The Express has got itself into something of a royal tizzy over proposals from the Green Party to change the way the Crown Estate and the monarchy are funded, presenting routine questions about public ownership and accountability as an outbreak of “republican activism”.
The newspaper, which is well known for its extensive and sympathetic coverage of the Royal Family, devoted a piece to claims that the Greens want to “strip King Charles of control over vast swathes of royal land and hand them to the state”.
The article headlined “Fury over Green Party plans for UK beaches and land owned by King Charles,” focuses on Motion A31, which could be debated at the party’s annual conference within weeks. The motion calls for Crown Estate land to be taken “out of the control of the monarch” and transferred to government control.
According to the Express, the motion claims that land owned by the monarch is “effectively in the public domain” and argues that it should no longer be managed by “a private group of Commissioners chosen by the monarch”.
The tabloid then wheels in Matt Vickers, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, who accuses the Greens of prioritising “republican activism” over defence, welfare and border security.
“The Green Party is not serious about the challenges facing our country.
“They would rather waste time on republican activism than fund defence, cut the welfare bill or secure our borders.
“Unlike the Greens, the Conservatives are proud of our history and our institutions, and will always support the British monarchy.”
Quite why questioning the constitutional arrangements governing an estate whose profits go to the Treasury amounts to “wasting time” is left rather unclear.
Indeed, one of the Express’s central premises is somewhat undermined by a basic fact, that King Charles does not personally own the Crown Estate.
The Crown Estate is an independent commercial business with a special constitutional status. Its net revenue is surrendered to the Treasury, while the monarch has no right to the capital or revenues of the estate. So framing the issue as an attempt to seize the King’s personal property is, at best, misleading.
The Express also warns that a fresh Green policy paper on the “shoreline and seabed” could “open the door to a wider fight over who controls Britain’s beaches and who gets to use them”.
Given the state of Britain’s bathing waters, perhaps a serious debate about who manages and protects the country’s coastline would not be such a terrible thing.
Research has found that England’s swimming waters are five times more likely to be polluted than those in the EU, while experts have warned that the UK risks becoming the “dirty man of Europe” as it falls behind other countries on bathing water quality.
If anything, that makes questions about how Britain’s beaches, coastline and seabed are managed rather more relevant than the Express’s suggestion that raising them is some sort of republican plot.
The newspaper also takes aim at another Green proposal, scrapping the Sovereign Grant, through which public money is provided to support the King’s official duties and the running costs associated with the monarchy.
The proposal is hardly unprecedented. Campaigners have long called for the Sovereign Grant to be abolished, arguing that public money would be better directed towards public services such as the NHS and schools. Republic, for example, has highlighted the substantial increase in the size of the grant since its introduction in 2011.
Whether the monarchy should receive public funding is a perfectly legitimate political question. So is whether the Crown Estate should remain under its current constitutional arrangements. And so is whether an unelected head of state should have the role, powers and privileges currently enjoyed by the monarchy.
People can reasonably disagree with the Green Party’s answers to those questions. But describing the mere act of asking them as “republican activism” is hardly a serious contribution to the debate.
And, somewhat awkwardly for the Express, even some of its own readers appeared unconvinced by the paper’s outrage.
“‘Fury’ again from the no-news, and Know-nothing ‘Express’. Small point – King Charles does not own the Crown Estate – which profits go direct to the Treasury. No harm in nationalising it, except there’s not much point as the State already owns it,” one reader wrote in the comments.
Another asked: “Why should an unelected family have control of 2 immense duchies? They should be administered by the state clearly and openly.”
If the monarchy is as secure and popular as its defenders insist, perhaps its supporters should be confident enough to allow those questions to be debated without reaching for the royal panic button.
Every year, around two million people descend on West London over the August Bank Holiday weekend to celebrate Notting Hill Carnival. And, almost as reliably, the right-wing media use the occasion to attack it.
Right on cue, the Daily Express published an article questioning whether Londoners can still ‘afford’ the carnival, reviving familiar complaints about policing costs, disruption and public spending.
Written by James Ford, who was an adviser to former London mayor Boris Johnson, the piece takes aim at a festival that has become one of Britain’s most recognisable celebrations of Caribbean culture and Black British identity.
But the history of Notting Hill Carnival makes Ford’s argument about taxpayers’ money difficult to separate from the wider political and cultural hostility that has surrounded the event since its beginnings.
Notting Hill was home to a growing West Indian community following the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948, but Black residents faced racism, intimidation and violence. The area had been a stronghold of Oswald Mosley’s far-right movement and was the scene of attacks on Black communities by groups of white youths.
The carnival emerged from a period of racial tension and violence in west London during the 1950s. It developed as a celebration of Caribbean culture, community and resistance. Over the decades, it has grown into a huge public event reflecting the diversity of modern London, bringing together people across racial, religious and sexual identities.
That history matters when considering Ford’s proposal.
“I take great exception to the Notting Hill Carnival,” Ford writes. “Not because the event is associated with an orgy of violent crime and stabbing. Not because of the extent to which it inconveniences local residents. Not even because of the staggering number of police officers injured each year.
“My beef is with the economics of the Notting Hill Carnival. And, more specifically, the value that London taxpayers get from it versus the subsidy they must cough up each year. Because, whilst the carnival may seem like a free day out, it is far from it.”
Ford then points to the costs associated with the event, including around £1 million for cleaning up the streets, £13.5 million in policing costs in 2024 and a £5.6 million City Hall grant.
He puts the total cost to taxpayers at around £20 million a year.
There is, however, another side to the economic argument.
Ford acknowledges that supporters point to the economic activity generated by the carnival, estimated at £396 million. Even using his own figures, that would represent a substantial return to the wider London economy compared with the public funding he identifies.
Yet Ford remains sceptical, arguing that the supposed economic benefit “disappears into the pockets of traders, food vendors, hoteliers and landlords.”
But that is rather the point of economic activity. Money spent by visitors doesn’t become meaningless simply because it reaches businesses. It helps generate revenue for food vendors, shops, hotels, transport operators and other businesses. For many small businesses and traders, large public events can provide an important source of income.
Ford’s answer is to turn the carnival into a paid event, suggesting a £10 charge for every attendee.
“I don’t want to cancel the carnival. I just want to stop it being a giant black hole for taxpayers’ cash. Surely, we have better things to spend £20m on each year?” he concludes.
The problem with this ‘solution’ is that it fundamentally changes what Notting Hill Carnival is.
A £10 admission fee might sound modest to someone on a comfortable salary. But for a family on a low-income struggling with the cost of living, the bill quickly mounts. The consequence would be to create another barrier between people and a public cultural celebration.
And that goes directly against the ethos of the carnival. For decades, the carnival has represented a public celebration of a Black British culture that once faced hostility, violence and exclusion. Its existence is a reminder of how far Britain has travelled since the racist attacks of the 1950s, and of why public spaces where different communities can come together still matter.
If the right really wants to debate public spending, there are plenty of questions worth asking.
But turning Notting Hill Carnival into an annual target, then proposing to put a price on participation, risks losing sight of what the event actually represents.
A carnival that grew from resistance to racism should not become a privilege reserved for those who can afford the ticket.
As Britain surfaces from a summer of prolonged drought, record heat and wildfires, the evidence is becoming harder to ignore. Climate change is increasing the likelihood of the extreme heat and dry conditions that make wildfires more common and dangerous.
Scientists overwhelmingly agree that human activity is driving climate change, yet the right-wing media appears determined to find almost anything else to blame.
Their latest target is rewilding, the restoration of ecosystems by allowing vegetation and natural processes to return with less human intervention. Their argument is that allowing vegetation to grow has created vast ‘tinderboxes’ and that environmental policies are therefore responsible for Britain’s worsening wildfire problem.
There is a serious discussion to be had about how land should be managed to reduce fire risk, but turning that discussion into a conspiracy about rewilding is another matter entirely. It also creates a notable contradiction. Newspapers claiming to defend ‘evidence-based’ land management are promoting a narrative that ignores much of the scientific evidence about what is actually driving extreme wildfire conditions.
The Telegraph’s rewilding blame game
When a 371-acre wildfire began at the RSPB’s Minsmere reserve in Suffolk before spreading to National Trust-owned Dunwich Heath, the Telegraph sought to pin the blame on ‘rewilding.’
The paper reported claims that the area had become a ‘tinderbox’ because of the RSPB’s ‘rewilding agenda,’ quoting Countryside Alliance chief executive Tim Bonner, whose organisation has consistently opposed rewilding.
Bonner accused organisations of refusing to manage vegetation because of ‘political ideology’ and an ‘obsession with rewilding.’
Yet the organisations actually responsible for managing the land gave a very different explanation.
The RSPB said the summer’s fires were “unprecedented in scale, driven by drought and prolonged heat exacerbated by climate change.”
The National Trust likewise pointed to prolonged drought and exceptionally low rainfall across England and Wales.
The Trust’s communications director Celia Richardson summed up the absurdity: “Some of the oldest surviving heathland in the UK burns in unprecedented temperatures and Telegraph headline says “rewilding” is to blame.”
There is an obvious problem with treating vegetation management as the primary explanation for catastrophic fires. Devastating wildfires have also occurred on intensively managed land. Scotland’s first recorded ‘megafire,’ at Dava on a managed grouse moor in June 2025, is one example.
And talking of grouse land. A recent article in the Murdoch-owned Times headlined “Wildfires suggest rewilding needs a rethink,” claims that “Green enthusiasm for ignoring the old-fashioned thinning and clearing of land does create habitats – and kindling.”
But there is a wider vested interest behind this particular vision of ‘traditional’ land management. Grouse moors are managed to support driven grouse shooting, a pursuit associated with Britain’s wealthy landowners and the ultra-rich, for whom vast swathes of upland Britain are maintained as private shooting estates.
That matters because much of this land is managed through intensive heather burning. Environmental campaigners have long argued that such burning can damage peatlands, which are naturally wet ecosystems that store carbon and support a wide range of wildlife.
So, when the right-wing press present burning and intensive management as the sensible alternative to rewilding, it’s worth asking whose interests that version of ‘sensible’ land management serves.
Climate science tells us that higher temperatures dry out vegetation and make it more flammable.
Indeed, there is evidence that some forms of ecological restoration can make landscapes more resilient to extreme weather. Rewilding can increase carbon storage, restore water-retaining soils and wetlands, provide shade and diversify vegetation.
Rewetting peatlands can also reduce the continuity of flammable vegetation. RSPB senior policy officer Tom Aspinall has explained that burning can encourage heather, an oily highly flammable plant, while rewetting and diversification can introduce a wider range of vegetation and disrupt the ability of fires to spread.
A balanced debate?
In response to a front-page story in the Daily Mail claiming that ‘eco-dogma’ and Labour’s environmental policies had caused the record number of UK wildfires, Rachel Millward, deputy leader of the Green Party, accused the newspaper of “turning reality on its head” by blaming rewilding while denying readers the facts about climate change.
“This is another deeply irresponsible headline from a deeply irresponsible newspaper,” she told Left Foot Forward. “The Mail seeks to blame the climate crisis on anything other than its main cause – burning fossil fuels.”
There is, of course, a legitimate debate about whether particular landscapes are being managed in the best possible way.
University of York associate professor Andreas Heinemeyer, who has studied UK moorland ecology for 15 years, widens the discussion to include the common practice of vegetation control through burning. He argues that the supposed conflict between those who support burning and those who oppose it has become a “false culture war.”
For Heinemeyer, policy should be based on “unbiased and robust evidence” rather than “false and misleading claims about burning.”
Amen to that but there seems little prospect of the right-wing media presenting a balanced discussion any time soon.
Trump’s war on conservation
And such misinformation isn’t confined to Britain. As with so many of the culture wars peddled by the right, the inspiration comes from across the Atlantic, where the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal recently ran an editorial arguing green policies were fuelling fires in Europe.
It’s a depressingly common thread. When wildfires become more frequent and extreme, the right-wing media repeatedly looks for an environmental policy to blame, anything, it seems, except the fossil fuel emissions driving global warming.
Donald Trump has taken a similar approach to environmental protection in the US.
His administration has rolled back protections covering huge areas of public land and weakened conservation safeguards. He has repeatedly attacked environmental regulations as the work of “radical climate activists,” including complaining that endangered-species protections have placed land off limits to development and even military training.
The same political instinct is visible on both sides of the Atlantic, to portray environmental protection as an ideological project, then use environmental problems as evidence that environmental protection has failed.
But the consequences of weakening habitat protections are not ideological. Habitat loss remains a leading driver of extinction. The Rewilding Institute has warned that rolling back habitat protections removes the foundations needed for ecosystems and wildlife to recover.
France’s far right exploits the fires while opposing green policy
The same contradiction is playing out in France which suffered a summer of record heat. By the end of July, the area burned by wildfires had already broken the annual record.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has spent years opposing green regulations. Yet the party seized on France’s worst blazes in years to accuse President Emmanuel Macron’s government of failing in one of its most basic duties, protecting people and their homes.
As Politico noted: “As France has sweltered through record heat, the National Rally has so far paid little political price for its lack of credibility on climate and environmental policy.”
Rather than addressing the causes of climate change, the party focused on adaptation, how governments can protect people from its consequences. During a June heatwave, for example, it proposed financial assistance for installing air conditioning in homes and public buildings, presenting the measure as an immediate response to concerns about health and safety.
It is a familiar political manoeuvre: exploit the consequences of a warming climate while sidestepping the policies needed to tackle its causes.
The French example makes clear that this is not simply a British media obsession with rewilding. Across the right, climate impacts are increasingly being used to attack environmental policy, even when the policies being attacked are aimed at addressing the underlying crisis.
Follow the evidence not the culture war
The Met Office says 2026 is on course to be the hottest UK summer on record. Temperatures reached 38.1°Cat in Kew Gardens, while 2026 became the first year on record in which temperatures reached at least 35°C in May, June and July. A summer this hot has been made around 130 times more likely by human-induced climate change, according to the Met Office.
Dr Stephen Cumbers, a medical doctor and chartered scientist, summed up the implications:
“None of this means every wildfire, death or hot day can simply be labelled ‘climate change’,” he wrote. “Nor does the evidence dictate a single policy programme. But it does make continued delay increasingly difficult to justify.”
His conclusion should be the starting point for the debate.
“The message to government should be neither alarmism nor complacency.
“Take the evidence seriously. Be honest about the risks and costs. And make energy and climate decisions on evidence rather than short-term political convenience.”
There is nothing wrong with questioning how particular landscapes are managed, or examining whether controlled burning, grazing, rewetting and other interventions can reduce wildfire risk.
What is wrong is turning that legitimate scientific and ecological debate into a political conspiracy in which rewilding is blamed for a wildfire crisis occurring amid record heat and drought.
The right-wing media’s argument ultimately collapses under its own contradiction. It demands that environmentalists “follow the evidence” while repeatedly ignoring the evidence when it points towards climate change.
Britain might need better land management, but it also needs an honest conversation about what is making wildfires worse.
Blaming rewilding won’t make the climate crisis disappear. In the meantime, the debate (or lack of debate) does feel like those astronomical arguments of the early modern period. Long after scientists and seafarers had proved that the earth was round and went round the sun, there were still those who insisted on the opposite. Are climate change deniers the flat earthers of our time?
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
Reform UK has rejected a Left Foot Forward journalist’s application to attend their party conference which starts today and finishes on Saturday afternoon.
On Tuesday evening, LFF reporter Olivia Barber received a rejection email.
The email stated: “Thank you for your media accreditation application for the Reform UK 2026 National Conference. Unfortunately, on this occasion, your application has been unsuccessful.”
LFF asked Reform press officer George Pykov why the application had been rejected.
Pykov stated that he believed that the application had been rejected due to the application stating they were covering the conference as a freelancer.
Barber attended as a freelancer last year.
The press officer also stated that the conference, which will take place from 3-5 September, was “overcapacity” for media applications.
He said he did not know what the cap on the number of journalists was.
However, while Reform said it is “overcapacity” for journalists, the party had been selling additional late-registration media passes to journalists for £100.
Shortly after contacting the Reform press team on Wednesday, Barber received an email stating “Your Media Conference Pass is confirmed”.
Two hours later, an email was sent stating that her pass had been rejected.
Asked whether Reform declines conference passes if journalists are critical of the party, the press officer said: “No that’s not what it’s about.”
Other Left Foot Forward journalists have been barred from attending Reform’s conference in previous years.
Several journalists who have investigated Reform have also had their conference pass requests for this year’s event rejected.
Investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan wrote on X that his conference pass had been rejected less than an hour after he published a story revealing how Isabel Oakeshott had privately called Reform mega donor Christopher Harborne “untrustworthy”.
Veteran broadcaster Michael Crick also had his request for media accreditation declined.
Reform said it had rejected around 50 journalists from attending its conference, stating: “Reform UK accepted 950 of about 1,000 media applications from a variety of outlets.”
Chinese retailer AliExpress has been caught fingerprinting visitors after one of the metrics—an outdated technique that measures inaudible sounds it sends to browsers—impeded a researcher's ability to use his bluetooth headphones.
Researcher Matthew Callaghan said he stumbled on the stealthy tracking by mistake. After loading the AliExpress homepage, audio from his phone stopped playing over his multipoint headphones, which accept connections from more than one device at a time. He set the headphones to play sounds from his phone except when his PC was producing audio. Each time he loaded AliExpress, the phone audio stopped. Each time he closed the tab the site was loaded into, the phone was once again audible.
Users can't hear it, but browsers can
While investigating the odd behavior, Callaghan said he found two highly obfuscated scripts. Together, they rendered a graph that analyzed the WebAudio readings of each visiting browser. This graph acted as an oscillator that measured Sawtooth waves, which are common in output from digital audio.
The Green Party leader has launched a blistering attack on Britain’s press regulation, branding the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) “toothless” and calling for a forced sell-off of most national newspapers by banning foreign ownership.
Zack Polanski is demanding an inquiry into the “culture and behaviour” of the press, arguing that the time has come for the media to be “sorted out.”
His intervention follows the death of Jason Arday, the former University of Cambridge professor who was found dead in London after facing intense media scrutiny over allegations of plagiarism. Polanski condemned what he described as “sustained and malicious media attacks,” arguing that Arday had faced particular hostility because he was black.
“We must now reflect on the impact of a trial by some of the media and online on someone under extreme pressure,” Polanski said.
The Prime Minister, responding to Arday’s death, urged a “moment of reflection” and warned people “not to rush to judgement.” Polanski criticised the comments, arguing that Andy Burnham had “utterly failed to recognise the moment to tackle the press.”
“I don’t think it would be ‘rushing to judgment’ to see that the press hounding people – especially people of colour – has been going on for a very long time,” he said.
The Green Party leader also took aim at press misinformation involving climate change. Replying to a story by the Daily Mail about the heatwaves in Britain, he said:
“Constant misinformation to protect their donors and fossil fuels is destroying lives and our planet. The Government must step up and stop being cowardly.”
In a letter to Burnham, Polanski has called on the government to launch an inquiry into how to “ensure a responsible press.”
The demands are being echoed within the Green Party. Members have called for the government to reopen the Leveson Inquiry to ensure its “full completion” and to place the British press under a “genuinely independent and recognised regulator with effective enforcement powers.”
A party motion has proposed that any new regulator should have powers to monitor what members describe as “harassment” arising from news coverage, as well as to “map and address” instances of racism and ableism.
Polanski’s comments inevitably drew a furious response from the right, with Free Speech Union founder Lord Toby Young telling the Telegraph that the Greens were attempting to exploit Arday’s death to advance what he described as an “anti-free speech agenda.”
“For the Green Party to pre-empt the inquest into [Mr Arday’s] death and weaponise it to pursue their anti-free speech agenda is both cynical and exploitative,” said Young.
“The British press does not need to be ‘sorted out’. Scrutinising powerful and influential figures and holding them to account, including Zack Polanksi, is precisely what it should be doing.”
This is the Toby Young who managed to secure a seat in the House of Lords from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, despite having been forced to resign from the Office for Students in 2018 after a string of misogynistic and homophobic tweets, including one where he referred to George Clooney as “queer as a coot” and another joking about visiting a bar full of “hardcore dykes.”
In other words, the man defending the press’s right to hold powerful people to account might reasonably be asked who holds the press, and those defending it, to account.
Ryan Bridge, founder of Operation Raise the Colours, the online campaign to display national flags in public spaces, has reacted furiously after the High Court backed Oxfordshire County Council’s decision to stop people attaching flags to roadside lampposts.
Oxfordshire County Council recently secured a High Court injunction preventing people from fastening flags to lampposts across the county. The Liberal Democrat-led authority argued that the practice created road safety hazards while also amounting to trespass and obstruction. Breaching the injunction could result in the seizure of assets, unlimited fines or even imprisonment.
The ruling follows a sustained campaign of intimidation directed at council staff. During proceedings, the judge heard that employees had been advised to check their vehicles for tracking devices after harassment linked to the dispute, while one worker’s home address was published online. Three individuals associated with Operation Raise the Colours were also warned by the court not to engage in any future flag-related activity.
Oxfordshire County Council has made clear that it continues to fly both the Union Flag and the St George’s Cross at County Hall and fully supports residents displaying flags on their own property. The case was about unauthorised installations on public infrastructure, not banning national flags.
That distinction, however, was largely absent from the predictable outrage that followed.
The Express declared that a ‘woke’ council had ‘banned’ St George’s and Union flags, despite the court ruling being about where they could be displayed rather than whether they could be flown at all. To reinforce that framing, the newspaper turned to the founder of Operation Raise the Colours.
Bridge told the Express: “This is the country we’re living in. This is the woke, middle-class, liberal, left agenda and, in places like Oxford, Cambridge, and Brighton, which are heavily occupied by people from the university education sector, we feel that our children are being indoctrinated by the left wing. This is where it’s happening.
“These people are getting rules and regulations for their own little world.”
His comments quickly moved beyond flags altogether.
Asked whether he believed Andy Burnham was patriotic, whether he could see the new Prime Minister hoisting a flag himself. Bridge said:
“I do, but I think he would do it for purposes of trying to get people onboard, just like he says ‘I’m one of the people, I’ll speak to the people’ and all this malarkey.
“I think it’s all one big cover. I am disgusted that he has got a Number 10 of the north. I think that’s disgusting.”
He went on to claim that Britain’s traditions like Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, were being eroded “because of people like Burnham.”
What began as a legal dispute over attaching flags to street lamps rapidly became, in Bridge’s view, evidence that Britain’s children are being indoctrinated, universities are driving a liberal takeover and devolved political institutions somehow threaten Buckingham Palace and Downing Street.
Needless to say, embedded within the article is one of the Express’s familiar reader polls asking whether English towns should fly more St George’s flags.
Yesterday, the European Commission slapped AliExpress with the largest fine yet under the Digital Services Act (DSA), exceeding $625 million.
In a press release, the EC said that AliExpress failed to “diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform.”
Officials found that AliExpress not only failed to staff teams dedicated to removing counterfeit and dangerous items from the platform, but it also made it easy for bad actors to evade detection.
The Intercept is challenging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to release public documents relating to an unlawful database intended to stifle protest and punish people who exercise their First Amendment rights. In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York today, The Intercept is asking the court to compel the government to release documents requested through the Freedom of Information Act regarding increased surveillance and travel restrictions for protesters. The Intercept is represented by Democracy Forward in the case.
“It’s not illegal to monitor the activity of immigration agents inside your community,” said Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept. “What is illegal is the U.S. government’s secret list of activists — and its refusal to turn over information about that database to the American public.”
Sweeping immigration enforcement actions performed by DHS and its component agencies — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — in recent months have led to a countermovement of civilians protesting and recording immigration enforcement actions in cities and towns across the United States. In response to the swell of public support for democracy, news reports and social media posts about encounters with ICE and CBP agents have suggested that by using photos, video, license plates, hotel check-in information, and more to create a database of lawful protesters, the government may be taking concerning action affecting the rights of those exercising their First Amendment rights. There are other indications that DHS may have used its authority over traveler programs to retaliate against protesters.
In one example, a video posted to social media on January 23, 2026, depicts federal agents recording a protester, saying that they were recording her “because we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” In another example, a court hearing regarding immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota reportedly included an exhibit of a recording of a federal agent saying, “Well, this person is gonna have a hard time traveling from now on” after taking a photo of an ICE observer’s license plate. In a separate court case, a civilian observing ICE submitted a declaration stating that her TSA PreCheck and Global Entry statuses were revoked three days after an encounter with immigration enforcement officials. Additionally, at least one prominent supporter of transgender rights has reportedly had her Global Entry access and U.S. passport canceled in the past few months.
In order to shed light on these reported abuses of power, earlier this year, The Intercept filed FOIA requests to help uncover important information about DHS’s efforts to increase surveillance of protesters and unlawful retaliation against people exercising their rights. Despite acknowledging the receipt of the requests, DHS has not produced the requested public documents, as required by law.
“The government is not allowed to selectively hide information about its actions that impact protected First Amendment activity,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “The surveillance and retaliation being reported would be egregious violations of core constitutional principles, and we are honored to represent a storied news organization as it fights to demand the public have access to the information we need to protect our democracy.”
The case is The Intercept v. DHS et al., and the legal team at Democracy Forward working on the case includes Amy Vickery, Daniel McGrath, Ron Fein, and Robin Thurston.
Login
