Hard Pass

President Donald Trump’s administration is suing four states over their refusal to issue undercover license plates to federal agents, the latest front in the wider struggle between the White House and Democratic-led states over the Republican president’s immigration crackdown.

The Department of Justice alleges in separate lawsuits filed Wednesday that Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington state are imposing unconstitutional restrictions that it says impede law enforcement and threaten agents’ safety.

“By denying undercover license plates to DHS components, including ICE, while issuing them to their own state agencies, these governors are pursuing discriminatory and obstructionist policies against federal law enforcement,” said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement.

“These actions undermine federal immigration enforcement, allow dangerous criminals to escape justice, and terrorize American communities,” Blanche added.

The Justice Department filed individual suits in U.S. district courts in the respective states. The four state governments are accused of trying “to obstruct the Federal Government’s immigration enforcement efforts, even though control over immigration and the nation’s borders is an exclusive federal power.”

Additionally, the Justice Department argues in the suits that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause bars state governments from regulating federal law enforcement.

Texas Democrat James Talarico launched his general election campaign for the U.S. Senate Wednesday by framing his Republican opponent, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, as part of a corrupt political establishment that uses power to serve itself rather than the people.

Talarico has given Democrats their best chance in years of winning a Senate race in Texas and has boosted their still-uphill chances of retaking the majority in the U.S. Senate in November. Talarico, a former middle school teacher and a state lawmaker from Austin, laid out a clear strategy for the months ahead: Litigating Paxton’s scandals to a weary electorate.

“Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America,” Talarico told a crowd of about 1,000 supporters who packed a dance club in downtown Houston. “He has failed the character test. He has put his own interests above the laws of Texas. Those are not my words, those are the words of Ken Paxton’s fellow Republicans.”

He also sought to tie what he called the “rot” at the heart of the nation’s political system to the everyday problems faced by many voters, driving home the concerns over rising costs that have been part of Democrats’ wider messaging strategy for this year’s midterm elections.

“In America, we have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis,” Talarico told the crowd.

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Two prominent Kremlin critics who’ve been targets of Russian coercion are testifying before MPs Thursday in support of legislation aimed at expanding and toughening Canadian sanctions law.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British opposition politician and dissident who was imprisoned by Moscow, and U.S.-born financier Bill Browder are both appearing at the House of Commons foreign affairs committee to back Bill C-219.

The private member’s bill, sponsored by Conservative MP James Bezan, would make transnational repression an offence punishable by sanctions. This type of repression is when foreign states harass or harm critics to silence them or stifle activism. Those persecuted often include elected officials, political dissidents, human-rights defenders or journalists.

Bill C-219 would also compel Ottawa to publish an annual list of all prisoners of conscience detained by foreign states on whose behalf Canada has been advocating. A prisoner of conscience is an individual who has been detained by their government for their political or religious beliefs. This list would also include details of efforts Canada have made on their behalf.

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The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether E. Jean Carroll, the longtime advice columnist who has said President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store 30 years ago, lied during the course of civil litigation against the Republican president, according to a person familiar with the matter.

It's Ken Jennings and he probably knew the correct answer, but he was so far ahead he took the loss to make the joke. Respect.

Voter turnout skyrocketed by 129%

FAIFO MF'ers

Over the decades, there has been no shortage of sites using clever techniques to covertly track visitors’ browsing histories, device fingerprints, and keystrokes and mouse movements in real time. Even Meta and Yandex were recently caught joining in the privacy-invasive free-for-all.

Now sites have a new way to spy on their visitors: measuring subtle interactions with their solid-state drives. The technique, named FROST (fingerprinting remotely using OPFS-based SSD timing), allows sites to monitor other sites a visitor is viewing and what apps are open on their devices.

The technique, laid out in a research paper, exploits a side channel, a form of leak resulting from physical manifestations such as electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or the time required to complete a task. By measuring the manifestations, attackers can decrypt encrypted traffic and infer other confidential data.

The attack that FROST uses is known as a contention side channel, which measures the interaction of various processes all using (or competing for) a given resource. By measuring the timing of certain I/O (input-output) operations of the SSD a visitor is using, the researchers were able to determine the websites open in other tabs—even on other browsers—and the apps that were open on the visitor’s device. FROST requires no interaction from the visitor other than opening the site hosting the attack.

Amnesty International, which has spoken out forcefully against the boat strikes since they began in September 2025, warned in a statement Wednesday that “these extrajudicial killings are becoming normalized” as they fade from the headlines and lawmakers do nothing to stop the administration.

Randomly noticed my main inbox has 11'111 messages

California governor Gavin Newsom is looking to thwart Donald Trump’s $1.776bn “anti-weaponization fund” by imposing a 100% tax on any payout received by state residents.