Colin Kaepernick Still Out There Being A Good Person

Tell-It Report: Colin Kaepernick to Fund Independent Autopsy For Trey Reed by Michael Harriot

The Delta State University student was found hanging from a tree on campus on Sept. 15. Read on Substack

In Gullah Geechee communities, a “tell-it” was a designated lookout, community warning system and the most trusted source for news and information. The Tell-It Report is ContrabandCamp’s weekly roundup of the Black stories that deserve more attention — from politics to entertainment.

Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp will fund the independent autopsy for Demartravion “Trey” Reed, who was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi. The state medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide.

The Black unemployment rate has increased by 1.5% in the last three months.

The Justice Department has quietly scrubbed from its website a study that shows that right-wing extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group.

Read the full stories below:

Colin Kaepernick will fund Trey Reed’s autopsy after officials initially called it suicide

Activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is funding an independent autopsy for Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the 21-year-old Delta State student who was found hanging from a tree on the Cleveland, Miss., campus on Sept. 15.

The Cleveland Police Department released a statement on Sept. 18 stating that the initial autopsy, conducted by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, ruled Reed’s death a suicide. Days prior, Delta State’s Director of Public Safety Mike Peeler said that there was no evidence of foul play. Reed’s family challenged their findings and is demanding answers.

On Friday, Ben Crump announced that Kaepernick’s “Know Your Rights Camp Autopsy Initiative” would be covering the cost of a secondary autopsy.

“Trey’s death evoked the collective memory of a community that has suffered a historic wound over many, many years and many, many deaths,” Crump said in a press release. “Peace will come only by getting to the truth. We thank Colin Kaepernick for supporting this grieving family and the cause of justice and truth.”

The statement read that the family will initiate the process once Reed’s body is released by the state medical examiner.

Reed’s body was found hanging on the Mississippi university’s campus, where nearly half of the student body is Black. The case evoked memories of the violent history of the Jim Crow South.

Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said he “condemn[s] the rumors circulating regarding his death.”

“We are getting mixed information. We are hearing everything on the media. We just want answers and truth because he was a young man I really loved,” Reed’s uncle, Jerry Reed, told Fox 13.

Family attorney Vanessa J. Jones told the local outlet prior to his death that Reed had spent time happy and with his family.

“He was here with his family. He was joyful and loving as ever. That is what he is being remembered for,” Jones said. “When he went back to Delta State University, he was his joyful self. So, the question is, ‘What happened?’”

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is demanding a federal investigation.

“We must leave no stone unturned in the search for answers,” the Mississippi representative said. “While the details of this case are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans.”

Black unemployment continues to surge

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Black unemployment rate has hit record highs since October 2021, according to the Associated Press.

In the last three months, the unemployment rate for Black Americans has gone up by 1.5% to 7.5%—twice that of the rate for white Americans—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bloomberg calls this “a rare development outside of recessions.” Researchers have attributed the spike to a slower labor market affecting Black employees first, as well as the president’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.

Reports of the more than 319,000 Black women who’ve become unemployed at the top of the year became an early indicator of the overall economic decline of Black communities. Their unemployment rate spiked from 5.1% in March to 6.7% in August.

“The most vulnerable people tend to get laid off first, and unfortunately, that tends to be Black Americans, and that’s something that is very disturbing in and of itself,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at accounting firm KPMG US, told CNN.

Experts note that these numbers can indicate looming economic troubles for the entire country. Employers added an average of 29,000 jobs each month over the past three months. That’s a drastic decline from the 209,000 average over the same time period in 2024, Bloomberg reports.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the outlet that Trump predicts that recent tax cuts and immigrant deportations will add jobs for Black Americans.

“President Trump is implementing the same America First economic agenda that delivered historic job and wage growth — including record-low Black unemployment rates — in his first term,” she said. “The passage of the Working Families Tax Cuts will unleash economic growth through tax reform, deregulation, and incentives for job creation in the private sector that will benefit all Americans.”

Alexsis Rodgers, political director at the Black to the Future Action Fund, told the AP that this is a “new era.”

“There are people who obviously believed his promises, that Trump was going to do something about the cost of eggs, the cost of housing,” she said. “They’ve seen the focus instead is on ICE raids and downsizing the government.”

The DOJ quietly removed a study showing that right-wing extremists have the biggest hand in domestic terrorism

The Department of Justice recently removed a study from its website showing that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, according to The Hill.

The study, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, stated that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” Jason Paladino first reported that the study had been scrubbed from the National Institute for Justice’s online library on Sept. 12.

The removal occurred just days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. In the wake of his death, Trump said, “The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, claiming “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

However, there has been little evidence to suggest that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old lead suspect in Kirk’s killing, identifies as a leftist or that his actions were motivated by political ideology. There’s more of an indication that Robinson and Kirk had been among similar circles of internet culture, according to The New Yorker.

The study, which can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine, used data from the National Institute of Justice. It found that far-right extremists “committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.” The authors also state, “In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

Similarly, ContrabandCamp’s Michael Harriot showed that political violence is much more likely to come from the right than the left.

The NIJ study points directly to online chat forums as a source that reinforces their beliefs on gun rights, conspiracy theories, hate-based views and more. “Users grew more ideological and radical as other users reinforced their ideas and connected their ideas to those from other forums,” the study reads.

ICYMI

“Dreamgirls” is returning to Broadway in fall 2026.
Duke University’s School of Medicine shuttered its graduate student support and DEI programming without informing the students and faculty.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating leads after 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dead in singer d4vid’s car.
A community advisory board blocks the Jay-Z-backed Caesar’s Palace Casino proposed in Times Square.

What the messages left on the unused rounds tell us about Charlie Kirk’s shooter.

Fox Host Goes Full PSYCHO

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade apologized Sunday for his “extremely callous” remark suggesting mentally ill homeless people should be executed.

Jimmy Kimmel Cancelled??? Stop Being Pusillanimous!!! | BREAKING NEWS Armageddon Update

ICE Attack Hospitalizes 80-Year-Old US Citizen

Kash Patel lies and is pilloried for tRump.

The right’s inflamtory rhetoric and blaming the left for inciting political violence on the left clips From The Majority Report

Hacks star Hannah Einbinder ended her Emmys speech with choice words for Donald Trump’s secret police force and some solidarity with the people of Palestine.

About The Arrested In NYC-

These Are the 15 New York Officials ICE and NYPD Arrested in Manhattan

More than a dozen elected officials were arrested in or around 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, where ICE detains people in what courts have ruled are unsanitary conditions.

Police arrested more than a dozen New York state and city elected officials Thursday at 26 Federal Plaza, the Manhattan immigration court and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office, many as they pressed to gain access to the building’s 10th-floor lockup, where recent court rulings—including a temporary restraining order—directed ICE not to cram immigrants into overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.

The lawmakers and other officials, arrested around 3:45 pm local time, say they were “attempting to conduct oversight” following claims that people appearing for court hearings were being confined for hours or days without proper food, medical care, or contact with attorneys.

A spokesperson for New York City comptroller Brad Lander’s office told WIRED by phone that Lander and 10 other elected officials were denied access and then arrested while “engaged in an action on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE inhumanely detains thousands of immigrant New Yorkers.” Lander was previously arrested at the same facility in June while accompanying a migrant man whom ICE targeted with arrest.

A joint press release issued by New York officials in the aftermath lists the electeds among those arrested:

NYC comptroller Brad Lander
State senator Julia Salazar
State senator Jabari Brisport
State senator Gustavo Rivera
Assembly member Robert Carroll
Assembly member Emily Gallagher
Assembly member Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas
Assembly member Marcela Mitaynes
Assembly member Claire Valdez
Assembly member Tony Simone
Assembly member Steven Raga
Public advocate Jumaane Williams
Assembly member Phara Souffrant-Forrest
Council member Sandy Nurse
Council member Tiffany Caban

At least some officials, according to Lander’s office, had been released at the time of writing. The final four on the list were arrested outside the facility, reportedly by the New York City Police Department. Dozens of New Yorkers who had gathered, holding signs and chanting “ICE out of NY,” were also arrested, officials said. A follow-up demonstration was planned for 6 pm ET at Foley Square, a longtime rallying point for immigrant rights protests in the heart of Manhattan’s Civic Center neighborhood.

NEW YORK NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 18 Comptroller Brad Lander joins 11 local elected officials inside lower Manhattans federal...

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE immediately responded to a request for comment. Reached by phone, a New York Police Department spokesperson declined to comment because “the incident is ongoing.”

Under federal law, members of Congress have explicit authority to inspect immigration detention facilities, including conducting unannounced visits. State and city lawmakers don’t have that authority and must rely on DHS or ICE to approve such requests. The Trump administration has instituted new policies, such as mandating advance notice and designating certain field offices and short-term sites off-limits, that have blocked or delayed congressional oversight visits in recent months.

Federal judges and civil rights groups have zeroed in on the conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza. This summer, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the government after allegations surfaced that the facility’s detainees were being crammed into severely overcrowded rooms and made to sleep on bare floors and were denied food, hygiene, and confidential access to their lawyers.

NEW YORK NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 18 Dozens of anti Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters are arrested after...

The problems echo a broader pattern across the US, where watchdogs and courts have flagged overcrowding, poor sanitation, and blocked access to counsel in ICE facilities from Arizona to Louisiana.

Advocates say some of the most jarring overcrowding is happening on 26 Federal Plaza’s 10th floor, where detainees have estimated that between 70 and 90 people have been crammed into rooms measuring roughly 215 square feet. That would leave each person with roughly the space of a doormat—less room than a folded bath towel—in an area no bigger than a studio apartment kitchen.

The arrests came as part of a coordinated action by progressive Democrats, timed to amplify demands for Albany to reconvene and pass the New York for All Act. The bill would bar state and local agencies, including police and sheriffs, from sharing information or resources with ICE, aiming to stop what lawmakers describe as abductions of immigrants at court hearings and check-ins. Along with New York City Council’s proposed Trust Act—which would let people sue if city agencies unlawfully cooperate with ICE—the legislation is essential, Democrats say, to defend due process and prevent local governments from becoming de facto extensions of ICE.

“The criminalization, demonization, and state-sponsored violence against immigrants in this country has reached a fever pitch under this administration. All of us, and especially elected leaders, must do more to protect New Yorkers, regardless of when they arrived,” Assembly member Emily Gallagher, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, said in a statement.

Many elected officials have been arrested while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. Among others, in June, Senator Alex Padilla of California was handcuffed after challenging Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem at a Los Angeles press conference, and in May, Newark mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside a federal detention center during an attempted oversight visit.

In a statement, Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project, applauded the lawmakers’ actions Thursday, accusing the US government of “egregious abuses of power,” and imploring New York governor Kathy Hochul to use her clemency powers to shield migrants dealing with overlapping punishments from the courts and immigration authorities.

“New York leaders cannot let this cruelty go unchecked,” she said. “The moment to act is NOW.”

Additional reporting by Andrew Couts.

Governmental Overreach

Brendan Carr Isn’t Going to Stop Until Someone Makes Him

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, experts say the FCC commissioner’s conduct is flatly unconstitutional. They also expect him to keep going.

In what has become an all-too-regular display from Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman used a podcast appearance Wednesday to flex his regulatory power. In this instance, he threatened action against broadcasters that refused to punish Jimmy Kimmel for remarks he made on his ABC show Monday night.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said on former Turning Point USA contributor Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday. “These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Since taking over the FCC at the beginning of the year, Carr has tested how far the agency can limit speech without ever quite formally censoring it. By leveraging his position as chairman, he has relied on informal threats and regulatory incentives to keep broadcasters in line with the Trump administration’s politics—and experts say Carr won’t end this campaign until someone stops him. For now, it’s not clear who’s even willing to try.

“He’ll push it until he’s stopped. Congress has been silent on this, and there hasn’t been a basis to get to court,” former FCC chair Tom Wheeler tells WIRED. “He’s been very artful in not making formal decisions that are appealable to the court, but instead having these informal, coercive activities that are not appealable, and so until Congress or the courts say he can’t, he’ll keep pushing.”

Over the past eight months, Carr—a formerly light-touch telecom regulator turned MAGA hardliner—has shown how far he’s willing to take this crusade. He has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for outlets the administration sees as “distorting” news content, targeting Comcast outlets over news coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation in April. He opened investigations into NPR and PBS underwriting announcements, alleging that they crossed into commercial advertising. Carr oversaw the merger between Paramount and Skydance and extracted concessions on CBS’s editorial work, pressuring the company to do away with its DEI policies and promise “viewpoint diversity” in coverage. (David Ellison, son of billionaire Trump supporter Larry Ellison, founded Skydance and became Paramount’s chair and chief executive officer following the merger.) At the same time, Donald Trump was suing CBS for having edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris; after Paramount paid out $16 million to settle the suit, CBS said it would end Stephen Colbert’s show next spring.

“The FCC under Brendan Carr uses mergers and business interests of media companies as leverage to extract concessions, extract bribes, and extract censorship,” says Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Carr did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While Carr’s threats have chased social media companies and cable networks, they’ve hit companies with business before the FCC the hardest. Nexstar, which owns dozens of ABC affiliate networks, was one of the companies to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! just hours after Carr’s Wednesday threat. The company is currently seeking approval from the FCC for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, which owns networks in major markets including Austin, Texas, and San Diego, California. Sinclair, another major broadcasting company, also relies on the FCC to periodically renew its licenses and allocate the company spectrum.

To Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on free speech, Carr’s threats against ABC appear to be “a pretty clear-cut case of jawboning.” Jawboning refers to a type of informal coercion where government officials try to pressure private entities into suppressing or changing speech without using any actual formal legal action. Since jawboning is typically done in letters and private meetings, it rarely leaves a paper trail, making it notoriously difficult to challenge in court.

This Kimmel suspension is a little different, Lakier says. During the podcast appearance, Carr explicitly named his target, threatened regulatory action, and within a matter of hours the companies complied.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that that’s unconstitutional in all circumstances,” says Lakier. “You’re just not allowed to do that. There’s no balancing. There’s no justification. Absolutely no, no way may the government do that.”

Even if Carr’s threats amount to unconstitutional jawboning, though, stopping him could still prove difficult. If ABC sued, it would need to prove coercion—and however a suit went, filing one could risk additional regulatory retaliation down the line. If Kimmel were to sue, there’s no promise that he would get anything out of the suit even if he won, says Lakier, making it less likely for him to pursue legal action in the first place.

“There’s not much there for him except to establish that his rights were violated. But there is a lot of benefit for everyone else,” says Lakier. “This has received so much attention that it would be good if there could be, from now on, some mechanism for more oversight from the courts over what Carr is doing.”

Organizations like the the Freedom of the Press Foundation have sought novel means of limiting Carr’s power. In July, the FPF submitted a formal disciplinary complaint to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel arguing that Carr violated its ethical rules, misrepresenting the law by suggesting the FCC has the ability to regulate editorial viewpoints. Without formal rulings, companies affected by Carr’s threats would be some of the only organizations with grounding to sue. At the same time, they have proven to be some of the least likely groups to pursue legal action over the last eight months.

In a statement on Thursday, House Democratic leadership wrote that Carr had “disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC” and called on him to resign. They said they plan to “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power,” but did not outline any tangible ways to rein in Carr’s power.

“People need to get creative,” says Stern. “The old playbook is not built for this moment and the law only exists on paper when you’ve got someone like Brendan Carr in charge of enforcing it.”

This vacuum has left Carr free to push as far as he likes, and it has spooked experts over how far this precedent will travel. Established in the 1930s, the FCC was designed to operate as a neutral referee, but years of media consolidation have dramatically limited the number of companies controlling programming over broadcast, cable, and now streaming networks. Spectrum is a limited resource the FCC controls, giving the agency more direct control over the broadcast companies that rely on it than it has over cable or streaming services. This concentration makes them infinitely easier to pressure, benefitting the Trump administration, Carr, but also whoever might come next.

“If political tides turn, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats won’t also use them in an unconstitutional and improper matter,” says Stern. The Trump administration is “really setting up this world where every election cycle, assuming we still have elections in this country, the content of broadcast news might drastically shift depending on which political party controls the censorship office.”

Makena Kelly is a senior writer at WIRED focused on the intersection of politics, power, and technology. She writes the Politics Lab newsletter that helps you make sense of how the internet is shaping our political reality—sign up here. She was previously at The Verge, CQ Roll Call, and the … Read More