Earlier this year we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a “phone company” was being generous: the branding deal was basically just a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed, MAGA-focused, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) named Patriot Mobile, which itself just […]
Part of what makes it difficult for the importance of so much of what is happening in the Trump administration to break through to the public mind is that it’s all chaos, all the time. Moving layers deeper to get at specifics can actually make the problem worse, in fact. Take all of our coverage […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. Online influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers, was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States. “The Tates will be free, Trump is […]
First, let’s dispense with the theater: the question of whether DOGE “still exists” as a formal entity completely misses the point. The always-misleadingly-named “Department of Government Efficiency” was never really about efficiency. It was Elon Musk’s excuse to gain access to the federal government’s fundamental systems and wreak havoc, Twitter-style—smashing anything that got in his […]
Current Third Circuit Appeals Court judge and former Trump lawyer Emil Bove made it clear — on more than one occasion — that DOJ lawyers should tell the courts “fuck you” if they tried to shut down any anti-migrant operations. That message apparently reached several receptive ears. Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the […]
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If you’ve been following along, you know why independent voices matter right now. The administration has been attacking institutions left and right. News orgs, law firms, philanthropic funders, universities, you name it. Many are capitulating. But not us. Someone needs to step up and keep doing this work without flinching and without compromising. That’s where […]
Last election season you might recall that the Trump administration lied repeatedly and pretended to be really interested in reining in corporate power and shoring up antitrust reform. And while this line was propped up by a lot of useful idiots (like Matt Stoller) who insisted there was common cause to be made with fascists, […]
I suppose we might all be tiring of the whole “the leopard you voted for eventually comes to eat your face” cliche at this point, but when the allegory fits you have to use it. And in this case, it fits so well that it would be comical if not for just how heartbreaking this […]
One can never predict how a court will rule after oral argument. But I do fear that in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment we are on the precipice of getting yet another major copyright decision from the Supreme Court where the words “First Amendment” are not uttered even once—unless, of course, someone like Justice […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, […]
Last week I wrote about how the US Patent and Trademark Office is pushing a rule change that would effectively neuter the inter partes review (IPR) system that reviews already granted patents to make sure they weren’t granted by mistake. Patent tolls and other abusers of the patent system have been screaming about this system […]
For weeks, we’ve been told the threat posed by the trafficking of illegal drugs is indistinguishable from an outright declaration of war on the United States by foreign drug cartels. Trump and his toadies insist traffickers are bringing drugs across the border to “kill” Americans, which would be an entirely self-defeating business plan no self-respecting […]
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It was never enough to simply expel migrants as quickly as possible for the Trump administration. A massive conglomerate of federal officers was incapable of hitting Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s 3,000 arrests per day quota, no matter how many rights it violated. Any pretense of only going after migrants with criminal records was discarded during […]
Not content with just filing baseless lawsuits against media companies who say mean things about our historically unpopular president, the Trump administration has unveiled a new lazy wrinkle in its war on journalism and free speech. The White House unveiled a new section of its website last week that claims to be tracking media outlets […]
A California judge ordered the end of a dragnet law enforcement program that surveilled the electrical smart meter data of thousands of Sacramento residents. The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and police violated a state privacy statute, which bars the disclosure of residents’ electrical usage […]
What a difference a near-decade makes. Back in 2017, the main concerns raised by New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board was that officers were routinely violating the right to record police officers. Sure, there wasn’t nearly as much precedent to rely on then (and we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to make this […]
Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away. It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy […]
Twenty years ago, John Jonik released one of the best political cartoons ever regarding attempts to censor and control the internet. In it, a character dressed up as Uncle Sam is placing a gift box labeled “Control of Internet Speech” on a counter. Behind it, a man dressed in a suit, labeled “Corporate Media” is […]
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