Opposition AfD Party a ‘Sure Path to Civil War’

Banning the nation’s second-largest political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has become a matter of constant conversation. Yet, a prominent academic has warned that there could be serious consequences for breaking the democratic system.

Germany’s AfD was declared a “right-wing extremist” organisation by the outgoing leftist government earlier this year, triggering a legal challenge. Meanwhile, some German states have moved to ban AfD members from serving as police officers or becoming civil servants.

Left-wing politicians even openly speak of outright banning the AfD altogether as incompatible with the post-war German constitution. This would see the state remove the elected members from parliament. Such discussions are now a weekly topic of headlines in Germany, despite the party having come second in this year’s national elections, with one-fifth of all votes being cast for the AfD, or over ten million ballots. Far from being a niche or fringe party, the faction now serves as the official parliamentary opposition and recently polled in first place nationwide.

While eliminating your political opposition at the stroke of a pen may seem appealing to the German left, a prominent academic has now spoken out to warn against the move, predicting that undermining the basic principles of democracy could be detrimental to the country.

Speaking to Euronews, chair for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Professor Andreas Rödder, is reported to have said: “The German Left should think carefully about what it is doing and what consequences it has for liberal democracy.”

The report cites Rödder as one of the “most important intellectuals” of Germany’s centre-right, so he is by no means an instinctive supporter of the AfD, which has eroded the support of the centrist Christian Democrats, just as populists have done to neoliberal “conservative” parties continent-wide.

Nevertheless, using language now increasingly heard in some European states, he told the publication: “A ban that would eliminate all votes for the AfD and thus lead to [a left-wing] parliamentary majority” would be a “sure path to civil war”.

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The Trump Administration Defends the Federal Ban on Interstate Handgun Sales

A couple of years ago, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Donald Trump, caused a kerfuffle by erroneously reporting that his boss had bought a Glock pistol while visiting a gun store in Summerville, South Carolina. That claim was striking because it implicated Trump, who was then seeking the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, in a federal crime: Since he was under indictment in state and federal court, he was barred from buying firearms. But even if Trump had not faced felony charges, the transaction that Cheung described would have been illegal because of federal restrictions on interstate handgun purchases.

As a resident of Florida, Trump would not have been allowed to directly buy a pistol from a South Carolina gun dealer. Instead, he would have had to arrange and pay for shipment of the weapon to a licensed dealer in Florida, who could have completed the transaction there, typically in exchange for an additional fee. A lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas takes aim at that rule, arguing that it is inconsistent with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) says the ban on interstate handgun sales fails the constitutional test that the Supreme Court established in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

As president, Trump now controls the nation’s vast military might, including its nuclear arsenal. But because the dubious New York case against him resulted in felony convictions, he is not allowed to possess firearms, let alone buy new ones. And even if his convictions are overturned on appeal, he still won’t be allowed to buy a handgun in South Carolina or any other state he might visit. His administration, which is avowedly committed to protecting Second Amendment rights, nevertheless is defending that restriction against the FPC’s challenge, saying it “serves legitimate objectives” and “only modestly burdens the right to keep and bear arms.”

That argument sounds suspiciously like the sort of “interest balancing” that the Supreme Court emphatically rejected in Bruen. When a gun restriction affects conduct covered by “the Second Amendment’s plain text,” the Court said in that case, the government has the burden of demonstrating that it is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” That test typically requires identifying historical analogs that are “relevantly similar” in motivation and scope to a challenged law.

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Wells Fargo Suspends Travel to China After Communist Regime Blocks Top Banker from Leaving

Wells Fargo suspended travel for all of its employees to China on Thursday after the Chinese government slapped an exit ban on banker Chenyue Mao.

Mao is an American citizen who was born in Shanghai. She is a managing director for Wells Fargo, working from an office in Atlanta. According to the bank, her duties include helping international companies manage their working capital in different countries.

Mao specializes in “factoring,” the practice of selling accounts receivable to third parties. The seller gets cash immediately, while the buyer or “factor” proceeds to collect on the invoices they purchased at a discount. Companies that do business overseas often find factoring preferable to running debt collections operations in foreign countries.

In June, Mao was elected as chairwoman of FCI, a global industry organization for international accounts receivable. FCI was called Factors Chain International when it was established in 1968, and factoring remains one of its primary interests, but it has diversified into other aspects of finance and debt collection across national borders.

When it announced Mao’s election as chair of its executive committee, FCI noted she had over 21 years of experience with factoring and has worked at Wells Fargo for over a decade. During that time, she was credited with growing “annual import-factoring flows to 2.6 billion euros (over $3 billion in U.S. dollars) while fostering innovation in open-account solutions.”

FCI said her goals as chairwoman included recruiting more banks to the organization and “expanding import-factoring know-how within the network.”

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Brazil Raids Bolsonaro’s Home, Orders Him To Wear Ankle Monitor After Trump Blasts Leftist Country

The Brazilian Supreme Court ordered that police raid former President Jair Bolsonaro’s home and place an ankle monitor on him on Friday, escalating its targeting of the conservative leader as President Donald Trump defends him.

After the Brazilian Supreme Court issued search warrants and restraining orders on Bolsonaro, federal police raided his home, and the former president was banned from contacting foreign officials, Reuters reported. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes cited a “concrete possibility” of Bolsonaro fleeing the country when he issued the order.

Brazil’s increased pressure on Bolsonaro comes shortly after President Trump defended his political ally and blasted the Brazilian Supreme Court for its “witch hunt” targeting Bolsonaro. Trump also imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil last week, citing the country’s “insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans.”

“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace,” Trump said in a letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “This trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

Moraes specifically called out Trump’s tariff on Brazil in his Friday order, arguing that it is intended to create an economic crisis in Brazil and interfere with the country’s judicial system.

On Thursday, Trump posted a letter on Truth Social that he sent to Bolsonaro, which read in part, “I have seen the terrible treatment you are receiving at the hands of an unjust system turned against you. This trial should end immediately! I am not surprised to see you leading in the polls; you were a highly respected and strong leader who served your country well.”

Bolsonaro told Reuters that he believes the Supreme Court’s move on Friday is in response to Trump’s recent comments. The former Brazilian president called Moraes a “dictator” and denied that he had any plans to flee the country.

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“Settlement tsunami”: Chicago spends more than double city budget on police misconduct settlements

The City of Chicago is searching for financial solutions amidst hundreds of pending police misconduct cases, spending more than double the $82 million budget.

Eight years ago, police burst down the door of the Mendez family home unannounced, pointing guns at Hester and Gilbert Mendez, and their sons Peter and Jack (who were 9 and 5 at the time) – only to find they’d raided the wrong apartment.

After years stuck in the legal pipeline, between COVID delays and multiple changes in the judge presiding over the case, Mendez et al. v. City of Chicago finally began on Monday, April 21, 2025 in Courtroom 1941 at the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in Chicago. 

The Mendez family was seeking financial compensation for their rights being violated and the trauma their children endured. 

The city of Chicago has already spent more than $164 million in taxpayer money this year on police misconduct settlements and judgments – more than double its $82 million budget. With hundreds of cases pending, including from people alleging torture by notorious former officers, the Mendez case illustrates how these situations often play out: the city launches into a costly trial, putting families through trauma and stress, only to settle for a large sum at taxpayer expense. Officials say there’s a better way to do it – offering substantial settlements earlier – not the unfairly small settlements that the city often uses to avoid trial, as lawyers see it; or ideally avoiding police misconduct in the first place. 

During the Mendez family’s trial, a now 17-year-old Peter Mendez described on the stand how he was traumatized on the evening of November 7, 2017. “My life flashed before my eyes, my heart was pounding, and I thought maybe I could die.”

To this day, the event has left Jack, the youngest child, with the same recurring nightmare of police shooting his mother, cuffing and taking his father away to jail, and separating him and his brother as they get taken to different orphanages. 

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Cocky cop jailed for stealing bitcoins had log of his crypto theft in his office

A former cop in the United Kingdom was sentenced to five and a half years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to covering up his theft of 50 bitcoins seized during an investigation into the now-defunct illicit dark web marketplace Silk Road.

In 2014, the former UK National Crime Agency (NCA) officer, Paul Chowles, assisted in the arrest of Thomas White, a man “who had launched Silk Road 2.0 less than a month after the FBI had shut down the original site in 2013,” the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in a press release.

Chowles was tapped to analyze and extract “relevant data and cryptocurrency” from White’s seized devices, specifically due to Chowles’ reputation for being “technically minded and very aware of the dark web and cryptocurrencies,” CPS said.

Like US cops busted for stealing bitcoins from Silk Road seizures, Chowles’ theft was brazen. In 2017, he transferred 50 of 97 seized bitcoins from one of White’s wallets to a public address, then used a cryptocurrency mixer called Bitcoin Fog to break up the bitcoins into smaller amounts “in an attempt to hide the trail of the money,” CPS said.

At the time, the bitcoins were worth about $80,000, but today, they’re valued at nearly $6 million.

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The Wearables Trap: How The Government Plans To Monitor, Score, And Control You

“When the states legalize the deliberate ending of certain lives… it will eventually broaden the categories of those who can be put to death with impunity.”—Nat Hentoff, The Washington Post, 1992

Bodily autonomy—the right to privacy and integrity over our own bodies—is rapidly vanishing.

The debate now extends beyond forced vaccinations or invasive searches to include biometric surveillance, wearable tracking, and predictive health profiling.

We are entering a new age of algorithmic, authoritarian control, where our thoughts, moods, and biology are monitored and judged by the state.

This is the dark promise behind the newest campaign by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to push for a future in which all Americans wear biometric health-tracking devices.

Under the guise of public health and personal empowerment, this initiative is nothing less than the normalization of 24/7 bodily surveillance—ushering in a world where every step, heartbeat, and biological fluctuation is monitored not only by private companies but also by the government.

In this emerging surveillance-industrial complex, health data becomes currency. Tech firms profit from hardware and app subscriptions, insurers profit from risk scoring, and government agencies profit from increased compliance and behavioral insight.

This convergence of health, technology, and surveillance is not a new strategy—it’s just the next step in a long, familiar pattern of control.

Surveillance has always arrived dressed as progress.

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