In keeping with the FAFO world we seem to be living in, just how far down the drain does this polished turd have to take our country before people call it enough. Remove the poison that is maga. Vote out these scum bags who enable him.
Hi everyone. I found this to be a hopeful sign. We need to excise, like an infection, the poison that has taken over our country’s leadership and too many of our citizens. And, in keeping with that, since they are a bunch of juvenile delinquents, perhaps the best person for the job is a pediatrician?
Wow. A group that initially included no Jews hatched a plan to make support for Palestine a crime. The US is following their playbook and supporting the mass killing & removal of Palestinians.Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement http://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u…
Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsProposed rule change could pave way for president to fire economists whose figures prove politically inconvenientwww.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…
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Inch by inch, day by day, and legal battle after legal battle, trans Montanans are dismantling the unconstitutional laws proposed by Republicans meant to destroy trans lives, and indeed, trans life itself.
Last week, they were able to let out a sigh of relief—for now. A Montana judge issued a preliminary injunction on HB 121, which would ban trans and intersex people from using gender-separated public facilities, such as bathrooms or changing rooms, that differ from their sex assigned at birth.
This decision follows a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the law from earlier this year, instituted after legal rights groups like the ACLU challenged it in court for violating Montanans’ right to privacy under the state constitution. A preliminary injunction is a more steadfast barrier—it means the law won’t take effect until after legal proceedings conclude, if ever.
The Attorney General for the State of Montana, like many anti-trans actors, is defending HB 121 using the thinly-veiled premise of “protecting women” from sexual violence. But the injunction filings indicate that the judiciary isn’t buying it.
“The State has not shown even a rational basis for the Act,” wrote Judge Shane A. Vannatta, who oversees a Montana District Court. “The State does not provide evidence of trans female offenses against [cis] women or evidence of offenses being committed in covered entities to support the necessity of immediate implementation of the Act.”
Instead, the court found that anti-trans bathroom bans do not protect women from harm. It only serves to stoke violence against trans women and cis women alike—everyone’s gender and sex becomes subject to public debate when these laws are put in place.
“Each individual observed walking into a restroom of a covered entity does directly and indirectly disclose that individual’s transgender or intersex identity, anatomy, and genetics,” the filing said. “All Montanans regardless of gender […] will not be subject to the prying eyes of others or to governmental snooping or regulation.”
Vannatta further notes that it is already illegal for people of any gender or sex to commit a sex crime, and that there is “no evidence” to support the notion that trans or intersex people “have a predisposition toward such offenses.”
He added that the state’s purported concerns were “disingenuous” and purely “conjecture.”
In reality, trans women—especially those of color—are more likely than any other demographic to be the victims of violent crime. And by using the law to force trans people to out themselves every time they use a public restroom, or to embolden self-deputized gender police, so-called “trans bathroom bans” create a greater risk of violence for everyone. There are countless stories of cis and trans people alike being accosted in bathrooms precisely because of the anti-trans panic these policies create.
The filing further concluded that trans women have been relentlessly targeted by the state government and are in dire need of protection. “Transgender Montanans have been subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment and have been relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process,” Vannatta noted.
The fight against HB 121 is not over, but State Representative Zooey Zephyr—who would be legally forced into the men’s room under the bill her colleagues passed—says she is hopeful.
“The Montana Supreme Court has been clear: every law that targets the trans community is a clear invasion by the government into the privacy of transgender people,” she told Erin in the Morning. “These laws are driven by animus against the community. I expect this law—like all laws driven by the anti-trans fervor—to be struck down by Montana’s courts.”
(Editor’s Note: For transparency, Erin in the Morning founder Erin Reed is the loving wife to the aforementioned Rep. Zooey Zephyr.)
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz criticized President Donald Trump during an interview with MSNBC host Jen Psaki, stressing just why the people who elected Trump to run the country “like a business” were completely misguided.
Walz particularly lamented the impacts of Trump’s ongoing trade war with Canada and Mexico, noting that Trump has a history of scuttling deals and “a proven track record of being an absolute failure.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks at the Al Udeid Air Base, Thursday, May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service, officials said Thursday.
A senior defense official laid out what could be a complicated and lengthy new process aimed at fulfilling President Donald Trump’s directive to remove transgender service members from the U.S. military.
The new order to commanders relies on routine annual health checks that service members are required to undergo. Another defense official said the Defense Department has scrapped — for now — plans to go through troops’ health records to identify those with gender dysphoria.
Far Right Federal Judge Rules Gay And Trans People Can Be Discriminated Against In Workplaces
Judge Kacsmaryk, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas, ruled on the EEOC’s treatment of Title VII employment discrimination claims on gay and trans people.
On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—a far-right federal judge in the Northern District of Texas with a record of aligning with the GOP’s most extreme legal positions—issued a ruling declaring that Title VII no longer protects LGBTQ+ people from workplace discrimination. The decision directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling inBostock v. Clayton County, which held that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is, by definition, sex discrimination. Kacsmaryk’s ruling marks one of the most alarming judicial rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights in recent memory—and sets up a direct legal challenge to one of the foundational civil rights protections for queer and trans people in the United States.
Montana Court Issues Final Blow to Anti-Trans Health Care Law
A judge found that the law’s premise is not scientific, but “political and ideological.”
A state judge in Montana has permanently struck down SB 99, a law which sought to ban gender-affirming care for Montana youth under age 18.
The court decision is a welcome reprieve for young trans Montanans, who have had the threat of forced detransition hanging over their heads since 2023. The bill would have threatened the licensure of physicians who provided trans-affirming care to this age group and prevented state funds from being used for gender-affirming surgeries, hormones, puberty blockers, and “social transitioning” measures for trans youth. It also would have allowed parents of trans kids to sue medical professionals for providing their children with the proper care.
But these kinds of laws, which are being passed around the country, are highly unscientific. They try to erase the biological reality of gender and sexual diversity to further a far-right gender ideology. As the court ruling declared, “the State’s interest is actually a political and ideological one: ensuring minors in Montana are never provided treatment to address” their gender dysphoria.
“In other words, the State’s interest is actually blocking transgender expression.”
1) The court found overwhelming evidence backing the benefits of gender-affirming care for trans people.
Palantir employees, including CEO Alex Karp, made millions in campaign donations in 2024. In April, the company won a $30 million contract to develop software to help ICE manage deportations. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
In early April, hundreds of military and tech companies exhibited their products at the Border Security Expo, which brought “government leaders, law enforcement officials, and industry innovators” together. During the two-day event in Phoenix, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said he would like ICE to operate more like a business: “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” He added that “the badge and guns” should do “the badge-and-gun stuff, everything else, let’s contract out.”
The event illustrates how companies are rushing to secure government contracts as the Trump administration ramps up its spending on ICE to reach its deportation goals. The House approved a spending bill in early May that sets aside $175 billion for immigration enforcement – about 22 times ICE’s annual budget – and includes $45 billion for detention, $14.4 billion for transportation and removal operations and $8 billion for hiring new ICE staff. The Trump administration ordered DHS to hire an additional 20,000 ICE officers.
OpenSecrets previously reported on the private prisons and air carriers that are poised to benefit from President Donald Trump’s plans to increase deportation. This final article in the series focuses on other for-profit companies benefiting from deportations.
New contracts
In April, ICE awarded software company Palantir Technologies a $29.8 millioncontract for developing ImmigrationOS, a tool to help ICE with identifying and prioritizing the deportations of individuals who are considered a risk, such as violent criminals; tracking who is self-deporting; and managing cases from the individual’s entry through detention, hearing and deportation. Palantir is expected to provide a prototype of the ImmigrationOS tool by Sept. 25. The tool is an extension of systems that Palantir has already delivered as part of its almost $128 million contract signed in 2022.
Deployed Resources, an emergency management company that has provided mobile restrooms, sinks and tents to music festivals such as Lollapalooza and emergency relief following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Sandy, has been awarded over $4 billion in government contracts to build and operate border tents since 2016, according to ProPublica. The company earned a $3 billion contract with ICE in 2022 for running tent detention facilities around the border. On April 11, ProPublica reported that ICE awarded a new contract worth up to $3.8 billion to Deployed Resources. On April 17, however, the billion-dollar contract was canceled for reasons unknown. The next day, ICE submitted a $5 million proposal for Deployed Resources to deliver unarmed guard services for 30 days at an ICE facility in El Paso, Texas. ProPublica also revealed that ICE has housed detainees at a tent facility in El Paso operated by Deployed Resources since March. The facility was previously used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but the Trump administration used the Department of Defense to award Deployed Resources an unannounced $140 million contract to run the site for ICE, citing the declaration of an emergency at the southern border. The facility can house up to 1,000 detainees, and ICE started transferring detainees on March 10, according to ProPublica.
Axon Enterprise, a company that develops technology and weapons for public safety, law enforcement and the military, took part in the Border Expo. The company was awarded a year-long $5.1 million contract on March 10 to deliver body cams and equipment. A day later, the company was awarded a $22,376 contract to deliver tasers that have been used specifically in deportations. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division bought $2.6 million worth of Axon tasers in 2020 and 2021.
Parsons Government Services, a “technology provider,” was also at the Border Expo. The company was awarded a contract worth up to $8.9 million for COVID-19 testing supplies in February, as well as an $87,467 contract in March and a $118,758 contract in April with ICE, both to provide “mobile biometric collection devices in support of the biometric identification transnational migration alert program.” The company is already wrapping up a one-year, $4.2 million contract for the transportation and guard services of ICE detainees in Newark.
General Dynamics, a weapons company, was awarded new $101,034 and $80,050 contracts in March to purchase non-lethal ammunition for training purposes for ICE’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs.
Sig Sauer Inc., a firearms company, was awarded more than $200,000 worth of contracts with ICE for firearms and firearm accessories in the first months of 2025: $57,163 in February, and $19,824, $35,106 and $90,854 contracts in April.
Paragon Professional Services, was awarded a $1.1 million contract on April 1 for transporting people who are detained by ICE in the New York City area and a $458,400 month-long contract to provide transportation of ICE detainees in Baltimore on April 17.
Follow the money
Palantir spent $5.8 million on lobbying the federal government in 2024. The company’s employees also made almost $5 million in campaign contributions during the 2024 elections. The largest contributions included $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc, $1 million to MAGA Inc and $344,914 to the Republican National Committee. Palantir’s CEO, Alexander Karp, contributed to Democratic as well as Republican candidates during the 2024 elections. In 2023, Karp contributed $163,800 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $154,920 to their Republican counterparts. Karp increased his contributions to the Republican Party after Trump was elected: On Dec. 12, 2024, Karp contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-supporting super PAC. In the first months of 2025, Karp contributed $360,000 to Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) Grow the Majority PAC and a combined $310,100 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Palantir also spent $170,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025.
Even though the company has no lobbying history, Deployed Resources has hired more than a dozen former government insiders, according to ProPublica, including some high-ranking ICE officials. Marlen Pineiro joined Deployed recently, after working for the Department of Homeland Security in Central America developing policies with Panama, and a decade as a senior official at ICE, according to her LinkedIn profile. A month after Trump’s victory, former ICE field office director Sean Ervin announced he was joining Deployed Resources as a senior adviser for strategic initiatives.
Axon Enterprise contributed to both the Democratic and Republican parties. The CEO, Patrick Smith, donated $25,000 to the Scalise Leadership Fund of 2024, a joint fundraising committee run by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). James Norton, the vice president of the company, contributed several thousand dollars to Republicans in the past two years. Axon Enterprise spent $1.5 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the first quarter of 2025, a $180,000 increase compared to Q1 2024. One of Axon’s lobbyists, Helen Tolar, also served as a transition advisor to Doug Collins, Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs.
Employees and PACs related to Parsons Government Services’ mother corporation, Parsons Corporation, contributed $592,053 in the 2024 elections, with $27,715 to Kamala Harris and $13,076 to Donald Trump. The company spent $950,000 on lobbying in 2024, mostly on defense issues. In the first quarter of 2025, the company ramped up its lobbying to $590,000, a $370,000 increase from the same quarter in 2024. Parsons Corporation has its own PAC, which spent $247,600 on Republican federal candidates in the 2024 elections, and $151,250 on Democratic candidates.
Sig Sauer Inc.’s PAC contributed $87,715 in the 2024 elections, mostly to Republican candidates. The company’s CEO, Ron Cohen, contributed $25,000 in 2024 to Preserve America, a super PAC supporting Donald Trump. The company spent $530,000 on lobbying in 2024 and $260,000 in the first quarter of 2025, a $180,000 increase from the first quarter in 2024. It did not lobby on specific bills in 2024.
General Dynamics contributed $3.4 million in the election, both to Republicans as well as Democrats. The company also spent $12.2 million on lobbying in 2024, mostly regarding defense issues. It spent $3.3 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, a $340,000 increase from the previous year.
Paragon Professional Services LLC is a subsidiary of Bering Straits Assn., which contributed $15,305 in the 2024 elections, both on Democratic as well as Republican candidates. The company lobbied to the tune of $280,000 in 2024, mostly on the Coast Guard Authorization Act and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. It has spent $60,000 on lobbying in 2025 so far. CEO Gail Schubert spent several thousand dollars on Republican candidates in Alaska.
Why does it matter?
(snip-It Matters! MORE on the page; click through above on the article headline.)
As the myth busting website Snopes points out, “contrary to popular belief, Congressional members do not receive free health care.” Instead, they choose a gold-level Obamacare policy and receive federal subsidies that cover 72 percent of the cost of the premiums.
In short, Snopes reports that members of Congress and staff “pay approximately 28 percent of their annual healthcare premiums through pre-tax payroll deductions.” They also have access to “free or low-cost care” through the Office of the Attending Physician as well as “free medical outpatient care at military facilities” in the D.C. area.
That’s a pretty good deal, especially given that the average 21-year-old making $25,000 a year would be charged $282 per month for a silver Obamacare plan, and pay about half of that, or $142, thanks to subsidies, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The biggest problem with this logic is that it's fundamentally regressive. Following it would mean democrats would not have been supportive of interracial marriage until the late 1990's, over 30 years after the Loving decision by SCOTUS legalized it.
Leave it to the Republicans to mess up sports. They don’t like anybody, and they don’t want anybody to be happy. The word in question is a word: it’s in the dictionary, is used by people, and it makes sense in a sentence. What a story! Peace and good spelling to all. ☮
In an age of division where authoritarianism is seeping into every corner of American discourse, the Spelling Bee offers up a reminder of what America should truly be
We’re living through turbulent times, to say the least. Authoritarianism and fascism threaten the United States. The conspiracy thinking, paranoia and manufactured outrage so characteristic of QAnon and the big lie about the 2020 election have colonized our political discourse like a fungus. Even the National Spelling Bee, a cultural institution which will be celebrating its centennial this year and which is generally exempted from the far right’s paranoid vitriol, hasn’t been immune. Earlier this year, a foofaraw erupted when right-wing outlets reported on the acceptance of “womyn” as an alternate spelling of “women” in the regional-level wordlist which the National Spelling Bee issues each year.
The reason “womyn” was included in the wordlist wasn’t some shadowy feminist plot by the Bee’s organizers. The competition simply allows any word in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary, unless it is obsolete. “Womyn” is in the dictionary, along with tens of thousands of other words, such as “pointless”, “culture” and “war”.
With zero self-awareness, an anti-trans podcast host raged that the Bee’s uncontroversial decision to allow “womyn” was a manifestation of “fabricated issues” and “totally manufactured outrage.” On Fox News, she snarled, “How lucky are we to live in the United States of America, where the spelling of women, never mind the definition, has become a national debate.” Samantha Poetter-Parshall, a Kansas state representative, joined in the criticism, calling the inclusion of womyn an instance of “crazy indoctrination of our children.” A parent quoted in reportage on the faux scandal shared Poetter-Parshall’s concern, asserting, “This is supposed to be about spelling and language, not ideology.”
George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, 1984, and the essay Politics and the English Language, would be startled to hear such a complaint. Orwell deeply understood the intimate relationship between language, thought, and politics. He keenly observed how “in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible … Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”
In our time, imprisoning and attempting to deport legal residents of the US for their political views and sending legal residents and gay people fleeing persecution in Venezuela – and potentially US citizens – to prisons in El Salvador where torture is widespread based on flimsy evidence from disgraced police officers is called “securing our homeland”. The announcement of economically ruinous tariffs which have wiped trillions off the stock market is called “liberation day.” Orwell believed that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration.” To combat the creep of Orwellian language, he argued that we should “recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end,” aiming to always use “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”.
In its emphasis on linguistic precision and its heartfelt delight in words, the National Spelling Bee is already political in Orwell’s sense. The Bee also has an implicit politics of appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Though most spellers are American, the competition has an international flavor: it regularly features participants from Ghana, Canada, Jamaica, South Korea, China, and Nigeria, and spelling bees have sprung up in countries like Zimbabwe too. The welcome which the Bee extends to logophiles from all over the world inculcates in kids an appreciation of other cultures and promotes a cosmopolitan worldview. Spellers study words from Latin, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German; this cultivates their love of linguistic variety. What’s more, the fact that the South Asian community regularly dominates the upper echelons of the competition reaffirms the importance of immigration to our society.
These days, even if many Americans reject the Trump regime’s ugly attitudes and practices, xenophobia and racism are rampant, hearkening back to the bad old days of the Know-Nothing Party and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The US government has become increasingly hostile to international travelers: there have been a spate of horrific stories of tourists, visitors, and legal residents from Germany, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere who have done nothing wrong being arrested, detained, and held for weeks by Ice, or being refused entry to the US and deported. In such a context, the National Spelling Bee’s steadfast commitment to multiculturalism is all the more essential.
Despite its unfortunate Covid-induced cancellation in 2020 and some turbulence from rule changes and regional sponsor attrition in 2021 and 2022, the National Spelling Bee has been a relative constant for students in an age of extreme dislocation and upheaval. In these politically polarized times, it offers Americans an opportunity for joy and collective uplift. It celebrates education, attention, focus, dedication, and quiet, patient effort. It teaches students grit, discipline, and linguistics. It reminds us of the importance of the human in an age of AI. It reinforces the importance of good sportsmanship and fair play. It promotes respect and friendship towards humanity at large. It invites us to honor and remember the values that ought to unite us all. The National Spelling Bee is a reminder of what America has been – and what it must continue to be.
Experts say president’s dismantling of world order, rapport with Netanyahu and choice of Pentagon chief benefiting IS
Donald Trump has a long and colorful history with the Islamic State. He incorrectly blamed the founding of IS on his predecessor, said its infamous leader “died like a dog” while announcing his assassination, and rallied an international coalition that successfully ended its so-called caliphate.
So far, in his second presidency, his administration has much less to do with IS. But the terror group has still benefited from him.
Experts tell the Guardian that IS is capitalizing on Trump’s dismantling of the international order, his affinity for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, and most of all – his most controversial cabinet appointment – in its recruitment propaganda.
In the US, IS supporters consuming that online messaging have become bona fide security threats in recent months, with a string of incidents dating back to before the presidential election.
On New Year’s Day in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a 13-year veteran of the US army, used a truck to kill fourteen partygoers in the name of IS. Earlier in May, Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, an ex-national guardsman, was arrested and charged with plotting a mass shooting at a military base near Detroit, on behalf of the group.
“The January 1 New Orleans attack and subsequent IS-linked arrests in the country demonstrate the continued influence the organization can project into the US,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, who has tracked the terrorist group for several years.
“These incidents also highlight how IS leverages the online space through social media and messaging applications to spread its ideology and inspire supporters to plot attacks.”
Part of that, as Webber explained, was persistently defining the US as a “crusader” state – the name jihadists have long used for all western countries.
But secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s tattoos, referential to those pan-European medieval invaders, have fueled IS propaganda dispersed on Rocket.Chat – a recruitment platform the terror group uses to communicate with its followers and recruits.
An April IS-article, titled Clear Evidence in Ink, zeroed in on Hegseth’s ink, which features crosses associated with crusaders and another on his arm that reads “infidel” or “non-believer” in Arabic.
The term also became better known among war on terror soldiers, who, like Hegseth, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a pejorative for themselves.
“This takes us back to the media stir just days ago when the American ‘crusader’ secretary of defense published photos of himself with the word ‘kafir’ written on his arm in Arabic, alongside other explicit phrases glorifying the crusades!” said the IS propaganda, amid a backdrop of Hegseth’s tattooed chest and arms.
“Events like these, orchestrated by Allah’s wisdom, serve as warnings and clear evidence of the true nature of the war waged by Jews and Christians against us – it is a deeply rooted religious war.”
On Rocket.Chat, pro-IS users fervently responded.
“What more do you want as proof that they want to wipe us all together?” wrote one user underneath an image of Hegseth’s tattoos.
Other fodder tapped for its digital propaganda, is Trump’s associations with Netanyahu and the IDF’s continued flattening of Gaza, which several experts and governments have called a modern-day genocide.
IS images and articles call for “revenge for the Muslims in Gaza” and the war, which has become one of its most valuable recruitment topics.
IS also sees the stream of international tariffs unleashed by the Trump administration as a sign the west and its power structures are unravelling. As another IS article described how “the reckless Trump has repeatedly claimed victory over jihad, yet now he is preoccupied with fighting German cars and Chinese goods” and stoking “commercial wars” that would lead to the demise of “kafir nations”.
Combinations of these topics are mainstay recruitment hooks that IS and its predecessor organization, al-Qaida, have used for years attracting men into its ranks. IS is in a rebuilding stage as Syria – once a base for its most successful era – has vowed to banish the group and other jihadist elements from operating within its borders, as the nascent government seeks rapprochement with the US.
But other IS chapters have shown they are attracting Americans, foreigners, and locals to their cause, by peddling anti-US messaging.
“Trump and the US have been monitored by [IS-Khorasan] Pashto, Urdu and Farsi channels specifically referring to developments in Syria and Afghanistan,” said Riccardo Valle, the director of research at the Islamabad-based publication the Khorasan Diary and an expert on the group’s Afghan wing.
“[IS-K] continue to foster the idea that there is no difference between Afghanistan and Syria trajectories and that both are puppets in the hands of the US, Russia, and China.”
The IS-K branch has shown its reach inside the US, too. An Afghan national and a co-conspirator were arrested in October, after the FBI disrupted an IS-K sponsored plot to attack a mass gathering on election day.
The justice department also described in 2024 court documents that IS-Somalia, an upstart branch which has become the intense focus of Pentagon airstrikes, had attracted an American foreign fighter who was in contact with their recruiters.
“IS-Somalia is becoming more internationally ambitious in its recruitment, associated online propaganda, and incitement efforts,” Webber said. “Pro-IS Somalia outlets are creating media content focused on US policy in the region and support for governments in the area.”
Scottie's Playtime 