Webbon appeared here last month when he called for executing US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
He appeared here in May 2026 when he declared that “virtuous masculine men will forcefully take away democracy” and install a Christian theocracy.
He appeared here last year when he called for Trump’s military to seize churches that fly Pride flags or have female clergy.
In 2024, Webbon appeared here when he called for the death penalty for homosexuality.
We still haven’t seen any new photos or videos of Davis in many years. The Liberty Counsel ditched her as a client after losing before the Supreme Court in November 2025.
The bill was introduced by freshman Rep. Sheri Biggs, who last appeared here when she called for opponents of the Iran war to “leave the country.”
Biggs first appeared here when she won the 2024 runoff against “death to gays” Pastor Mark Burns.
Two US senators say the Trump administration is breaking the law by withholding the FISA court decision while it presses Congress to renew America’s most sweeping surveillance program.
Two Democratic senators who have long overseen US intelligence say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court’s findings from Congress until lawmakers renew a program that lets federal agents read Americans’ communications without a warrant.
Seven months ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans’ messages from intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications, or records the law requires. The court approved another year of surveillance anyway. The ruling has never been made public, and Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California say the administration’s own deadline for releasing it passed in September.
The program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), lapsed in June after Congress failed to renew it, though collection continues under the court’s March approval. The administration’s own public documentation says rulings like this one are reviewed for public release “within 180 days of issuance.” That window closed September 13, even as intelligence officials press lawmakers to reauthorize the program by the end of the year.
Wyden, the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Schiff, the former chair of its House counterpart, say the administration owes Congress an explanation for the delay, and the names of the officials responsible, by November 6.
“If this administration won’t follow this simple statutory directive,” the senators told Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche in a demand letter obtained exclusively by WIRED, “it is unclear why Congress or the American people should trust this administration to follow any of the other legal limits to Section 702.”
Outside Congress, Demand Progress and 22 other civil liberties and government accountability groups on Monday urged congressional leaders to refuse to reauthorize Section 702 “while the administration actively withholds legally mandated information about how the surveillance program operates.” Signatories range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative-backed Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability.
The Trump administration has already been pressed, and has promised, to release the ruling. In April, senators Tom Cotton and Mark Warner, the Intelligence Committee’s Republican chair and Democratic vice chair, pressed the administration to release it within 15 days so it could inform the Senate’s debate. In July, asked in writing whether he would commit to declassifying it by the 180-day deadline, Blanche replied, “Yes.”
Warner “has been clear that he supports transparency with regard to Section 702,” his communications director, Rachel Cohen, tells WIRED. Neither former director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard nor Bill Pulte, who briefly replaced her as acting director, “were responsive,” Cohen says, “but Senator Warner expects that DNI Clayton will declassify the opinion, consistent with the bipartisan letter and as required by law.”
Cotton’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the US Justice Department did not answer questions WIRED sent Friday about the delay.
Clayton, who is legally responsible as director of national intelligence for declassifying the ruling, has made no such promise. Asked before his July confirmation whether he would ensure the opinion was public before Congress voted on reauthorization, he wrote only that the government was “working arduously to expeditiously declassify” it and had made the full opinion available to lawmakers.
Some of what the court found is already known. A FISA court opinion declassified last year described a similar FBI tool, a “participants filter” that let agents select people in contact with surveillance targets and read their messages. In February 2025, the Justice Department’s National Security Division told the court the tool had been running searches no one counted. The FBI shut it off the next month and switched it back on later that year, after the department approved a rebuilt version.
This year’s ruling went beyond that. The court found that tools agencies use to narrow intercepted data to an American’s messages amount to searches of Americans, subject to the same limits, and ordered them rebuilt, The New York Times reported in April, citing unclassified administration talking points sent to lawmakers. Senator Alex Padilla said in a written question to Blanche that the Justice Department “is appealing portions” of the ruling “limiting the government’s use of certain filtering tools.”
While the ruling stayed secret, seven intelligence agency fact sheets from March 2026, one dated the day of the ruling, cited a 98.9 percent compliance rate for FBI searches of Americans and credited Section 702 with stopping a planned terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna. None mentions the court’s findings. The figure appears nowhere in the Justice Department inspector general’s October 2025 review of those searches, which put the compliance rate at 98.6 percent and could not conclude that “the FBI’s querying compliance issues are entirely in the past.”
According to the fact sheets, FBI auditors review every such search. FBI director Kash Patel closed the bureau’s Office of Internal Auditing last May and moved its auditors into another division. The bureau’s search counts before 2025 also omit queries run through the participants filter, searches the government’s own privacy watchdog says are “not possible to track.”
Lawmakers who have read the ruling hint that it says more. Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, urged colleagues on the Senate floor in June to read it in a secure room. “I have seen it,” he said. Once they did, he told them, “your opinion of the role of FISA and the rights of Americans will be impacted for sure.”
Wyden has also warned about a classified interpretation of Section 702 that he says multiple administrations have relied on and refused to declassify. “When it is eventually declassified,” he said in March, “the American people are going to be stunned that it took so long and that Congress had been debating this authority with insufficient information.”
The Trump administration has until November 6 to answer the senators. The court’s current approval of the program expires in March.
Surveillance reform advocates say the administration may try to avoid that fight by attaching a renewal to the annual defense authorization bill, which Congress usually finalizes in December. In 2023, lawmakers extended Section 702 for four months through that year’s defense bill after a Senate effort to strip the provision failed. This year’s House and Senate versions of the bill do not yet include it.
Dell Cameron is an investigative reporter from Texas covering privacy and national security. He’s the recipient of multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards and is co-recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a senior reporter at Gizmodo and a staff writer for the Daily … Read More
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is engaged in far-reaching spying against left-wing activists that rivals the FBI and CIA crackdowns on the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.
Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional spying operation carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond.
The high-profile Minnesota 15 prosecution makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), flush with federal funds and newly hired personnel, is now President Donald Trump’s primary tool against dissent, with a powerful array of post-9/11 investigative authorities brought to bear against everyday Americans organizing their communities.
Nothing of this scale has been seen in the United States, experts say, since the federal government’s counterinsurgency against the New Left and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
Among the records revealed during the discovery process in these cases are dozens of reports, audio transcripts, emails, intercepted Signal chats, photographs, database queries, and more. They reveal the inner workings of the domestic terrorism investigations, running under the names Project Whipple Shield and Operation Puppet Master, authorized by the controversial National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.
Published following Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September of last year, NSPM 7 instructs federal law enforcement to use every tool available against organizations and people who criticize the administration’s policies and espouse “anti-Christian” ideas. The full scope and extent of the investigations it authorizes remains unknown.
Defense attorneys for the Minnesota 15 claim that the prosecution stems from a broader nationwide surveillance operation aimed at opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. One attorney in the case directly compares the DHS-run campaign to the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, which unconstitutionally surveilled, infiltrated, and blackmailed racial justice, civil rights, and anti-war movements from the 1950s through the early 1970s.
Three former law enforcement officials who reviewed filings concur, telling WIRED that the case is almost certainly part of a wider intelligence-gathering operation that began long before the administration invaded Minnesota in December 2025.
Dueling motions in the case over discovery of DHS’s surveillance program reveal that personnel with Homeland Security Investigations—one of ICE’s two components—repurposed funding mechanisms and investigative tools for serious criminal probes and turned them on domestic dissenters. Operation Keyhole, the HSI undercover program that bankrolled the Minnesota 15 prosecution, dates back to 2008. As of June 2026, it was underwriting a half dozen active undercover investigations in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.
Around 120 HSI agents, many drawn from specialized units across the country that have served as the leading edge of the administration’s militarized immigration enforcement operations, were assigned to the case—including 11 undercovers. They used highly invasive surveillance techniques, including the deployment of Reaper drones and Patriot Act tools usually restricted to money laundering and terrorism investigations. Undercover operatives also infiltrated churches in apparent violation of a court order.
The Minnesota 15 indictment stems from the Trump administration’s demand that the Justice Department “go big and go loud” to crack down on community response networks during last winter’s Operation Metro Surge. Twin Cities activists organized volunteers to monitor DHS agents and their vehicles using encrypted Signal groups, homebuilt vehicle databases, and a centralized dispatch system. Government prosecutors claim that this amounts to a criminal conspiracy to block immigration enforcement, unlawfully identify and stalk federal agents, and even assault them.
Their defense attorneys say the heavy charges filed against the Minnesota 15 don’t align with their alleged conduct. “This is the first time I’ve had a client who’s accused of a conspiracy and went on a speaking tour,” says Kevin Riach, who represents defendant Isaac Sant.
Peeking Through the Keyhole
An internal ICE document laying out the scope of Operation Puppet Master—which led to the indictment of the Minneapolis 15—ends by noting, “This case has also been accepted under CUC Op Keyhole.” According to prosecutors, Operation Keyhole is a long-standing program created by HSI’s Saint Paul office to fund “undercover activity”—primarily equipment purchases and personnel costs—in a region covering Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska. The program has funded at least 77 investigations into “narcotics trafficking, child sexual abuse, financial investigations, and counter-proliferation” since it started in December 2008.
The CUC prefix, per an internal 2008 DHS handbook unearthed by the independent media outlet Unicorn Riot, refers to Certified Undercover Operations, a formal designation with clearly defined oversight mechanisms, procedures, and reporting requirements. Operation Keyhole’s parameters are reviewed every six months by a committee comprising senior DOJ and DHS officials. As of June 2026, when it was last renewed, Keyhole funded six active investigations, including Project Whipple Shield, which was initiated in February to probe claims of assault, stalking, and doxing of DHS agents and other federal employees, and underpins the Minnesota 15 indictment.
At least 11 undercover agents working under Operation Keyhole infiltrated Twin Cities anti-ICE activists, participating in martial arts and know-your-rights trainings, marches, general strikes, and community meetings. They also infiltrated activists’ communications network for identifying possible undercover ICE vehicles and dispatching activists to tail them through the Twin Cities, and penetrated several activist group chats on Signal, transmitting their contents back to other HSI colleagues for analysis and eventual inclusion in the indictment.
Activist conferences as far away as Seattle, Michigan, Chicago, and New York City were placed under surveillance as part of the investigation, and HSI teams photographed and ran the license plates of every car parked in the lot of a meeting location or seen transporting activists. There is also drone footage from unarmed Customs and Border Protection Reaper drones of the activists moving around the Twin Cities area.
The undercovers were part of a much broader group of more than 50 HSI agents, including at least two dozen from HSI’s little-known Special Operations Group, that took part in the investigation and surveillance of the defendants, both digital and in-person. Feds with decades of experience on complex financial crimes, drug cartel investigations, human trafficking, and organized crime were pulled into the Minnesota 15 investigation.
Several of the Minnesota 15 case agents are from out of state and appear in court records for the prosecutions of anti-ICE activists in other cities. This includes Los Angeles–based HSI agents Robert Kurtz III, who specializes in financial fraud, and Ryan Ribner, who allegedly assaulted SEIU California president David Huerta at a June 2025 protest of an ICE enforcement operation, arrested him, and then claimed the then 58-year-old Huerta attacked federal law enforcement. (Huerta’s charges were dropped in July after videos contradicting Ribner’s account surfaced.) HSI records show Ribner was also involved in at least two prosecutions of Southern California residents who physically confronted ICE and Border Patrol agents last year.
Other agents from the conspiracy investigation have also been involved in recent high-profile incidents. Tim Gerber, the “team leader” of an HSI Special Operations Group squad, led the investigation of former CNN host Don Lemon for reporting on a protest at a Minneapolis Church where an ICE agent was a pastor. Fellow SOG agent Yue Her was present at the scene of a 2025 incident when Renee Good’s killer, ICE Special Response Team agent Johnathan Ross, was dragged by the car of a man he tried to apprehend.
“This operation does not seem in any way limited to Minnesota,” says Spencer Reynolds, a former DHS attorney and counterterrorism lawyer who now works at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “As we saw with the boots on the ground in the streets, with Greg Bovino leading CBP and Border Patrol special forces units on sweeping raids across the country, this is the intelligence and undercover investigative apparatus that is running in parallel to the door-kicking.”
Follow the Money
Mike German, a retired FBI agent who worked undercover domestic terrorism cases for years before becoming a sharp critic of post-9/11 federal law enforcement, likens the Minnesota 15 case to federal law enforcement’s long history of suppressing left-wing social movements, including the CIA’s Operation MH/Chaos, which surveilled the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War for evidence of foreign influence. One difference is the sheer scale—this time, it’s bigger.
According to a 2011 book by former CIA officer Frank Rafalko, the CIA secret investigation into suspected foreign influence on the New Left and anti-Vietnam War movement had 42 officers working the case at its peak. Court records show 119 HSI agents worked on the Minnesota 15 case alone.
“Broad monitoring of social media, communications, and financial transactions are used to link an ever increasing number of people as potential subjects of investigation and prosecution,” German says. “These are exactly the kind of intelligence activities J. Edgar Hoover adopted to suppress the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s.”
The key difference today, German says, is the vast pool of data available to the feds.
HSI used highly invasive measures—including scrutiny of wire transfers, PayPal reimbursements, and other financial transactions; forensic digital analysis of website traffic; 15 terabytes worth of infiltrated Signal chats; and information from a commercial data broker—to identify individuals under investigation.
After a local activist uploaded a license-plate search tool on Fly.io, a developer-focused public cloud platform, to an infiltrated Signal chat, HSI agents reviewed website DNS queries and Stripe data along with data purchased from a commercial broker. This gave HSI access to SSH session logs, outbound connection records, the Fly.io account’s signup IP, and a Stripe card fingerprint on an account that had never completed a payment. Agents fused that with Minnesota DVS records and commercial data from the Thomson-Reuters CLEAR platform to produce a driver’s license number, Social Security number summary, years of address history, phone numbers, property records, and jointly registered vehicles.
Documents concerning financial records requested through the Treasury Department’s 314(a) suspicious activity reporting program—created by the Patriot Act to enable speedy tracking of finances for terrorism and money-laundering investigations—show that the feds targeted records of 29 “subjects” during queries conducted on March 31, 2026. Emails viewed by WIRED between several HSI agents based in Los Angeles and Arizona show that batches of records were turned over pursuant to those inquiries, including some dealing with SEIU that a senior Minnesota HSI agent sent to a LA-based colleague to be filed “wherever these records are stored.”
HSI investigators used similar workarounds to warrants and grand jury subpoenas to obtain phone records for several journalists who covered Operation Metro Surge, as first reported by The Guardian. Court records show the feds used an administrative summons request reserved for violations of customs and taxation requirements, which does not fit the activity that made up the criminal charges filed by the Minnesota US attorney against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others.
The Minnesota 15 case is the clearest example yet of DHS pursuing the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on what have long been upheld as First Amendment–protected activities. But it’s unlikely alone.
Riach, the defense attorney, says the HSI reports show the agency is complicit in what he called “the new COINTELPRO.”
“What we saw during the immigration surges last year was that ICE is the administration’s paramilitary force, the projector of strength,” Riach says. “Here, we see that HSI are taking the FBI’s place as the investigative secret police—it’s the classic one-two punch of authoritarian regimes around the world.”
Ali Winston is an independent reporter covering criminal justice, privacy, and extremism. He has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York magazine and has reported documentaries for BBC Panorama and PBS Frontline. His work has earned several honors, including a George Polk Award for Local Reporting, an … Read More
WaPo: Democratic Midterms Wins Included Record Number Of Scientists, Doctors, Nurses, And Engineers
He goes on and on and on.
Harrison last appeared here in September 2026 when he forced the University of Texas to delete a web link to its LGBTQ history archive as a violation of new state anti-diversity laws.
In 2025, he got a professor fired after Christian student complained that she had mentioned LGBTQ rights during class.
In June 2026, Harrison unleashed a furious tweetstorm after the Texas city of Arlington posted about Pride Month.
Harrison appeared here in March 2025 when he went “undercover” at a University of Texas LGBTQ arts exhibit and posted dozens of outraged photos on his X account.
He first appeared here in 2022 when he introduced a bill making it legal to use the HOV lane while pregnant because “unborn babies” constitute the required additional person.
Harrison coordinated the HHS response to COVID during the first Trump administration. After being elected to the Texas legislature, he advocated against mask and vaccine mandates.
He goes on and on and on.
Moss appeared here in March 2023 when the Michigan Senate approved his bill providing statewide LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed his bill into law several days later.
According to researchers, the hacking only worked if phone owners were using outdated versions of iOS or Android.
“The New York Civil Liberties Union brought the lawsuit in 2024 on behalf of the Long Island Roller Rebels, a women’s roller derby league that welcomes transgender women.”
Courts have repeatedly ruled that aiming a middle finger at authorities is constitutionally protected free speech, but the right to bear finger guns is legally murkier.
https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/2115624707563069561/video/1
Notorious Florida cultist Anthony Sabatini has appeared here countless times.
Last week a watchdog group found that at least 40% of those 20,000 names aren’t on the voter rolls to begin with, much less that they are noncitizens. Over the weekend, Trump claimed that California has “millions” of noncitizen voters.
Schatzline, a Baptist pastor and Liberty University graduate, last appeared here when he led a training session at a Christian nationalist Texas megachurch about how there’s no such thing as the separation of church and state.
He appeared here last year when he gave an award to a private Texas Christian school for its “least-vaccinated status” among all Texas schools.
Also last year, he authored a bill that would allow private citizens to sue bookstores for selling “obscene books.”
He appeared here in March 2023 when he sponsored an anti-drag bill. Critics then quickly resurfaced a video showing him in drag while in college. Schatzline’s X and Instagram posts feature many notorious far-right figures.
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