timelets

Powered by encrypted messaging apps, anonymized platforms and a growing pool of people willing to move money for a cut, the system is agile, scalable and disturbingly hard to shut down. What began a decade ago as a fringe trend on dark-web bazaars is fast evolving into a sprawling global ecosystem of freelance money movers. Even the biggest criminal groups, long reliant on in-house laundering, are starting to tap it.

This is happening while the Trump administration is shifting funding and priorities away from money laundering investigations while also clearing the way for crypto to take a larger role in global finance. That raises the dangerous possibility that laundering operations could slip entirely beyond the government’s ability to police them, several watchdogs and crypto enforcement agents say.





https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-11/drug-cartel-money-laundering-shifts-to-crypto-and-the-gig-economy

Both the Trumps and Witkoffs began cashing out during the run-up to the inauguration.

On Jan. 16, two lieutenants for Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the U.A.E. president’s brother, signed the deal to purchase a 49% stake in World Liberty for half a billion dollars—a huge sum for a company that at that time had no products. Of the upfront installment, $187 million was directed to Trump family entities, while $31 million was slated to flow to entities affiliated with the Witkoff family. The deal didn’t give the Tahnoon-backed entity any rights to the proceeds of future WLFI token sales, preserving the Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ income stream.

World Liberty stopped selling its WLFI token to the public in March. By then, the company said it had taken in $550 million from the token sales, in addition to the U.A.E. investment money.



https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-sons-crypto-billions-1e7f1414

South Texas is a heightened example of what contractors are facing across the country in areas where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has intensified. Home builders in Minnesota relayed similar experiences of raids picking up whole work crews, even those with legal documentation, said Grace Keliher, executive vice president of the Builders Association of Minnesota. Nationally, a third of commercial contractors reported being affected by immigration-enforcement actions in the past six months, according to a January report by trade group Associated General Contractors of America.

Two guards at a nearby immigration detention center said they frequently see detainees come in still wearing dusty work clothes from construction jobsites. A significant portion of the men they now guard have valid work permits, they said, which they haven’t seen in previous administrations, but those detainees still wait weeks to see a judge before being released.

Because of that, people are afraid to work whether they have legal authorization or not, a reality that has hit the industry and broader regional economy hard. Paul Rodriguez, CEO of Valley Land Title, estimated that residential construction activity fell 30% in recent months in Hidalgo County.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/texas-immigration-raids-economy-87e23e2e

Only 13% of those arrested at the beginning of 2025 didn’t have either a conviction or a pending charge.

Since October, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction and only 5% had a violent criminal conviction, according to a Cato Institute review of ICE data.

Many of the criminal immigrants the Administration counts among those in detention are convicted criminals culled from prisons.

Syracuse professor Austin Kocher, who tracks official ICE data, finds that between Sept. 21, 2025, and Jan. 7, 2026, single-day ICE detentions increased 11,296. But only 902 of those were convicted criminals, 2,273 had pending criminal charges and 8,121 were other immigrant violators. ICE arrests have been trending upward since January 2025, but criminal arrests have plateaued.

White House aide Stephen Miller’s undisciplined mass deportation and zero-immigration policy is building distrust, and the White House pitch that public safety justifies its enforcement is losing credibility.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/mass-deportation-trump-administration-ice-criminals-minnesota-tim-walz-kristi-noem-7f3bb88b

Впрочем нигде не могу найти видео начала конфликта: везде показывают, как он сопротивляется повалившим его полицейским.

Но некоторые СМИ утверждают, что есть какие-то видео, где он якобы подходит к ним не с пистолетом, а телефоном.

https://xaxam.dreamwidth.org/1333814.html?thread=8634422#cmt8634422

Я так поняла, что они задерживали нелегала, а этот чудик решил зачем-то вмешаться.
Ну и получил, как пелось в той песне маслину.

А тот, кого они пытались задержать - удрал.
То есть мужик жизнь потерял из-за какого-то нелегального криминала.
Чистая премия Дарвина.
Да.

https://julinona.dreamwidth.org/494833.html?thread=5830385#cmt5830385

The world is waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of President Trump’s “emergency” tariffs, and Mr. Trump’s weekend tariff spree against European allies underscores again why his abuse of his authority needs to be reined in.

The episode puts in sharp relief how open-ended Mr. Trump’s claim of tariff emergency authority is. He can declare an emergency on his own, he can decide which countries and goods he can hit with the border taxes, and at what rate. This means he can use tariffs essentially whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants. Congress gave him no such expansive power under IEEPA or any other statute.

Tariff apologists will say the Greenland tariffs show the uses of border taxes for foreign policy, but the taxing power is Congress’s under the Constitution unless expressly delegated to the President.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-greenland-ieepa-supreme-court-2a4a6591

The Journal identified 13 shootings involving ICE or CBP agents and civilian vehicles since July, using court records, news reports and gun-violence databases.

Footage verified by the Journal and a video shared on Friday by DHS show Ross moving in front of the vehicle while its engine was running, which former and current DHS agents say they are trained not to do.

The Minneapolis shooting shares characteristics with others the Journal reviewed: Agents box in a vehicle, try to remove an individual, block attempts to flee, then fire.

Footage from the shootings also shows officers approaching civilian vehicles with their engines still running—a situation police are trained to avoid. According to Kerlikowske, such training is designed to keep officers out of harm’s way.

Videos reviewed by the Journal show officers trying to open vehicle doors, reaching into vehicles and smashing windows, followed by drivers fleeing.

Police are trained to break a window only in specific circumstances, such as if the driver is armed or there is a medical emergency, said Alpert. In footage from the four cases closely reviewed by the Journal, none of the drivers had firearms, but DHS insists they were still dangerous.

Obstructing a moving vehicle
In at least three of the shootings, officers pursued a vehicle on foot. Footage also shows officers moving into the potential path of the vehicle or clinging on to it while it moved.

“It’s like policing 101. Don’t get in front of a car or in their potential pathway, especially if the engine is running,” said Jon Blum, a former North Carolina officer who now develops police training curricula.

Firing into a moving vehicle also creates its own danger, according to Alpert.

“If I shoot you, and I’m successful, now we’ve got an unguided missile,” said Alpert. “What if there are kids playing in the street?”

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/videos-show-how-ice-vehicle-stops-can-escalate-to-shootings-caf17601

Costco Wholesale Corp. joined a fast-growing list of businesses suing the Trump administration to ensure eligibility for refunds if the US Supreme Court strikes down the president’s signature global tariffs policy.

The nation’s biggest warehouse club chain is among dozens of companies to file lawsuits in a US trade court since late October challenging President Donald Trump’s use of an economic emergency powers law to impose the levies, according to court records. It’s one of the biggest corporate players to jump into a fight largely driven this year by small businesses and Democratic state officials.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement that, “The economic consequences of the failure to uphold President Trump’s lawful tariffs are enormous and this suit highlights that fact. The White House looks forward to the Supreme Court’s speedy and proper resolution of this matter.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-01/costco-joins-companies-suing-for-refunds-if-trump-s-tariffs-fall

Though Trump has been in office for more than three weeks, he has yet to send a substantive bill to Congress. Some observers have compared Trump’s flurry of action to Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days, or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society agenda. They are missing the point. FDR and LBJ sent big legislation to Congress. Trump is starting with a pipeline of executive orders. If the courts stymie those, they will be blocking his agenda. His strategy rests on a pliant judiciary.

He believes the US electorate gave him an unchecked mandate. It follows that any interference in his exercise of power — including an Alice-style belief that the US constitution means what he chooses it to mean — amounts to a block on democracy. Could he put 30,000 illegal immigrants beyond legal reach in a refitted Guantánamo Bay? Of course. The American people have spoken. Might he pick which of America’s creditors to repay and which to declare fraudulent? Quite possibly. Trump, not judges, will be the decider.

The Republican-controlled Congress has removed itself from Trump’s path. Unelected judges are the problem. Ultimate among those are the nine justices of the US Supreme Court. It is to their inboxes such dilemmas are heading. At stake is their reason for existing.

Turkeys are allegedly opposed to Thanksgiving. Yet the Supreme Court last July granted the US president sweeping immunity from almost any “official” acts. It takes little imagination to infer that this could be stretched to ignoring the courts. The six justices who put their names to that ruling may now regret their loose phrasing. They could have edited themselves into an advisory body. The problem the court faces is that Trump has a strong wind at his back. Constitutional lawyers warn that he could destroy America’s separation of powers.

https://www.ft.com/content/8e52b5ae-56b4-4571-ba09-103d5799ce9a