News

Senators move to ban federal face-logging the week a vendor pitches it to the cops next door

By The Wrecking CrewThe Remedy Desk · the coffee break edition, 6 October 2026

The chief lays the file on the table on a Friday: Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Jeff Merkley, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced the Ban Flock Act, which would stop federal agencies from using automatic license-plate readers. The chief does not call this urgent.

On September 29, a surveillance company told police departments it wants to "close the gap" that Flock itself won't close. The gap is facial recognition. The pitch is not to Washington. It is to the local departments that already lease Flock's plate-reading cameras — the box on the pole that was sold, built, and billed as a license-plate reader, nothing more.

The planner walks the pole. Nothing about the hardware needs to change. The camera stays where it is, pointed at the same street, feeding the same local server. What changes is the software a vendor is now offering underneath it: the same lens that used to log a plate now logs a face. The upgrade does not pass through any federal agency, which is exactly the jurisdiction the new bill covers — and exactly the jurisdiction the upgrade skips.

The tinkerer takes inventory of what's actually in the box. One statute, drafted this week, that reaches federal use of the readers. Two parts, built for two different locks, sitting on the same bench. How many of those departments take the pitch is not in any filing yet — the company made an offer; it did not publish a client list.

The muscle doesn't wreck the bill. There's nothing wrong with it; it does what it says, for the agencies it says. The muscle wrecks the premise that a plate reader is a fixed thing once it's bought and bolted to a pole. It isn't. It's a platform, and the next feature gets pitched to whoever already has the hardware installed, federal ban or no federal ban.

The pilot checks the gauges before the story lands anywhere: a camera sold as a plate reader, a vendor now selling the same camera as a face reader, and a bill that stops one buyer while the other buyer — city hall, the county sheriff, whoever signed the original lease — is still taking meetings. The bill is a real tool aimed at a real door. It's just not the door the vendor walked in through this month.

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US pulls twelve bombers home over threats to a British base; Britain keeps the base and the arrests.

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk · the noon edition, 6 October 2026

Today we are doing a withdrawal, and the order of it is the dish. The United States has taken all twelve of its B-1B bombers out of RAF Fairford, in Gloucestershire; President Trump gave the reason as "threats" he believed were linked to Tehran. A day later, British counterterrorism police arrested a seventh person over the incident at that base last month, a 22-year-old from London. The aircraft are home. The case is not.

You will need one airbase, owned by the United Kingdom and operated by the Americans. You will need the Pentagon, which is what we call the ministry of defence, after the shape of the building. And seven arrests, every one of them made by British officers.

CLIVE: Withdrawal. I have been in a withdrawal since August, artistically, and not one person at this table has thought to ask me what from.

GARY: You withdrew from the rota. I'd put the rota through the wall, only Keith's gone and stuck it to the boiler.

Begin at the end of September. Police evacuated homes near the base on the Sunday and arrested five men over suspected explosives offences, and counterterrorism officers took the investigation.

KEITH: Sticking things down is a trade, and there's an angle in this one. Little model bombers, Gloucestershire gift shop, I can have stock by Thursday.

ROB: Stock. It's heavy, that. The big thing flies off, the little things stay where they are, and the damp's been saying so for years.

On the first of October they arrested a man with dual British and Iranian nationality in the borough of Westminster, on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts, and searched two properties there. British officials have said they believe Iran played a part in planning the incident. That is six.

Now take the base by both ends and turn it over. Britain owns the ground; America flew the aeroplanes; the threat was to the ground, and it is the aeroplanes that have gone. A base does not travel.

Le Monde, the French paper, has it as "Police make seventh arrest over UK airbase incident": a UK airbase. At home The Hill's headline says "US airbase RAF Fairford", and its own first line says "a U.S.-operated air base owned by the U.K." Both are the same field.

CLIVE: Can the table decide whether the damp is a collaborator or a critic? I am drafting a reply to it either way, in couplets.

So to today, and the seventh. You will be looking for the charges: the six men in their twenties arrested before him are on police bail, and the whole of it stays with British counterterrorism police.

Serves twelve bombers, at home, on American soil. Gloucestershire keeps the base, the houses that were evacuated, and the investigation.

ROB: That's the pattern, that is. Whoever's still in the house when the heavy stuff goes gets the meter, the damp and the clearing up, and nobody thanks them.

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Trump invites Iran to take out two California cities, drawing a Republican break and a record-low approval rating

By ChipStaff Writer · the matinee edition, 6 October 2026

The White House says the sentence was a warning, not an invitation, and read by itself, Monday night's words at a Nebraska rally can carry that reading. President Trump told the crowd that high prices from the Iran war were "a small price to pay for keeping the world safe — keeping our country safe," then added: "They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego." On Tuesday, the White House said he meant it as a warning about the risk of a nuclear Iran. That is the defense. It has to survive the record it was said inside.

That record runs briefly, in order. A United Nations inquiry already found the war's opening strikes likely crimes. The Congressional Budget Office counts the cost at nearly $40 billion, a figure the office itself calls conservative. A senator who voted to confirm Hegseth has since called twice for his firing, and a Republican congressman has filed paperwork to impeach him. At the United Nations, Trump told the General Assembly he would "annihilate" Iran; a Quincy Institute scholar, interviewed from a Democracy Now studio in New York ahead of the Assembly's second day, called it a new low in U.N. history. None of that is Monday's sentence. All of it is the room the sentence got said in.

California's governor did not take the warning as a warning. Gavin Newsom activated the State Threat Assessment Center, the office that watches for threats to the state, and called the remarks "deranged and dangerous." San Diego's mayor asked the president to "keep our city out of your reckless war talk." That's the Democratic column, and the defense can file it there and move on.

It cannot file Jim Desmond there. Republicans have mostly stayed quiet this week, which the defense is entitled to read as unity, except Desmond broke it. Desmond, a Republican running for Congress in San Diego, the city named in the sentence, said he "served to protect Americans, not write off American cities." That is the candidate from the president's own party, in the city named, saying the sentence wrote off his city.

The defense needs one more thing: the public still hearing a warning as a warning. That's where the timing works against it: a Reuters poll put approval at 32 percent on September 21, the lowest of either term, two weeks before Nebraska, with Republican voters named as the reason it fell. Four weeks remain before the midterms decide what a rally crowd's applause is still worth.

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Alito's oil recusal gets called the bare minimum, the same week his book calls marriage decisive.

By LouOne More Question · the matinee edition, 6 October 2026

What's the smallest word a book can hide a verdict inside? I already know this one. Give me a second anyway — I don't like saying a thing out loud until I've got it in front of me. Here. ABC News, today: Justice Alito's new book calls same-sex marriage a "decisive" turn "against religious liberty." That's the word the book uses.

Now the part where I back up, because that's the only way I know how to tell anything — from the beginning, in order, the way it actually happened on the page.

September 29th. Common Dreams. Justice Alito recuses himself from the Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil case out of Boulder, Colorado — the oil companies on one side, the county on the other — a week before arguments. Critics call the recusal the bare minimum, given the ties to the oil industry already in the reporting.

October 2nd. Two things happen the same day, which I find easier to understand than hard to. And on a different tape, same date, same network: Alito talking about how he'll decide when to retire. Not if. When.

Also October 2nd — I keep having to go back to this drawer — CBS again, a longer quote this time, the whole sentence instead of half of it, because I shorted him once already this week and that's not how I do business: "It's part of the job that you're going to displease people by making decisions on controversial matters." That's what he told them, about losing friends over Dobbs. The whole sentence. I wanted to get that right.

And then today. The book is out. Same-sex marriage, a turn against religious liberty — that's the line from the book. That's the sentence sitting next to the recusal from Suncor.

Here's where I go out to the car, because I can't think sitting still. The car doesn't start without a minute of coaxing — fan belt, probably, I keep saying I'll get to it — but it starts, and while it's warming up I open the glovebox and I'm looking for the toll receipts, because I drive the turnpike for work and I keep every one, not out of pride, just habit. Four this month I didn't take the E-ZPass lane. Four times I pulled into the cash lane instead, waited, paid by hand. I don't know why I do that on some days and not others. I just know I can count it.

That's what a recusal is supposed to be, isn't it — the one lane you don't take. Suncor, Boulder, Big Oil. He didn't take that lane. The question the receipts leave sitting there is what happens to the other lanes — the ones with his name already stamped on the toll, Dobbs, marriage, the whole turnpike of decisions he's still driving while the book hands out its own word for each one.

I was halfway down the porch steps, dog at my heel, book bag on my shoulder, when the kid from the corner store flagged me down about a delivery — and while I was signing for it, he asked me something I didn't have a good answer for. He'd heard about the recusal on the radio. He wanted to know if a justice can step out of one case and still get credit, in the same week, in his own book, for being brave about the rest.

I told him I'd have to check my notes. I already had. The word for the oil case is already written down, back in September, from people who don't work for him. The word for the marriage case is newer, and it's his own — and I'm sorry, I know I already used it once, but there's no better word on the page for it: decisive.

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Senator tours Saudi Arabia under the sirens a month-old G7 demand was supposed to have silenced.

By The Wrecking CrewThe Remedy Desk · the matinee edition, 6 October 2026

The chief calls the crew to Riyadh to look at a toolbox that's already sitting open on the floor.

On September 17, the United Nations' own fact-finding mission said there were "reasonable grounds" to believe two U.S. strikes inside Iran were war crimes — an accountability tool, built and signed, left on the shelf. Two days later, on the 19th, an explosion near Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport put Saudi Civil Defense on the air for the first time, warnings routed to residents of Riyadh and the surrounding area — a siren wired to a war that hadn't reached Saudi soil before that morning.

The planner studies what came next. Three days after that siren, on September 22, the G7's foreign ministers signed a statement: Iran must stop arming the Houthis, the escalation is a threat to "regional and global energy security," full stop. The same day, Secretary Rubio asked a different question out loud — if NATO allies can block U.S. base access during a fight with Iran, what is the alliance's "biggest strategic benefit" even for. Two tools landed on the table that single afternoon: a formal demand carrying seven governments' names, and a basing rule Rubio himself named as leverage. The count of those two picked up in the two weeks since: zero.

The tinkerer tests the shelf against this week's load. Into that same stretch of airspace, Senator Chris Murphy flew into Doha on Saturday evening, then on into Saudi Arabia itself, while the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh issued a security warning for Americans and the sirens kept sounding.

The muscle doesn't build the fix. The muscle takes down the idea that there was no fix sitting ready. There was: a G7 demand, a basing rule, a war-crimes finding — three tools, signed and dated, all of them older than this week's airport hits. The pilot's whole job is getting someone to reach for one of them before the next siren, not during it.

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Governor blocked from speaking at $3.7 billion submarine plant he says he spent a year landing

By SterlingThe Ownership Desk · the early bird edition, 6 October 2026

You will want to know what a year of courtship buys a governor in Baltimore. A groundbreaking, as it happens, and no microphone. Moore says the administration blocked him from speaking at the Anduril plant on Tuesday, the plant he told reporters he landed: "We have been working with them for over a year to bring them on board." A year. Anduril puts up $3.7 billion and will cut components for Virginia-class submarines in Baltimore County, which sits in Maryland, which has a governor. Beside the president instead: Marlon Humphrey, a Ravens cornerback. On October 1 you had Dennis Rodman, on the red-state tour. On September 1 a $1 billion Rolls-Royce plant in Indiana was pronounced the "Trump Effect." The state courts, the state keeps the title, and the fruits are taken at a federal lectern ... a usufruct, handsome and entirely lawful. Moore keeps the jobs. The price was the podium.

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Newly released bodycam disputes both the union chief's payday theory and the department's own force count.

By LouOne More Question · the early bird edition, 6 October 2026

Did the department's first account of how much force they used on that cheerleader match what showed up later on the camera? I already know the answer to that one. Give me a second, I had it written down somewhere, here. That's not my sentence. That's theirs.

I wrote something else down the same week, a different page of the same notebook. A veteran Tempe police officer, speaking for their union, told the New York Post that the cheerleader and her legal team are "fictionalizing" what happened. They said there's clear video evidence she struck a police officer. I don't underline things as a rule. I underlined that one: clear.

There's a camera over the register at the corner store on my block, the crooked one, pointed more at the lottery machine than the door. I asked the owner once to run it back, the day I knocked a jar of pickles off the shelf. He found the moment easy enough. He found my face easy enough too, laughing behind the counter before I'd even picked myself up off the floor. Same tape. What a person is looking for, when they ask to see it, isn't always what somebody else is looking for.

So which is it, with this one? Does the union chief's statement to the Post describe what's on the footage, or does it describe what they think she's trying to get out of it? I go back and forth, I keep going back to the same page. The statement doesn't say the force matched what the department first reported. It says she's angling for a payday. Those are two different subjects, filed under the same quote.

And does CBS's report about the footage talk about a payday, or does it talk about how forceful the officer was? Here's what I've got written down: backlash over use of force. Not backlash over a lawsuit. Not backlash over a payday. Backlash over force, and specifically over whether the department's first account of that force held up once the tape came out.

I keep flipping back through these pages, sorry, bear with me, I never got around to buying the kind with tabs. Here's the union chief, on the record, suspecting a payday. Here's CBS, on the record, reporting that the footage disputes the department's own initial claims. Both from the same week. Both about the same piece of footage. I'm not telling you what that means. I'm asking which one the tape backs up, because it can't back up both at the same time, not if one of them is about money she might get and the other is about force the department already said was something different.

Does the department's first account of the force and the footage CBS describes say the same thing, or two things? I think I know, but you didn't get the facts from me today, you got them from the Post and from CBS, and I'd rather you check my notebook against theirs than take my word for it.

Alright. I'll let you get back to your day. Oh, actually, excuse me, one more thing before you go. I know I said I wouldn't come back to this, I'm sorry, let me put it a different way. The footage the department released, the one CBS says disputes their own first account of the force used, was it making the same case the union chief made to the Post, the one about a payday, the one with the clear video evidence against her? Or was it making a different case, just as clear.

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SINCE 2002

Administration bars election observers used since 2002, as Georgia's GOP board asks it to probe its own machines.

By LouOne More Question · the supper edition, 6 October 2026

How many times, in the twenty-some years since the election monitors from Vienna started showing up to watch us vote, has somebody in Washington told them not to bother? I already know the answer to this one. I wrote it down last night because I don't trust myself to get a count right out loud. Hold on — here it is, I've got it right on the page. Zero. Not since 2002. Not one midterm, not one presidential year has the United States turned away the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Zero times, until this one.

So this fall, somebody finally said it anyway: the first time. That's a long run to break. Somebody decides, year after year, to let the monitors come. And then, this year, somebody decided not to.

Here's the part that didn't sit right next to it, and I only noticed because I happened to read both pages the same night. Same week — I went back and checked the dates twice — Georgia's Republican-led State Election Board had its executive director, James Mills, write a letter to the attorney general.

I want to be fair about what that is. That's a Republican-led board asking the Trump administration's Department of Justice to come look closer at voting machines that board already oversees. I've got a car, an '04, needs a fan belt about twice a year, and when it squeals I don't write a letter to anybody about it — I lift the hood myself, because it's my car and I know where the belt sits. Mills didn't lift that hood personally. Mills asked Washington to come lift it instead. That's not my opinion. That's just what the letter asks for.

And in that same stretch — the Guardian's phrase, not mine, I wrote it down because they hedged it so careful — "conservative-friendly media outlets" started carrying fresh allegations from some of the same officials who backed the fraud claims back in 2020. Fresh claims. The machines can't be trusted, they're saying. Same voices, mostly. New season.

So lay it out the way I've got it written on the page. A party asks the federal government to watch its own machines harder. Voices close to that party say right out loud the machines can't be trusted. And the federal government, that same week, tells the one outside body that's watched every vote since 2002: don't bother coming this time.

I'm sorry, I know I already gave you that number once, back at the top, and I told myself I wouldn't circle back to it. My wife says I do that when something won't sit right in my stomach — keep turning it over, say it a different way, see if it sits better. It doesn't. Twenty-some years, and not once did this government say no to being watched. Then, this year, one did.

Oh — excuse me, before you go. One more thing, it'll just take a second. I've got Georgia's letter written on one line of this page, and Washington's rejection written on the line right under it. One of those is a government asking to be watched closer. The other is the same government, the same week, asking to be watched less. Which one of those is the letter in my hand, and which one is the rejection?

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