Hard Pass

Just a year and a half ago, Senator Rand Paul sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for federal government employees to ask internet companies to remove any speech. Now, in a NY Post op-ed, Paul proudly announces that he did exactly that—formally contacting Google executives to demand they remove a video he didn’t like.

It was literally like that. I had a script of about 310 lines and the main function was like 10-20 lines of code. I had a very nice Setup of objects that handled all functionality possible behaviours independent and so my main function was just receiving a user input from another function and add accordingly which included like 3-4 different scenarios that are being handled in the main function.

[Democracy Now] speak[s] with activist, civil rights attorney and ordained minister Nekima Levy Armstrong about her role in a protest at a St. Paul church on Sunday, where one of the pastors, David Easterwood, also leads a local ICE field office in the Twin Cities area. “I believe that if someone professes to represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to preach it, that they should not be allowing ICE agents to drag people out of their homes,” Levy Armstrong tells Democracy Now! She spoke from an undisclosed location after Trump officials vowed to investigate and possibly arrest the demonstrators.

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/mop/p/606772/landparasites

Sixteen years after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen says it "paves the way for demagogues like Donald Trump to seize power."

Archive link: https://archive.ph/4RbKe

The annual assessment, which has been prepared since 2020, purports to offer a holistic assessment to threats to the Western Hemisphere. These assessments have consistently focused on what you imagine: southern border security, the drug trade, immigration, and critical infrastructure protection in the United States.

But this year’s assessment, marked “For Official Use Only” and not yet released to the public, identifies violent extremism on the part of American citizens as the priority and greatest threat.

One phrase in particular stands out to me as new: potential terrorism based upon “class-based or economic grievances.” (The term has not appeared in any previous assessment.)

Archive link: https://archive.ph/7zdMu

https://neopaquita.es/@berniethewordsmith/115934559015328999

US justice department’s website shows the disgraced former CEO petitioned Donald Trump over fraud conviction

Fearing primaries for abetting Trump’s crackdown, top Democrats are turning away from a deal they crafted to avoid another government shutdown.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://theintercept.com/2026/01/21/democrats-ice-funding-compromise/