Tag: police state

North Jersey police officer pleads guilty to child porn distribution

A suspended Morris County police officer has pleaded guilty to distributing child porn, according to the county prosecutor’s office.

Anthony Kelly, 37, of the Ledgewood section of Roxbury, entered his plea June 16 to one count of second-degree distribution of child sexual abuse material before Morris County Judge Ralph Amirata. The state has agreed to recommend a seven-year prison sentence, the prosecutor said in a press release.

The investigation began in late 2024 after six CyberTips generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were sent to the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office. The tips detailed the distribution of more than 100 items of child sexual abuse material from an account on Kik, an instant messaging application, between July and October 2024.

Investigators revealed the account belonged to Kelly, who was charged on Nov. 26. He is currently suspended without pay from the Dover Police Department.

Dover Police Chief Jonathan Delaney, in a statement to the Daily Record, said Kelly’s arrest “appears to be an isolated incident and does not reflect the values, professionalism, or character of the hardworking men and women of the Dover Police Department.” He added that he remains committed to upholding the high standards throughout the department.

“We will continue to cooperate fully with the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office as this matter proceeds through the appropriate legal channels,” Delaney said. “In the meantime, I want to reaffirm my confidence in the dedicated officers of this department who serve with honor, courage, and a deep commitment to public safety.”

In addition to the seven-year recommended prison sentence, Kelly will be required to register pursuant to Megan’s Law upon his release, the prosecutor’s office said. He is scheduled to be sentenced by Amirata July 18.

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France Pushes Digital ID Check Laws For Platforms Like Reddit and Bluesky

Efforts by the French government to combat online access to pornography are quickly turning into a broader push to dismantle online anonymity, raising significant alarm among privacy advocates.

Authorities are now considering applying harsh age-verification mandates not just to explicit sites, but also to social networks like Reddit, Mastodon, and Bluesky, platforms where adult content may appear but where identity is not typically tethered to real-world credentials.

The shift doesn’t involve new legislation, but a reinterpretation of existing laws under France’s recently enacted regulations. This would allow the state to brand platforms that “enable the sharing of pornographic content” as porn sites, subjecting them to some of the most invasive digital ID checks yet proposed in the EU.

Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office stated, “Our focus is age verification for any platform that distributes or enables the sharing of pornographic content.”

Though framed as a move to protect children, the implications extend well beyond youth safety. Any service caught in this net would be forced to track the age, and by extension, the identity, of its users, undermining pseudonymity and threatening to make anonymous online activity impossible in practice.

The government’s renewed urgency follows the tragic killing of a teaching assistant in a high school, which President Emmanuel Macron used to reemphasize his call to ban social media for users under 15. While unrelated to pornography, the incident is being used to justify sweeping controls over digital spaces.

Platforms that fail to comply with the new age-check rules risk being fined, blacklisted by search engines, or even blocked entirely. Chappaz recently signaled that Elon Musk’s X is close to being designated as a pornographic platform, despite its primary function as a text-based social media site, highlighting how blurry and expansive the government’s definitions have become.

However, the legal path is anything but clear. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), decisions over “Very Large Online Platforms” rest with the European Commission, not individual member states.

These platforms are expected to assess and mitigate risks, including those tied to adult content, but retain discretion on how to do so. A legal review in France is reportedly underway, signaling the state’s intent to push this policy despite potential conflicts with EU law.

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Florida Lawmakers Pass Bill To Revoke Medical Marijuana Cards From People With Drug Convictions, Sending It To DeSantis’s Desk

Lawmakers in Florida are sending legislation to the governor’s desk that would revoke state medical marijuana registrations of people convicted of certain drug crimes.

On Monday, both the House and Senate signed off on a compromise version of SB 2514, a broad bill that touches on cancer, dentistry and other health-related matters. It also contains a provision that would force the state Department of Health (DOH) to cancel registrations of medical marijuana patients and caregivers if they’re convicted or plead either guilty or no contest to criminal drug charges.

On Monday, both legislative chambers approved a compromise committee’s revised version of the bill and sent the measure to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Language in the latest version is slightly different than what the Senate approved earlier this year. It says that a patient or caregiver would have their registration immediately suspended upon being charged with a state drug crime. The suspension would remain in place until the criminal case reaches a final disposition.

DOH officials would have authority to reinstate the registration, revoke it entirely or extend the suspension if needed.

Authorities would be required to revoke a person’s registration if the patient or caregiver “was convicted of, or pled guilty or nolo contendre to, regardless of adjudication, a violation [of state drug law] if such violation was for trafficking in, the sale, manufacture, or delivery of, or possession with intent to sell, manufacture, or deliver a controlled substance.”

The revised language appears to eliminate an earlier restriction that would have also revoked registrations for people who merely purchased illegal drugs, including more than 10 grams of marijuana for their own use. The new version focuses more specifically on production and distribution.

It also clarifies that patients and caregivers would have a process to request their registrations be reinstated. That would involve submitting a new application “accompanied by a notarized attestation by the applicant that he or she has completed all the terms of incarceration, probation, community control, or supervision related to the offense.”

It’s not clear from the plain language of the revised bill whether it would impact only future criminal cases involving medical marijuana patients and caregivers or whether DOH would need to review the records of existing program registrants and revoke registrations of an untold number of Floridians with past drug convictions.

Notably, lawmakers defeated several proposals to expand the medical cannabis program during this year’s regular legislation session—including by allowing home cultivation, adding new qualifying conditions, protecting employment and parental rights of patients and letting military veterans register for free.

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California Judge Blocks Trump Admin from Dismantling State Dept’s Censorship Agencies

A federal judge in California has halted the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) Hub, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).

In a June 13 order, US District Judge Susan Illston declared that the planned elimination of the unit, part of a broader push by the administration to downsize the federal government, violates an earlier injunction.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have prematurely celebrated the end of R-FIMI back in April when he said the censorship unit was “dead.”

Despite his announcement, legal barriers remain in place, preserving the agency’s existence. For now.

Through the intervention of the federal judiciary, R-FIMI, a program with a $50 million annual budget that has drawn fire for suppressing online speech under the pretense of combating “foreign disinformation,” has been granted an unexpected lifeline.

The agency, a legacy of the Obama administration, was launched in 2016 to monitor and counter alleged foreign propaganda, particularly from Russia.

But over time, its activities expanded into domestic spheres, drawing allegations that it pressured social media platforms to silence certain political voices ahead of the 2020 election.

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Great Big Ugly Surveillance State

On March 20, President Trump signed an executive order “Eliminating Information Silos.” The order directed heads of federal agencies to make sure officials designated by the president “have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems.” The executive order did not attract much attention until it was more recently revealed that the administration was working with tech company Palantir to create a database containing all information collected by all federal agencies on all US citizens.

A database consisting of all the information of American citizens collected by the various federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Pentagon would be a major step in creating a total surveillance state. This database could come in handy to future Dr. Faucis seeking to enforce mask and vaccine mandates. Those with access to this database could see personal health records, education records, and tax returns. They may even be able to see how many firearms individuals have purchased and if they were associated with any organizations the government had labeled “extremist.”

Despite the obvious threat to liberty the “big ugly database” poses, some commentators and “influencers” who would normally oppose, or at least be skeptical of, expansion of the surveillance state are supporting it because they believe it will be used to locate illegal immigrants. Some conservatives are supporting this proposal because it will help identify students who have publicly opposed the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Ironically, many of those supporting government cracking down on “anti-Israel” students came to fame (and in some cases fortune) as critics of “wokeness” and cancel culture.

The abandonment of liberty because fear drives people to trust government promises of safety is a phenomenon we have witnessed several times this century. An obvious example is the way many former friends of freedom supported the PATRIOT Act and other infringements on liberty following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. We also saw it during the covid hysteria when many embraced mask and vaccine mandates. Following the 2008 market meltdown, normally rather staunch opponents of government intervention supported the bailouts because they agreed with then-President George W. Bush who said he had “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”

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Documents Show Biden Admin Ginned Up FBI Investigations Of Law-Abiding Political Opponents

The Biden administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism was never about protecting Americans. It was about targeting them. From the day it was released, the strategy became a political weapon used against political opponents and anyone who dared to challenge government overreach.

Now, four years after this deeply troubling document, one thing is clear: President Trump must immediately rescind this unconstitutional abomination. The bureaucracy should not have the power to label law-abiding citizens as potential terrorists under vague and intentionally undefined terms such as “anti-government” and “anti-authority.”

This unprecedented strategy marked a shift in how the federal government views American citizens. Notice how it uses ambiguous terms as indicators of potential terrorism, yet it makes no mention of “anti-American sentiment.” That glaring omission says it all. The true purpose was to criminalize dissent against the government rather than protect the nation.

Recently declassified documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence show how the FBI and Department of Homeland Security “respond[ed] to incidents of concerning non-criminal behavior,” reinforcing concerns about the weaponized agencies opening probes on Americans who weren’t breaking the law.

The abuses of power were widespread. Consider who was targeted: parents who spoke at school board meetings, MAGA supporters, and Catholics who dared to hold traditional beliefs about the sanctity of life and the sexes, just to name a few. The FBI created threat tag systems to track these Americans and opened investigative files on citizens engaged in constitutionally protected activity.

These actions are unconstitutional and extend well beyond the statutory authority granted to these agencies by Congress. The National Strategy and the mechanisms laid out in the Strategic Implementation Plan operate in a legal gray area where bureaucrats act independently and use vague, undefined criteria to investigate and target Americans with little oversight or accountability.

This lack of oversight allowed millions of taxpayer dollars to be funneled to censorship initiatives such as Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, which collaborated with government agencies to flag and suppress online speech under the pretext of combating “misinformation.” Americans shouldn’t have to pay to have their own voices silenced, especially by a government that was created to protect our God-given liberties, not undermine them.

Today, as anti-ICE riots ravage Los Angeles, with vehicles burned, property vandalized, police attacked with rocks, and foreign flags waving in the streets, the same media, bureaucrats, and Democrat activists who once claimed concerned parents were domestic extremists are suddenly silent.

Now that Trump is back in office, their hypocrisy and hierarchy are on full display. The narrative of domestic extremism conveniently disappears as violence erupts from the political left. The very people who weaponized government power against peaceful Americans now look the other way as real political violence unfolds.

The National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism isn’t just an attack on one group of people. It’s an attack on our way of life and the core principles of our republic. The chilling effect is real, and the consequences are dangerous, cutting across the political spectrum. It breeds fear and self-censorship. If we are afraid to express our views or question those in power in a peaceful manner, tyranny is not far behind.

The president and Congress must reassert their authority against an out-of-control bureaucracy that has emerged as the fourth branch of government, unconstrained by constitutional checks. The president should immediately issue an executive order that revokes and dismantles Biden’s entire National Strategy framework. This would demonstrate Trump’s commitment to “drain the swamp.” Moreover, Trump should issue a directive to all federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies prohibiting the use of benign political or religious beliefs as criteria for investigations.

While Biden’s National Strategy itself is an executive policy document, Congress should immediately defund any program that brings the strategy to life. Congress controls the power of the purse and should eliminate all funding for related programs, including private-public censorship collaborations and any domestic terrorism initiatives that lack clear definitions. Federal efforts to outsource surveillance to third-party institutions and organizations should be abolished.

If we want a government that is accountable to the people it was created to serve, then Congress must rein it in. Our Founding Fathers warned about the dangers of an all-powerful centralized bureaucracy, and as President Ronald Reagan stated, “As government expands, liberty contracts.” It is long past time that so-called public servants are reminded that they exist to serve the public, not rule over them.

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Virginia Man Faces 12 Months in Jail, $2,500 Fine for Drawing a Crosswalk With Chalk

After the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, denied requests to paint crosswalk lines at an intersection popular among pedestrians, Kevin Cox, a retired crossing guard, decided to take matters into his own hands by placing spray chalk lines in the shape of a crosswalk. He’s since been charged with intentional destruction of property, a Class I misdemeanor, and faces a sentence of up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

Cox’s temporary crosswalk was placed at the intersection of Elliott Avenue and Second Street, which is often used by pedestrians visiting the Ix Art Park but does not have any painted crosswalk lines. Although 900 residents petitioned in October 2024 for a crosswalk to enhance safety following a fatal pedestrian-car crash at a nearby intersection, city officials responded by saying that pedestrians should cross at either First Street or Sixth Street, roughly 400 or 500 feet away, respectively, where painted crosswalks already exist. 

Irritated by the city’s inaction, Cox, an outspoken pedestrian advocate, placed his chalk lines in May 2025. “There is a marked crosswalk now at Second Street and Elliot Avenue in spite of you,” he told the city manager, Sam Sanders, in an email sent that same day. “It’s chalk, not paint. Please replace it with a real one,” reported 29News, a local NBC affiliate.  

Police said they couldn’t determine if the lines were permanent paint, according to the police report Cox shared with 29News, leading the city to cover them with black paint. Cox later turned himself in to the Charlottesville Police Department. “They have provoked me,” Cox told 29News, “it’s not going to stop me.” 

Pedestrian fatalities hit a 40-year high in 2022, increasing by 50 percent from 1.55 to 2.33 per 100,000 population since 2013. While there are several contributing factors, including larger vehicles with impaired visibility and high-speed roadways, some blame distracted driving. This has led 31 states to pass laws prohibiting device usage while driving since 2010.

Other government solutions range from the innocuous, like increased lighting at intersections, to the more controversial, like California’s vetoed car speed alarm bill or a $48 million proposal for new federal regulations. Placing one’s preferred road markings is a risky choice given the potential for increasing, rather than decreasing, overall safety. 

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California City Makes Homeless Eligible For Arrest If They Refuse 3 Offers Of Shelter

The San Jose City Council in Northern California voted June 10 to render homeless individuals, who refuse three offers of shelter, in violation of trespassing laws and able to be arrested.

The council members voted 9–2 in favor of amending the city’s encampment code of conduct with a “responsibility to shelter” provision.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat, introduced the proposal, which is among the stricter anti-encampment laws introduced since the Supreme Court in 2023 made it simpler for cities to ban homeless people from camping on public property. Mahan said that, if the city has enough shelter and interim housing, homeless people should be required to move into them.

Vice Mayor Pam Foley said getting people housed is the first step to getting them the help they need.

“We cannot expect to adequately treat mental illness, addiction, or unemployment effectively if someone is living outdoors,” Foley said during the City Council meeting. “Stable shelter, whether through interim housing, safe parking, or safe sleeping sites, not only connects people with critical services and job training, but ultimately paves the way toward permanent housing.”

Foley said the updated Code of Conduct demonstrates that San Jose is dedicated to reducing homelessness and restoring access to public spaces.

“When shelter becomes available, choosing not to fill those spaces only sets us back,” she said. “We must ensure that every opportunity to move people indoors is used to its fullest potential for both their sake and for the broader San Jose community’s well being.”

The city will not make arrests merely for refusing shelter, but, rather, for trespassing. The goal of the code of conduct revision is to enhance engagement with the homeless community.

Councilmember Peter Ortiz, who voted “no” on the proposal, fears the code of conduct revision could lead to a situation where the city has de facto criminalized homelessness, pointing out that the policy says somebody who simply declines shelter could be arrested. He noted that there are many reasons one may deny shelter, including unsafe shelter conditions or incompatibility.

“I think that by including arrest language in this policy, there could be unintended consequences,” he said at the city council meeting.

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Europe’s Populist Parties Keep Gaining Ground, But Cannot Get Into Power

Across the European continent, despite gaining considerable proportions of the vote, populist parties are increasingly being frozen out of governing in coalitions by political opponents who regard them as extremist.

Proponents of the tactic known as a “cordon sanitaire” or “firewall” say it’s not an attack on democracy but a defense of it. But one war expert said the tactic will only arouse anger in voters and that “there is no potential for peaceful political change.”

Coalitions are part and parcel of political life in many European countries.

But the cordon sanitaire, a measure normally directed at keeping out fringe outliers, is now being used to keep out parties that are gaining majority-level support.

Such parties include the Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally, Austria’s Freedom Party, Spain’s Vox, and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.

They all deny being “far-right” as they are often dubbed by media, opponents, or academics, but their political opponents regard them as beyond the pale and have formed coalitions on the promise of shutting them out of governance.

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GOP Rep Introduces Resolution Labeling ‘Free Palestine’ Slogan as ‘Anti-Semitism’

The resolution is non-binding but seeks to exploit the recent violence in Boulder, CO for political purposes

Colorado GOP Congressman Gabe Evans introduced a non-binding resolution on Friday that labels ‘Free Palestine’ as “an antisemitic slogan.” The bill seeks to limit immigration of people who oppose Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv’s genocidal onslaught in the besieged Gaza Strip. The bill is expected to be voted on some time next week.

The bill reads, “Whereas, while shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and Jewish people, Mohammed Sabry Soliman attacked the peaceful demonstrators with homemade Molotov cocktails.”

The term “Free Palestine” refers to the desire to end the nearly 60 -years-long brutal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, illegal per international law. It also implies support for ending Israel’s apartheid regime, replacing it with either a two-state solution or a single state with equal rights, including the right to vote, for all citizens currently living under the rule of the Israeli government.

The introduction of the bill follows a terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado by 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national who was living in the United States on an expired nonimmigrant visa. He had applied for asylum subsequent to his visa’s expiration. Over a dozen people were injured after the assailant threw Molotov cocktails at attendees at a small pro-Israel demonstration.

The attendees were calling for the release of the hostages taken during the October 7th Hamas attack in southern Israel. Hamas has repeatedly offered to release all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza including the end to the blockade on the Strip which has pushed the population closer to full-scale famine amidst constant bombardment. Both Tel Aviv and Washington strongly oppose a ceasefire despite the fact that it is the only way to secure the hostages’ release and safety. Top Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are committed to continuing the war and finishing its ethnic cleansing campaign.

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