Surveillance......

Police Are Spending Opioid Settlement Funds on Flock Cameras

Historic opioid settlements were supposed to be a lifeline for underserved communities. But much of that money is flowing to law enforcement.

Schuyler Mitchell

More than a dozen local law enforcement agencies across the country have used opioid settlement money to procure Flock cameras and other AI-powered automated license plate readers (ALPRs), an investigation by Mother Jones has found.

Settlement funds began flowing to states and localities in 2022, after major pharmaceutical companies agreed to resolve thousands of lawsuits over the industry’s role in the opioid crisis. Altogether, state and local governments secured more than $50 billion in funds, to be paid out over 18 years, from the various manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies accused of fueling the deadly epidemic.

Public health advocates hoped the settlements would provide lifesaving resources for historically underserved communities ravaged by opioid addiction. But as the money has been disbursed, local officials have come under fire for putting crucial dollars toward policing instead of prioritizing addiction prevention, recovery, treatment, and harm reduction services: KFF Health News found that police spent settlement money on Tasers, firearm silencers, drones, and more; in West Virginia, some rural counties used the funds to pay off their jail bills.

“Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

But little attention has been paid to how police departments have used those opioid funds to build out AI-powered surveillance networks like Flock, whose ALPRs have become increasingly popular with police even as they’ve drawn intense bipartisan pushback in the communities where they’ve been deployed. A review of meeting minutes, local reporting, state opioid expenditure disclosures, and invoices obtained via public records requests reveals that at least twelve sheriffs’ offices and police departments have since 2024 spent their opioid funds on Flock cameras. Another seven law enforcement agencies used the money to purchase similar ALPR technology from competitors Motorola, Axon, and Verkada.

In sum, Mother Jones found that 19 agencies in ten different states spent more than $920,000 in opioid funds on Flock and other ALPRs, a likely undercount given the inconsistency with which opioid settlement expenditures are tracked and disclosed across states and local jurisdictions.

In city council and county commission meetings, police sought to convince local officials that the cameras were a good use of the opioid money because they would help catch drug traffickers and reduce drug-related crimes. But Robyn Oster, director of policy at the nonprofit Partnership to End Addiction, said that this type of spending doesn’t honor the spirit of the settlements.

“It’s just really not the way to make the most impact in addressing addiction,” said Oster. “While $50 billion may seem like a lot of funds, once it’s divided up over 18 years and thousands of localities, a lot of places really aren’t getting that much, particularly given the scope of the crisis…Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

At a June 2025 meeting in Sunnyside, Washington—an agricultural hub where roughly one in five people live in poverty—council members were thrilled by the prospect of spending their opioid settlement money on a Flock camera. Around $200,000 had been sitting, untouched, in the city’s coffers since 2022, even as the area faced a dire need for expanded treatment services: Yakima County lacks a medical detox center and has one of the highest overdose death rates in Washington state.

“We’ve had several people … in that strip mall next to the hotel … that have complained about drug use and things like that behind their business, and they’ve asked us to place a trailer there,” the Sunnyside police chief told city councilmembers. He requested the approval of $24,000 in opioid settlement funds to go to a one-year lease for a mobile Flock security trailer, which would integrate with the city’s existing Flock surveillance system.

“I was trying to find creative ways to pay for one because $24,000 wasn’t in our budget this year,” he added, “but we’ve got this opioid settlement money, and if we’re tying it to the drug use problem we’re having at these hotels, I think we can justify the expenditure there.”

The city council unanimously voted to approve the police chief’s request. “Can we afford two of them?” one councilmember asked with enthusiasm.

Thousands of miles away, in Ohio County, West Virginia, county commissioners also voted unanimously in favor of spending opioid money on Flock cameras. In September 2025, the commission approved the sheriff’s office’s request for six Flock ALPRs, totaling $57,900 for the first three years. According to meeting minutes, Chief Deputy Kent Lewis “said a representative from the company is able to come and give a presentation,” and “added that Walmart and Lowe’s use FLOCK, so we may be able to tie into their system as well.” When one commissioner asked whether the cameras were an appropriate use of the funds, the deputy sheriff responded that they would “[help] track drugs coming into our area.”

Three months later, Sheriff H. Nelson Croft Jr. gave an update on Flock to the commissioners. According to meeting minutes, the system logged 28,000 license plate readings on Black Friday alone. Ohio County has a population of around 40,000.

The surveillance industry has taken notice, explicitly encouraging cops to spend opioid money on the technology. A December blog post from the multinational security firm Leonardo called opioid settlement funds “a major new opportunity” for law enforcement to invest in license plate readers.

“Eligible spending categories vary by state,” the blog post noted, but approved uses often include “LPR technology due to its role in detecting vehicles tied to drug trafficking, overdose events, and fugitive recovery.” In June, 404 Media reported that Leonardo planned to add sensors to its ALPRs that “would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices” in passing cars, enabling the cameras to track not just cars but “the location of particular people.”

“The funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

Mother Jones identified four additional locations where local officials explored using opioid money to pay for Flock cameras but ultimately funded them through other parts of city or county budgets. In Green, Ohio, for instance, the city council approved the purchase of 14 Flock cameras in 2024, and the mayor stated at the time that the city could use $20,000 of opioid money to offset the cost. But Shelley Goodrich, Green’s director of finance, told me the city ultimately paid for the first two years of the contract using a different funding source. “We were planning to use Drug Task Force funds beginning in 2026; however, we have not made any payments in 2026,” she wrote. This month, the Green City Council voted against renewing its contract with Flock, citing concerns about privacy and oversight.

In Etowah County, Alabama, commissioners authorized two disbursements from the opioid settlement fund to pay for ten Flock cameras in August 2024 and March 2025, totaling $42,267. But minutes from October 2025 show that the sheriff department’s budget was increased by $42,267, “to reimburse the Opioid Settlement fund for the FY 2024 and FY 2025 annual contract for the Flock safety cameras.” The Etowah County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to questions about why it reimbursed the funds or whether it plans to use opioid money for future renewals of the Flock contract.

Opioid spending on police surveillance technology isn’t limited to ALPRs. Mother Jones also identified six locations that have used opioid settlement money to fund contracts with Peregrine Technologies, an AI-powered software platform that integrates law enforcement surveillance data from a variety of sources.

In October, the city of Campbell, California, approved a three-year, $71,500 annual contract with Peregrine using opioid settlement funds. A publicly accessible copy of the contract states that “the initial Customer Data sources and systems” integrated into Peregrine would include both Flock and Axon ALPRs, as well as Axon body cameras, police records, and the Axon Fusus intelligence platform. Two months later, the city council in Chicopee, Massachusetts, approved a five-year, $837,500 contract with Peregrine, to be paid using opioid funds.

Chicopee was among the western Massachusetts cities hit hardest by the opioid crisis, and in 2024, it still had the second-highest overdose rate in Hampden County. In meeting minutes, the Chicopee mayor noted there was “quite a bit of money in the opioid agreement account” and said that the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office supported increasing the Peregrine contract from three years to five years.

Peregrine itself has been proud to announce “new partnerships” with police departments in Cranston and South Kingstown, Rhode Island. “Both agencies leveraged opioid settlement funds to invest in their communities by strengthening interagency collaboration, operational awareness, and investigative workflows through Peregrine,” stated a July LinkedIn post from the company.

Revelations that local governments spent residents’ opioid money on Flock cameras has stoked furor in both Pensacola, Florida, and Monongalia County, West Virginia. In Pensacola, the mayor approved a two-year, $108,000 contract for 18 Flock cameras using opioid funds. After seven months of public backlash, the Pensacola City Council announced in June that it would no longer allow opioid money to be spent on Flock cameras when the contract next came up for renewal.

In Morgantown, West Virginia, constituents have shown up at the Monongalia County Courthouse every Wednesday morning to speak out against local officials’ support for Flock. In November, the Monongalia County Commission approved the sheriff’s request to use up to $180,000 of settlement funds to install 20 Flock cameras across the county. To some people in the area, this use of the opioid money felt like salt in an all-too-fresh wound.

“As somebody who has had family members directly affected by the opioid crisis, I find the use of these funds absolutely disgusting,” said Harrison York, a 25-year-old electrical engineering student at West Virginia University in Morgantown. “The thing that got my family members clean were methadone services, and that’s what this opioid settlement money should be used for.” He pointed to research showing that criminalization does little to help people struggling with drug addiction, and contended that further policing “would punish the poor and the working class, who are victims” of the opioid epidemic.

Adam Menear, a 45-year-old father born and raised in Morgantown, started a petition in March calling on the Monongalia County Commission to halt the installation of Flock cameras that has received more than 1,500 signatures to date.

“There is not a single human being inside the state of West Virginia who was born and raised here who has not been adversely affected by the opioid crisis,” Menear told me. “The new crisis is the fact that the funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

Puerto Rico’s worsening water emergency

Empty jugs and dry reservoirs: Inside Puerto Rico’s worsening water emergency

By Ray Sanchez, Isabel Rosales

Milagros Pica Quiñones’ small concrete home is an untamed menagerie of bottles, paint buckets, bleach and laundry detergent jugs.

The 96-year-old grandmother in the impoverished oceanfront town of Loiza, in Puerto Rico’s northeast, sees “the thinnest thread of water” trickling from her faucet most days before service is shut off from 10 p.m. until dawn.

“I drag the buckets away with whatever strength I have and I cover them,” Pica Quiñones said. “Three buckets in the bathroom. One in my kitchen. Outside, I have three, two-gallon buckets. In front of the house: 15 smaller, gallon-sized containers. Next to a wall – 10 large bottles.”

The scramble to find water – collecting it in small vessels and cisterns – is a daily survival routine for hundreds of thousands of other US citizens on the island due to widespread service interruptions. The most vulnerable – the elderly, the sick, low-income people – are forced to bear the heaviest burden.

Billed as a beautiful and vibrant tourist destination, Puerto Rico is home to 3.2 million Americans who face an exhausting daily struggle for necessities like clean, running water. Pica Quiñones, whose showers consist of dipping a red Solo cup into a bucket, thinks about water all the time.

The US territory’s fragile water situation reached a new critical point over the summer – exacerbated by drought and what experts say is mismanagement and aging infrastructure, including a lack of investment and maintenance. On Friday, people living in the capital of San Juan and nearby communities completed their third full week on mandatory water rationing schedules.

Forced to endure up to two days without running water, residents must rely on bucket baths and dry shampoo, use bottled water for cooking and making coffee, paper plates and plastic utensils to eat, and occasionally forgo laundry, housecleaning and toilet flushing. All while their water bills keep coming.

“When you have a drought colliding with an aging infrastructure, that’s more than a drought. That’s a humanitarian crisis, and it’s a crisis which is deep,” said Northeastern University chemistry professor Eugene Smotkin, who lives in Old San Juan with his wife. “It’s not a drought story.”

Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón declared a state of emergency July 31 due to the drought. It’s unknown how long the rationing measures will remain in place, she said.

“This is a situation that we never expected to happen,” the Republican governor told CNN earlier this month, referring to the drought.

The US Department of Agriculture approved a drought disaster declaration on the island, allowing farmers and agricultural producers in 26 municipalities to access emergency loans, the governor’s office announced Wednesday.

The governor told MS NOW this week she was “not ruling out” asking Washington for a national emergency declaration, which would unleash massive federal funding for Puerto Rico. Her government, González-Colón said, need to “exhaust all the local assets, all the resources before asking for a national declaration of emergency.”

“I totally understand the frustration,” she said of island residents who blame the government for the longtime water woes, acknowledging a lack of maintenance to the island’s infrastructure.

Below-normal rainfall could continue until next year

The capital of San Juan recorded its driest month on record in more than 120 years in July, said Emanuel Rodriguez, a hydrologist at National Weather Service in San Juan.

Most of the island archipelago is experiencing moderate to extreme drought conditions, affecting more than 3 million people, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Lakes and streams – some at or near record lows – are losing water amid a rainfall deficit that could last months, Rodriguez said.

“We could stay below normal (rainfall levels) at least until January,” he added.

The water emergency is also a consequence of the deteriorating infrastructure, particularly a series of recent ruptures in the so-called Superaqueduct, a crucial 72-inch pipeline that carries potable water 50 miles along the northern coast to the densely populated San Juan metro area.

Since the pipeline’s rupture in June, the Puerto Rico National Guard and government agencies from throughout the island have been distributing potable water from cistern trucks, according to the governor’s office.

The governor’s office and the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Carlos Pesquera, a civil engineer and former secretary of transportation and head of public works who was appointed by the governor as an advisor on the water crisis, said the drought “is the immediate trigger” of the current emergency, “but it does not fully explain the vulnerability” of the water system.

“Puerto Rico has aging infrastructure, significant water losses and areas where greater redundancy and resilience are needed,” Pesquera, a member of the pro-statehood governing party, told CNN via email.

Before the recent ruptures, nearly 60% of water treated by the aqueduct and sewer authority was lost mostly due to “inaccurate meters, unauthorized water consumption, or water main leaks,” according to a 2019 report on the island’s infrastructure by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Stints of waterless days for years

Hilda Rodríguez, the 58-year-old executive director of a San Juan nonprofit, has been keeping a log of waterless days at her home in the Monteflores neighborhood in the Santurce section of the capital. She started it five years ago, using a water droplet emoji 💧 to track on her cell phone the days without water.

This year, the log shows more than 200 days without water.

In 2025, there were 175 days. The previous year: 142 days. In 2023, 100 days. And 136 days in 2022. A year earlier, 22 days.

“I needed to write all this down because no one would believe me,” she said with a laugh. “In Puerto Rico, we make a joke of everything. It’s the best way to survive all the things that happen to us – one way to escape as we keep going.”

This crisis is no joke.

“It’s one stumble after another,” said Rodríguez, who has also been tracking every phone complaint she’s made to the water utility over the years. “Just when you think you’re finally getting back up, something else happens.”

In another Santurce neighborhood, a group known as “Exigimos Agua” (We Demand Water) has also kept an online log of days without water or electrical power since 2024, when 57 waterless days and 58 days without power were tracked by the Machuchal residents. So far this year, the group says there have been more than 140 days with no water and at least 24 days without electricity.

Puerto Ricans, including the more than 2 million living in the San Juan metro area, have long endured major droughts made worse by the aging water system.

Severe droughts caused water restrictions, affecting more than a million people, from 2014-2016, and more recently in 2020.

“The water problem in the San Juan area has been with us for years,” Rodriguez said. “Every year it gets worse. It’s draining, a constant state of worry. It is no way to live.”

During a 1994 drought, rationing left the San Juan metro area with water available only every second or third day, according to a 2020 report commissioned by the American Society of Civil Engineers. On days when water was available, the pressure in some communities would arrive after midnight and fade by dawn, the report said.

In 1995, with water service only two or three days a week, Rodriguez purchased and paid to install a 600-gallon cistern for about $1,000. If she were to do it now, she said it would cost her more than twice as much.

At the time, the island’s water utility responded to the 1994 drought by vowing to end shortages with the $1 billion construction of the Superaqueduct and its interconnections, as well as dredging the main source of water for the San Juan area, the Carraízo reservoir.

With a capacity of 75 million gallons of water per day, the Superaqueduct went into service in 2000.

After more than a quarter century of service, the Superaqueduct’s recent breaks exposed a key weakness in Puerto Rico’s water system: The heavy reliance on a single, long-distance transmission line without an equivalent backup during a major interruption requires sustained attention and investment, according to Pesquera.

He was appointed as a special advisor for water infrastructure after last year’s rupture and prepared a report for the government on improvements to alleviate the island’s water problems.

“The Superaqueduct was originally designed as a complimentary water source. Its purpose was to reinforce existing systems and make the metropolitan (San Juan) network stronger, not to replace traditional water sources,” he wrote in his report.

González-Colón has said at least $7 billion in federal funds had been committed to water infrastructure improvement projects. The lack of maintenance and investment in the water system dates back decades, she said earlier this week, and the destruction of hurricanes Irma and Maria made matters worse.

For Smotkin, the water crisis reflects the island’s history of structural neglect and systemic abandonment by both local and federal authorities. The water woes must be seen in the context of Puerto Rico’s dependency on the United States.

“The enduring image is of people standing with bottles and jugs, spending their lives trying to obtain something as elementary as water because the infrastructure that should have delivered it had failed them,” said Smotkin, who has lived on the island nearly 25 years and works to bring renewable energy sources to Puerto Rico.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Lourdes Tañon, a resident of Trujillo Alto, a municipality southeast of San Juan, was on her way to check the cistern at the home of her mother. Suddenly, it started to rain.

The driver of another car stopped, putting his hands out the window as if to capture the falling droplets, she recalled.

“Getting wet under the first rain of May is a custom here because it supposedly brings good luck,” she said. “People go outside and get wet. That’s what it feels like now when it rains. We’re all praying for more rain.”

‘This is now our daily life’

In 2017, Hurricane Maria struck nine days before the grand opening of Hector Rosa’s restaurant, Rosa Cocina Libre, in San Juan’s Cupey district. The opening was delayed for five months.

Now he finds himself confronting another crisis, one he believes could have been prevented. His mornings begin by turning on the faucets to see if water is running.

If there is no water, Rosa scrambles to figure out where to get it and how quickly. The restaurant has a cistern and two additional mobile tanks, with a combined capacity of about 2,000 gallons. He must fill up the three tanks at least once a day to keep the restaurant running. He often questions how much longer he can keep operating in Puerto Rico, Rosa said.

“I love my island and I love to be here in Puerto Rico,” he said. “I want to be part of the island but it’s like having your hands tied every single year — every single month it’s something.”

The water crisis has become impossible to ignore anywhere Eduardo Caldazo goes.

At his apartment in Isla Verde, one of the island’s busiest tourist areas, and at his restaurant-bar, Calle Sin Salida in San Juan, there is no warning about when the water will vanish or return.

He relies on a 400-gallon water tank to keep his restaurant operating four days a week but keeping it filled is a full-time job.

“This is now our daily life,” he said. “I know it won’t be fixed.”

Rafael Cabrera, a 64-year-old university professor, lives in a 30-apartment condominium complex in Monteflores, just south of Machuchal. In 2022, residents raised nearly $100,000 to purchase a pump and cistern to remedy intermittent water service problems. The cistern, which holds nearly 4,000 gallons, went unused until last year, when residents were issued the required water utility permits to activate it, Cabrera said.

“The hardest part is lacking hope about a problem that seems to have no solution,” he said.

Some residents said hope is elusive given the island’s litany of miseries – from natural disasters to a bankrupt government to a financial control board that manages funding for infrastructure.

“The frustration is understandable, but it is also important to recognize how complex it is to restore a water distribution system after an extended interruption,” Pesquera told CNN when asked about residents’ criticism. “Residents and businesses need the most realistic information possible about when service will actually reach their area.”

In Loiza, Pica Quiñones’ great-granddaughter, Modesta Irizarry, drives around helping elderly neighbors. She collects water from cistern trucks, distributes donated packs of bottled water and food, and leads water truck drivers to the homes of the bedridden. Almost every day, she makes time to check on her great-grandmother.

“I find many older adults alone in subhuman conditions with no one to care for them,” she lamented, her voice fading.

Irizarry has helped her community in the aftermath of hurricanes, during the Covid-19 pandemic, and other emergencies. The despair over the water crisis, she said, is similar to life after Hurricane Maria.

“I wish I had more hands. There are people who, no matter how much they need it, won’t ask for help. They won’t let you in because of shame. The suffering is so great.”

Her great-grandmother, meanwhile, spends part of her days filling up her menagerie of bottles and containers.

“Whenever we have water, I fill every bottle and bucket I can find. I’ve never had to live like this – not even after the worst storms,” Pica Quiñones said.

So.... What the fuck did the orange shit accomplish????

Six months on, Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ risks igniting crises far beyond the Middle East

Analysis by Ivana Kottasová, Brad Lendon

When US President Donald Trump launched his war against Iran, he called it an “excursion” that would take just a few weeks. Six months later, the conflict has become a nightmare for almost everyone even remotely involved in it.

It’s been a disaster for the Iranian people, for the millions living elsewhere across the Middle East, and for consumers around the world who are struggling with higher costs.

Yet Trump’s war goals remain unfulfilled, even though the goalposts keep shifting: from initially demanding a complete Iranian surrender, regime change and the abandoning of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions, to more recently simply demanding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and putting the brakes on Tehran’s nuclear program.

But the war’s unintended consequences have spread far beyond the Middle East, affecting global security, diminishing America’s global standing, and potentially providing its adversaries with an opportunity to expand their influence.

As the Trump administration focuses all its energy on trying to get out of the self-inflicted crisis in Iran, it has taken the eye off the ball of other potential global flashpoints the US has long been involved in, including Ukraine, Taiwan and the South China Sea, and the Koreas.

From Trump’s decision to scale back the annual joint military exercises with South Korea and pulling out the only US aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, to the critical shortages of ballistic missile interceptors in Ukraine, many of the war’s most consequential geopolitical and security effects may ultimately be felt far beyond the Middle East, and have yet to materialize.

Emily Harding, a vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based think tank, said that while none of the potential flashpoints have developed into a full-scale crisis yet, there is good reason to be worried.

“This is the kind of thing where the global adversaries are going to be taking note of the situation and learning more about how the US reacts in certain moments and then folding that into their planning. But we haven’t seen anybody take advantage of it yet,” she said.

“It’s more that some foundations are being weakened, not that we’re actually seeing the building start to shake.”

Ukraine and Russia

The US-Israeli attacks have sparked a furious retaliation from Tehran. Iranian drones, ballistic missiles and other projectiles have been raining down on US bases and allies across the Middle East.

As the US and its allies burned through their weapons stockpiles, some ammunition originally slated for Ukraine had been redirected.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN this month that his country had only a tenth of the interceptor missiles it urgently needed to stop surging Russian ballistic missile attacks.

The shortages are having devastating consequences for the Ukrainians: This summer has been the deadliest period for civilians since May 2022.

The global oil crisis caused by Iran’s decision to effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz has also undermined the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign against Moscow. Faced with the rising cost of gasoline at US pumps, Trump took the controversial decision to lift some sanctions on Russian oil exports to cool the market. In doing so, the US effectively helped Russia earn more cash to fund the war effort in Ukraine.

The global disruption to oil, gas and fertilizer trade caused by the closure of the strait has also helped Russia make inroads on finding new customers.

Alexander Gabuev, the director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said this was demonstrated when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the leaders of Southeast Asian countries in the Russian city of Kazan in June.

“The turnout in Kazan was impressive: Nine of 11 heads of state from ASEAN were present, along with the Indonesian foreign minister and a special representative from Myanmar. Above all, these men decided to make the long journey to Russia because of US and Israeli attacks on Iran causing higher prices for energy and fertilizer,” he said.

In some ways, the Iran war has benefited Ukraine. It has made the rest of the world realize that the more than four years of war have turned Kyiv into a drone superpower and led to an array of security cooperation agreements and ammunition promises with a number of nations.

The Koreas

The Iran war is now casting a shadow over another potential flashpoint: the Korean Peninsula, which has technically been at war for more than seven decades in the absence of a peace deal following the 1950-1953 conflict South and North Korea.

The US has been deeply involved in the region, with some 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. But the decades-long relationship suffered a hiccup this year when Trump sharply curtailed the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises with Seoul, partly citing South Korea’s lack of support for the Iran war.

The US president has also signaled openness for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has been overseeing a steady increase in his country’s nuclear arsenal and regular missile launches.

Analysts said the consequences of cutting military exercises impacts readiness if war were to resume on the Korean Peninsula in the short term, and its more distant effects include lengthening the time needed for Seoul to assume wartime control of its troops, something sought by both the South Koreans and the US.

South Korean officials said this week that a second exercise, for amphibious landings scheduled for September, was canceled in June. Those exercises were to have involved US Marines stationed in the Japanese island of Okinawa, units of which were involved in the blockade of Iranian ports.

There is also the question of supplies and logistics, including the reallocations of some US missile interceptors from South Korea to the Middle East during the fighting. The Pentagon hasn’t revealed how much of the interceptor inventory was moved, but analysts say possible long-term shortages of key interceptors like the Patriot system are likely.

Taiwan and the South China Sea

The deployment of the Japan-based aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the Arabian Sea to relieve the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln leaves the US without any aircraft carriers in the Pacific for an indeterminate time should the need for one arise.

The US has had a continuous presence in the Pacific for more than two decades with the exception of a gap of several weeks in 2024.

That lack of a carrier in the US 7th Fleet’s area of responsibility raises questions for other regional allies.

The Philippines will be particularly worried given the increasing Chinese activity in the South China Sea, around disputed features like Scarborough Shoal, which lies in the Philippines exclusive economic zone but is effectively controlled by Beijing.

Tensions between Manila and Beijing extend to Second Thomas Shoal which, like Scarborough, is in the Spratly Islands. Both have seen at-sea clashes between Filipino and Chinese personnel.

The US and the Philippines have a mutual defense treaty, and if the tensions with China were to escalate, not having a carrier in the region could put US forces at a distinct disadvantage, especially given the current issues with munition stockpiles.

“The big thing that I’m worried about is what it looks like for the US in a potential conflict with China,” Harding said. “We’re not seeing that turn up anytime soon … but if there were to be a conflict with China, we would be in a state of ammunition shortage, specifically the ones that we’re going to need for that conflict.”

Global chokepoints

There could be other devastating consequences of the war – for example if other players try to weaponize other international shipping chokepoints.

“We’re not yet seeing this, but if it got to a point later on where one of those countries wanted to, they could certainly point to this as a (precedent),” Harding said.

She added that the severity of the war’s impact will depend chiefly on how long the US keeps fighting it.

“The Trump administration has to decide what’s good enough for an outcome here and if the only thing that’s good enough is a complete destruction of the nuclear program and, what Israel wants, which is an Iran that’s internally broken and divided, then that is a long commitment of both blood and treasure and the world economy is going to feel the consequences of that long term,” she said.

But Trump could also decide that it could be enough to make the nuclear program “unusable,” she added – something he suggested could be done by keeping the key sites, currently destroyed and under the rubble, inaccessible to Iran by striking whenever Tehran tries to access them.

“That’s not a great solution, but it’s a workable solution. And if that’s enough, and if (Iran’s) weakened proxy network is enough, then what you really have to deal with is the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s hard and a little bit expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as what (the US is) doing right now,” she said.

“From the Iranian perspective, all they have to do is survive, and they’re doing that. So they can kind of keep this going for as long as they want.”

AG to look into ‘aggressive’ behavior

Republican governor asks his AG to look into ‘aggressive’ behavior by Trump admin’s election monitors

By Kaanita Iyer

Wyoming’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon voiced concerns about the Justice Department election monitors who observed the primary election in his state last week, saying he’s asked his attorney general to look into their “aggressive” behavior.

The Justice Department sent two Civil Rights Division attorneys to Laramie County, Wyoming, which includes the state capital of Cheyenne. But some officials, including the state attorney general, weren’t made aware of the move in advance, Gordon said at a state canvassing board meeting Wednesday.

“It sounded like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive,” Gordon said, adding, “It just was irregular and, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into … the nature of the visits and all that sort of stuff.”

The DOJ, when reached for comment, pointed CNN to an August 18 statement from Wyoming US Attorney Darin Smith: “Voters deserve absolute confidence that their ballots are secure and their voices are heard without interference…. We are working alongside local officials to ensure every lawful vote is protected.”

CNN has reached out to the governor’s office for comment.

The DOJ said it has sent more than 80 monitors to seven states so far this year for primary elections, as of Tuesday. The department has said it would send about 1,000 monitors to polling sites in November.

Gordon’s criticism comes as President Donald Trump continues to sow doubt about elections. Earlier this year, he baselessly alleged there was cheating in the Los Angeles mayoral primary election before the DOJ sent a prosecutor to observe ballot processing. The president also still claims, without evidence, that the 2020 election he lost to former President Joe Biden was rigged.

Democrats and voting rights activists raised concerns last year, ahead of the off-year elections, that the monitors could be used to undermine the voting process or as a precursor to sow doubts about the election. But the Trump administration had insisted monitors are being sent out in line with decadeslong federal monitoring practices.

Gordon said he isn’t against the idea of election monitors, but raised concerns that the “behavior” of the ones deployed to Wyoming “seemed to exceed what the authority that Congress had given them was.”

“I’m not saying anything went wrong or anything else, and I certainly think that the conduct of this election was phenomenal,” Gordon said. But, he added, “I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes.”

Blocked again and again..........

Judge blocks Trump’s mail-in voting plan, again

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani paused the Trump administration’s plan to use the Postal Service to limit the delivery of ballots.

By Kyle Cheney

The Trump administration’s bid to overhaul mail-in voting ahead of the midterms is on hold once again.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled late Thursday that the administration’s plan to use the Postal Service to limit mail-in voting would impose onerous new requirements on states without enough time to implement them — potentially disenfranchising large numbers of voters.

The Massachusetts-based Obama appointee barred the Postal Service from continuing to implement its plan for at least the next two weeks, calling it “a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away.”

The Trump administration is certain to appeal Talwani’s decision. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court swept aside an earlier lawsuit aimed at blocking the Postal Service plan, concluding that it had been filed prematurely — in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump — and didn’t give the administration a chance to attempt to implement it.

But that changed last week, when the Postal Service finalized its regulation governing mail-in ballots, triggering a new wave of lawsuits aimed at stopping the plan, and giving Talwani another chance to weigh in on whether it could be implemented this year.

The lawsuits, filed by a coalition of blue-state attorneys general and voting rights organizations, contended that the effort to quickly impose new requirements for mail-in ballots would hamper states’ efforts to administer the 2026 elections.

Earlier Thursday, the administration urged Talwani to refrain from blocking the Postal Service’s plan, saying it was a key step in preventing fraud and establishing a uniform system for mail-in ballots. In her order, Talwani noted, “the record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting.”

“The Postal Service will not determine voter eligibility, ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” the Justice Department contended. “The Rule does not displace a single State election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”

RFK Jr. is a stupid scum-cum-sucking prick.......

Shapiro won’t say who died of measles. RFK Jr. is exploiting it.

The Health secretary suggested the Pennsylvania governor is hiding something about the deaths’ cause. Shapiro says he can’t say more.

By Carmen Paun

The death of two Pennsylvanians with measles has sparked a social media row between the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The dispute has also reprised a Covid 19-era debate: How much does it matter whether someone died from a disease or just died with a disease?

Pennsylvania health authorities strongly implied that the two died from measles in announcing their deaths Tuesday but also left some wiggle room in describing the deaths as “measles-associated.”

Shapiro then criticized Kennedy — a longtime vaccine skeptic — for his rhetoric around vaccines, which the governor said hasn’t helped stem the measles epidemic that has driven cases in the U.S. to a 35-year high. But Shapiro’s refusal to release further details about the deaths, citing patient privacy, has given Kennedy room to argue he is hiding something — or fabricating the deaths outright.

Vaccination advocates told POLITICO they’re worried Shapiro and Pennsylvania health officials’ secrecy has given Kennedy an opportunity to again cast the public health establishment as villains, just as he did during the pandemic, when he said officials were inflating the death toll by counting people who died of another disease but had also tested positive for Covid. The result has been a hardening of the positions dividing partisans in the fight over the latest infectious disease scourge.

“The anti-vaccine movement, they thrive when there’s an information vacuum or when there’s lack of clarity and communication,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor who practices in the Pittsburgh area and teaches at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Kennedy suggested Wednesday that a Shapiro aide had fabricated the deaths to blame the Health secretary and accused him of trotting out tactics Democrats used during the pandemic to rebut critics and to steer people toward getting vaccinated.

“The performance was a replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain,” Kennedy wrote on social media platform X.

Shapiro has said it’s Kennedy spreading misinformation — such as that the measles vaccine contains the remnants of aborted fetuses. While some vaccines, including measles, involve growing viruses in human cell cultures originally developed from two aborted fetuses in the 1960s, no fetal tissue remains in the vaccines produced today, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Shapiro and his health department have argued they’re not releasing more information to respect patient privacy. They have said the people who died were unvaccinated.

At a press conference Tuesday, Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen declined to say more.

“We are protecting people’s privacy and confidentiality,” she said in a response to a reporter’s question about the ages of the people who died.

Shapiro also declined to say whether either of the two were Amish, nodding to the same privacy concerns. Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, where state officials said the two people who died resided, is home to the country’s oldest Amish community, in which many refuse vaccination.

Kennedy has argued the measles outbreak in the U.S. has been mainly confined to members of religious communities who refuse vaccination and that his questioning of vaccine safety wasn’t to blame for the spread of the outbreak. He blames the drop in vaccination rates against measles on Covid vaccine mandates that many Americans opposed.

Nearly 2,800 measles cases have been reported in the U.S. this year, the most since the early 1990s.

Adalja said he didn’t fault Shapiro for declining to say whether the deaths were in the Amish community, because that could stigmatize it.

But he argued Shapiro could have shared more about the deceased’s ages and the state’s investigation of the deaths. Adalja said that Shapiro followed a very narrow interpretation of state patient privacy rules.

Shapiro talked Tuesday about how deaths from measles were preventable, suggesting that measles caused the deaths in his state.

But the state’s health department clarified in a statement Wednesday that measles might not have been “the immediate cause of death.”

In response to Kennedy’s suggestion that a Shapiro aide may have made up the deaths, Bogen said in a statement late Wednesday that she had “thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information” and “could confirm the two measles-related deaths.” She said the state reported the information to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s measles response team on Tuesday.

In a statement Thursday, the CDC said it’s “working to determine what actually occurred” and touted Kennedy’s “efforts to clarify conflicting information from Pennsylvania officials about whether the two reported deaths were caused by measles.”

The agency noted that Shapiro has declined the CDC’s offer of assistance. The Pennsylvania governor said Tuesday the state’s health department was able to manage the local outbreak.

“Accuracy is critical to reliable national data, transparency, and public trust,” the CDC statement continued. “During COVID-19, concerns arose about deaths being attributed as caused by the disease when individuals instead died from other causes,” it said.

Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and former Harvard scholar who’s currently a chief medical officer at a biotech company working on infectious diseases, wrote on X Wednesday that he was “increasingly perplexed” why more information wasn’t being provided on the two deaths.

“If the link is weak between measles and the deaths, state it. If the link is strong between measles and the deaths, state it,” he wrote.

Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a Republican, accused Shapiro and state health officials of deception over the lack of clarity on the two deaths.

Parsons said the county coroner did not have any cases of people dying from measles but the coroner has provided information about a baby born at home who died soon after birth with measles but not because of it. The Pennsylvania health department said Wednesday that the infant was one of the two cases it was referring to.

Parsons emphasized in an X post Thursday that the baby could not have been vaccinated against measles because children typically aren’t vaccinated until they are a year old. Shapiro and Bogen had suggested the people who died were unvaccinated by choice, Parsons argued.

He then added that state authorities have not released any more information about the second death.

The governor’s office referred to Bogen’s Wednesday statement when asked for comment on Parsons’ accusation.

Adalja said more clarity from Pennsylvania would help.

“It’s going to be very hard for them to recover because there’s lots of people who have been saying that they don’t trust public health authorities after COVID,” he said. “This is like a textbook example of why that sentiment exists.”

Anthropic blacklisting is illegal

Judge rules Trump administration’s Anthropic blacklisting is illegal

California-based U.S. District Judge Rita Lin said that the Trump administration’s actions amounted to “unlawful retaliation” in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

By Christine Mui

A federal judge in California Thursday found that Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth broke the law when he designated Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, who ruled in March to pause the unprecedented label, wrote that the Trump administration’s actions amounted to “unlawful retaliation” in violation of the First Amendment and that Anthropic was denied due process as required under the Fifth Amendment.

“Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless,” she said in a 59-page order that largely ruled in Anthropic’s favor.

The company sued the government in March, alleging directives and public disparagement by Trump administration officials violated its free speech and due process rights, among a range of other claims.

Those directives, including the supply chain risk designation, were issued after Anthropic asserted that its technology should not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance. Trump administration officials have argued the U.S. military must have unrestricted access to artificial intelligence for “all lawful purposes.”

In her order, Lin also found that the Department of Defense violated the Administrative Procedure Act and formally overturned Hegseth’s directive that all other Pentagon contractors stop doing business with Anthropic.

“We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”

The Pentagon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment to the ruling.

A second lawsuit that Anthropic filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit remains ongoing.

Introducing a bill to nullify Trump’s executive order

House Democrat moves to reverse Trump’s ‘Lake America’ order

Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell is introducing a bill to nullify Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario.

Riley Rogerson

A House Democrat is already pushing back on President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said in an interview hours after Trump’s announcement that she plans to introduce a bill Monday that would nullify the name change. The one-page bill is titled the “Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act.”

“People do not understand how intertwined our two countries are,” Dingell said “And this is insane, this naming Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.’”

The name change is Trump’s latest escalation in a rapidly spiraling trade war between the U.S. and Canada. The White House imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian imports earlier this week, inviting retaliatory levies from Ottawa.

Trump said in a Truth Social post Canada has been “Ripping Off” the U.S. for decades and that Canada is “easily the most difficult and unreasonable” country he deals with.

Trump’s renaming Lake Ontario throws another controversy into one of the country’s most consequential states ahead of the midterms. Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has already attacked his Republican opponent Mike Rogers over the move.

Dingell said she has been working with Democratic leaders on a response to the tariffs, and separately collecting signatures on a letter to Trump that urges “your Administration to change its diplomatic approach with our closest ally, Canada, and recognize the importance of the United States-Canada relationship.” She said she has about 100 signatures from fellow House Democrats.

“I grew up in a small town called St. Clair, and when I got up and looked out my bedroom window every day, I didn’t see America. I saw Canada,” Dingell said. “We lived that close. Canada was as close to us as [the Cannon House Office Building] is to the Capitol.”

What a tiny dick move........

Trump signs executive order renaming Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’

The name change is Trump's latest attack on Canada as the two countries engage in a rapidly spiraling trade war.

By Ashley Ahn

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” amid an intensifying trade war with Canada.

“Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly, even the military,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We defend Canada for nothing.”

The text of the executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to ensure all federal agencies and the Geographic Names Information System, which records official names of U.S. geographic features, refer to the lake using its new name.

The announcement came two days after the president threatened to change the name of the 13th-largest lake in the world, which borders New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. (The province is named after the lake.)

The executive order states that the United States claims most of the lake’s volume, “with the deepest parts of the Lake’s waters lying within United States territory.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on X that Canadians will never stop calling the body of water Lake Ontario, whose name predates the United States and Canada and originates from the Wendat word “Ontari’io,” meaning beautiful, big lake.

“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he said. “Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”

And in a social media post responding to the White House, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York — the only state bordering the lake — said “New York won’t be calling it that.”

Her statement comes one day after she decried Trump’s threats to rename the lake as “absurd” at the New York State Fair, where she spoke with farmers affected by the tariff war with Canada.

Hochul said the Trump administration “should be focusing on ways to mend relationships with Canada so our farmers and our consumers and our families do not continue suffering from this inane war over tariffs.”

Stashing Lake Ontario’s name is Trump’s latest attack on Canada as the two countries exchange verbal punches and threats over tariffs.

“The Canadian officials have treated us very badly,” Trump said, calling them “nasty people.”

The two countries are in a rapidly spiraling trade war, after talks for a deal broke down over the weekend. Trump has spent the week belittling Canada, calling the country’s leaders “easily the most difficult and unreasonable.”

Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has needled Canada, saying it did not need independence and should become America’s “51st state.” His relationship with Carney has deteriorated, with Carney seeking closer ties to Europe and calling for countries to adapt to a new global order that is not built on the assumption that America is a reliable ally.

The lake’s name change is the latest in Trump’s efforts to alter the names of global landmarks across the country, changing the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and Alaska’s Denali — the highest mountain peak in North America — to Mount McKinley at the beginning of his second term.

While Trump’s name change dictates government policy, it cannot immediately compel cultural or international change. The Associated Press, for example, said it would use Mount McKinley in its widely used style guide — but not “Gulf of America” because of its international nature.

In a video posted on Truth Social Thursday, the president crossed out Lake Ontario on a map with a black marker and wrote “Lake America” in all caps.

“We have a gulf and a lake,” Trump said in the Oval Office after signing the executive order. “Now all we need is an ocean.”

Lawsuits over Grok deepfakes mount

Musk’s AI company sues its users as victim lawsuits over Grok deepfakes mount

As alleged victims sue the company over AI-generated child sexual abuse material, xAI takes the legal fight to its own users.

By Hassan Ali Kanu

Elon Musk’s xAI has adopted an unusual and aggressive strategy to fend off lawsuits over child sexual abuse material allegedly created by its AI chatbot, Grok.

The company recently sued two of its users, saying they violated X’s terms of service by using Grok to create explicit images of children. xAI is the parent company of the social media platform X, where Grok is housed.

Both of the men xAI has sued are also facing criminal charges.

The company’s lawsuits seek to hold those users responsible for “all reasonable expenses” xAI incurs defending itself against lawsuits their alleged victims file against the company, including damages for “reputational harm.”

Late last month, xAI sued Russell Bloodworth, an Arkansas photographer who is facing more than 100 criminal charges for allegedly using Grok to alter his professional photos of children into child sexual abuse material. Bloodworth has pleaded not guilty.

“[Bloodworth’s] actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage,” xAI wrote in its complaint.

The company is being sued by alleged victims of Bloodworth over images he’s accused of creating with Grok. It asked the court to rule that Bloodworth should have to cover its legal fees in that litigation because Bloodworth violated X’s terms of service to create the allegedly unlawful and abusive images.

Even in instances of criminal conduct, it’s extremely rare for businesses to enforce their terms of service by suing a user.

“It’s not something you really see any other companies doing,” said John Coyle, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and an expert on business contracts and corporate litigation. “The reason why most companies don’t engage in this kind of behavior is because, first, it’s not great for their brand.”

Generally, xAI has enforced X’s terms of service through suspensions, terminating accounts and making legally required reports of suspected child sex abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The company has made nearly 74,000 such reports in 2026 alone, resulting in more than 240 arrests, it said in court filings.

xAI has not said why it’s turning to litigation in certain cases or how it decides when to do so. The company did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

About two weeks before suing Bloodworth, xAI sued Terry Wayne Harwood, a South Carolina man also accused of using Grok to create CSAM. Harwood has also been criminally charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. The lawsuit makes the same allegations of breach of contract and uses language included verbatim in the later complaint against Bloodworth.

xAI is defending itself in multiple lawsuits over nude or explicit images generated by Grok without the subject’s consent, including the creation of child sexual abuse material.

One class action includes a plaintiff, referred to as South Carolina Roe, who claims that the perpetrator who used Grok to “nudify” images of her as a child was her father.

South Carolina Roe’s attorney, Sophia Rios, told POLITICO that xAI’s lawsuit against Harwood is “too little, too late.” The number of reports regarding Grok-created child sexual abuse material “indicates to me that the actual problem is with their product, which they should fix to prevent this conduct from happening in the first place,” she said.

xAI says in its complaints that the company “builds in technological safeguards to prevent bad actors from engaging in illegal, harmful, or abusive conduct, or otherwise attempting to violate its rules.”

The company is facing at least two other class actions regarding nudification. The company is also defending against at least four individual suits based on Bloodworth’s alleged crimes, with more expected, according to Derek Potts, an attorney representing alleged victims of Bloodworth. All of the cases essentially claim that xAI fails to use industry-standard safeguards used by other AI businesses to prevent the creation of sexualized, non-consensual deepfakes.

Potts told POLITICO the company’s lawsuits against the alleged perpetrators are an attempt to “try to point the finger elsewhere,” adding that he doubts the company can recover a significant sum from Bloodworth and Harwood.