The panel urged the change in a 66-page report drafted by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), focused on implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Page A9From§Eachthe early bird edition — 31 August 2026
$17 million buys ICE shock gloves, biometric screening buys travelers' faces, and War Department buys silence from reporters.
As it ran on the front
You want to know how a government pays for a security state without ever using the words 'security state'? You itemize it. Seventeen million dollars for electric shock gloves for ICE agents — not batons, not tasers, gloves, so the agent doesn't even have to reach for a separate tool, the restraint is just built into the hand now. Same week, the House Intelligence Committee wants biometric screening for travelers — your face, on file, because of a hijacking that happened before most people flying today were born. Same week, the Department of War — that's what they're calling the Pentagon now, they changed the sign — is back after the First Amendment, again, the 'again' doing a lot of work in that headline, because this isn't the first time and everybody in that building knows it isn't the last.
None of these three things ran together anywhere else today, and that's the trick — you announce the glove contract on a Tuesday, the face-scanning proposal on a Wednesday, the press story on a Thursday, and nobody has to write the sentence that connects them, because separately none of them sound like a system, they sound like agenda items. Put them in the same paragraph and you get a government that restrains you by hand, identifies you by face, and warns the people who'd report on any of it to watch themselves. That's not a conspiracy, that's a budget. Democrats are calling for the glove contract to be canceled, which is good, that's the job, but calling for cancellation and getting cancellation are two different line items, and until the money actually stops moving, the gloves ship.…
…(cont) Here's the part that should sit in your stomach: none of this is hidden. The contract number is public. The committee hearing is public. The Department renamed itself in public. This isn't the part where they lie to you, this is the part where they tell you exactly what they're building and dare you to do something about it before delivery date. Malarkey has always had a budget line; this is just the year they stopped hiding the invoice. The First Amendment they're eyeing is the same one that lets you read this sentence. Spend it while you've still got it.
“Shock gloves, face scans, and a warning to the press, itemized in three separate headlines so nobody adds them up — but I just did, and it comes to one government building a hand that doesn't need a badge to grab you. Same week, same country, same budget.”
“The glove contract is under review, the biometric proposal is just a recommendation, and the Department's interest in the First Amendment is purely about national security, obviously, that's all it's ever about. I don't see the connection you're drawing, and even if I did, I wouldn't be the one to confirm it.”
The receipts
The Department of War launched a new attack on the First Amendment this weekend. It did so by asserting that the Washington Post had committed a criminal act in its reporting. Specifically, its reporting on the concerns of senior U.S…
A group of House Democrats on Monday demanded the immediate cancellation of a nearly $17 million federal contract to provide electric shock gloves to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who have been unleashed on American cities…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.