Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Research on ALS, a debilitating condition also known as Lou Gehrig's disease that leads to muscle weakness and death, has found a link between exposure to pesticides and disease development. A new study led by ... Alison O'Neil provides insight into how a specific pesticide damages the nerve cells affected in ALS patients. The paper, published in the prestigious multidisciplinary journal PLOS One, is a follow up to another study O'Neil conducted on the pesticide known as cis-chlordane, which is banned but persists in the environment. "The goal of the study was to try to figure out why cis-chlordane is able to kill motor neurons," which are the nerve cells that die in ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), she said. "It turns out that [the pesticides] are affecting the mitochondria, which are the powerhouse of the cell," said O'Neil. Without mitochondria, the motor neurons weaken and die. This insight points to potential for more effective treatments for a disease when current therapies extend life by only a few months. "The implications of that finding helps us determine what kind of drugs people need," said O'Neil. Since there is clearly an environmental component in most cases of ALS, said Clackson, the research can help pinpoint what is contributing to the disease and potentially change disease trajectory. "If we see these early biomarkers, say pesticides in the blood, then we can perhaps treat them earlier and have a completely different outcome," he said.
Note: It's recently come out that the popular pesticide paraquat probably causes Parkinson's disease. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
Imet my best friend, Ursula Guidry, in college. Ursula died from cancer when her children were in preschool. We'll never know if her death was pure "bad luck," or whether it had something to do with growing up amidst plastics-manufacturing facilities. What we know for certain is that the toxic chemicals emitted by those facilities can ravage the human body. It's against that backdrop that I watch Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin work feverishly to dismantle the safeguards protecting people from toxic chemical exposures. The U.S. averages one chemical spill, fire, or explosion every three days, but Zeldin's attacks almost guarantee an increase. Every part of the petrochemical supply chain puts communities at risk, including the nation's millions of miles of pipelines. In Satartia, Miss., a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide used in oil drilling ruptured from heavy rains and floods, spewing carbon dioxide for hours. The carbon dioxide displaced oxygen in the air, so car engines stopped running and people could not escape. Dozens were hospitalized. Acute CO2 emissions cause heart malfunction and death by asphyxiation. Extreme flooding can also submerge Superfund toxic waste dumps. Nearly 1 in 4 Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site. Zeldin's plans are a gift to the fossil fuel and petrochemical corporations. For the rest of us, they are an explosive and hostile attack on our children, our families, and our best friends.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
A scientific study that regulators around the world relied on for decades to justify continued approval of glyphosate was quietly retracted last Friday over serious ethical issues including secret authorship by Monsanto employees – raising questions about the pesticide-approval process in the U.S. and globally. The April 2000 study by Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro – which concluded glyphosate does not pose a health risk to humans at typical exposure levels – was ghostwritten by Monsanto employees, and was "based solely on unpublished studies from Monsanto," wrote Martin van den Berg, co-editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. It also ignored "multiple other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies" that were available at the time. Some of the study authors may also have received undisclosed financial compensation from Monsanto, he noted. The retraction came years after internal corporate documents first revealed in 2017 that Monsanto employees were heavily involved in drafting the paper. "What took them so long to retract it?" asked Michael Hansen, senior scientist of advocacy at Consumer Reports. The ghostwritten paper is in the top 0.1% of citations among academic papers discussing glyphosate. The retraction exposes the flaws of a regulatory system that relies heavily on corporate research, and an academic publishing system that is often used as a tool for corporate product defense.
Note: Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the scope of Monsanto's media propaganda machine and the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and corruption in science.
The city of San Francisco filed the nation's first government lawsuit against some of the largest manufacturers of ultra-processed foods on Tuesday, asserting that the 10 corporations knew the products were harming Americans' health but continued to market them anyway. The corporations include cereal giants Kellogg, Post Holdings and General Mills, candy makers NestlĂ© USA and Mars Incorporated, the soda companies behind Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, as well as Kraft Heinz Company, ConAgra Brands and Mondelz International. The suit argues that the health care costs of treating related health conditions tied to consuming ultra-processed foods – upwards of $100 billion a year – have fallen on Americans, cities and states. "These companies created a public health crisis with the engineering and marketing of ultra-processed foods," San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said. "They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body." "We must be clear that this is not about consumers making better choices. Recent surveys show Americans want to avoid ultra-processed foods, but we are inundated by them. These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused," he added. Some 70 percent of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.
The United States is the world leader in regime change, toppling 35 foreign heads over the past 120 years, by one reckoning. Overthrowing another country's leader is a routine enough tactic that it has its own acronym among academics: FIRC, or foreign-imposed regime change. According to a tally by Alexander Downes, an associate professor and political scientist at George Washington University ... the United States carried out nearly a third of all of about 120 forced ousters of foreign leaders around the world between 1816 and 2011. About 20 of those 35 U.S.-backed regime changes were in Central and South America or the Caribbean. In some of those countries, the United States removed and replaced leaders again and again, with the concentration of someone kicking a vending machine to get the right candy bar to drop. In 1954 alone, for example, Washington ousted three Guatemalan leaders in succession. Globally, a third of all forced regime changes by all countries led to civil wars in the targeted nation within 10 years. Experts see warning signs for any attempt at regime change in Venezuela, a petrostate where misgovernment by socialist autocrat Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, coupled with international sanctions, have trashed the economy and created millions of refugees. The Trump administration has accused Maduro of being in league with drug traffickers, although the United States overstates Venezuela's role in drug smuggling.
Note: Learn about the 35 countries where the US has supported fascists, drug lords and terrorists.
The director of the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine division told agency staff in a memo that an internal review found that at least 10 children died "after and because of receiving" the Covid vaccine. The 3,000-word memo, obtained by NBC News, was written by Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. In it, Prasad claims that agency staff determined that "no fewer than 10" of 96 child deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, between 2021 and 2024 were "related" to Covid vaccination. He said the true numbers could be higher, accusing the agency of ignoring the safety concerns for years. "This is a profound revelation," Prasad wrote in the memo. "For the first time, the U.S. FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children." Prasad suggests that the child deaths were tied to myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. The memo uses [characterized] Covid vaccine requirements for schools and employers as "coercive," calling past agency decisions "dishonest," and arguing that vaccine regulation "may have harmed more children than we saved." At one point, Prasad instructs staff who disagree with his conclusions to resign. He also claimed the Biden administration dismissed early safety concerns, and criticized former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky for what he described as "dishonest and manipulative" public comments.
Note: Children were never at serious risk from the COVID virus. The death of even one child from this vaccine is unacceptable. Read our comprehensive, in-depth, and nuanced investigation into COVID vaccine injuries and deaths.
The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all. The news that Trump is going to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on America, justifying their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import 500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States. While president, Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious drug lords like JoaquĂn Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States. Hernandez was tolerated if not preferred by previous U.S. administrations from Obama through the first Trump White House, because he and his National Party were business friendly, anti-communist, and supported by the neoconservatives now gunning against Maduro.
Note: Beginning with the backing of an illegal and brutal military coup that egregiously violated human rights in 2009, the US government–under both Democratic and Republican administrations–supported Hernández for years, funneling aid to his military and police forces while turning a blind eye to his deep involvement in drug trafficking, election fraud, and human rights abuses. For more, read our Substack investigation into the dark truths behind the US War on Drugs.
Every time somebody flushes a toilet in Mannheim, they contribute to ecological shipping. Since March 2025, the German city's wastewater treatment plant has been feeding an experiment of global relevance: Transforming sewage gases into green methanol, a cleaner, nearly-carbon-neutral alternative to heavy fuel oil. The pilot, known as Mannheim 001, is the first full case study of how human waste can be captured, processed and converted into fuel powerful enough to propel cargo ships across oceans. "It's the first time the entire value chain – from sewage to finished methanol – has been demonstrated," says David Strittmatter, co-founder of Icodos, the start-up behind the project. Wastewater plants produce sludge – the thickened residue left after sewage is treated and cleaned. Mannheim's plant ferments this sludge in oxygen-free tanks, yielding biogas rich in methane and carbon dioxide, which is usually burned for heat or flared off. Icodos' innovation is to clean and upgrade that gas. "The sewage gas is dried, desulfurized, and then the carbon dioxide is separated from the rest," Strittmatter explains. Using renewable electricity, the captured carbon dioxide is then combined with hydrogen through a catalytic process to form methanol – a liquid fuel that can run ship engines. According to Icodos, scaling sewage-to-methanol worldwide could cover the entire fuel demand of the global shipping sector.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and healing the Earth.
November 30 marks the International Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare. Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides over southern Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, and parts of Cambodia. Nearly two-thirds was Agent Orange, later discovered to be contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) – a potent, long-lasting dioxin. TCDD is a known human carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor, linked to cancers, reproductive disorders, and birth defects that can span generations. By the letter of the CWC, Agent Orange is not classified as a "chemical weapon." If you ask a Vietnam veteran suffering from Parkinson's, cancer, heart disease, or any of the 19 types of conditions the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) associates with Agent Orange exposure, you'll hear a very different story. To them, it was every bit a weapon designed to destroy life and health. A 2018 Government Accountability Office report found that over 757,000 veterans – about one in four who served – were receiving benefits linked to Agent Orange. The 2022 PACT Act broadened that circle to veterans who served in other areas where Agent Orange was used. By 2024, more than 84,000 new Vietnam-era veterans were granted compensation, many due to exposure. Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, the toxic legacy of Agent Orange and other dioxins lingers on.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and toxic chemicals.
The World Health Organization's cancer research agency has classified atrazine – the second most widely used herbicide in the United States – as "probably carcinogenic to humans," adding to growing concerns about toxic exposures in the nation's farm belt. The evaluation means the first and second most widely used herbicides in the U.S. – glyphosate and atrazine – are now both considered probable human carcinogens by the world's leading independent cancer-hazard authority. Atrazine is banned in the European Union and other countries due to health and environmental concerns, but remains widely used in the U.S., where it is a common contaminant in drinking water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Despite these concerns, U.S. regulators allow its continued use. The new assessment by the WHO's cancer agency comes 10 years after the agency's landmark finding that glyphosate, the world's most heavily used herbicide, is also "probably carcinogenic to humans." Both atrazine and glyphosate are also endocrine disruptors, meaning they can disrupt key hormone systems that regulate growth, development and metabolism. Both herbicides are also largely produced by companies outside the United States. Syngenta, owned by ChemChina, produces most of the atrazine used in the U.S., while Bayer, based in Germany, is the dominant producer of glyphosate. The cancer designation for atrazine comes amid reports of rising cancer rates across the U.S. Corn Belt.
Note: It's recently come out that the popular pesticide paraquat probably causes Parkinson's disease. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will soon allow erotic and sexually explicit interactions for adult users. Erotic features aren't just another product update; they deepen emotional dependency and encourage people to treat AI companions as partners rather than tools. This shift opens the door to what I call "intimate advertising" – a powerful new form of manipulation in which tech companies shape human desire and manipulate users for profit. AI has continual access to our anxieties, frustrations, desires, and secrets. It can understand how our minds work and detect when we are most vulnerable – and, therefore, most persuadable. What is particularly troubling is that this new form of advertising will come from entities that many will consider friends and life advisors. AI companion apps have been downloaded over 220 million times worldwide and are used regularly by over half of US teens. With intimate advertising, personal companionship becomes inseparable from businesses' persuasion techniques. A system designed to comfort you can easily be repurposed to sell to you. The deeper AI companions embed themselves in our emotional lives, the more vital it becomes to draw a clear line between care and commerce. Before Big Tech turns intimacy into its most profitable advertising channel yet, we must press regulators to enforce the idea there are limits on how far we are willing to let AI into our private lives.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy.
Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison's purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world's second-richest individual. The world's seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle. Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform's security and operations, giving the world's second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world's seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of ... governments.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on financial inequality and media manipulation.
Military aviation accidents are spiking. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D- Mass.) office reported this week, the rate of severe accidents per 100,000 flight hours, was a staggering 55% higher than it was in 2020. Her office said mishaps cost the military $9.4 billion, killed 90 service members and DoD civilian employees, and destroyed 89 aircraft between 2020 to 2024. The Air Force lost 47 airmen to "preventable mishaps" in 2024 alone. The U.S. continues to utilize aircraft with known safety issues or are otherwise prone to accidents, like the V-22 Osprey, whose gearbox and clutch failures can cause crashes. Dan Grazier, director of the Stimson Center's National Security Reform Program, told RS that the lack of flight crew experience is a problem. "The total number of flight hours U.S. military pilots receive has been abysmal for years. Pilots in all branches simply don't fly often enough to even maintain their flying skills, to say nothing of improving them," he said. This is often because aircraft are not ready to fly. "One of the main reasons behind the lack of flying time, is the simple fact that modern military aircraft are excessively complex machines that don't work as often as the services need them to do," Grazier told RS. He said that popular aircraft, like the F-35, often are not mission capable. "Pentagon officials can ... insist on simpler aircraft with high readiness rates as a key performance parameter."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
As more details come to light about Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire sex trafficker is increasingly suspected of having used his wealth, influence, and connections to shape the way political power is used, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. If true, what kind of foreign policy did he favor and what goals did he hope to achieve? Over the years, Epstein exchanged emails with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak opposing the Iran nuclear deal and favoring military action against Syria; expressed concern about Israel's intensifying turn away from the two-state solution; and counseled Donald Trump adviser ... Steve Bannon on how the Trump administration could best take on this leading global rival of the United States. The country that featured most heavily in Epstein's private discussions contained in the files wasn't Israel; it was China. It was in his private chats with the virulently anti-China Bannon that the country most often came up, with Epstein often framing China as a serious threat that had to be defeated. Epstein bounced between certainty that China was falling apart and warnings that it was a formidable foe. China is "a unified nationalist economic country" whose forty-year-long strategy is "right on track," Epstein told Bannon in July 2018. "My meeting the other day was around how these peasants looked into their own systems, found the NSA cybertools that we had inserted and then used them against us interests," Epstein wrote [in another exchange].
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war and Jeffrey Epstein.
Children who spend more time on mobile phones, TVs, and video games may face a higher risk of developing attention problems as they grow, according to a first-of-its kind, large-scale study. The findings, recently published in Translational Psychiatry ... indicate a link between longer screen time and more severe symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Researchers ... also found measurable, though subtle, brain abnormalities among heavy screen users. Longer screen time at ages 9–10 predicted higher ADHD symptoms two years later. Higher screen time was linked to a smaller cortex, the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher-level thinking and attention. Children with more screen time at the outset had a smaller right putamen, a region involved in language learning, addiction, and reward processing. Heavier screen use after two years was tied to slightly thinner development in three other cortical regions that support important cognitive functions, such as attention, working memory, and language processing. Screen use has increased worldwide among children and adolescents, with more than one-third of U.S. parents of a child under 12 reporting their children began interacting with a smartphone before the age of 5. While digital devices are promoted as essential tools for school and social connection, their excessive use has been tied to disrupted sleep, reduced physical activity and negative impacts on mental health.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and mental health.
The first time Mike Martin held an AK-47 was after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. "My faith tradition is rooted in peace and non-violence," he says. Martin took the AK-47 to a nearby blacksmith in Colorado Springs, dismantled it and forged the metal into a shovel and a rake. This moment sparked the beginning of RAWtools (War spelled backwards), a nonprofit Martin now runs full-time, and a movement spanning four states with affiliates in Buffalo, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and Asheville, North Carolina. Since its humble beginnings 14 years ago, RAWtools has destroyed and repurposed more than 6,000 guns, forging them into garden tools and art. Martin now carries the trigger of the first Kalashnikovs he destroyed on a keyring. For Martin, the physical act of destroying a gun can be healing, but often it's just the beginning of a bigger conversation. "The dominant culture often tells us that we can't escape the violence, so we should therefore join the violence," he says. "Instead, this counter-story of turning swords into plows insists that violence is the problem, not the solution." Anybody can fill out a form on the RAWtools website, or respond to the buyback program "Guns to Gardens," and arrange to donate their gun. Donors often want to be involved in transforming the weapon into a force for good. RAWtools regularly holds events, especially in front of churches and synagogues, not only to collect and transform guns, but to start conversations.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing the war machine.
During the Cold War, the first implants showing that we could control animal minds sparked panic. The C.I.A. had its own clandestine experimental mind-control program. People warned of brain warfare. Those fears [are] back, along with a conversation about what it means to have freedom of thought at a time when technology is literally being implanted in our brains. Brain computer interface, or B.C.I. ... are very small devices that go right on the surface of your brain, where they can pick up neural activity. The data is transmitted via Bluetooth to a computer program, which decodes the information. In a sense, they're hooked up to an artificial intelligence. So the neural network inside your mind communicates with a neural network outside. And through that, we are able to reconstruct people's intentions. For people with degenerative diseases, or who are paralyzed, or who otherwise have lost important abilities, these implants have been totally revolutionary. These patients can move their hands, type and in some cases, speak again. Optogenetics, a technique for turning isolated neurons on and off, has been used to implant false memories in mice, raising the possibility that, in the distant future, something similar could be done in humans. Neuroprivacy is the idea that we should have to give consent to anyone who wants access to our innermost selves. But there's a question: Does neuroprivacy apply only to my unspoken thoughts? Or does it apply to the electrical activity in my brain?
Note: Read about the Pentagon's plans to use our brains as warfare, describing how the human body is war's next domain. Learn more about biotech dangers. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and microchip implants.
The White House under Gerald Ford tried to block a landmark Senate report that disclosed the CIA's role in assassination attempts against foreign leaders and ultimately led to a radical overhaul in how the agency was held to account, documents released to mark the 50th anniversary of the report's publication reveal. The documents, dating from 1975, were posted on Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research group, as it sought to highlight the report's significance amid conjecture that Donald Trump may have authorized the agency to assassinate Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, amid a massive US military build-up against the country. Among the documents posted by the National Security Archive is a "secret/sensitive" options paper addressed to Dick Cheney, then chief of staff to Ford, that included a recommendation of outright opposition to publication of the report. Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the National Security Archive, said highlighting the Church report's historical significance had become more urgent. "Fifty years after the scandal of the revelations of the Church committee report, we've come a long way in the wrong direction, where we have US presidents who now seem to feel they can openly discuss assassination plots against foreign leaders," he said. At least 83 people have been killed in 21 US drone strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since early September.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption.
Fifty years ago today, a special Senate Committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church lifted the veil of secrecy on the clandestine efforts of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to target specific foreign leaders for assassination. The Church Committee overcame intense pressure from the Gerald Ford White House to withhold publication of the report, which exposed CIA operations to "neutralize" leaders such as Fidel Castro in Cuba, Patrice Lumumba in Congo, and General Rene Schneider in Chile. "The evidence establishes that the United States was implicated in several assassination plots," states the introduction of the 285-page report, officially titled Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. "The Committee believes that, short of war, assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality. It should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy." To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee report, the National Security Archive is posting a small selection of documents on efforts by the Ford Administration to keep the report secret. Public outrage forced the CIA and the White House to retreat on the use of assassination as a tool of covert operations. In response to the report, on February 18, 1976, President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which stated: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on assassinations and intelligence agency corruption.
2025 has given Americans plenty to protest about. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers–including U.S. Border Patrol agents–were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car. Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate. Via public records requests, EFF obtained datasets representing more than 12 million searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. The data shows that agencies logged hundreds of searches related to the 50501 protests in February, the Hands Off protests in April, the No Kings protests in June and October, and other protests in between. Some agencies have adopted policies that prohibit using ALPRs for monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet many officers probed the nationwide network with terms like "protest" without articulating an actual crime under investigation.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.