State Department confirms federal censorship shield law incoming

Today, Sarah Rogers, United States Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, confirmed that the US is poised to forever block foreign censorship of US citizens under laws like the UK Online Safety Act or the EU Digital Services Act.
FAA ignored warnings before DCA crash: "100% preventable"—federal investigators
In some states, a push to end all property taxes for homeowners
Why Los Angeles Stopped Repaving Its Streets

The answer, it turns out, has to do with federal disability rules that, paradoxically, have made fixing roads legally riskier than letting them fall apart. Though well-intentioned, L.A.’s shift shows how such policies can unintentionally worsen urban quality of life. The clearest explanation of the city’s shift comes from L.A.–based housing and transportation advocate Oren Hadar. Digging through budget documents and engineering classifications, Hadar explained in an essay late last year that the city didn’t necessarily abandon street work so much as reclassify it out of existence.

The reason for the invention lies in federal disability law. Under regulations implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act, when a city alters a street, it must also bring adjacent pedestrian infrastructure into compliance—meaning the installation of ADA-compliant curb ramps at every affected intersection. Repaving is considered an alteration that triggers these requirements. Maintenance activities, such as filling potholes or making minor repairs, are not. The city claims that large asphalt repairs are “pavement maintenance activity” and therefore do not require ADA upgrades.
Automaker Lobbyists Undermine Maine's Effort to Pass 'Right to Repair' Reforms

Trump

Democrats

California took in millions for dead people's phone, internet service

California obtained millions in federal funds to cover phone and internet service for 94,000 dead people, a new report from the Federal Communications Commission has revealed. The state took in $3.8 million between 2020 and 2025 through the federal Lifeline program, which spends nearly $1 billion annually to subsidize phone and internet service for low-income Americans, according to the FCC’s inspector general. Of the three states named in the report, California collected the most money by a long shot — accounting for more than 80% of the payments, the report said.
Tim Walz says he’ll never seek elected office again

Left Angst

In 6 violent encounters, evidence contradicts immigration officials' narratives
We've hit the "Washed up Pop Stars Latch On phase: Streets of Minneapolis
BBC Confirms Authenticity of Viral Video Appearing to Show Alex Pretti Kicking Agents’ Car 11 Days Before Shooting
- BBC Confirms Using 'Facial Recognition Technology' to ID Pretti in Newly Uncovered Video
- Alex Pretti appears to spit at ICE, kick out tail light in previous Minneapolis confrontation before he was shot by Border Patrol
What ICE Did to Alex Pretti Is Somehow Worse Than We Thought

So assuming that DHS is lying its bureaucratic ass off—which always is a good assumption—at least some of the overripe guys in masks stalking the streets of Minneapolis knew who Pretti was before anything happened last Saturday. (Keep the phrase “malice aforethought,” or “premeditation,” in mind.) And then there’s the new video of Pretti’s killing, in which the last shreds of the official government story are, well, shredded. here’s no “riot.” There aren’t enough people on the sidewalk for a decent hockey fight. An ICE officer walks right up to Pretti and initiates the violence. Then he and his colleagues swarm Pretti, who vanishes below a flurry of punches and kicks while onlookers plead with his attackers.
- Video is no substitute for Faith.
FBI Investigates Minneapolis Activists over Signal Chats
Philosopher John Gray: We are living through regime change

Gramsci formulated a thesis that still frames thinking on the left: the West is stuck in a pathological state of disorder between two regimes. Because this condition is morbid, it can be remedied by resolute political will. So, at any rate, progressives would like to believe. The alternative, for them, is despair. Reality, however, is unyielding. There will be no global regime akin to those that existed, or were imagined. Liberalism and socialism were formulated in an era of Western supremacy, a historical accident lasting a few centuries, now plainly ending. Progressive thinkers envision the future through the lens of their lost pasts. Life in the aftermath is unthinkable. The American-led order, in its final incarnation, was a neoliberal construction. Proclaimed immortal in a forgotten “Washington consensus”, it has been killed off by regime change in the American capital. The system that was supposed to spread across the globe has disappeared in its country of origin. Trump has not only shattered free trade. By taking equity stakes in strategic industries, he has made American capitalism into a dirigiste enterprise ruled by himself and his friends. By authorising a criminal investigation into the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, he is undermining a central pillar of the neoliberal order and the primacy of the American dollar. As a functioning system neoliberalism remains semi-intact only in the European Union, a crumbling continental free market wedged helplessly between predatory mercantilist powers. If it retaliates against Trump’s tariff threats, the last bastion will fall.
- "No one is above the Law" and see also: Gramscian damage
Administration Social Media Posts Echo White Supremacist Messaging
Politics and the English Language, January 2026 Edition

Cook avoids most of the sins Orwell describes. He uses short, common words. He eschews hackneyed metaphors. He uses the active, not passive, voice — for the most part. His prayers and sympathies are “with everyone that’s been affected.” Who, exactly, has been affected? Affected how? By whom? Numerous examples come to mind, but not from Cook’s memo. Two Minneapolitans were affected, quite adversely, by being shot in the head and back at point blank range, in broad daylight, by unhinged ICE goons. A five-year-old boy — himself a U.S.-born citizen — was affected when ICE agents apprehended his father, used the boy as bait to lure other family members, and is now being held in a notorious detention center in Texas, a thousand miles away. The list is long, the stories searing. But Cook mentions nothing more specific than “everyone that’s been affected”. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them, indeed.
The tech 'courtier' steering Trump on AI to Silicon Valley's delight
Best Gas Masks
ICE violated at least 96 court orders in January
Documents Prove Trump Administration Arrested Students for Criticizing Israel
Younger Americans see U.S. dominance slipping to China
Google Co-Founder Seeds Billionaire Political Effort Amid Wealth Tax Debate
The Trump Administration Is Publishing a Stream of Nazi Propaganda

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

Angry Norfolk residents lose lawsuit to stop Flock license plate scanners
County pays $600k to pentesters it arrested for assessing courthouse security

Two security professionals who were arrested in 2019 after performing an authorized security assessment of a county courthouse in Iowa will receive $600,000 to settle a lawsuit they brought alleging wrongful arrest and defamation. he case was brought by Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn, two penetration testers who at the time were employed by Colorado-based security firm Coalfire Labs. The men had written authorization from the Iowa Judicial Branch to conduct “red-team” exercises, meaning attempted security breaches that mimic techniques used by criminal hackers or burglars.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

The cold war maps that can help us rethink today's Arctic conflict
Families of Boat Strike Victims Sue U.S. for "Manifestly Unlawful" Killings
- Obama established precedent that the US President can order the killing of anyone anywhere.
US Congress asks Ford for more info on Chinese military battery partnership
Trump officials met group pushing Alberta independence from Canada
US spy satellite agency declassifies high-flying Cold War listening post

World

Iran / Houthi

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

Royal Navy forces Russian ship out of British waters

China

Health / Medicine

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

The US is on the verge of losing its measles elimination status

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

A pendulum-based system allows energy to be extracted from ocean currents
Major US city (LA) takes bold decision to ban single-use printer cartridges
Satellite images show swaths of the Arctic on fire
Summer? Where did southern Australia's record-breaking heatwave come from?
Overshoot: The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate
Microbubble-induced erosion releases micro- and nanoplastics into water
Swift bricks to be installed on all new buildings in Scotland as MSPs back law

Swift bricks will be installed in all new buildings in Scotland after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of a law to help endangered cavity-nesting birds. The Scottish government and MSPs across the parties backed an amendment by Scottish Green Mark Ruskell to make swift bricks mandatory for all new dwellings “where reasonably practical and appropriate”. The swift move contrasts with the four-year battle to bring the hollow £35 bricks into law in England. The Labour government last year rejected an amendment to make the bricks mandatory for new buildings, instead introducing them into planning guidance, meaning there is no legal obligation on developers or planning authorities to provide them.
Accidental climate scientist who uncovered an unexpected force of global warming
Fossil Fuels Are Doomed
'Pesticide cocktails' polluting apples across Europe, study finds
Eating insects: A sustainable solution or an overhyped idea?