Gone Fishin’: The CDC Shooting, RFK Jr.’s Conspiracy Theories, And A Sweet Catch In Alaska

from the fishy-business dept

This past Friday, August 8th, Patrick Joseph White allegedly opened fire on the CDC campus in Atlanta, killing a police officer while expending nearly 200 shots that sprayed the office buildings. This being America, this news in and of itself is not particularly compelling. We do mass shootings and attempted mass shootings better than anyone else in the world, after all. USA! USA!

But the reported motive that led White to attack the CDC certainly did grab people’s attention:

Police identified Patrick Joseph White as the gunman and said he opened fire on the campus following claims that the COVID-19 vaccine made him severely depressed and suicidal, AP reported.

Interestingly, NIH has studied psychiatric effects following COVID-19 vaccination and found that the opposite occurs at the macro level: vaccination is actually associated with lower levels of depression and anxiety. Obviously there can be differences in individual cases, but that’s the data from a study in 2022.

Now, of course, there’s a new man in charge of HHS and its child agencies. RFK Jr. has railed against vaccines generally, and COVID-19 vaccines specifically, for years. He recently killed off the federal funding for mRNA vaccines, including COVID vaccines. He has previously and continues now to engage in blatant vaccine misinformation. Back when he was failing to win the U.S. presidency, he said this:

It doesn’t take tinfoil-levels of dot-connecting to understand how you get from anti-vaxx peddlers like Kennedy to a troubled man blasting up a CDC campus. Is RFK Jr. the only reason White shot up the agency? No, probably not. But he is almost certainly a reason it occurred and that means he has some blood on his hands. The outrageous, profane wielding of pseudo-science by the person now in charge of American healthcare is vulgar all on its own, but it also comes with these sorts of knock-on effects. I have no idea what White was dealing with in his life, but I do know that what comes out of RFK Jr.’s mouth and social media accounts is dangerous. Dangerous because of the health risk it puts upon people who believe him. And the risk of those that take him so seriously that they are willing to commit acts of violence.

As the Epictetus said, circumstance don’t make the person, but they do reveal the person. And leaders are supposed to lead in a crisis. It was something like 13 hours after police in Atlanta gave the all clear on the attempted mass shooting that Kennedy managed to put out a statement about it:

I would argue first that the statement is entirely disingenous. I have yet to see anything that looks even remotely like support for the CDC from Kennedy in general. I’ve seen budget cuts. I’ve seen staffing cuts. I’ve seen claims about chemtrails. I’ve seen years and years of attacks and conspiracy theories against the very agency he now leads. Where is all of that support?

And I would also argue that it isn’t a great look for this statement to have been delayed by 30 minutes because Kennedy was on his personal ExTwitter account posting some sweet pics of his fishing trip in Alaska:

Perhaps the brain worm ate the part that powers empathy.

The connection is not lost on those that were targeted by this shooting, it should be noted. The CDC staffers in Atlanta were obviously terrified during the shooting. After it was all over, they wanted assurances that their collective boss had some understanding of his own culpability in all of this.

On Sunday, CNN reported that the CDC held a video conference with approximately 800 staff members to discuss the traumatic event and allow them to ask questions. Staff said they felt like “sitting ducks” as bullets whizzed just over their cubicle walls and they dove for the floor.

Stat also got access to the call and reported that another employee asked newly confirmed CDC Director Susan Monarez if she had been in touch with Kennedy directly about the shooting.

“Do you expect Secretary Kennedy to make a statement about this, and are you able to speak to the misinformation—the disinformation—that caused this issue, and what your plan forward is to ensure this doesn’t happen again?” the employee asked.

Monarez did not directly answer the question, saying only that she had been in touch with Kennedy’s office. “It’s a good question. We’ve been in constant communication with the Office of the Secretary, and more will be coming,” Monarez said.

That such a question even has to be asked by a public servant is a disgrace. Why any competent scientist would risk their lives to keep working for American health agencies while RFK Jr. is still leading HHS is a mystery to me.

Filed Under: cdc, covid, covid vaccines, disinformation, health and human services, rfk jr., shooting, vaccine disinformation, violence

Is It Still ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ If All The Predictions Were Accurate?

from the which-part-was-wrong? dept

“Hysterical.” “Alarmist.” “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” “He’ll be constrained by institutions.” “There are adults in the room.” “You’re overreacting.” “The generals won’t let him.” “Stop being so dramatic.”

Every single person who said we were being hysterical about Trump being an existential threat should be forced to explain how the President seizing control of the capital’s police force and deploying military units to forcibly relocate citizens represents normal democratic governance.

They called us hysterical when we said he’d use the military against civilians. He’s literally doing it right now.

They called us alarmist when we said he’d seize control of law enforcement. He just placed D.C. police under the direct command of his Attorney General.

They called us deranged when we said he’d create fake emergencies to justify authoritarian power grabs. He’s invoking emergency powers while violent crime is at a 30-year low.

They said the institutions would hold. The institutions are being commandeered in real time.

They said the generals would refuse illegal orders. The National Guard is already deployed.

They said we were exaggerating the fascist threat. He’s literally declaring “Liberation Day” while seizing control of the capital.

Remember who told you this was hysteria.

They told you that those of us warning about fascism were being hysterical. Now the President has seized control of the capital’s police force, deployed military units against citizens, and announced forced relocations of undesirables—and these same voices are explaining why it’s not really that bad, why it’s technically legal, why we should wait and see how it plays out.

The “hysteria” was prophecy. The “alarmism” was accuracy. The “derangement” was simply seeing clearly what was coming while others chose comfortable blindness.

They’ll never admit they were wrong. They’ll just keep moving the goalposts. “Sure, he seized control of D.C. police, but it’s only for 30 days.” “Yes, he deployed the military, but it’s just the National Guard.” “Okay, he’s forcibly relocating citizens, but he says they’ll be given places to stay.”

This is how normalization works—through the reasonable voices who explain why each new outrage isn’t quite outrageous enough to justify the alarm we’re expressing.

We weren’t hysterical. We were right.

We weren’t alarmist. We were accurate.

We weren’t deranged. We were paying attention.

And now, as military units patrol the capital under presidential command, as police forces answer to the President’s personal authority, as citizens are forcibly relocated for the crime of poverty—now they want us to remain calm, to trust the process, to avoid inflammatory language.

No.

This is fascism. We told you it was coming. You called us hysterical. And now it’s here.

Remember who saw it clearly. Remember who denied it. And never, ever let them forget that when American democracy needed defenders, they chose to police the tone of those sounding the alarm rather than confront the threat itself.

The existential threat wasn’t rhetorical. It was real. It’s here. It’s happening.

And everyone who called us hysterical for warning about it is complicit in its arrival.

Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.

Filed Under: donald trump, fascism, trump derangement syndrome, washington dc

Another Look At The STOP CSAM Act

from the ai-on-the-brain dept

Amidst the current batch of child safety bills in Congress, a familiar name appears: the STOP CSAM Act. It was previously introduced in 2023, when I wrote about the threat the bill posed to the availability of strong encryption and consequently to digital privacy in the post-Roe v. Wade era. Those problems endure in the 2025 version (which has passed out of committee), as explained by the EFF, the Internet Society, and many more civil society orgs. To their points, I’ll just add that following the Salt Typhoon hack, no politician in any party has any business ever again introducing a bill that in any way disincentivizes encryption.

With all that said, the encryption angle is not the only thing worth discussing about the reintroduced bill. In this post, I’d like to focus on some other parts of STOP CSAM – specifically, how the bill addresses online platforms’ removal and reporting of child sex abuse material (CSAM), including new language concerning AI-generated CSAM. The bill would make platforms indicate whether reported content is AI – something my latest research finds platforms are not all consistently doing. However, the language of the requirement is overbroad, going well beyond generative AI. What’s more, forcing platforms to indicate whether content is real or AI overlooks the human toll of making that evaluation, risks punishing platforms for inevitable mistakes, and assumes too much about the existence, reliability, and availability of technological tools for synthetic content provenance detection.

STOP CSAM Would Make Platforms Report Whether Content Is AI-Generated

One of the many things the STOP CSAM bill would do is amend the existing federal statute that requires platforms to report apparent CSAM on their services to the CyberTipline operated by the nonprofit clearinghouse the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The 2025 version of the bill dictates several new requirements to platforms for how to fill out CyberTipline reports. One is that, “to the extent the information is within the custody or control of a provider,” every CyberTipline report “shall include, to the extent that it is applicable and reasonably available,” “an indication as to whether” each item of reported content “is created in whole or in part through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering an authentic visual depiction” (i.e., real abuse material). If a platform knowingly omits that information when it’s “reasonably available” – or knowingly submits a report that “contains materially false or fraudulent information” – STOP CSAM permits the federal government to impose a civil penalty of $50,000 to $250,000.

This provision is pertinent to the findings of a paper about AI-generated CSAM that my colleague Shelby Grossman and I published at the end of May. Based on our interviews with platforms (including some AI companies), we find that platforms are generally confident in their ability to detect AI CSAM, and they’re reporting AI CSAM to the CyberTipline (as they must), but it appears platforms aren’t all consistently and accurately labeling the content as being AI-generated when submitting the CyberTipline reporting form (which includes a checkbox marked “Generative AI”). When we interviewed NCMEC employees as part of our research, they confirmed to us that they receive CyberTipline reports with AI-generated files that aren’t labeled as AI. Our paper urges platforms to (1) invest resources in assessing whether newly identified CSAM is AI-generated and accurately labeling AI CSAM in CyberTipline reports, and (2) communicate to NCMEC the platform’s policy for assessing whether CSAM is AI-generated and labeling it as such in its reports.

In short, current practice for AI CSAM seems to be to remove it and report it to NCMEC, but our sense is that most platforms are not prioritizing labeling CSAM as AI-generated in CyberTipline reports. Presently, reporting CSAM (irrespective of whether it’s AI or real) is mandatory, but the statute doesn’t give that many specifics about what information must be included, meaning most parts of the CyberTipline reporting form are optional. Thus there’s currently no incentive to spend extra time trying to figure out whether an image is AI and checking another box (all while the neverending moderation queue keeps piling up). STOP CSAM would change that, and would likely lead platforms to spend more time filling out CyberTipline reports about the content they’d quickly remove.

The $250,000 question is: How accurate does an “indication as to whether” a reported file is partially/wholly AI-generated have to be – and how much effort do platforms have to put into it? Can platforms rely on a facial assessment by a front-line content moderator, or is some more intensive analysis required? At what point is information about a file not “reasonably available” to the platform, even if it’s technically within the platform’s “custody or control”? Also, a lot of CyberTipline reports are submitted automatically without human review at the platform, typically where a platform’s CSAM detection system flags a hash match to known imagery that’s been confirmed as CSAM. How would this AI “indication” requirement interact with automated reporting? 

The Reporting Requirement Goes Beyond “AI”

STOP CSAM’s new reporting provision doesn’t require the reporting only of AI-generated imagery. Read the language again: when submitting a CyberTipline report, platforms must include “an indication as to whether the apparent [CSAM] is created in whole or in part through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering an authentic visual depiction.”

That goes well beyond the “Generative AI” checkbox currently included in the reporting form (which can already mean multiple different things if it’s checked, according to our interview with NCMEC). Indeed, this language is so broad that it seems like it would apply even to very minor changes to real abuse images, like enhancing the brightness and saturation of the colors, or flipping it so it’s a mirror-image. I’m not sure why or how a platform could reasonably be expected to know what edits have been made to an image. Plus, it’s strange to equate a fully AI-generated image with a real image that’s merely had the color saturation tweaked in a photo editing app. Yet the bill language treats those two things as the same. 

This broad language would turn that “Generative AI” checkbox into a catch-all. Checking the checkbox could equally likely mean (1) “this is a digital image of a child who’s actively being abused which has been converted from color to grayscale,” (2) “this is an image from a years-old known abuse image series that’s been altered with Photoshop,” (3) “this is a morphed image of a real kid that’s been spit out by an AI-powered nudify app,” or (4) “this is a fully virtual image of an imaginary child who does not exist.” How is that useful to anyone? Until NCMEC adds more granularity to the reporting form, how is NCMEC, or law enforcement, supposed to triage all the reports with the “Generative AI” box checked? Is Congress’s expectation that platforms must also include additional details elsewhere (i.e. the free text entry box also included in the CyberTipline form)? Will they be fined if they don’t? 

It’s not a speculative concern that platforms would comply with STOP CSAM by reporting that an image has an AI element even if it merely has minor edits. In both this AI CSAM paper and our previous paper on the CyberTipline, we found that platforms are incentivized to “kick the can down the road” when reporting and let NCMEC and law enforcement sort it out. As one platform employee told us, “All companies are reporting everything to NCMEC for fear of missing something.” The burden then falls to NCMEC and law enforcement to deal with the deluge of reports of highly variable quality. Congress reinforces this incentive to over-report whenever it ups the ante for platforms by threatening to punish them more for not complying with increased reporting requirements – such as by fining them up to a quarter of a million dollars for omitting information that was “reasonably available.” The full Senate should keep that in mind should the bill ever be brought to the floor.

The Human Cost of the “Real or AI?” Determination

Although our report urges platforms to try harder to indicate in CyberTipline reports whether content is AI-generated, there are downsides if Congress forces platforms to do so. In adding that mandate to platforms’ CyberTipline reporting requirements, the STOP CSAM bill does not seem to contemplate the human factors involved in making the call as to whether particular content is AI-generated. 

As our paper discusses, there are valid reasons why platforms might hesitate to make the assessment that a file is AI-generated or convey that in a CyberTipline report. For one, platforms may not want to make moderators spend additional time scrutinizing deeply disturbing images or videos. Doing content moderation for CSAM was already psychologically harmful work even before generative AI, and we heard from respondents that AI-generated CSAM tends to be more violent or extreme than other material. One platform employee memorably called it “nightmarescape” content: “It’s images out of nightmares now, and they’re hyperrealistic.” By requiring an indication of whether reported content is AI, the STOP CSAM Act would incentivize platforms to make moderators spend longer analyzing content that’s particularly traumatic to view. Congress should not ignore the human toll of their child-safety bill.

Platforms may also fear making the wrong call: What if a platform reports an image as AI CSAM when it’s actually of a real child in need of rescue? What if the law enforcement officer who receives that report deprioritizes it for action out of the mistaken belief that it’s “just” AI, thereby letting the harm continue? Besides the weight of that mistake on platform personnel’s conscience, there’s also the specter of potential corporate liability for the error. (Platforms are supposed to be immune from liability for their CyberTipline reports, but that isn’t always the case.)

STOP CSAM would exacerbate the fear of getting the “real or AI?” assessment wrong. Platforms could incur stiff fines if a CyberTipline report knowingly omits required information or knowingly includes “materially false or fraudulent” information. That is, a platform could get fined both for failing to indicate that content is AI-generated when in fact it is, and for wrongly indicating that it is when in fact it isn’t, if the government concludes the conduct was knowing. (Even if the platform ends up getting absolved, the path to reaching that outcome will likely be costly and intrusive.)

Forcing platforms to make this assessment, while threatening to fine them for getting it wrong, could improve the consistency and accuracy of platforms’ CyberTipline reporting for AI-generated content. But it won’t come without a human cost, and it won’t guarantee 100% accuracy. There will inevitably be errors where real abuse imagery is mistakenly indicated to be AI (potentially delaying a child’s rescue), or where, as now, AI imagery is mistakenly indicated to be real (potentially wasting investigators’ time). 

To try to comply while mitigating their potential liability for errors, platforms might submit more CyberTipline reports with that “Generative AI” box checked, but add a disclaimer: that this is the platform’s best guess based on reasonably available information, but the platform is not guaranteeing the assessment’s accuracy and the assessment should not be relied on for legal purposes, etc. If platforms hedge their bets, what’s the point of making them check the box?

What’s the State of the Art for AI CSAM Detection?

Congress seems to believe that platforms know for a fact whether any given image they encounter is AI-generated or not, or at least that they can conclusively determine the ground truth. I’m not sure that’s true yet, based on our interviews for the AI CSAM paper. 

A respondent from a company that does include AI labels in its CyberTipline reports told us that they still use a manual process of determining whether CSAM is AI-generated. For now, most of our respondents believe the AI CSAM they’re seeing still has obvious tells that it’s synthetic. But moderators will need new strategies as AI CSAM becomes increasingly photorealistic. Already, one platform employee said that even with significant effort, it remains extremely difficult to determine whether AI-generated CSAM is entirely synthetic or based on the likeness of a real child. 

When it comes to content provenance, Congress should take care not to impose reporting requirements without understanding the current state of the technology for detecting AI content as well as the availability of such tools. True, there are already hash lists for AI CSAM that platforms are implementing, and tools do exist for AI CSAM detection. One respondent said that general AI-detection models are often sufficient to determine whether CSAM is AI-generated; we heard from a couple of respondents that existing machine learning classifiers do decently well at detecting AI CSAM, about as well as they do at detecting traditional CSAM. However, we also heard that the results vary by tool and tend to decline when the AI content is less photorealistic. And even currently performant tools can’t remain static, since the cat-and-mouse game of content generation and detection will continue as long as determined bad actors keep exploiting advances in generative AI. 

There’s also the issue of scale. Congress shouldn’t expect every entity that reports CSAM to NCMEC to have the same resources as a massive tech company that submits hundreds of thousands of CyberTipline reports annually. Implementing AI CSAM detection tools might not be appropriate for a small platform that submits only a handful of reports each year and does everything manually. This goes back to the question of how much effort a platform must put into indicating whether reported material is AI, and how accurate that indication is expected to be. Even for big platforms, it is a challenge to determine conclusively whether highly realistic-looking material is real or AI-generated, much less for small ones. Congress should not lose sight of that.

Conclusion

The reboot of STOP CSAM is just one of several bills introduced in this Congress that involve AI and child safety, of which the TAKE IT DOWN Act is the most prominent. Having devoted most of my work over the past two years to the topic of AI-generated CSAM, it is gratifying to see Congress pay it so much attention. That said, it’s dismaying when legislators’ alleged concern about child sex abuse manifests as yet another plan to punish online platforms unless they “do better,” without reckoning with the counterproductive incentives that creates, the resources available for compliance (especially to different-size platforms), or the technological state of the art. In that regard, unfortunately, the new version of STOP CSAM is the same as the old.

Riana Pfefferkorn (writing in her personal capacity) is a Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI.

Filed Under: ai, ai csam, ai detection, csam, csam detection, cybertipline, liability, reporting, stop csam, stop csam act, take it down act

Daily Deal: Babbel Language Learning (All Languages)

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Become a language expert with the Babbel Language Learning deal. However you choose to access your 10K+ hours of online language education, you’ll be able to choose from 14 languages. Want to try your hand at all of them? Knock yourself out — you’ll have a lifetime to get it done. And you can tackle one or all in 10-to-15-minute bite-sized lessons, so there’s no need to clear hours of your weekend to gain real-life conversation skills. Covering a range of topics that are actually valuable on the road and using time-tested strategies proven by academics from Yale University, City University of New York, and Michigan State University, Babbel was developed by over 100 expert linguists to help users speak and understand languages quickly. With Babbel, it’s easy to find the right level for you — beginner, intermediate, or advanced — so that you can make progress while avoiding tedious drills. It’s normally on sale for $250 but use the code LEARN at checkout to bring the price down to $159.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Appeals Court Affirms ICE Can’t Arrest People Just For Looking Latino; ICE Immediately Ignores Ruling

from the rogue-agency dept

Three weeks ago, California federal court judge Maame E. Frimpong issued an order blocking ICE from pretending looking a bit foreign was reasonably suspicious enough to justify stops, much less the mass arrests ICE officers have been carrying out regularly in the Los Angeles area.

The opinion had to spell out things that should have been immediately clear to ICE (or, indeed, any law enforcement agency, federal or local), like:

[T]he Court considers whether speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent could give rise to reasonable suspicion. There is no case law that supports that it could.

And:

[A]t least one news article reports that people were dragged out of bathrooms at a swap meet, which makes Defendants’ arguments that their stops and arrests are consensual unpersuasive.

The resulting restraining order forbade ICE from doing its usual ICE stuff, at least in the seven California counties overseen by this court.

Defendants may not rely solely on the factors below, alone or in combination, to form reasonable suspicion for a detentive stop, except as permitted by law:

i. Apparent race or ethnicity;
ii. Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent;
iii. Presence at a particular location (e.g. bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.) or;
iv. The type of work one does.

All of this was obviously unconstitutional. And all of this was the sort of thing ICE wanted to continue doing, especially since Trump and his administration officials were setting the floor at 3,000 arrests per day and stating this was the minimum expected of federal law enforcement officers, but especially those working for ICE.

The government appealed. But it fared no better during the second review of its racist actions. The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruled on August 1 that the restraining order blocking ICE’s “round up all the Mexicans!” efforts could remain in place. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

As the ruling [PDF] points out, there’s plenty to indicate ICE’s actions aren’t supported by anything any reasonable person would consider to be reasonable suspicion. This citation may be anecdotal, but it’s one of several similar supporting statements made by those suing the government to force it to play by the constitutional rules:

To give just one example, Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in East Los Angeles and identifies as Latino. On the afternoon of June 12, he stepped onto the sidewalk outside of a tow yard in Montebello, California, where he saw agents carrying handguns and military-style rifles. One agent ordered him to “Stop right there” while another “ran towards [him].” The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American—and they repeatedly ignored his answer: “I am an American.” The agents asked Gavidia what hospital he was born in—and he explained that he did not know which hospital. “The agents forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” An agent asked again, “What hospital were you born in?” Gavidia again explained that he did not know which hospital and said “East L.A.” He then told the agents he could show them his Real ID. The agents took Gavidia’s ID and his phone and kept his phone for 20 minutes. They never returned his ID.

There’s plenty of reporting out there that backs up this single example of, apparently, many the Appeals Court could have cited. ICE officers are demanding identification and proof of citizenship (already incredibly problematic) from random (but always non-white) people and then ignoring the provided documents in order to move forward with a detention or arrest.

The court also notes it appears ICE is trying to meet a 3,000 arrests per day quota — another thing law enforcement agencies are pretty much universally not allowed to do. The DOJ’s lawyers, of course, claim no such quota exists:

In response to the Court’s inquiry at oral argument, DHS has confirmed that neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that ICE or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law.

Plaintiffs’ allegation that the government maintains a policy mandating 3,000 arrests per day appears to originate from media reports quoting a White House advisor who described that figure as a “goal” that the Administration was “looking to set.” That quotation may have been accurate, but no such goal has been set as a matter of policy, and no such directive has been issued to or by DHS or ICE.

I’m sure this is all very true. But it’s all equally as meaningless. Of course, no written policies or directives exist. Putting it on paper or incorporating it into existing polices would put ICE on the wrong side of the law as far as arrest quotas are concerned. That’s why none of these documents exist. But that doesn’t mean the expectation doesn’t exist and that ICE officials aren’t doing everything they can (short of leaving a paper trail) to push officers to meet this “goal.” Even if the paperwork doesn’t exist, the pressure and perverted incentives do. And that just makes Stephen Miller the only bigoted idiot stupid enough to say this sort of thing in public, when he just could have limited it to internal verbal communications with ICE and DHS officials.

But whatever, the end result is the same: the plaintiffs have shown enough evidence to support their claim that ICE is violating the Constitution by pretending having brown skin and (perhaps) an accent is all the legal justification it needs to detain or arrest people en masse.

That ruling was released August 1st. This is what happened one day later in one of the counties covered by two consecutive federal court rulings, as highlighted here in this Simple Justice post:

I’ll describe the video briefly, just in case you can’t see the embed or chose not to watch it. On August 2, while an existing restraining order was in place (issued July 14 and affirmed August 1), ICE agents wearing masks and camo drove a Penske rental truck into a Home Deport parking lot. Once parked, the back of the rental truck was opened and ICE officers poured into the parking lot and then moved outward to the surrounding neighborhood, grabbing anyone looking vaguely Hispanic. All of this was captured on video by onlookers.

As Scott Greenfield notes in his post, this certainly appears to be what it is: a direct violation of the restraining order that was upheld by the Ninth Circuit a day before this happened:

If you call the Home Depot parking lot “targeted,” then it was a targeted raid. Otherwise, it was just a roundup of random Hispanics without any basis to believe they were “illegal” other than the fact that they appeared Hispanic and were in the Home Depot parking lot. This was exactly what Judge Frimpong found to be unconstitutional racial profiling.

So, if you need another depressing data point about this administration, you can add this one: yet another example of federal government agencies ignoring court orders and practically daring the courts, Congressional reps, voters, and even the people who claim the Second Amendment protects the rest of the Constitution to do anything about it. So far, the courts are on their own, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that holding the government in contempt is about as useless as issuing “strongly worded” memos. (And, of course, the government has already asked for an “emergency” review of this restraining order from Trump’s robed enablers…)

The repeated violation of court orders may give some plaintiffs a clearer road to victory in individual civil rights lawsuits, but it’s doing almost nothing to assure Americans that the current government won’t just pave over our rights and put up an M1 Abrams parking lot.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, 9th circuit, biased policing, california, dhs, ice, mass deportation, racism, trump administration

Trump FCC Installs Babysitter At CBS To Ensure The Network Kisses King Donald’s Ass

from the nannystate-bullshit dept

With the cowards at CBS/Paramount having paid their $16 million bribe, Trump’s FCC was quick to rubber-stamp its approval to the company’s $8 billion merger with Skydance (owned by Trump’s billionaire friends in the Ellison family). Part of that deal involves installing a Trump babysitter to ensure what’s left of the media giant’s journalism division is appropriately deferential to our mad baby idiot king.

The CBS/Paramount/Skydance merger formally closed last Thursday, and the new “bias monitor” is presumably now hard at work ensuring the new CBS news division is appropriately feckless. The FCC’s lone Dem commissioner, Anna Gomez, was quick to (correctly) call the appointment of a government-appointed truth-nanny a “betrayal” of journalistic independence and the public trust:

It’s grotesque, ironic, dangerous, and foreboding that the authoritarian GOP has installed a “truth monitor” at a major media network, especially after spending decades whining about policies like the long-deceased Fairness Doctrine and even longer pretending to have read Orwell’s 1984.

But it’s also hugely problematic that in just 7 months the FCC has been converted from government consumer protection agency into a 24/7 Donald Trump earlobe nibbler and speech police (under the pretense of protecting free speech and “fighting media bias,” no less). No longer does the FCC even try to competently regulate media and telecom giants to protect markets or consumers; its entire function now is to bully companies that aren’t appropriately sexist, racist, or feckless enough for Donald’s liking.

All of that said, this monitor shouldn’t really have much of a job, assuming the incompetent administration ever gets around to actually appointing a full-time staffer in the first place.

The Ellison family broadly supports Trump, and it’s inevitable that whatever’s left of journalism at the new CBS reflects that, despite a lot of the usual, empty rhetoric about a firewall between ownership and editorial. CBS was already becoming more friendly to authoritarians before the merger; it’s inevitable this just gets worse under Trump-friendly ownership and reflects a broader institutional media failure.

I think there’s two paths for the new CBS.

In one, the Ellison family finds a way to competently combine TikTok, Bari Weiss’ Free Press, and CBS to create a modern right wing tech-savvy propaganda empire that rivals News Corporation. There’s some signs that’s already underway. This “news” and propaganda would be a money pit funded by the infotainment arm of the company (see: the $7.7 billion acquisition of MMA rights).

But there’s another path in which all the debt from this acquisition spree results in the usual waves of layoffs and cost cutting and quality erosion that drives potential viewers to the exits. A path in which Larry Ellison’s nepo baby son struggles to adapt to changing markets, over-estimates the public’s thirst for Bari-Weiss style authoritarian-apologist dog shit, and, like other recent disastrous media gambits (the Time Warner Discovery mess), drives the entire operation straight into the ocean.

Either way the FCC’s new “bias monitor” is dangerous extremism, but it’s going to be so much worse if the Ellison family authoritarian coddling and appeasement gambit is actually financially successful.

Filed Under: bias monitor, cbs, donald trump, fcc, free speech, larry ellison, media, propaganda
Companies: cbs, paramount, skydance