Powderhorn

The industry as a whole still has some kinks to work out.

Federal officials have repeatedly claimed that criticizing immigration officials or identifying officers is unlawful and dangerous, despite clear First Amendment protections for both. Now, the government appears to be taking a disturbing new step: investigating Americans for posting information on social media that originally appeared in news reports.

This tactic allows the government to kill two birds with one stone: censoring individual critics and limiting the reach of the press. If the government can deter people from sharing news reports through threats of investigation or prosecution, it can undermine the public impact of journalism without ever censoring a newsroom directly.

Local news outlet Syracuse.com reported last month that federal agents tracked down a New York woman to demand she remove a social media post that they claimed threatened Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. Agents confronted the woman, Paigelynne Gonyea, where she worked at a polling place and demanded she sign a form letter stating she could be criminally prosecuted for threatening a federal officer.

Gonyea told Syracuse.com that she believed agents were referring to a January Instagram post “where she named the ICE agent who shot protester Renee Good.” In the post, Gonyea shared a picture of the agent, Jonathan Ross, that The Minnesota Star Tribune used in its news report first identifying him as the shooter.

Gonyea wrote, “BREAKING: The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!”

The Department of Homeland Security later told The Associated Press that Gonyea also posted Ross’ home address, and a spokeswoman shared with the AP reporter a different, redacted social media post purporting to come from Gonyea’s account. But Gonyea denied posting Ross’ address, and DHS has not made the alleged post publicly available. Gonyea also told NPR that agents who came to the polling station had a copy of her Instagram post with the photo of Ross, which does not include his address.

Pretty amazing how the same party has gone from "government is the problem" to "people who disagree with fascism are the problem" -- in my lifetime.

ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) plans to open a new 528-bed facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children inside a Louisiana airport, AP reported this week.

The facility will be run by the nonprofit arm of a private prison company that has reported deaths of two detainees since April at one of its facilities in the state.

The new ICE facility at England Airpark in Louisiana will be run by the nonprofit arm of Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority. The official contractor for the new ICE facility is the LaSalle Family Foundation, LaSalle Corrections’ nonprofit arm, a tax-exempt organization, AP reported.

Whether LaSalle Corrections’ nonprofit arm, LaSalle Family Foundation, may be violating federal tax rules is “a valid question,” said Josh Starin, attorney at law firm Shell Bray, in an interview with Impactivize. Starin previously spent 13 years at the Internal Revenue Service as a subject matter expert on major technical, procedural, and administrative issues for the IRS Tax-Exempt/Government Entities Business Operating Division.

Upon initial review of LaSalle Family Foundation’s most recent IRS tax filing, Starin said, “It doesn’t pass the smell test for what I would expect a private foundation to be operating.”

Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, is suspending his campaign following sexual assault allegations.

Platner announced his decision in an 11-minute video posted to social media on Wednesday evening, in which he angrily accused the Democratic establishment and corporate media of “using these allegations to take away all of the things we need to run a campaign” and acting “as judge, jury and executioner”.

“For the movement to continue, it can’t be me,” he said. “For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.”

Short excerpt, but it gets quote-heavy on Platner's behalf, all of which is denials, which aren't particularly relevant since he's no longer a candidate.

Edited to add the GOP response, thrown in at the end. Apparently, irony isn't real:

“Maine Democrats elected a rapist Nazi to be their nominee for Senate, and regardless of who they anoint next, Susan Collins will be re-elected in November,” said Samantha Cantrell, regional press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“Democrats rolled in the mud with Platner, and now they are completely stained by their association with this sick monster,” said Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters.

We’ve all heard the warning that “The internet is forever.” But in reality, huge swaths of the digital world are disappearing all the time: websites go dark, governments purge public records, social media posts vanish, and streaming platforms remove films and music, Without deliberate efforts to preserve this material, much of our recent history could simply cease to exist. The Internet Archive has spent decades fighting that disappearance, most nottably through its Wayback Machine, which preserves snapshots of a web that is otherwise constantly being rewritten. Current Affairs spoke with Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, and librarian Chris Freeland, co-editor of the Internet Archive’s new Vanishing Culture report, about why the internet is far more fragile than we think and what is lost when corporations and governments can make information disappear.

Nathan J. Robinson

Okay, listen, I want to start with a phrase—a phrase that will get under your skin, a phrase that I'm sure you've heard many times, and that we're going to correct here at the beginning. And the phrase is some variation on "the internet is forever," that is to say, when you put something online, it's never going to go away. I've heard that all of my life; I have lived through the birth of the internet, the entire history of the internet, and I've heard that all the time. So, tell us, is the internet in fact forever? And if not, in what ways is it not?

Two weeks before this year’s primary elections, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for the public to report people or groups suspected of voter fraud.

“Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of a thriving republic, and with the authority granted to my office by the Legislature, we will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity,” Paxton said in a February news release announcing the tip line.

The announcement linked to guidance from his office about election laws in Texas, which included a requirement to be a U.S. citizen, a prohibition on collecting mail ballots on behalf of others and a warning that “it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.”

“You must register to vote using the address where you reside,” the attorney general’s guidance stated.

Despite his own warnings, Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

State Sen. Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing that Paxton, whom she accused of adultery, moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. But Paxton continues to list the home’s address in the northern Dallas suburb on his voter registration. Angela Paxton declined to be interviewed. A source close to the Paxtons said the attorney general has not moved back into the home since leaving.

All hat, no cattle, that Paxton is.

A heat wave scorched much of the eastern United States over the Fourth of July weekend, bringing extreme temperatures that caused roads to buckle, snarling holiday traffic.

Nowhere was this more dramatic than on a stretch of concrete-paved Interstate 97 south of Baltimore, where one lane of traffic suddenly warped, forcing its closure. A city street in Chicago experienced a similar, though less dramatic, pavement failure, and several state departments of transportation warned motorists to watch for additional heat-related road damage.

Scientists say such heat waves are becoming more common and more intense. Climate change is driving more extreme temperatures, along with heavier rainfall. Both can contribute to pavements expanding and cracking, making roads temporarily impassable as they await expensive repairs. It raises the question: Are the nation's roads ready to meet the challenge of a warmer, wetter future?

Civil engineers say the answers aren't entirely straightforward.

A man whose Tesla Model 3 was allegedly in self-driving mode when it crashed into a home near Houston and killed a 76-year-old woman inside recently has been jailed on a count of manslaughter.

Michael Butler’s arrest in the 19 June death of Martha Avila was announced late on Wednesday in a Facebook post by the sheriff of Harris county, Texas, Ed Gonzalez.

Butler, 44, remained in the custody of Gonzalez’s office as of Friday morning in lieu of $150,000 bail, jail records showed. He had a court hearing tentatively scheduled for 6 July.

His arrest came amid a case that has drawn federal investigators’ scrutiny as well as a wrongful death lawsuit from Avila’s family.

Butler was traveling in his Tesla at about 8pm local time in the Houston suburb of Katy when the car allegedly^[this portion of the story is not in dispute] plowed through the front wall of Avila’s home, fatally pinning her.

Investigators said Butler, who was injured in the wreck, showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperating with investigators. He allegedly told sheriff’s deputies that he was using self-driving technology with which the car was equipped, but it has not been clear what – if any – role it played in the deadly crash.

The is a whole lot of words for a story that never answers the fundamental question raised: "What evidence led to Butler's arrest?"

I have no reason to question the validity of the arrest, but a nut graf would be really useful here. Say, the actual text of the Facebook announcement^[once again, friendly reminder that posting on Facebook is necessarily exclusionary] laying out why the guy is in jail. Something as simple as:

In a statement posted online, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said that investigators had determined the Autopilot feature had been deactivated at the time of the crash.

We don't need the cop jargon, but the reader deserves something better than The Guardian posting a story that admits "Butler was arrested, and we have no idea why."

Somehow, The Verge got hold of the probable-cause affidavit^[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28405676-texas-v-michael-butlerpdf/], which lays out some pretty damning determinations.

And yes, I just learned about footnote formatting^[I'm drunk with power!].

It’s MAHA Monday at the Great American State Fair, and I am drinking a Phorm Energy Screamin’ Freedom (16 ounces for $6). The fair also offered normal drinks for $5 (Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, lemonade), but I figured that for an extra dollar, it would be worth it to know the taste of freedom. Screamin’ Freedom, specifically. This drink offers “natural energy,” “mental focus,” “hydration,” “zero sugar,” “200 MG caffeine,” and a picture of an eagle. The concessions worker warns me that the beverage emphasizes “screamin’” because it has the caffeine content of two Red Bulls. The flavor (“cherry, lemon, & blueberry flavored with other natural flavors”) evokes a melted rocket pop but gets somehow worse with every sip. It is in a can, so I will never know the color of this drink, but over the course of MAHA Monday, I will drink the entire thing.

Everything that follows may be a hallucination!

Consider the state booths. Some are Official State Presentations; others are very much not. Florida includes a cannon, a manatee, and a drawing of Juan Ponce de León at the Fountain of Youth, labeled “Drawing of Juan Ponce de León at the Fountain of Youth.” Georgia is proud to have originated the Waffle House! (Happy MAHA Day?)

Washington State has no official presence, but like many other states without an official presence, that has not stopped some graphic designer from conjuring up a nightmare on its behalf, this one in the form of an elk posing proudly with an Amazon package.

For the very first time, biologists packed nonliving components into a cell-like membrane, piece by piece, and witnessed the bag of molecules start to behave like life. The lab-made synthetic cell grew, replicated its DNA, and divided, demonstrating the basic functions of a cell cycle.

It’s “an impressive step,” said Jack Szostak, who studies the origins of life at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the research. “I don’t know of any other effort to put together an artificial cell from biological components that has progressed so far.”

The cell is not alive by any definition. It can’t survive without constant deliveries of food and ribosomes, the machinery needed to make proteins. It has no defenses or a good waste removal system. But it’s the strongest demonstration yet that it is possible to generate life from nonlife, a goal that synthetic biologists have been chasing for decades.

“It’s a big step forward to this holy grail of making a living thing out of dead components,” said Sijbren Otto, a systems chemist at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry in the Netherlands who was not involved in the work. “It’s not completely there yet, but it’s definitely getting quite close.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling coalition has unveiled a sweeping package of tax, labour and pension reforms aimed at reviving Europe’s largest economy and countering a surge by the far right.

The “Programme for Revival and Employment” announced on Thursday includes about 10 billion euros ($11.4bn) in annual income tax relief targeted at lower and middle-income earners, taking effect from January 1, 2027.

The 34 reform measures also include an overhaul of the creaking pension system, tougher rules for employees’ sick leave and a reduction of the country’s stifling bureaucracy.

The tax relief is to be financed primarily by restructuring the surcharge on top incomes.

“The highest earners in this country will therefore take on a larger share” of the tax burden, said Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the centre-left SPD. “That is fair, so that our country can move forward.”

It's so weird to hear politicians make sense at the Cabinet level.

Some readers might look at this headline and think there’s something off about it. And I’ll grant you that. There are several ways music can be played: to, for, not at all. Sometimes though, the only way to describe the playing of music is “at.”

One of Trump’s many vindictive “surges” targeting cities and states run by Democratic party members occurred in Washington DC. Not content to flood the streets with tons of federal officers, the administration decided these forces needed backup from the National Guard. Of course, Trump claimed the crime problem in DC was so bad it could only be dealt with by a surge that blended choice bits from “police state” and “martial law” into an unpalatable whole.

DC residents were less than thrilled. One resident — Sam O’Hara — made his displeasure known by doing the thing in the headline: playing music at National Guard troops.