United States | News & Politics

Amid multiple national crises, President Donald Trump spent Thursday morning posting—not for the first time—about how his predecessor Barack Obama should be arrested, and how Georgia election workers should be prosecuted, in both cases citing unsubstantiated claims.

Oracle is considering workforce cuts and selling Cerner to alleviate financial pressure, warns investment bank TD Cowen.

The forum comes while Martinez is fighting for evidence in her own case to be released to the public, citing public interest after the killing of Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents and what they describe as the government’s continued misinformation about her case, according to court documents

Bystanders say they are determined to keep recording federal agents’ actions: ‘There will be absolutely no accountability unless people are documenting’

Rachel Leingang and Maanvi Singh in Minneapolis
Thu 29 Jan 2026 10.00 EST

The killing of Alex Pretti by a federal officer on Saturday, less than three weeks after the killing of Renee Good, brought heightened attention to the brutality observers and bystanders are facing in Minneapolis as they witness and document immigration enforcement. Volunteer observers told the Guardian they have been subjected to violence since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge in early December.

Observers who had been detained by federal agents and released, many without charges, told the Guardian they were denied access to medical care, phone calls and lawyers.

An internal memo changed the standard from whether people are unlikely to show up for hearings to whether they could leave the scene.

Archive: [ https://archive.is/cDsHv ]

New recruits are rushed through training in 42 days. Many of them are former cops and veterans, but some will never have held a gun before, says a former ICE official. In contrast, says Alex del Carmen, a criminologist who helps train police officers, it can take up to a year for local cops to be deemed street-ready.

@Isucceed on X:

I'm really not excited about entering our "we have to work together to protect our neighbors from fascists" era with the "I refuse to be slightly inconvenienced to protect the vulnerable from Covid" crowd.

The COVID pandemic is ongoing and fuck ICE. If you can't handle me saying any of that, this post isn't for you. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered. COVID seems less lethal now, but it still appears to be spreading and causing serious long-term damage to many people.

We'll get back to that stuff later. First, if anyone is still here, don't worry, I'll probably get all of you to stop caring and click away.

Don Lemon has it easy. I got arrested to inhibit my free speech once. When I was a teenager, I was friends with a girl who met a guy I was friends with and they started dating. Then it happened later again with the same guy and another girl. I've always been very alone and unsuccessful with women, and the second girl stopped talking to me for many years after she started dating him. The first one was still a friend of mine for a while, and she told me this guy raped her. I assumed he did the same thing to the second one based on some behavior that seemed odd before we stopped talking.

I started telling people he was a serial rapist, and the cops got involved. I was taken into custody for a few hours. While I was there, they assigned me a public defender, who recommended I go along with the judge's orders and stop talking about the topic.

I continued discussing the whole thing online, and suddenly people saw me as a criminal. Redditors started lying about me and spamming me with nonsense replies, and many of them kept harassing me on reddit for years after this, across multiple reddit accounts. I still always expect them to show up and start flooding my replies about this and other old stuff again at any time.

While internet strangers didn't help at all, I was able to get a better lawyer. He called the court's bluff and threatened to proceed to trial, and he mentioned some other past court case, which in the business they call citing precedent. My charges were basically dropped on the basis of free speech.

I knew that lawyer well, but I couldn't keep asking him for help every time as the police kept harassing me about various things over the years. The bullying on reddit also snowballed into full-on gangstalking and helped escalate things. The redditors were able to get the FBI to call my local police department and send detectives to my door, over some angry comments I made back at them.

This was after they kept getting me hit with bans for years; kept saying I must be stupid because I call myself smart and only an idiot would do that; kept saying I must be a pedophile because I'm against banning people from shit based on an exact age number and only a pedophile would be against that. I told you I'd probably get all of you to stop caring what I have to say.

The police also kept giving me nonsense tickets while I tried to make money as a delivery driver. My employer a Chinese food restaraunt with no parking, so the cops would give me parking tickets for stopping in front of the place to pick up the deliveries, because I drove very safely and slowly and they wouldn't find me actually endangering anyone.

I had an internet girlfriend with heart problems who disappeared on me. I kept telling myself she must be alive. I promised her I would buy her a Lamborghini someday, because I had insulted Lamborghinis once and accidentally hurt her feelings when she always wanted one, so I kept trying to save up to buy her a Lamborghini. This would not work as a delivery driver with the cops harassing me with tickets, suspending my license over seat belt tickets so that I'd die of a heart attack in my 50s from riding a bicycle to deliver food, etc.

My unpaid lawyer was a good man, but it didn't seem feasible to keep asking him for help with all of this. I ended up choosing to leave New York and move to another state, where I didn't know anyone. I had to pick somewhere good, since I wouldn't have any help at all anymore. I picked Maine, hoping it would buy me time. I guess that's kept me alive and out of prison so far.

Facebook banned me about the same time I left New York State. That was a couple of years before COVID hit, before Louis Rossmann famously left New York City over the police state constantly harassing him too.

I still had no friends in Maine, but I was still driving back and seeing friends in New York. My facebook ban showed me I had almost no real friends there either. Almost zero people actually stayed in touch with me after the ban.

Later, the world started hearing news of a new virus in China. Before they called it COVID, they called it nCoV-2019 - meaning "novel coronavirus" or "new coronavirus."

It was already being swept under the rug. Those of us who know how to press buttons on a calculator realized the coronavirus would kill millions of people, but most people were ignoring it. The media was ignoring it.

I couldn't get enough information. I just kept entering Google search queries, filtering results to "past hour" and "past 24 hours," because sometimes Google wouldn't even index things until the first hour was already over. Days turned into weeks turned into months unable to focus on any other topic.

One of the ways they downplayed it was by constantly reporting outdated numbers. One of the reasons I had to keep searching for new updates, constantly, was to make sure I wouldn't mention any incorrect numbers in conversations, because you would see news articles and redditors and everyone constantly posting numbers from 70 hours earlier instead of the latest 24-hour updates.

At one point, there was a piece on CNN's website saying the coronavirus was no big deal, and people should really be more worried about the flu. It enraged me endlessly, when the coronavirus was clearly going to kill millions of people. The same talking point later got reassigned to the right-wing mouthpieces and I've never been able to find any trace of that article from CNN's website, but I remember it. I'm still looking for anyone else that remembers it or has proof it existed. A chat bot, with no link, tells me the title was "Forget the coronavirus. The flu is a much bigger threat." That sounds about right.

I remember being downvoted constantly in every subreddit whenever I talked about how this was being swept under the rug. It didn't matter if it was a normie subreddit or a big scientific subreddit or a small scientific subreddit or the actual coronavirus subreddit for discussing the virus. People downvoted the shit out of me and called me a moron for saying this virus would obviously kill millions of people worldwide based on the death rates and contagion rates we were seeing.

They did not listen to my advice on how to prepare or what to do to save lives. They didn't care. When deaths got into the hundreds of thousands, they still didn't care. Then millions of people died. People still don't care.

Evidence suggests the virus started in China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Gain Of Function research labs are funded by global authorities, including American taxpayers. While I was trying to learn those details, I heard of widespread internet bans for people discussing any of it. COVID suddenly made my facebook ban a lot more common.

Internet bans were still a regular thing for me. I had been banned from much of reddit for supporting Donald Trump, who I was now watching turn the US into a COVID breeding ground, and now I was also banned from the Donald Trump subreddit.

The internet girlfriend that disappeared on me with heart problems was back. She was talking to me again, at least sometimes. She was still alive. I was technically homeless, drifting between different hotels and sometimes sleeping in my car, but still holding onto a tiny bit of money I had saved up for her Lamborghini. She basically scammed me out of that thousand bucks or two while she secretly had a new partner at the time. They ended up having kids.

They probably both filed taxes and got their COVID stimulus checks too. I've never filed taxes, because I'm not giving permission to bomb brown kids with my money, so I never got the stimulus checks Trump sent out. I went flat broke. Ended up with my car barely running, unable to afford car repairs.

I was always writing that girl emails about how I wanted to kill that guy she was with.

I didn't really know my dad, but I found out he died during a deadly phase of the COVID pandemic. They didn't deem it COVID related; it was a heart attack. He was in his 50s and actually still rode a bicycle to work. Probably just a coincidence. The wife he gave everything in his will died before him and he died before writing a new will, so it went to his next of kin, which was me.

I would have immediately bought that internet girl with the supposed heart problems a Lamborghini with some of that money, if she at least made it easier to get in touch with her at the time, instead of blocking me for those emails. At least she doesn't make me wonder if she's alive anymore. She let me know her real name before disappearing this time.

The lawyer that used to help me in New York also died during a deadly phase of the COVID pandemic. But it wasn't deemed COVID related. I bet it was just a coincidence.

While I was getting arrested, gangstalked, buried in online bans and downvotes, Don Lemon was getting paid to speak on TV. While I wasn't filing taxes to fund the bombing of brown kids, I bet he was.

"If it's not true don’t allow people to put it up there. Have them face consequences," Don Lemon said. "If you’re going to be on social media, you should put your real information on there, so that if you say something that is not true … then you should be able to face the consequences for it. It shouldn’t just be bots out there spreading BS."

I can't find any video of Don Lemon saying that. Kinda like I can't find any trace of the CNN article saying the new coronavirus isn't worse than a flu. But I can at least find traces of Don Lemon's statements. I'm not the only one that remembers. He was quoted in news articles that you can still find online.

It wasn't many more years before CNN started downplaying the Israeli genocide of Gaza, funded by those American taxpayer dollars I've been mentioning.

His free-speech-violating arrest looks pretty easy to go through compared to my last one. I'm always worried something like that will happen to me again, or worse. I could end up like the guy in Tennesee that did a month in jail for posting a meme under Trump's Presidency. I could end up like hundreds of journalists or tens of thousands of other civilians in Gaza. I wonder if Don Lemon is as fearful as I am.

If anyone remembers or can find that CNN website piece I mentioned, or the video of the Don Lemon censorship quote, I'd appreciate it.

A few years after my facebook ban, I heard there were rumors in my home area that I committed suicide, and one girl I used to know supposedly cried when someone let her know I was actually alive.

I briefly knew a girl online called Mad, with a tattoo on her arm that says "Moon + Back" in her mom's handwriting, from before she lost her mom to cancer. She disappeared on me while telling me she felt like she was dying of COVID. But I was also having a mental breakdown at the time. Unlike most girls stuff like this has happened with, she never came back and let me know her real name so I could make sure she's alive. If you know her, please let me know she's still alive, or let her know I still worry about her.

I would have hired a private investigator to look for her by now, but the same thing happened more severely again with another woman called Digit from the wallstreetbets reddit community. People that knew her keep spamming me with rumors that she committed suicide, but no proof, mirroring what was said about me after my Facebook ban. Digit lost someone herself, during a deadly phase of the COVID pandemic. I hear it was suicide. Probably a coincidence.

I basically live in constant panic over her and Mad.

And I still worry about ykorea, another wallstreetbets redditor that stopped posting, that I've posted about before. I barely knew ykorea.

While trying to find proof Digit and Mad are alive, I saw a movie called The Circle. It's about a woman trying to get in touch with a friend she's worried about, until it backfires because it goes viral on the internet.

That's part of what's always been terrifying about this. I didn't need to see that movie to know maybe I'm just cursed and it will always keep getting worse. Ever since seeing it, I'm even more paranoid about attracting attention too quickly. Yet there's nothing for me to do except wait for shit to magically change, or keep trying to find anyone that can help.

If I said all of this in a video, it would be easier to sit through for how long it is, and it would reach more people. It would work better as a video. I'm scared the video could be too worthwhile, it could attract the wrong attention, it could backfire. It's safer if it's more like a blog post, pretty much incapable of going viral, except I don't even know if anyone will read the whole thing at all. I've made this post offensive enough that even Digit, who is highly literate and very patient, might not read it. Even so, posting this might risk attracting the wrong attention.

It's taking me years to try to slowly thread the needle and find the information I need, while trying to limit the damage in the process. I can't make a video too good, just good enough for people to maybe not click away from. I might as well just do an article, and make that hard to read too.

But sometimes the human brain just needs information. I can't stop trying to get answers. I can't wait forever. I keep taking the risk of making certain topics into halfway-held-back videos. Eventually I'd probably take the risk of making videos that aren't held back at all.

I bet if Don Lemon asked his followers, it would only take a few hours for him to get screencaps of the CNN website coronavirus piece, and his statements on censorship.

More to his favor, Don Lemon can also afford better lawyers than me, and I assume he has people to hang out with wherever he lives.

Trump's Gestapo is now shooting everyday non-celebrities like me in the streets. Meanwhile, Don Lemon is arrested as a distraction, a clever way to make me waste time typing all this. At least I'm clever enough to ensure probably no one wastes time reading it.

Don't ask me to sympathize with him being booked by the Trump administration. It's just one Nazi arresting another Nazi. Both uphold the corrupt court system. Both pretend the court's verdicts are real and Constitutionally valid, at least most of the time.

The whole point of this arrest is to make TV out of it. At least this time, it's some really fucking funny TV.

Don Lemon seems fine with letting worse happen to people like me.

whoever loves Digit

originally posted on nostr, where there are no downvotes

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jXA_KmAYMUxLIgJv0CVvdCNF84eORg1G/view?pli=1

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42415602

Black journalists are being arrested because they protested a white Nazi's hate service.

This is the sign you have been waiting for.

Back in May, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered what might be the single most audacious statement of the Trump era—and that’s saying something

SBF swears he was Republican-curious long before things went awry.

Former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh, Trump's nominee for Fed chair, has a history of siding with financiers over workers. His nomination is a dangerous move to ensure the Fed does Trump's bidding, not what's best for American families.

Although the appendix listed 74 cases with 96 separate violations, Schiltz wrote that the "extent of ICE's noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges."

The former CNN anchor has said he was not demonstrating, but reporting as a journalist, during the interruption of a service inside a St. Paul church earlier this month.

They rounded up the people who were there and had dark skin, leaving people with lighter skin free.

Agents use facial recognition, social media monitoring and other tech tools not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track protesters, current and former officials said.

The key thing is that knowing who the 30 people recording ICE in public are doesn't do much for them in an environment where a couple blocks away, they would get a different 30 people doing the same.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7489457

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23072

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to revise the Clean Water Act, specifically a section of the law that regulates water quality and limits states’ and tribes’ authority over federal projects, as well as how tribes can gain the authority to conduct those reviews. Experts say the move would dissolve one of the few tools tribes have to enforce treaty rights and hamper their ability to protect tribal citizens.

“What the Trump administration is proposing to modify here is a really important tool for states and tribes, because it gets at their ability to put conditions on or, in extreme cases, block projects that are either proposed by the federal government or under the jurisdiction of the federal government,” said Miles Johnson, legal director at Columbia Riverkeeper, an organization that works on issues affecting the Columbia River.

Developers seeking to build dams, mines, data centers, or pipelines must navigate a permitting process to do so. One requirement in the process is obtaining certification from a tribe or state confirming that the project meets federal water quality standards. Currently, tribes and states conduct holistic reviews of projects, known as “activity as a whole”, evaluating all potential impacts on water quality, including spill risks, threats to cultural resources, and impacts on wildlife. This approach was established under the Biden administration in 2023.

However, the newly proposed rule would limit reviews to “discharge only,” where both states and tribes are able to review projects solely based on how much pollution they would release, narrowing the scope of oversight.

The proposed rule also changes how tribes can gain regulatory authority to assess water quality under the Treatment in a Similar Manner as a State program, or TAS. Under that program, tribes are able to act as regulators, one of the few tools available to them, and directly set conditions to limit factors that would pollute waters near tribal lands. To date, only 84 tribal nations have received TAS status, allowing them to review federal projects. Currently, Section 401 of the Clean Water Act allows tribes that can demonstrate the capacity and resources the ability to review water quality standards, expanding regulatory powers beyond tribes with larger resources. The proposed change would shrink those powers, allowing only TAS tribes to perform evaluations through a separate, more rigorous authorization program.

“Treaty rights are one of the strongest mechanisms to enforce against the federal government, against the state, against third-party actors, and in litigation,” said Heather Tanana, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “It takes years, it takes money, it’s complicated to do, and so you want these other mechanisms.”

A reversion to pre-2023 rules, Tanana said, would put higher demands on tribes to show larger-scale capacity, often in the form of dedicated water departments.

“There’s such a wide variance in tribes of what resources are available to them. Do they have other sources of revenue, right? How many staff do they have? Do they have their own environmental departments? Is it one person, or is it 10?” said Tanana.

During the Biden administration, tribes advocated for a baseline rule allowing all tribes some input in federal projects while seeking TAS status, but industry pushback during the comment period and a Trump win during the general election in 2024 led to its withdrawal from the EPA in December.

Patrick Hunter, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, noted that of 7,500 projects submitted during the Biden administration, fewer than 1 percent were denied. Most were approved with conditions such as mitigation measures and sediment traps to prevent water pollution during construction. Tanana said tribal review outcomes were similar.

The EPA’s 2025 report on tribal consultations highlighted widespread opposition to changes. “The clear feedback from the tribes was, ‘Don’t change it,'” said Tanana. “‘You’re going to make it harder for us to exercise our sovereignty to protect our waters and protect our community.’”

A 30-day public comment period on the proposed rule is currently underway. The rule is expected to face litigation after finalization.

“Tribes have an obligation to care for the rivers and waterways that have sustained their communities since before the existence of the United States and are weighing every option to protect their way of life,” said Gussie Lord, head of tribal partnerships at Earthjustice.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA wants to eliminate one of the few ways that tribes can protect their water on Jan 27, 2026.

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