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Green Groups Sue Trump EPA for Approving Toxic Semiconductor Chemicals Amid AI Data Center Boom
“The rush to build more and more data centers is causing harm far beyond the data centers themselves."
Aug 14, 2026
A trio of green groups on Friday sued the US Environmental Protection Agency over its approval of two new chemicals for semiconductor manufacturing, arguing that the EPA allowed potentially dangerous substances to be sold despite acknowledging significant gaps in its understanding of their health risks.
CHIPS Communities United and the Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco challenging the approvals. The groups contend that the EPA violated the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) by permitting the chemicals’ use without adequately assessing their risks to employees in semiconductor plants and the communities in which they are located.
According to Earthjustice, the EPA identified potential hazards including cancer, neurological damage, and even sudden death, but also acknowledged that it lacked sufficient information to determine the full extent of those risks. The names of the chemicals are redacted in the complaint—in which they are identified by their EPA premanufacture notice numbers, P-26-0029 and P-26-0045—because the agency has designated their identities as confidential business information.
“The Trump administration is rushing dangerous chemicals to market without the review or the protection that the law requires,” Earthjustice senior attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Here, EPA admits that it has not evaluated the full extent of these chemicals’ health risks, yet it is still sending them into communities across the country and leaving the public to discover their effects one doctor’s visit at a time.”
CHIPS Communities United coalition director Judith Barish said: “Neighbors and workers are exposed to toxic chemicals in semiconductor factories. Over decades, workers in chip [factories] have been harmed by workplace exposure and residents of nearby communities have been impacted by hazardous air or water that is contaminated by these chemicals."
"We call on the EPA to stop approving chemicals that can harm public health without understanding the risks," Barish added.
As Earthjustice noted:
Semiconductor manufacturing is a major ongoing source of [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances], a large class of toxic “forever chemicals,” along with other industrial manufacturing sources. PFAS don’t easily break down and can persist in our bodies and the environment for decades or more. Semiconductors are also foundational hardware for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, affecting many communities in addition to those surrounding the massive polluting chip factories.
The groups' lawsuit comes over a month after the EPA under President Donald Trump—who campaigned on what critics say was a largely empty promise to "make America healthy again"—and agency Administrator Lee Zeldin approved a fifth “forever chemical” pesticide pushed by industry lobbyists.
"EPA’s approval of these unstudied chemicals is just the latest example of the Trump EPA refusing to follow the legal risk assessment processes under TSCA and prioritizing industry profits over public health," Earthjustice said on Friday. "Last year, the agency proposed shifts to how it conducts risk evaluations for chemicals already in use and on the market that would let it ignore the real-world risks posed by toxic chemicals."
Harmful chemicals associated with data center cooling, fire suppression, and production of semiconductors and other electronic components include refrigerants such as Freon and Opteon, Teflon coatings for cable insulation, Krytox for pumps and robotics, and Viton for sealing.
Additionally, as the Natural Resources Defense Council explained, data center cooling systems "can consume vast quantities of water and pollute large quantities of water, depending on the type of cooling system used. For example, evaporative cooling consumes large quantities of water while some immersion cooling techniques rely on harmful chemicals such as PFAS."
While much critical attention on the lack of guardrails on unchecked AI development has focused on the risks of the technology itself and its economic implications—which experts say includes the shorter-term danger of mass unemployment and the long-term threat that superintelligent machines could one day subjugate or even wipe out humanity—the green groups are highlighting environmental and health hazards amid the worsening climate emergency.
"The rush to build more and more data centers is causing harm far beyond the data centers themselves," Jane Williams, chair of the Grassroots Network National Clean Air Team at Sierra Club, said Friday.
“From the plants where toxic chemicals are used to make semiconductors, to the roads these chemicals are transported on, and finally to the incinerators where they are disposed, EPA’s approval of these dangerously unstudied chemicals places the public at risk," Williams added. "These chemicals are suspected to be persistent bioaccumulative toxins, a category of chemicals that contaminate breast milk, cord blood, and the next generation. This action is an assault on the future.”
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In Gift to Abusive Wall Street Firms, Trump CFPB Moves to Suppress Consumer Complaints
“Hiding the consumer narratives and concealing the wrongdoing of corporations and powerful interests—that’s what you do if you’re afraid of the truth,” said one advocate.
Aug 14, 2026
Consumer complaints against financial companies have skyrocketed over the past three years, and the trend drove President Donald Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take action Friday—but not against the firms that have been accused of charging unfair fees, failing to resolve disputed credit card charges, attempting to wrongly collect debts, and other offenses.
Instead, the CFPB announced that it would no longer be publishing complaint "narratives"—the written description by a complainant of their interaction with the financial company—or data visualizations in the database of complaints, hiding from public view consumers' remarks on the institutions' business practices.
“Hiding the consumer narratives and concealing the wrongdoing of corporations and powerful interests—that’s what you do if you’re afraid of the truth,” said Diane Thompson, deputy director and chief advocacy officer at the National Consumer Law Center, in response to the bureau's announcement. “Nothing could be a clearer sign of the Trump CFPB’s choice to stand against ordinary people and for corporate power and predation.”
The CFPB asserted that "the utility" of the public database of complaint narratives has proven "minimal" since the bureau began publishing the complaints in 2015, four years after it began allowing consumers to submit the complaints, as required by law.
"By their very nature, complaint narratives reflect negative consumer experiences and present only one side of an issue," said the CFPB.
Christine Hines, senior policy director at the National Association of Consumer Advocates, suggested that presenting "only one side" of an interaction that a consumer has with a financial institution is the point of the database.
"Nearly 6 million consumers who have filed with the CFPB have received some kind of relief, such as getting money back or getting a mistake on a credit report fixed. That’s a real, tangible benefit the public database makes possible."
“As it shuts down narratives in the complaint database, this CFPB is disregarding its obligation to make the marketplace fair and transparent for everyday consumers, and instead, is helping big banks, lenders, debt collectors, credit bureaus, and others to evade public scrutiny and accountability,” said Hines.
Companies have 15 days to respond to a complaint before the CFPB makes the consumers' comments public. The bureau has published more than 17 million complaints that have been made since 2011, and in each of the last three years, the complaints have doubled annually.
The bureau received 6.6. million complaints in 2025, up from 3.2 million in 2024 and 1.6 million in 2023.
Erie Meyer, who served as chief technologist at the CFPB and helped build the complaint database, accused the Trump administration of "inventing excuses to hide credit reporting and Wall Street abuses from the public."
"More than 17 million people have filed complaints with the CFPB about their credit report, mortgage provider, student loan servicer, payment app, or bank account—and the CFPB in turn has worked diligently to resolve these problems, even saving people’s homes from foreclosure and cars from repossession," said Meyer. "Taking down this data doesn’t protect consumers from confusion, but it does protect companies from public transparency and scrutiny."
Meyer also pushed back against the administration's claim that the database is rife with "confusing or misleading information" submitted by complainants.
"The CFPB complaint database and its narratives are the earliest warning system we have for what’s breaking in the economy," said Meyer. "Before a single story is published, the CFPB confirms the person is a real customer of that company. The company gets two weeks to respond, on the record, in public. That’s not an anonymous internet review—that’s closer to due process than most Americans get anywhere else in their financial lives. Burying this information is an intentional decision to make corporate misconduct harder to see.”
The new rule was announced two months after former CFPB acting Director Russell Vought purged the bureau's backlog of complaints and made other changes that, the administration said, were aimed at eliminating artificial intelligence-generated and duplicative complaints.
The database, said Public Interest Research Network consumer campaign director Mike Litt, ensures that "companies have an incentive to respond to and fix problems precisely because complaints are made public."
“Hiding the ‘narratives’ or any other part of the CFPB’s Consumer Complaint Database would truly hurt consumers. Americans deserve user-friendly, searchable access to details about these issues, so they can make educated purchasing decisions," said Litt. "Nearly 6 million consumers who have filed with the CFPB have received some kind of relief, such as getting money back or getting a mistake on a credit report fixed. That’s a real, tangible benefit the public database makes possible."
Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America, added that law enforcement agencies, Congress, and the press have all been informed by complaint narratives "on what problems are occurring in their communities."
“These narratives, all published with consumer consent, convey the emotional hurt caused when companies act without regard for the law," said Rust. "It’s wrong, especially at a time when so many people are struggling to make ends meet, to blunt their voices.”
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'Outrageous': Trump Officials Investigated Left-Wing Groups After Alex Pretti Killing in Minneapolis
One First Amendment advocacy group called the investigation a "disturbing, invasive, and utterly unjustifiable attack on freedom of expression and political dissent."
Aug 13, 2026
"These are the actions of an authoritarian state," said US Sen. Chris Van Hollen on Thursday regarding new reports of a broad investigation by the Department of Homeland Security into numerous left-wing groups in Minnesota earlier this year, in the wake of Border Patrol agents' fatal shooting of Alex Pretti at a protest against the agency's anti-immigration crackdown.
As The New York Times reported, days after Pretti was killed in the street as he tried to help a woman who had been violently pushed by the agents, the DHS office in St. Paul opened an investigation into groups including the climate-focused Sunrise Movement, major labor groups like the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Democratic Socialists of America, and a collective called Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN).
The Trump administration began the probe under the auspices of investigating whether the groups had provided "help and money," as the Times reported, to people who had participated in protests across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, where tens of thousands of residents rallied against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and defended their neighbors from immigration raids last winter.
Newly released government documents, which were uncovered after an attorney filed a motion with the federal District Court in Minnesota demanding information about the DHS investigation, show that the agency characterized the protesters who opposed ICE as "violent opportunists and agitators."
The investigation included DHS' use of administrative subpoenas to obtain financial records from Sunrise Movement, Communications Workers of America, and the SEIU, scrutinizing what the agency called "domestic terrorist financing."
Undercover agents also infiltrated Signal chats and meetings at libraries and churches, recording attendees' comments criticizing ICE and calling for the agency to be abolished—a view held by roughly 50% of Americans, according to a recent poll by YouGov—as well as their names and license plate numbers. They also scoured the individuals' social media accounts for images and information.
“None of these individuals did anything other than engage in protected First Amendment speech in a church meeting room,” wrote Kevin Riach, the lawyer who filed the motion. “Yet now their personal information is memorialized in a DHS dossier.”
The investigation "concluded, with no evidence (but obvious political animus), that numerous Twin Cities unions and nonprofit organizations were involved in a widespread conspiracy," said Riach. “It surveilled and surreptitiously gathered financial records generated by these organizations despite the lack of any connection between those organizations and criminal conduct.”
As the Times reported, the indictment in June of 15 organizers who led direct actions against federal agents, announced by US Attorney Daniel Rosen, came out of the sprawling DHS investigation.
When Rosen announced the indictments, he cited National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a memo issued last September and mandated a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts"—with an exclusive focus on left-wing groups.
Before the indictment, the Times reported, investigators showed a PowerPoint slide to grand jurors linking 18 groups including the AFL-CIO, Vets for Peace, and a local teachers union to a "conspiracy" against ICE agents.
The news of the indictment, said Paul Blest of the labor rights media organization More Perfect Union, "should be the biggest story in America."
"Just so everyone clearly understands, the Trump administration's approach to dissent is to exhaust every avenue to put dissenters in federal prison," said Blest.
The First Amendment advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent called the investigation a "disturbing, invasive, and utterly unjustifiable attack on freedom of expression and political dissent."
"The inquiry comes amid President Trump’s escalating crackdown on freedom of speech across the United States," Defending Rights and Dissent added. "Last year, Trump issued NSPM-7, a directive which tramples the First Amendment in weaponizing the federal government to root out his political adversaries and cast all activism against the administration as 'domestic extremism.'"
"Defending Rights and Dissent calls for this investigation to be dropped immediately," said the group, "and strongly condemns all attempts by the Trump administration to intimidate ordinary Americans exercising their freedom of speech."
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Trump Admin Permanently Guts Law 'Designed to Stop Criminals from Laundering Money' After Push From Elon Musk
“Trump is making it easier for cartels, criminals, and US adversaries to abuse our financial system," said Sen. Andy Kim. "Because he’s in the pocket of billionaires like Elon Musk, who’d potentially benefit."
Aug 13, 2026
Critics are warning that the Trump administration just made financial crimes a lot easier to commit by permanently gutting a law that prevented criminals from using shell companies to obscure their activities. Elon Musk may benefit.
On Tuesday, the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a final rule permanently exempting US individuals and companies from a section of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) requiring them to identify the true owners of opaque companies.
The law, which passed in 2020, was ironically introduced and championed by then-US Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is now President Donald Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser.
At the time, Rubio called the law—which he introduced with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)—"the most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades."
But Republicans have since pushed to repeal the legislation, which Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) referred to as "big government overreach."
With Republicans in Congress unable to muster the votes to reverse it legislatively, the Trump administration has effectively killed the law by weakening Treasury Department policy. In March 2025, Treasury adopted an interim rule exempting US companies from its requirements.
Plans for a rule change were announced by Treasury less than 24 hours after the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Musk—who was then leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—commented on his social media platform X that he would “look into” the statute in response to a right-wing comedian who'd complained about it.
According to a May report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, more than 99% of entities previously required to report under the law were now exempt. That exemption was made permanent this week.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was "a victory for common sense and American small businesses" and called the reporting requirements "burdensome... for millions of law-abiding business owners without compromising our national security.”
Nelson Bunn, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said the exact opposite was true.
"By exempting domestic entities and owners from reporting, FinCEN has significantly hindered prosecutors’ ability to identify the bad actors from legitimate businesses when investigating US shell companies used by transnational cartels, human traffickers, and cyberscammers,” Bunn said. "Taking away this indispensable tool for law enforcement endangers American families and communities.”
The change is drawing outrage from Democrats and some Republicans. In a statement on Thursday, Whitehouse and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the rule change "undermines the clear intent of the law."
"The act gave the federal government needed tools to address criminal activity like human trafficking, terrorist financing, drug distribution, sanctions evasion, and more without unduly burdening legitimate commercial entities," they said. "This decision is an unfortunate one that fails to use all available tools to protect Americans and crack down on illicit financial schemes.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, highlighted that the committee's previous oversight found the rollback would likely hamper efforts to stop a host of bad actors.
These included Chinese money-laundering networks that have been used to funnel proceeds to drug cartels, fraudsters using opaque ownership to rip off federal grants and benefits, and a Venezuelan national who allegedly used shell companies to hide over $1 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said the law was “designed to stop criminals from laundering money, and Trump and Secretary Bessent are violating the Constitution to gut it,” and in doing so, “intentionally facilitating corruption and crime.”
In a letter sent to Bessent in March 2026, Warren and other Democratic lawmakers noted that Musk himself would be a direct beneficiary of the rule change, since he "uses a network of dozens of secretive companies—potentially the type of entities that, under the CTA, are required to report ownership information to the Treasury Department."
The New York Times found that in Texas alone, there are over 90 different companies and other legal entities tied to Musk, with others in California, Delaware, and Nevada, which he has used to buy property, structure business deals, hold assets, and pay for political activity—including more than $80 million in super political action committee spending to support Trump in 2024—without putting his own name on the transactions.
"Trump is making it easier for cartels, criminals, and US adversaries to abuse our financial system and harm Americans," said Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ). "Why? Because he’s in the pocket of billionaires like Elon Musk, who’d potentially benefit from his shady and corrupt actions."
Warren said: "Secretary Bessent should reverse this decision. And he needs to testify in front of this Committee to explain why he’s putting American national security at risk.”
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Imploring Latin America to Quit ICC, Hegseth Suggests 'Fake' Court Could Target US Over Boat Murders
One critic said he hopes the Hague-based tribunal will investigate the Trump administration's "illegal, unproven, expensive, destructive, and pointless boat strikes."
Aug 13, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday urged Latin American governments to quit the International Criminal Court, accusing the Hague-based tribunal of plotting to prosecute American and allied military personnel while defending the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive—and, experts say, illegal—campaign against alleged drug traffickers.
"We are working together, we are building together, and we are training together," Hegseth said during a speech in Panama at a gathering of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC), a group of mostly right-wing regional governments. "We are killing terrorists. And we're defeating the failed and toxic ideologies of radical socialism and communism."
"Now, speaking of socialism, make no doubt about it, the international left, along with their enabling left-wing media, is plotting to unlawfully assert International Criminal Court jurisdiction over US and partner military personnel and operations," Hegseth asserted, offering no evidence or explanation to support his claim.
Legal experts, including former US military Judge Advocate General Corps attorneys, have argued that aspects of the Trump administration's bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean—particularly Hegseth's alleged order to "kill everybody" and follow-up attacks targeting survivors—may constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings and war crimes. More than 220 people have been killed in at least 66 such strikes over the past 11 months, with survivors, victims' relatives, and regional governments claiming at least some of those killed were fishers with no narco-trafficking ties.
Hegseth has also been accused of promoting war crimes in the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran by vowing that US forces would not be bound by "stupid rules of engagement," threatening to destroy critical Iranian civilian infrastructure like power plants and bridges, and by boasting that US forces were delivering "death and destruction from the sky all day long" as airstrikes killed hundreds of civilians, including 156 students and staff massacred at an elementary school in Minab on February 28.
"To be clear, there is no legitimate basis for the ICC's lawless power grab that they will entertain anywhere they can in the world," Hegseth said in Panama. "Our efforts in this effort are 100% lawful under the laws of armed conflict. It's striking that this so-called court and other globalist bodies undermine our efforts but do nothing to hold real terrorists and real tyrants accountable. And that's why the ICC poses a threat to your national sovereignty, your constitutional mandates, and the national interests of your people—just as it does ours."
"That's why I strongly encourage every ACCC member to leave the ICC, and reject their attempts to rob your governments and your courts of your sovereignty," he added. "I know as a soldier, I swore an oath to the Constitution, not some fake and illegitimate international court."
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Trump's assault on the ICC, which began during his first administration, has escalated during his second term. In February 2025, the president issued an executive order declaring a national emergency over the ICC and authorizing sanctions against court personnel involved in investigations concerning the United States and Israel—two of whose leaders are fugitives from the tribunal.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The court also ordered the arrest of three Hamas leaders for the same categories of crimes allegedly committed during and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, but Israeli forces extrajudicially assassinated all three of the men.
The warrants for the Israeli leaders incensed the Trump administration, which responded with sanctions and threats.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a "campaign to dismantle" the ICC, promising to “teach” the court "the full meaning of American resolve." The State Department, meanwhile, said the campaign would seek to “systematically disable” the tribunal’s ability to operate or target US personnel.
The US is not a party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC. However, the treaty states that individuals from nonsignatory nations can be held liable for crimes committed in the territory of a member state, a situation applicable in Palestine, which is an ICC member, while Israel is not.
US disdain and animosity toward the ICC long predates Trump's presidencies. During the administration of George W. Bush, the US passed the American Service Members’ Protection Act—also known as the Hague Invasion Act—which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate,” including military intervention, to secure the release of American or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC.
The Trump administration is seeking to persuade countries to abandon the ICC.
Chad and Venezuela—where Trump ordered a January invasion to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife—have announced plans to withdraw, with Chad saying its decision followed a call from a senior US diplomat. The ICC’s Assembly of States Parties has urged both countries to reverse course, warning that the departures threaten the global fight against impunity. The two nations join Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which also initiated ICC withdrawals in 2026.
Only Burundi and the Philippines have actually completed withdrawals from the Rome Statute. Hungary, meanwhile, reversed its planned departure this year after voters ousted longtime right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Hegseth’s Panama appearance coincided with Colombia becoming the ACCC’s 19th member, as new right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella requested joint US-Colombian military operations against drug cartels and trafficking.
The alignment marks a sharp turn from the government of former leftist President Gustavo Petro, which repeatedly criticized Trump administration boat strikes and supported the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague.
Such cooperation has led to US intervention in Ecuador's war on drugs. US and Ecuadorian forces are carrying out Operation Total Extermination, a joint counternarcotics operation beset by allegations of human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, and destruction of civilian property.
Responding to reporting, University of Virginia researcher and doctoral student Joseph Bouchard wrote on X that the "ICC may investigate the US's illegal, unproven, expensive, destructive, and pointless boat strikes."
"They should, and hopefully hold these criminals accountable," he asserted. "They are killing hundreds of fishermen for no reason beyond cruelty."
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Human Rights Watch Details How Trump Has Gutted Federal Civil Rights Enforcement
"While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief.”
Aug 13, 2026
Eighteen months into President Donald Trump's second term in the White House, the administration has systematically gutted the infrastructure within the federal government that for decades had worked to ensure that civil rights and anti-discrimination laws were being enforced—and has turned agencies "against the communities they were meant to protect," as one researcher at Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
In a new report, the organization detailed how four key agencies have been substantially weakened since Trump took office and almost immediately, with the help of tech billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, set about slashing the federal workforce and demanding that the civil servants who remained be "fully on board" with the president's right-wing agenda.
The report, titled "Remedies Abandoned: US Civil Rights Enforcement Under the Trump Administration," explains how the US Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division lost about 75% of its attorneys after the White House told staff that they were not to operate independently from the president; the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Education closed more than half of its regional offices and laid off nearly half its staff in one day; the Fair Housing Office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shrank from 31 staffers to 11; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reached its lowest staffing level in over four decades.
With the federal civil rights enforcement workforce decimated, the White House has abandoned discrimination complaints at the four agencies and has carried out demands outlined in Project 2025, the right-wing policy blueprint put forward by the Heritage Foundation. In addition to pushing for the administration to reclassify civil servants like those who were pushed out of their civil rights enforcement roles, the document called for presidential control of the Justice Department and an end to "disparate impact enforcement."
In April 2025, three months after taking office, Trump signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to eliminate their analysis of disparate impact—the framework that confronts discriminatory policies based on their impacts rather than their intent—to the "maximum degree possible."
Disparate impact analysis, said HRW, "allows people to challenge hiring criteria, lending practices, school discipline policies, and housing regulations that produce discriminatory outcomes even when no one can identify a smoking gun like a policy that explicitly says 'exclude Black applicants.'"
The executive order and related directives that followed had a sweeping impact, with HUD dropping seven major housing discrimination and environmental justice cases months later, after they had been ongoing for years.
For example, the agency informed Chicago officials it would no longer monitor the civil rights agreement that had required zoning reform to end concentrated industrial pollution in Black and Latino neighborhoods.
"Department leadership said it would no longer treat environmental harms as fair housing violations in situations without explicit indication of intentional discrimination, in line with President Trump’s April 2025 order seeking to end disparate impact enforcement," reads the HRW report.
HUD has closed at least 115 fair housing complaints without issuing findings on the claims of discrimination, and career attorneys at the agency filed a whistleblower complaint last September showing they'd been barred from contacting complainants and working with the DOJ to resolve the matters.
"One of the ways we know that our democracy is functioning and healthy is that your rights don't just disappear because the political winds shift," said Trey Walk, a US program researcher at HRW.
NEW: The Trump administration has gutted federal civil rights enforcement in the United States, leaving the people the laws were built to protect without adequate remedies.
In a new report, HRW documents the administration’s efforts to unravel the work of four key agencies… pic.twitter.com/4VADDpmFDR
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) August 13, 2026
The Education Department's OCR also appears to have resolved no racial harassment cases in 2025, despite the fact that in 2024, such complaints reached a new record among Black and Latino students.
The case of a 12-year-old boy in Lubbock, Texas, who had been interrogated by school officials without his parents present and falsely accused of a sexual offense, had been close to being resolved when the OCR office for the region abruptly closed in March 2025. When an attorney for families in Lubbock who had had open cases emailed the federal investigator who had been working on the complaints, they received an autoreply, saying the employee no longer had access to any of the case files.
"Numbers illustrate the scale of abandonment," reads the report. "With 11,985 education-related civil rights cases pending when the administration took office, OCR reached just 112 resolution agreements across all of 2025—1% of the caseload, and 78% fewer than the year before on the same budget. OCR reported no resolution agreements for sexual harassment, none for sexual violence, none for racial harassment, none for discriminatory school discipline, and none for seclusion and restraint of students with disabilities. The 2025 case resolution number is low, even compared to previous years when the agency was not adequately staffed or funded."
Walk said that the Trump administration "is targeting efforts to address discrimination without offering any alternatives. While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief.”
More than half of OCR's nationwide staff were among the 1,300 Education staffers whose jobs were cut in a single day in March 2025. Vince L., a career attorney at OCR who was one of 40 people interviewed by HRW for the report, said that in the administration's first weeks, he and his colleagues had received a directive essentially saying: "Stop all work. Decimate staffing. Divert resources to political witch hunts."
"Seven of 12 regional offices shut with no notice," he said. "Some people didn’t even know until their computers didn’t work. You’d come in the next morning and your badge wouldn’t work. That’s how you’d find out you were being terminated.”
Similar scenes played out at the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, where an attorney identified as Gloria A. described how the department's independence from the White House "flew out the window" early in Trump's term when lawyers were directed to carry out the president's political agenda.
“We viewed ourselves as attorneys for the United States,” another civil rights lawyer who was reassigned to complete administrative work, told HRW. “Which is different.”
A significant sign of the gutting of civil rights enforcement at the DOJ came when the agency moved to dismiss multiple consent decrees to reform police departments.
A two-year DOJ probe had found a pattern of racially discriminatory force by the Louisville Metro Police Department, where officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor in 2020, but the DOJ moved to dismiss the consent decree that had demanded reform at the police department just six months after it was signed.
A similar consent decree was dismissed around the same time, in May 2025, in Minneapolis—almost exactly five years after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer there.
"At least four other consent decrees to reform police departments across the US were dismissed in the same period," reads the report. "In each case, the department withdrew before any independent finding that the underlying violations had stopped."
HRW called on Congress to conduct oversight hearings on "the collapse of enforcement capacity at key federal agencies" and urged state legislatures to pass or strengthen disparate impact standards, create or fund state fair housing enforcement agencies with investigative authority, and create private rights of action under state law for discrimination claims previously only covered by federal enforcement.
It called on state agencies to expand intake capacity to take complaints currently not being accepted at the federal level and urged state attorneys general to consider challenging federal agency decisions, including case closure policies that have harmed state residents.
The group emphasized that it was not making formal recommendations to the White House or any federal agencies.
"The leadership of these agencies have not demonstrated good faith interest in improving anti-discrimination enforcement in the US," said HRW. "The immediate remedies lie with Congress, state and local actors, the media and civil society, and international bodies. A future administration will need to rebuild what has been dismantled by this executive branch."
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Big Brother Is Watching You... Through a Flock Camera
Millions of Americans are being watched as the US ramps up mass surveillance with help from AI, data brokers, and partnerships with private tech companies.
Aug 13, 2026
Government surveillance isn’t new, but new wide-ranging technologies that can detect our faces and track our movements are making it more ubiquitous. While the tools have changed, the purpose remains the same: to chill independent thought, free speech, and dissent, bringing our country closer to 1984.
Millions of Americans are being watched as the US ramps up mass surveillance with help from AI, data brokers, and partnerships with private tech companies. Immigrants, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and activists are among the most intensely monitored, but tech like Flock cameras has brought the issue into communities across the country.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, police departments have increasingly deployed automated license plate readers (ALPRs) powered by AI to track drivers “without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.” And they’re doing this with little to no oversight or regulation.
Flock Safety is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the US. Their solar-powered, teardrop-shaped cameras capture images of all passing vehicles, storing the car’s make, model, and other identifying features. Any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can access the company’s nationwide database without a warrant.
As more communities wake up to the danger, the solution isn’t trading one brand of camera for another.
Flock cameras also track people. Their “FreeForm search” feature has allowed police departments to search the database using phrases like “male with tattoos” and “person on skateboard,” according to data reviewed by 404 Media.
DeFlock, an open-source project that maps license plate readers, has identified over 128,000 ALPRs in the US. Even my small town of around 20,000 people in Southern California has at least 35 ALPRs, most of them Flock cameras.
No independent research has shown that ALPRs can reduce crime. But there’s mounting evidence of the technology’s alarmingly high error rate. An analysis by the Roseville, California police department found that 71% of Flock’s alerts to the Roseville police incorrectly flagged vehicles as stolen or used in a felony.
Far from promoting “public safety,” the tech has led to wrongful arrests, profiling, and countless other abuses.
Flock reportedly has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Among other cities, Los Angeles recently suspended their use of Flock cameras amid mounting privacy concerns over who controls the data and how it’s shared.
Court records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that Texas deputies searched 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide to track a Texas woman across state lines because she allegedly “had an abortion.” In Dunwoody, Georgia, a public records request revealed Flock employees accessing cameras in children’s spaces at a community center as part of sales demonstrations.
Other reporting has found cops repeatedly misusing the Flock system to stalk exes.
More communities are organizing and fighting back against this unregulated AI technology. As a result, at least 100 cities have now rejected ALPRs, most of them Flock cameras. But Flock is only one cog in the machine. Cities can easily replace their Flock cameras with those from competitors like Axon, Motorola Solutions, or Genetec, as some have already done.
Mass surveillance remains the fundamental problem. Ever more companies collect our data through cellular networks, facial recognition, surveillance cameras, and ALPRs, among other sources.
The US government, in turn, purchases massive amounts of our data from commercial data brokers without obtaining warrants—bypassing our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. In tandem, multiple federal agencies now have sweeping access to Americans’ sensitive personal data through systems built by Big Tech company Palantir, following President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order that expanded data sharing across agencies.
This metastasizing mass surveillance state—what George Orwell called “Big Brother” in 1984—is eroding our privacy, freedom, and Constitution.
As more communities wake up to the danger, the solution isn’t trading one brand of camera for another. We need oversight and regulation of the entire surveillance industry, as well as the government agencies that rely on it.
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Mysterious Attacks on Ecuadorian Fishers Raise Fears of Expanded US Boat Bombings
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly,” said one expert.
Aug 12, 2026
An investigation published Wednesday by The New York Times has raised fresh questions about who attacked three Ecuadorian fishing vessels in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year—but for fishers and their families in the South American nation, the mystery is hardly new.
According to the Times, Ecuadorian fishers aboard the Fiorella, Negra Francisca Duarte II, and Don Maca were separately attacked by what witnesses called unidentified "gringos" using drones. Survivors said they "came under attack by English-speaking assailants wearing matching uniforms with American flag patches, but without any clear insignia to link them to an official government force."
International rights groups have called for an investigation after the Fiorella and its crew of eight disappeared in January amid Operation Southern Spear, President Donald Trump's largely ineffective campaign of extrajudicial strikes on boats that the US administration claims, without evidence, were smuggling drugs.
By the Pentagon's own admission, more than 220 people have been killed in at least 66 such strikes since last September. The US military says no civilians were killed in the strikes, a claim that anonymous government officials called "a fucking joke" and "a total whitewash."
This is a very worrying story. Ecuadorian fishermen are being attacked and killed, and the perpetrators seem to be either the U.S. military engaged in clandestine operations or an American mercenary company working for Bukele or another Central American country.
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— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 7:12 AM
Government officials in countries including Colombia and Venezuela, as well as victims' relatives, have contradicted the US claim. The families of two Trinidadian men killed in one strike earlier this year filed wrongful death lawsuits against the United States. Relatives of a Colombian slain in another US strike also filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Some of the Ecuadorian fishers featured in the new Times piece say they were seized and interrogated by the attackers before being handed over to the Salvadoran navy, which conducts long-range maritime patrols and counternarcotics operations in the Eastern Pacific and occasionally intercepts vessels.
The new Times report says that a maritime patrol aircraft based at a military facility in El Salvador repeatedly flew toward and tracked the Ecuadorian fishing boats in the days before they were attacked or disappeared. An analysis of flight data found that the aircraft's course appeared to follow the vessels over several days.
Yet the aircraft was not listed among Pentagon operational aircraft. According to the Times, it was registered to a private company whose address was a UPS store mailbox in Virginia, deepening the mystery over who was operating it—and for whom.
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly," Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in the laws of war, told the Times.
"And that’s what makes this even more squirrelly," added Finucane, now a senior adviser in the US Program at the International Crisis Group. “Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address? Come on.”
The Pentagon has denied involvement, claiming that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) did not know about the attacks or have a role in them. But the new findings raise the possibility that the attacks could have involved a private military contractor or another force operating in coordination with Washington's expanding anti-drug campaign.
“Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address?"
In addition to the boat bombing campaign—which the Pentagon has replaced with the newly created Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—SOUTHCOM has launched Operation Total Extermination, a joint counternarcotics operation with Ecuadorian forces involving the deployment of US ground troops into the Andean nation.
In one operation in the campaign, Ecuadorian soldiers raided and destroyed a dairy farm in San Martín, Sucumbíos, on March 3. Ecuador claimed the site was a traffickers’ camp, but investigations by The New York Times and, later, Human Rights Watch found substantial evidence that it was a working cattle and dairy farm with no credible evidence of a criminal connection. HRW said four workers at the farm were detained and tortured by Ecuadorian forces, and that the broader operation was carried out with US assistance.
The Times investigation published Wednesday followed months of reporting by Ecuadorian and international media and human rights groups, including HRW, on the three fishing vessels and their crews.
In April, Primicias reported growing fear among fishermen in Manabí, Ecuador's major fishing province, where crews said they had been intercepted and attacked at sea. Fishers from the Don Maca and Negra Francisca Duarte II separately described being surrounded by drones and subsequently detained by what they believed were US personnel.
Don Maca's crew told El Universo that drones bombed their boat without warning on March 26. Fishers aboard said they escaped in small boats, approached a foreign vessel for help, and were instead handcuffed and hooded before eventually being transferred to Salvadoran authorities.
El Universo also separately reported a strikingly similar account from the crew of the Negra Francisca Duarte II. Captain Hernán Flores said a drone struck the boat on March 17, setting it ablaze and forcing all 16 fishermen into the water. When they approached a nearby blue vessel seeking assistance, Flores said, armed foreign personnel pointed weapons at them, bound them, and covered their heads.
In the case of the Fiorella, Primicias and El Universo reported that two fishers who had separated from the boat in a smaller vessel saw a drone circling above shortly before they spotted smoke on the horizon. Fiorella and those aboard it have never been found.
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Thomson Reuters Slammed for Deal That Gives ICE Access to Private Profiles of Tens of Millions of Americans
"Big Tech and Big Data companies like Thomson Reuters need to decide whether profiting from government surveillance is compatible with the values they claim to hold," said one tech watchdog.
Aug 12, 2026
More than two dozen watchdog organizations are calling on Congress to investigate reports that the data broker Thomson Reuters is making its investigative database available to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which they warn will make Americans vulnerable to Fourth Amendment violations.
Last month, documents unearthed by 404 Media revealed:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to pay data broker giant Thomson Reuters $125 million for access to its databases of personal data—which includes peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information—to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigate what it describes as “voters fraud” and immigration fraud.
On Tuesday, a coalition of advocacy groups, including Public Citizen, ACLU, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Common Cause, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sent a letter to members of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees warning about the deal.
"The reporting highlights a problem that has continued to grow in recent years: Federal agencies are purchasing access to commercially aggregated personal information that they could not otherwise obtain without judicial oversight," the letter says. "This growing practice threatens to erode the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment and underscores the urgent need for Congress to close the data broker loophole."
Thomson Reuters is primarily known for its leading international news agency, but it is also a major data broker that sells access to its dozens of databases to businesses and governments.
ICE has been buying data from Thomson Reuters since 2008. But the Trump administration hopes to dramatically expand its access through a package of Thomson Reuters Special Services investigative products that includes CLEAR, which aggregates public and proprietary records such as addresses, phone and subscriber data, vehicle records, and publicly available web and social media information.
The package also includes license-plate and alerting tools capable of providing nationwide vehicle location information and real-time alerts based on last-known-location data.
While much of this data could be acquired through other means, the watchdog groups explained that "aggregating them into searchable investigative dossiers dramatically expands government surveillance capabilities, which further run the risk of being supercharged by the rapid growth and use of artificial intelligence by the federal government."
A DHS procurement document reviewed by 404 stated that Thomson Reuters "is the only contractor able to provide ICE with a continuous monitoring and alert service for millions of individuals and entities of interest; this is essential for national security purposes.”
Thomson Reuters has denied that selling CLEAR access presents a constitutional risk, stating earlier this year that "CLEAR does not contain the types of information that law enforcement traditionally need a warrant to obtain, and CLEAR does not include information about an individual’s citizenship or immigration status."
The letter from advocacy groups also notes that the use of this technology in voter fraud investigations, in addition to immigration and national security, "demonstrates the broad range of government functions now supported by commercially acquired surveillance tools."
The documents do not make clear how ICE plans to use the data from Thomson Reuters in a voter fraud investigation.
Trump has directed the federal government to use DHS citizenship and immigration records to identify suspected noncitizen voters and commanded states—in an order that has been blocked by a federal judge—to turn over information about their voters.
While the administration says the goal is to root out noncitizen voters, voting rights advocates have warned that many eligible voters are also at risk of being wrongly purged.
As 404 pointed out, news of the agreement with Thomson Reuters came "after President [Donald] Trump held a conspiracy-laden and unhinged press conference about election security" in July, "setting the stage for potentially undermining the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections."
The letter urges Congress to hold oversight hearings examining federal agencies' acquisition and use of commercially available information from data brokers, require transparency about what data agencies are purchasing and how it's being used, and examine whether existing law surrounding data purchasing adequately protects constitutional rights.
It also calls on the government to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that would close the data broker loophole by preventing the government from buying data from private companies that it would ordinarily need a judicial warrant to obtain directly from an individual or company.
"Americans should not lose their Fourth Amendment rights simply because the government is willing to purchase its way around our rights," said JB Branch, the director of federal AI governance and technology policy at Public Citizen. "Big Tech and Big Data companies like Thomson Reuters need to decide whether profiting from government surveillance is compatible with the values they claim to hold.”
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DC Under Siege: One Year of Military Occupation
We don't need billions of dollars going toward policing our neighbors and Social Schedulingmilitarization of our streets to make our communities safer—we need housing, education, healthcare, and a commitment to climate justice for true national security.
Aug 12, 2026
One year ago, the Trump administration brought 800 National Guard troops to occupy the streets of Washington, DC, part of the "Safe and Beautiful Task Force." There are now approximately 5,000 troops from 15 states deployed here, with some officially moved in and set to stay through 2029.
This does not include the alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies swarming our neighborhoods across the city, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency, Park Police, and more.
The National Guard can be found meandering around metro stations, museums, and grocery stores there for mere posture. Despite crime being down before they were deployed here. A new analysis from the Center for American Progress found the Guard deployment has not had a measurable impact on violent crime. They are not even trained in "civilian policing," and are unable to make actual arrests.
“This was never about reducing crime, especially not violent crime,” said Chandler Hall, who wrote the study. “This has been a show of force without any evidence to bear that it’s actually working."
"If my neighbors could experience military protection as something imposed upon them, what did civilians overseas think when American forces arrived in their communities?"
The cost of the Guard is estimated at $3 million a day, with some troops said to make close to $9,000 a month, including salary, lodging, and food per diem. It is hard to track the multi-year total in billions of dollars as the administration is far from transparent with the process.
The wasteful spending from the Department of War is unsurprising. Despite the Pentagon never passing an audit, the Department of War's proposed budget is record-breaking at $1.5 trillion for one year and does not include the recent billions for the Iran war and additional billions to Israel to further the genocide in Gaza and ongoing destruction in Lebanon.
Some of the reasoning for more troops in DC was for the Freedom 250 nationalism events, beginning with a UFC fight, State Fair, and Fourth of July festivities, all of which were disastrous, from cancellations, evacuations, and heat strokes to stage parts falling, nearly killing performers. The millions of dollars that went into these spectacles strained the local community. On July 4, my friend Nicky, a 71-year-old EMT, worked an 18-hour double shift for $27 an hour while constant military flyovers cost over $1.2 million.
Karen Degraphenreid, a veteran of the US Air Force as a Major of 10 years, got involved with Free DC when the military occupation in DC began. She describes her reflections from her time overseas to experiencing the guard takeover here at home.
"Washington is the only place in the country where more than 700,000 American citizens can have troops deployed to their streets by leaders they have no voting representation in choosing. We pay federal taxes, serve in the military, and fulfill every obligation of citizenship, yet Congress can override our local government and impose decisions that fundamentally reshape life in our city. That reality forced me to reconsider what 'protection' actually means," she said.
She continued:
Many of my neighbors never asked for soldiers outside their neighborhoods. Many openly opposed their presence. To them, the deployment did not feel like reassurance. It felt like a federal government exercising power over a city that has long been denied full democratic self-government.
And that realization led me to a question I had never seriously asked during my years in uniform.
If my neighbors could experience military protection as something imposed upon them, what did civilians overseas think when American forces arrived in their communities? When we said we were bringing security and stability, did they experience it as protection? Or did they see armed strangers exercising power over places that belonged to them?
Karen is also a member of Common Defense, which holds trainings for veterans to verbally confront the National Guard. Other veterans are speaking out to encourage their fellows and active-duty members to do the same. Groups like About Face have been welcoming anti-war veterans to become more organized for years, many of whom were deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and are actively opposed to the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran.
At a press conference commemorating one year of the occupation, Luke Filomena, a registered nurse with National Nurses United, expressed the imperialist boomerang we are all witnessing
I’ve seen this administration and every administration prior instead choose to spend hundreds of billions, now trillions of dollars, yearly, to go toward countless amounts of death and destruction through endless imperialist wars overseas and the funding and arming of a genocide in Gaza. I’ve been forced to watch as hospitals filled with patients and fellow healthcare workers, as well as schools filled with children, are indiscriminately bombed in Gaza and in Iran, and as the US blockade of Cuba leaves hospitals without fuel and supplies to power lifesaving medical equipment and provide care for their patients.
"Over the past year, under the Trump regime, we’re now seeing the imperialist boomerang come back, with its sights locked on the Black, brown, and immigrant communities here in DC; those who I see each day at the bedside," Filomena explained.
It's one thing to be aware of connecting the dots, and it's another to act on it. DC has been public about its opposition to the military takeover of the city. When the occupation first launched, we disrupted Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's photo op at Shake Shack in Union Station. A month later, Trump and almost his entire cabinet went out to dinner at a restaurant near the White House, and we disrupted it, chanting, "Free DC, Free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time." We later drowned out a public appearance by Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and hundreds of National Guard at Malcolm X Park.
Opportunities to confront the administration are rarer than daily encounters with the Guard. The same week budget cuts to Supplemental and Nutrition Assistance Program were being discussed in Congress, I asked a group of troops, who often appear to be aimlessly wandering our neighborhoods in groups of four, if people in their communities would be hit by this. I've asked them if they know their neighbors and what services they could use and be funded versus them being deployed here to hang outside of a convenience store. When the forest fires created thick smoke across DC, I asked why they were here and not putting out the fires.
In these conversations, they almost always nod their head and reach for their pamphlet, telling me and others who confront them to contact their supervisor. They come from states from Mississippi to Michigan, and there have been state-by-state campaigns to get the Guard to go home. Many of them are here voluntarily, not simply "following orders" as we are led to believe.
While we have 800 military bases abroad, the war economy is inescapable for most people within the United States as well. The predatory trap the military-industrial complex has on young people of color or those in poverty means they are heavily recruited to join the various branches of the military. The increased amount of data centers across the country is also making the war economy ever more apparent.
But the state can't use the excuse of job creation anymore. The Climate and Communities Institute shows us that employment at military contractors has plummeted over the past three decades, from an estimated 3.2 million workers during the Reagan military-spending peak in the mid-1980s to 1.1 million workers in 2020. The drop occurred despite Pentagon budgets rising 22% over the same period (not accounting for inflation costs). The alternative is a care economy, a system of paid and unpaid labor, services, and relationships that support human health, well-being, and daily life, that moves away from dirty, violent jobs that rely on weapons manufacturers and the fossil fuel industry.
We cannot normalize troops on our streets. But we must address the roots that cause normalization. We've been taught to salute combat veterans for their service no matter their history; we're used to discounts for military personnel and TV shows and Hollywood movies glorifying lower-level cadets to high-ranking commanders. While militarized superheroes are a common staple in US popular culture, teachers are buying their own school supplies for their classrooms, social workers have overwhelming caseloads, EMTs are working overtime while underpaid, and many veterans are unhoused or waitlisted at the VA.
Washington, DC does not need occupation; it needs fair representation. We don't need billions of dollars going toward policing our neighbors and militarization of our streets to make our communities safer—we need housing, education, healthcare, and a commitment to climate justice for true national security. In the meantime, we have only seen our community grow stronger to protect each other—more trainings, skill sharing, documenting, court support, fundraising, and more. Every day we are supporting each other by radically building community through getting to know our neighbors more deeply in real life.
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