We made it to May, well done!

What can I say, you couldn’t make up the events of last month if you tried. Literally, I do not think I have ever spent as much time fact-checking anything as I did for the April newsletter. Every moment I thought I was done and ready to publish, I unearthed another wild headline- like a Russian doll of government dysfunction, political chaos, and grassroots resistance.

On the other hand, I was delighted to see that the resistance to war, genocide, secret police, and forced detention is stronger than ever. Living in the Capital of the U.S., where the armed National Guard still patrols and terrorizes Black residents, feels like a hostage situation. However, the global solidarity I witnessed this month has made this anti-authoritarian organizer feel less alone and even more committed in my resolve to shine a light on this moment in history.

With that, I present the April Newsletter : )
Please use the table of contents below to navigate the newsletter.

Federal Government

Far From Peace or Sanity: War$$, Lies, and Starving the Troops

From our county’s highest seat of power- feuds with the pope, a blasphemous AI generated image, calling political opponents “low IQ individuals”, and a number of other outbursts of erratic behavior. See a list of Donald Trump’s deleted posts here. Calls for the death of the entire Iranian civilization, in a particularly genocidal Truth Social post from the president, has prompted leaders to call for support to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. A group of medical professionals holding many ideologies submitted into the record their assessment that Trump does not have the capacity to remain president.

The U.S. government now owes tens of thousands of importers a total of up to $175 billion in refunds for the tariffs imposed by President Trump last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

The deadline Trump presented Iran with to re-open the strait of Hormuz was pushed back again. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were scheduled to go to Pakistan for indirect talks with Iranian officials, with Islamabad serving as an intermediary to Pakistan. Trump abruptly canceled the diplomatic trip, signaling that peace talks during the ongoing shaky ceasefire have fallen apart.

Pete Hegseth was called for questioning in front of the House (HASC) and Senate (SASC) Armed Services Committees respectively, for the first time since the start of the Iran War. Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of staff General Dan Caine testified before the Committee on Trump’s Budget request of $1.5 Trillion. The Pentagon has asked Congress to codify its “Department of War” renaming, saying it will cost nearly $52 million to complete. The war and the DOD remains unpopular, with over 60% of Americans expressing disapproval of Trump’s handling of the conflict, and Anti-war protesters interrupting Hegseth’s opening statement to call him a War Criminal. During the hearing, Hegseth deflected direct questions about the actual cost of the conflict, insider trading, and sending armed troops to polling locations. The DOJ unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Soldier charged with using classified information to profit from prediction market bets during Maduro’s capture.

Eligible men will soon be automatically registered into the U.S.A. military draft pool, according to the Selective Service System SSS website, the change “transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS through integration with federal data sources.” The agency is moving to an automatic registration process, rather than requiring eligible men to sign up manually.

Troops deployed for the Iran war are suffering low morale and starvation. Multiple photos of small and unappetizing meals were shared by Marines aboard the USS Tripoli and the USS Abraham Lincoln, warships deployed to fight the Iran war. Another crew member told family that members were rationing their food supplies on the ship. When concerned family members attempted to send food, they found that the U.S. Postal Service temporarily suspended mail delivery to 27 military ZIP codes.

President Trump made false claims about NATO, NASA, foreign policy, taxes, immigration and other subjects in a Fox Business interview. “We’re fighting wars,” Trump told an audience at a White House Easter lunch, as seen in a video posted on and then removed from the White House’s website. “We can’t take care of day care.” Trump also fired the entirety of the National Science Board (NSB) in an escalation of the administration’s attacks on science. The purpose of the NSB is to advise Congress and the President on the activities of the National Science Foundation (NSF)

The Holes in the Epstein Files Coverup: Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Melania Trump

Pam Bondi was removed from her position by Trump and temporarily replaced by Todd Blanche, who served as Trump’s defense attorney across several criminal cases the then-former president faced following his first term. In an attempt to gain insight into the department’s compliance, former Attorney General Pam Bondi was called to testify in a sworn deposition. In a letter to Comer, assistant attorney general Patrick Davis argued that the subpoena no longer applied because “the committee issued the subpoena to Ms Bondi in her official capacity as attorney general”. The House Oversight committee filed contempt charges against Bondi after she failed to appear for her scheduled deposition. She is now re-scheduled to testify on May 29th.

FBI director Kash Patel is reportedly deeply paranoid about being fired and often drinks to excess. According to internal FBI staff, Patel flew into a paranoid “freak-out” when faced with a technical issue this month with a computer system. When he believed that he had been fired and locked out of the FBI computer system he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House. FBI staff are increasingly concerned that the director is increasingly vulnerable to coersion and exploitation.

To the surprise of everyone, including the White House, First Lady Melania Trump gave a brief statement in front of the presidential seal, denying any association with Jeffery Epstein. This brought questions about Epstein Files accountability back to the forefront of national discussion.
As the UK authorities look to investigate Former Prince Andrew’s role in the Epstein trafficking pyramid, the DOJ has told British police it will not hand over the original documents without a formal request being made. That is a bureaucratic and lengthy process. The DOJ Inspector General, the internal watchdog announced that it has began its audit of the department’s compliance.

Political attacks: State Run elections, Research, and Federal employees

The DOJ sent a letter to Michigan Officials demanding that they hand over county records from the 2024 election to the Trump administration.

DOJ announced criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, in what many observe as a politically motivated attack. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that the charges include wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Following the indictment, Fidelity moved to block donor-advised funds to the organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 and utilized paid informants to provide the FBI research on domestic terror groups.

The Office of Personnel Management ( OPM ) received letters from Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate. Lawmakers cited data privacy and security concerns following the agency’s proposal to compel insurance companies to share service and cost data of certain enrolled government employees. The AFGE The American Federation of Government Employees warns that this proposal exists within the current climate of coordinated attacks on Federal Employees.

Court Rulings: Voter Data, Paramount Merger, and weakening the Voting Rights Act

In a 6-3 ruling Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down one of Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts. The court’s conservative majority found that Louisiana’s Sixth District, which links Black communities across the state, relied too heavily on race in its design. The Supreme Court significantly narrowed a key provision of the Voting Rights Act Section 2 — a provision that broadly outlawed discrimination in voting on the basis of race — has been interpreted to allow, and sometimes demand, the use of race-conscious data in redistricting, to protect the voting power of minorities.

A Federal judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit demanding detailed voter data from Rhode Island. That ruling said the federal government was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists containing sensitive data and said the Justice Department had failed to identify a basis or a purpose for requesting the voter records.

A federal judge issued a delay in enforcing Colorado’s artificial intelligence law. The lawsuit against Senate Bill 24-205 was filed by Elon Musk on behalf of his xAI company. The U.S. Justice Department pointed to the 2024 law’s “explicit carve out for discriminatory algorithms designed to advance ‘diversity’ or ‘redress historic discrimination.’”

Federal judge blocks Nexstar-TEGNA merger amid antitrust lawsuit. The preliminary injunction means Nexstar, owner of FOX 59 and CBS 4 in Indianapolis, cannot yet acquire WTHR, an NBC affiliate.

States

The States Stand up to Corporate and Federal Pressure: InfoWars, AI, Abortion, and Amazon’s monopoly built on secrets

The Texas Supreme Court is hearing arguments regarding whether or not the Onion’s bid to take over Alex Jones’s InfoWars will be approved. A lower Texas court paused the Onion’s takeover of InfoWars, and repayment of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims. While the case progresses, Alex Jones announced that InfoWars had it’s last show, due to the studio closing because a court-appointed state receiver is no longer paying the bills to keep it open. The receiver is charged with taking control of Jones’s assets and selling them  to pay the families what Jones owes them.

Virginia Governor Spanberger signed SB338 into law amending Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) with new language prohibiting the sale of Virginians’ precise geo-location data. Virginia joins Oregon and Maryland in banning the sale of its residents’ location data.

State Republicans stand up to White House AI legislation moratorium pressure. It appears that they are responding to their constituents who have persistently voiced support for legislating around AI. Connecticut prosecutors and police chiefs have put the brakes on the rapidly expanding acquisition of artificial intelligence-powered law enforcement tools until the emerging technology can be tested and rules established for its use.

South Carolina advances a near total abortion ban out of Senate Committee on party lines, to the Senate for debate and a vote. Republican Sen. Tom Davis voted “no” and repeated his pledge to fight the bill from getting further.

California’s State Attorney General released unredacted documents containing internal Amazon communications, amid state anti-trust and price fixing case. The trial in the California attorney general’s lawsuit against Amazon is currently scheduled to begin on 19 January 2027.

Cyber Rights

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: AKA warrantless government surveillance

Congress passed a 45 day extension for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside of the United States. The extension comes after they failed to pass an extension with reforms that would honor American’s privacy protections as laid out in the fourth amendment to the Constitution.

Apple fixed a bug that allowed the FBI to gain backdoor access to notifications containing messages sent via encrypted messenger Signal.

Existing protections against commercial surveillance

Advertising pixels, analytics scripts, session-replay tools, ​and even AI-powered chatbots are now driving consequential privacy litigation across the country. California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) remains the sharpest tool. Specifically, CIPA section 631 targets unauthorized reading of communications while in transit; The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) – The 1988 ​federal statute prohibiting disclosure of video-viewing information without consent found new life in the pixel era. State and federal wiretapping statutes – The federal Wiretap Act and its state-law counterparts prohibit the intentional interception of electronic communications without consent.

Defending against unlawful use of AI

Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to advance a bill from Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that would require AI companies to implement an age-verification process and ban them from providing AI companions to minors, according to a summary of the legislation, dubbed the Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue Act, or GUARD Act.

An Ohio man is believed to be the first person in the nation to be convicted under a new federal law for using AI-generated, sexually explicit images of women to intimidate and harass them. His conviction for the publication of digital forgeries is covered under the Take It Down Act, which was enacted in 2025

Pop star Taylor Swift’s company filed three trademark applications with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Two relate to sound trademarks covering her voice: The third trademark is a visual trademark covering “a photograph of Taylor Swift holding a pink guitar. Swift’s trademark filings come after lawyers for McConaughey secured similar trademarks to protect his likeness from AI deep fakes.

Wall Street law firm, apologized to a federal ‌judge for submitting a court filing with inaccurate citations and other errors generated by artificial intelligence. Andrew Dietderich, co-head of the firm’s global restructuring group, said the errors included AI “”hallucinations”” – instances in which AI makes up case ​citations, misquotes the law or generates non-existent legal sources.

Major News publishers limit the Internet Archive access to articles due to AI scraping concerns. In total, 241 news sites from nine countries explicitly disallow at least one of the four Internet Archive crawling bots. Most of those sites — 87% — are owned by USA Today Co. “This effort is not about specifically blocking the Internet Archive,” USA Today Co. spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton told Wired, describing it instead as part of the company’s broader effort to block all scraping bots. Now, journalists and digital rights nonprofit organizations are pushing back and advocating for news publishers to lift their restrictions. (I personally depend on the Internet Archive to archive important news, limit traffic to bad actor pages, and keep quality reporting accessible to those who cannot afford subscriptions)

Corporation Watch

Tech Layoffs, Manifestos, Defense Contracts, Breakups, TikTok remixes and the death of “tokenmaxxing”: The latest in AI news

Tech saw another devastating round of layoffs in April, and companies are crediting AI for the “restructuring”. Oracle laid off 30,000 employees across the United States, India, Canada, Mexico and Uruguay, representing 18% of its global workforce Microsoft plans to offer staff voluntary buyouts for the first time in history for 7% of its US workforce by July. Meta announced to employees via email that it plans to lay off around 10% of its staff, eliminating about 6,000 internal roles. Snap Inc (Snapchat) announced that it would cut 16% of their global workforce, about 1,000 individuals. GoPro will eliminate 23% of its workers, nearly 150 roles. Investors are having mixed reactions to these layoffs, with some companies seeing a rise in stock value and others seeing minimal change.

Palantir posted a 22-point manifesto to X (Twitter) that amplified fringe views held by the far-right. The lengthy post featured calls for; mandatory conscription into the armed forces, undermining public officials through the use of AI, and recruiting Silicon Valley to further erode the thin boundary between defense contractor and software provider. International governments considering contracts with the US based spy tech company were repulsed by the post, with Australia leading calls to ban Palantir.

Google signed a classified deal with the Pentagon to allow their artificial intelligence models to be used for classified work, amid a dispute between the Department of Defense and the A.I. start-up Anthropic. Hundreds of Google employees urged the CEO to reject deals with the Pentagon in a letter with over 600 signatures from employees at Google DeepMind and Cloud.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with the heads of major U.S. banks to discuss the cyber threat of Anthropic’s new Mythos model. Users in a private online forum ​gained access to Mythos on the same ⁠day that Anthropic first announced a ​plan to release the model to a ​limited number of companies for testing. The White House opposed the plan to expand access to the model. Despite the previous declaration of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, the NSA is using Mythos to scan for security vulnerabilities.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland, is seeing an very interesting and cat fight play out in its courtroom. Elon Musk has accused Sam Altman of betraying the founding agreement of the non-profit they started together, OpenAI, by changing it to a for-profit enterprise. Musk is seeking a range of remedies that include the removal of Altman and Brockman from OpenAIand more than $134bn in damages. Now we all get the pleasure of watching this play out in court, and it is messsyyy. OpenAI has vehemently denied Musk’s allegations, saying that he agreed in 2017 that establishing a for-profit entity would be a necessary next step for the company and that Musk is “motivated by jealousy” and “regret for walking away”. During jury selection, most people said they had negative feelings about Musk. One called the billionaire a “jerk” and another said they “disagree with a lot of things he’s done”. Some even brought up Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” and said: “Elon doesn’t care about people … He probably cares more about money.” One selected jury member said of Musk: “While I do not like him, I can definitely separate my feelings about him from the facts in the case.”. Only a few days in, and the case has turned into a full blown circus, with Musk making a series of embarrassing statements and on-the-record lies.

Open AI released GPT 5.5, to compete with Anthropic’s new model Claude Opus 4.7. Open AI released a memo to investors that said it’s planning to have 30 gigawatts of compute by 2030, while it expects Anthropic to have roughly 7 to 8 gigawatts by the end of 2027. Anthropic’s computing power constraints, changing pricing plans, and source code security were all under question this month following a series of events, including when over 500,000 lines of leaked source code. In fact, Anthropic’s recent removal of enterprise discounts has led to Uber’s CTO confirming that expected AI spending has already been surpassed. Meta ended its internal AI leaderboard, “Claudeonomics,” just days after its launch, after employee usage data was allegedly leaked to the public. Cursor, an AI agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model deleted a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to PocketOS founder.

Microsoft and OpenAI renegotiated a ‌pact that let Microsoft exclusively sell the ChatGPT creator’s artificial intelligence models. The renegotiated terms announced jointly will help OpenAI secure more computing power and build out an enterprise business that ⁠can compete better with Anthropic

TikTok tested an AI remix setting that comes turned on by default. In order to block viewers from remixing content, users must turn off remixes on every individual post. Users have already called out the company for the complicated process, but the company didn’t confirm if a unilateral opt-out option would become available alongside its eventual rollout. The backlash eventually made TikTok pull the feature from the app.

Tech Mergers : Deutsche Telekom, Canva, Globalstar, and Paramount

Deutsche Telekom exploring merger with T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom ​is the majority shareholder in T-Mobile, with a stake of nearly 53%. Shares of T-Mobile, with a market value of about $218.57 ⁠billion, rose more than 1% following the news. Deutsche Telekom has a valuation of ​about $166.46 billion. The potential merger could create the world’s biggest wireless operator by market capitalization.

Canva announced the dual acquisition of Simtheory, an AI collaboration and agent management platform, and Ortto, a customer data and marketing automation company. Canva says the acquisitions add strengths in agentic AI, data infrastructure, marketing automation, and customer engagement.

Amazon buys satellite operator Globalstar for $11B to challenge Elon Musk’s Starlink, bolstering its fledgling satellite business as it tries to catch up with Elon Musk’s Starlink. Tech companies are pouring in billions of dollars to capture the market for satellite-based connectivity. See the Biggest Media Deals And Mega-Mergers Of 2026 So Far here.

Weather Report

The Assassination Attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Trump was rushed off of the stage following shots fired at the White House Correspondents dinner at the Washington Hilton ballroom. A shot was fired by armed gunman Cole Allen and shots were returned by Secret Service before Allen was detained alive and well. In bizarre and chaotic series of events, attendees dove under tables and security scrambled to evacuate top government officials. Minutes later, Trump spoke at the podium, thanking secret service, denouncing the gunman as a sick individual, and again seizing the opportunity to call for the construction of the Ballroom. After which, the DOJ accused the nonprofit challenging President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in an unusual court filing. The U.S. Attorney for D.C. released security footage of the shooter rushing through metal detection, charging multiple security guards.

Allen was arraigned and charged by complaint with one count of attempt to assassinate the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm & ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He traveled by Train from California to DC with his weapons, booked a hotel room at the Washington Hilton, and scheduled his manifesto as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” to sent to the inboxes of friends and family. His manifesto outlined “rules of engagement”- essentially a list of was and was not a target and his motivations for carrying out the attack.

This assassination attempt immediately spurred online conspiracy theories questioning the credibility of information shared by media and officials. The close call also prompted journalists and former security detail to speculate about and question what they reported as lax security protection. The event was already heavily scrutinized, following escalations between the administration and the right to report, protests, demonstrations, and a series of events calling for accountability for the mishandling of the Epstein case.

Detention Centers: Inhumane, Secretive, and Expensive

Alligator Alcatraz deemed ‘inhumane’ amid legal battles. Last month, U.S. senators Ossoff and Durbin launched an investigation into the operations inside the detention facility after hearing testimonies of “egregious” human rights violations inside the facility. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston said about 1,500 detainees are being held in cages packed “wall-to-wall,” with soiled restrooms and food portions she said are insufficient for adults. An analysis of ICE arrest data exposes the gap between rhetoric and reality in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The data shows more than three in four people detained in the state since January 2025 had no criminal record. Among them was a 27-year-old man from the Dominican Republic who was arrested by ICE despite being granted legal permanent residence, raising questions about due process safeguards.

Congress has spent months negotiating funding for ICE’s parent agency, but behind the scenes, ICE detention is expanding. And the mechanisms that used to monitor it are crumbling. As ICE goes dark with key immigration data, here’s how to track it. U.S. Rep Maxine Dexter said she was blocked from speaking with pregnant minors who are being detained at a South Texas facility

The GEO Group, a private contractor that runs the Tacoma detention center housing immigrants facing possible deportation, has signed a six-month extension of its 10-year contract with ICE.

Individuals are detained indefinitely despite the expectation of deportation. One family has been held in ICE detention for more than 320 days.
ICE detention is a public health crisis as local hospitals are treating significantly more ICE detainees under the Trump administration. In a Michigan detention center, Chicago-area immigrants face difficult conditions amid mounting challenges to defend their immigration cases, they said. They said they’ve been denied bond without justification. They’re far from their families, able to connect only via phone and video calls. Finding and working with attorneys can be difficult from within the center, and it’s challenging to gather the evidence they need for their cases. The conditions make it difficult to build their cases, some said. Others said a judge ordered for them to be deported months ago — and yet the government has kept them in custody. The wife of a U.S. Army sergeant was held at an immigration detention facility in El Paso, Texas, amid signs that the Trump administration is dialing back leniency toward immigrant family members of military personnel and veterans.

FIRE!: Warehouses, Tesla, and Sam Altman’s home

A Molotov cocktail was used to start a fire at a Tesla sales office in New Orleans. According to the fire department, a Tesla was engulfed in flames, with a second car beginning to catch fire. No injuries were reported and the fire is currently under investigation.

A Texas man was charged with hurling a Molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and attempting to set fire to the AI firm’s headquarters.

Video posted to social media showed a warehouse worker setting fire to toilet paper and other combustibles while explaining that he does not make enough to live on. The fire progressed into a six-alarm blaze, with about 175 firefighters responding to the emergency. The blaze resulted in more than $600m in damage, with $500m in paper products destroyed as well as the $150m warehouse. Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, has been charged with several counts of felony and state arson.

Data Breeches causing financial and reputational harm

Mercor hit with 5 contractor lawsuits in a week over data breach Contractors filed five lawsuits against Mercor, the AI training firm valued at $10 billion, in the past week, accusing the company of violating data privacy and consumer protection laws. AI industry recruiting platform faces multiple lawsuits over data breach A recent incident allegedly resulted in lost personal information and damages including breach of contract, plaintiffs told a California federal district court. Kraken Says It Is Being Extorted Over Stolen Crypto User Data and Refuses to Pay Kraken Crypto faces extortion over internal system data. Chief Security Officer Nick Percoco disclosed the threat via X , stating the firm is working with federal law enforcement across multiple jurisdictions to pursue arrests.

Crunchyroll slammed with lawsuit as millions of users left exposed in data breach Crunchyroll engaged in a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court in the wake of a large-scale data breach last month.

Watson Clinic $10 Million Data Breach Settlement Gets Final Nod Watson Clinic LLP’s $10 million settlement to resolve a data breach suit received final approval from a federal court along with an attorneys’ fee award of $3.3 million.

State district judge in Helena issued a ruling, allowing the Montana State Auditor’s Office to move forward with its investigation into the data breach that may have affected hundreds of thousands of customers with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana. More than 6,000 Iowa Medicaid members affected by a data breach according to the Iowa department of Health and Human Services says Medicaid data for 6,717 Iowans was accidentally posted to a state website on February 16.

Good News

Fascists, Capitalists, and Warmongers facing global rejection

Another Flotilla set sail earlier this month from Barcelona carrying aid supplies for Palestinians in Gaza. Organizers have said more than 70 boats and 1,000 people from around the world would be participating, with more vessels joining the original boats as the flotilla sailed east across the Mediterranean. Activists sailing on dozens of boats attempting to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian aid say Israeli forces intercepted them overnight.

Far-Right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was ousted from his position after 16 years. Despite Trump, MAGA influencers, Russian interferance, and Vice President Vance campaigning for him, Hungarian voters rejected Orbán for Péter Magyar. Magyar is a former Orbán loyalist who campaigned against corruption and on everyday issues like health care and public transport, has pledged to rebuild Hungary’s relationships with the European Union and NATO.

Samsung chip production dropped 58% ​and 18% during an ⁠overnight shift when an estimated 40,000 union members attended a rally outside Samsung’s Pyeongtaek, South Korea chip manufacturing facility. If the union and management can’t come to an agreement, the union is planning an 18-day strike beginning on May 21st.

Trafficking victims and their families hosted a memorial for Virginia Giuffrey in DC to celebrate her life and legacy on the one-year anniversary of her death. Victims of Jeffrey Epstein protested outside the White House during the King and Queen’s visit. The UK royalty declined meeting with the victims and spoke vague words of support in front of Congress.

Here in the U.S, Drag performers parodied conservative political figures during a “Turning Point U.S.GAY” show in Brooklyn. The performances were not just hilarious, they also raised more than $20,000 for the ACLU.

Detention and Data Center Expansion meets significant and inevitable community push back

The NAACP filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI, accusing the artificial intelligence company of violating the Clean Air Act with its use of natural gas-burning turbines to power data centers in and around Memphis, Tennessee.

Federal regulatory staff filed a protest to a proposed pipeline to fuel the Project Jupiter data center in southern New Mexico, likely delaying its construction. About half of the data centers slated to open in the US in 2026 will either face delays or outright cancellations.

Protesters gathered outside Baldwin facility as immigrant detainees held by ICE launch hunger strike. In protest of the largest immigration detention center in Michigan, Organizers led several events outside of City Hall that coincide with the five-day hunger strike against ICE detention centers.

Illinois Environmental Lobby Day, hundreds gathered in Springfield to push action on three environmental bills to protect wetlands, ban single-use plastics and safeguard against energy and water strains caused by the data center boom.

Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal Residents of a St. Louis suburb turned out in droves to unseat four incumbents just days after the council approved a development agreement for a $6 billion data center.

Schuylkill County residents voiced concern about the BRADS landfill, data centers and the incoming ICE detention center at the weekly meeting of the county commissioners.

Amid growing rumors that construction of an AI data center is about to begin, a Gloucester County town is making it clear that no data center is planned within its borders now — or perhaps ever. Officials in Logan Township introduced an ordinance that would ban all data centers as a permitted use across the township. City and county officials across the Seattle region have approved various bans on new or expanded immigration detention centers.

McAllen area residents push back against any ICE detention facility in their community. In an effort to thwart the possibility of an immigrant detention center opening up in the city, Rio Grande Valley residents confronted the McAllen city commissioners on Monday, demanding their opposition and transparency on the issue.

Humanity’s love for the Moon and Stars: Artemis II

For the first time in more than 50 years human beings left Earth orbit and for the first time in history, witnessed a total solar eclipse from deep space – the Moon sliding directly in front of the Sun break. The goal of the mission was to prepare for a potential 2028 moon landing. The Artemis Accords were designed in 2020 as a big-tent coalition to achieve big goals collaboratively, a step to show that national space agencies are now “building together with international co-operation” towards the same goals. The crew made history as the first Black Man, the First Woman, and first Canadian on a moon mission. View photos from the mission here.

Horoscope

The month began with a Full Mooon in Scorpio on the 1st. On the 6th Pluto retrograde begins, the subtle but long-lasting shift inspires reflection of long-term transformations of power. On the 16th, the New Moon moves into Taurus, ideal for starting anew with a focus on luxury and money. On the 18th, Mars moves into Taurus marking slow progress and determination as themes for the month.

Take this as your sign from the moon and stars to reflect on long-term goals and not be too hard on yourself during moments of slow progress.

Until next month,
<3 Raelyn