United States | News & Politics

The bill's supporters call it child protection; its architecture looks more like a national ID system for the internet.

“I asked for an attorney probably a hundred times and was never given one,” Saari said. “I was never told why I was being arrested.”

Then, Saari said, “They took my cell phone and cloned it. They actually told me they did that.”

A much-hyped ICE pullback from Minneapolis is a blip in a looming nationwide surge of arrests, concentration camps.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43164907

Federal officials initially claimed a cartel drone infiltrated U.S. airspace in bizarre incident

Homeland Security Kristi Noem abruptly ended a press conference in Arizona on Friday after being asked about a bizarre incident in which federal officials closed the airspace above El Paso this week after border officials reportedly used a laser to shoot down a party balloon they mistook for a cartel drone.

During the press conference in Phoenix, a journalist asked if the reports were true, and if so, why border officials did not appear to coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“You know, this was a joint agency task force mission that was undertaken and we’re continuing to work on the communication through that but recognize we’re grateful for the partnership of the Department of War and FAA as we go forward,” said Noem, who then walked away from her microphone.

Feb. 13, 2026

https://archive.ph/gBRoW

Free buses? Really? Of all the promises that Zohran Mamdani made during his New York City mayoral campaign, that one struck some skeptics as the most frivolous leftist fantasy. Unlike housing, groceries and child care, which weigh heavily on New Yorkers’ finances, a bus ride is just a few bucks. Is it really worth the huge effort to spare people that tiny outlay?

It is. Far beyond just saving riders money, free buses deliver a cascade of benefits, from easing traffic to promoting public safety. Just look at Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; and even New York itself, all of which have tried it to excellent effect. And it doesn’t have to be costly — in fact, it can come out just about even.

If free buses strike you as wasteful, you’re not alone. Plenty of the beneficiaries would be people who can afford to pay. Does it make sense to give them a freebie? Yes, if it improves the life of the city, just as free parks, libraries and public schools do. Don’t think of it as a giveaway to the undeserving. Think of it as a gift to all New Yorkers in every community. We deserve it.

Most had court orders protecting them from removal to their home countries, so they were sent to detention in Cameroon.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7661955

Noam Chomsky, described this ethos: “The cool observers – meaning us smart guys – it’s our task to impose necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications to keep these poor simpletons on course.”

Feds could be in your group chat

“President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda has supercharged opposition in cities where he has deployed federal agents to conduct raids, and communities in states including New York and Missouri are already working to block the next step the Department of Homeland Security plans to take in its push for mass deportations: acquiring massive warehouses across the country to use as immigrant detention centers.

““Thirty-eight billion dollars,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). “That’s what Trump is spending to turn warehouses into human holding facilities. Not on schools. Not on healthcare. Not on veterans. On warehousing humans.””

Virginia Supreme Court rules U.S. Marine’s adoption of an Afghan war orphan will stand The decision most likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the fate of the girl, whose adoption over the objections of her relatives was criticized by judges in a scathing dissent.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep an Afghan orphan they brought home in defiance of a U.S. government decision to reunite her with her Afghan family. The decision most likely ends a bitter, yearslong legal battle over the girl’s fate.

In 2020, a judge in Fluvanna County, Virginia, granted Joshua and Stephanie Mast an adoption of the child, who was then 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan living with a family the Afghan government decided were her relatives.

Four justices on the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday signed onto an opinion reversing two lower courts’ rulings that found the adoption was so flawed it was void from the moment it was issued.

The justices wrote that a Virginia law that cements adoption orders after six months bars the child’s Afghan relatives from challenging the court, no matter how flawed its orders and even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.

Three justices issued a scathing dissent, calling what happened in this court “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation.”

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A judge sentenced an 18-year-old who acknowledged killing five people in a North Carolina mass shooting to life in prison without parole Friday, rejecting arguments that he deserved the chance for release decades from now.

Austin David Thompson was 15 during the Oct. 13, 2022, attack that began at his Raleigh home when he shot and repeatedly stabbed his 16-year-old brother, James.

Equipped with firearms and wearing camouflage, Thompson then fatally shot four others — including an off-duty city police officer — in his neighborhood and along a greenway. He was arrested in a shed after a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

Thompson pleaded guilty last month to five counts of first-degree murder and five other counts less than two weeks before his scheduled trial.

Thompson, who did not speak publicly in court, was led away in handcuffs after the sentencing. Family members of the shooting victims cried as the sentence was handed down. Thompson’s attorneys announced plans to appeal the sentence.

Federal immigration officers have repeatedly used force in ways that appear to violate their own policies or general policing guidelines, NBC News found.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55309025

This past year, official social media accounts from the Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and other government agencies have adopted a distinct voice online. The posts look like memes, utilizing dramatic AI-generated art, general patriotic slogans, and cinematic language about “defending the homeland” and shaping America’s future.

But if you look closer, a pattern emerges.

Many of these phrases, images, and attached media aren’t just regular social media content. They repurpose language, symbolism, and cultural references with direct connections to neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements. It’s content that experts say is instantly recognizable to those who are in the white supremacist know, but can be largely invisible to everyone else.

There has been not one, but two posts from our government institutions that reuse a phrase ripped straight from William Gayley Simpson’s book Which Way Western Man?. It was published and promoted by the National Alliance—considered one of the “best organized” neo-Nazi groups in the United States. The book is antisemitic, racist, and explicitly states that Adolf Hitler was right.

The agency, which regulates U.S. passports, began issuing cease and desist orders to not-for-profit libraries in late fall, informing them they were no longer authorized to participate in the Passport Acceptance Facility program as of Friday.

Protesters in Minneapolis and St. Paul said in sworn statements that they were singled out by agents who demonstrated that they knew where they lived.

https://archive.ph/lkUTc