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Nationwide redistricting brawl nears the end Tuesday in Virginia referendum

Apr 15, 2026Center Right

Virginia's redistricting referendum next week marks the beginning of the end of a nationwide battle to use mid-decade redistricting to help gain control of the U.S. House.

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Growing surveillance state under Trump admin sparks nationwide backlash

Raw Story

7 hours ago

Growing surveillance state under Trump admin sparks nationwide backlash

Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety’s cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company’s Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things,” Cox added.Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people’s travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.The ACLU—which recently launched a “Get the Flock Out” campaign to “fight creepy ALPR cameras”—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.“Flock’s ALPR cameras aren’t like your normal traffic cameras,” the ACLU explained. “This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.”The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan,” ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.Susie O’Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California’s nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company’s national network without city officials’ knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.O’Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.“I have goose bumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis,” she said. “And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way.”Less than a week after Good’s killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city’s Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue.”“There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant,” he added.At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.Krishnamoorthi and Sen.

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MAGA reporter declares: 'Uncool' State Fair debacle is the 'end of Trump'

Alternet.org

7 hours ago

MAGA reporter declares: 'Uncool' State Fair debacle is the 'end of Trump'

On Friday, a prominent MAGA journalist called it: “The State Fair debacle is the end of @realDonaldTrump as a cultural force.”Alex Berenson – a veteran journalist who gained MAGA fame for his vocal COVID denial and voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 – posted this declaration to social media along with a photo of an almost completely empty National State Fair, at the center of which stood a mini mockup of the Commander in Chief’s crumbling triumphal arch. “Trump has always been uncool in a cool way,” Berenson continued. “He’s so in love with himself and his own awful taste you appreciate him even if you hate him. But this is just a box-office bomb, and it makes him look so old.”His dismal assessment comes amid rampant reports of the fair’s many disappointments. The event – much touted by Trump in the weeks preceding it – has been characterized by thin to nonexistent crowds, prompting the crowd-size-obsessed president to fly into a rage and fret that no one will show up to his 4th of July rally. His own supporters have called it “really disappointing,” “unnecessarily vanilla,” and “like a silent protest.” Even Fox News ditched the affair after wasting too much airtime on “live shots of empty grass.”The National State Fair is part of the wider celebrations marking the United States’ 250th birthday, which have been plagued by controversy, scandal, and failure for months. In May, the fair concert series fell apart within hours of its lineup announcement as musicians quit, saying they’d been misled about the event’s pro-Trump connotations. Somewhere along the way, Trump decided the Reflecting Pool needed to be painted, and that debacle spun out into Algaegate. This and other projects have been riddled with accusations of no-bid contracts and shady dealings. Berenson’s assertion that the end of Trump is nigh comes as the MAGA movement descends into “civil war.” The president has lost some of his most important political and media allies, like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The ‘Relectant Right’ who played a key role in his 2024 election have soured. And even the white working-class voters who are his most loyal support base have drifted away. Overall, Trump’s approval ratings have plunged to historic lows, increasing to just 37 percent in recent days.

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Reason.com

10 hours ago

Will Trump v. Barbara End the Birthright Citizenship Debate? (UPDATED)

The Court may have ruled on birthright citizenship, but the debate over birthright citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment is likely to continue.

Center Right

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Iran Holds Funerary Processions for Late Supreme Leader in Symbolic Referendum for Regime

TIME

17 hours ago

Iran Holds Funerary Processions for Late Supreme Leader in Symbolic Referendum for Regime

The Iranian regime has cast the funeral procession as a symbolic rebuke to the U.S.-Israeli campaign that sought to decapitate its leadership.

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Democrats reveal hypocrisy as SCOTUS ends Haitian protections: ‘Why is Haiti America’s responsibility?’

Blaze Media

Yesterday

Democrats reveal hypocrisy as SCOTUS ends Haitian protections: ‘Why is Haiti America’s responsibility?’

The Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for many Haitian migrants has triggered serious outrage from the left — and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales can’t help but notice the glaring issues in leftist logic.“Now, seems like it would be kind of common sense. It’s in the name. It’s the T in TPS. Temporary. Temporary. There is an actual definition of the word 'temporary.' It means 'not forever,'” Gonzales says, pointing out that they were supposed to have this status for months, but instead they have had it for nearly two decades.“Democrats, Haitians, anyone who has the liberal brain rot — they're losing their entitled little minds about it,” she adds.Founder and CEO of the Immigrant Family Services Institute Dr. Geralde Gabeau yelled to crowd cheers, “This is the time for all of us to raise our voices and to say this country is also our country, is also the country of our immigrant because we are the one who built it.”“I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to ask you for your receipts, ma’am,” Gonzales comments.“'Haitians built this country' is the argument that they made,” she adds.However, celebrities have historically made their home sound like a place no one should want to leave, as Susan Sarandon, Conan O’Brien, and even Bill Maher all have donned shirts that read “Haiti is great already.”“They were pretending like it was just this wonderful, beautiful country; it’s not a third-world s**t-hole,” Gonzales comments. “And now all of a sudden, they’re back to like, ‘No, no, you can’t send them back. No, don’t do that. It’s too big of a s**t-hole.’”And CNN’s Jake Tapper is among those pleading.“I heard Stephen Miller, who’s driving a lot of this, say that Haiti is safe for Haitians, and I just looked at the State Department’s website, and they have a level four 'do not travel' advisory for Haiti just from a few months ago,” Tapper said on CNN.“Crimes include robbery, carjacking, sexual assault, and kidnappings for ransom. That doesn’t sound safe to me,” Tapper added.“'Do not travel' is not for Haitians. That’s 'do not travel' for the United States. That advisory is to American citizens traveling to Haiti, not Haitians going back home,” Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told Tapper.“I understand that, but based on everything I’ve read, including the U.N. and Human Rights Watch, it doesn’t sound safe for Haitians. More than 8,100 killings documented last year. Those weren’t Americans. Haiti is among the top five countries with the highest rates of rape and sexual abuse, with more than 1,200 cases of sexual violence last year,” Tapper replied.“So Haitians are making Haiti unsafe, and somehow we are expected to import them. These are criminals,” Gonzales comments.“Why would it be our duty to import anyone from any unsafe country in the world?” she asks. “The obvious conclusion is you are only going to make our country less safe.”Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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How Google and AI Nearly Made a Seasoned Reporter Spiral

ProPublica

Yesterday

How Google and AI Nearly Made a Seasoned Reporter Spiral

The post How Google and AI Nearly Made a Seasoned Reporter Spiral appeared first on ProPublica.

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Legal expert shares sobering warning after Trump's big court loss: 'Not the end'

Raw Story

Yesterday

Legal expert shares sobering warning after Trump's big court loss: 'Not the end'

A legal expert shared a sobering warning on Thursday about President Donald Trump's continued efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court rebuffed his latest attempt. Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told Michael Popok, a lawyer and host of "The Intersection" podcast, on a recent episode that the Trump administration's birthright citizenship case was "just the tip of the spear." Last year, the administration signed an executive order stripping birthright citizenship from people who are born in the country but whose parents are here illegally. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Wednesday that the executive order was unconstitutional. Wofsy warned during the interview that the Supreme Court's decision is not the end of the road for the Trump administration's efforts. "What cases like the Birthright decision show is that we can keep fighting and we can win these fights," Wofsy said. "There are battles so fundamental and central to who we are as a country that we can overcome.""I hope that gives some hope to those who may be feeling a little hopeless in this moment, but I also don't want to at all undercut that this is an incredibly frightening and demoralizing time for so many people in our communities," he continued. "This is an example of our allies, our communities, the American people, who stood up and said no to this idea of rewriting a fundamental constitutional guarantee, and we held the line in this case," he added. "It's an example of why we have to keep fighting, but it is by far not the end of the fight."

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Freedom 250 dancer nearly struck by plunging panel as event stage 'falls apart': report

Raw Story

Yesterday

Freedom 250 dancer nearly struck by plunging panel as event stage 'falls apart': report

A stage panel plunged toward dancers rehearsing for President Donald Trump's Freedom 250 July 4th celebration on the National Mall, narrowly missing them.Video of the incident, posted to X at 3:18 PM Thursday by independent journalist Aaron Parnas, showed the panel falling from the arched stage structure as dozens of dancers performed below."The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration," Parnas wrote."This is incredibly dangerous stuff," journalist Ryan Grim wrote on X."Trump cutting safety corners with stage building is the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies," Grim added. Under criminal law, causing a death through reckless safety failures can result in prosecution even without intent to harm."This equipment is deadly when falling from those heights," he wrote.Since Freedom 250's Great American State Fair opened on the National Mall on June 25th, the event has been plagued by power outages that melted ice cream, a 110-foot Ferris wheel that repeatedly broke down, and plywood booth facades painted to look like marble columns, Forbes reported. Freedom 250 is a public-private partnership created by Trump to organize the nation's semiquincentennial celebrations, operating separately from America250, the nonpartisan organization Congress created for that purpose."MAJOR BREAKING: Trump's Freedom 250 stage collapses in the midst of a rehearsal for the July 4 performance," political commentator Brian Krassenstein wrote on X."People literally could have died," he added.Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Mall celebration at 9:45 PM on July 4th, two days away, according to WTOP.

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Nationwide redistricting brawl nears the end Tuesday in Virginia referendum

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Nationwide redistricting brawl nears the end Tuesday in Virginia referendum

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