Three executions in a single day and none were in Florida

The 21st and 22nd Executions of 2026

Yesterday I wrote about Anthony Darrell Hines who was executed on August 13, 2026 in Tennessee. Two more Executions followed on the same day for the first time since 2010.

Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was put to death by the state of Oklahoma, in the first of three executions scheduled for Thursday in a rare triple procedure that underlines the renewed appetite in the US for state killings.

Just one hour later, Hines was put to death by the state of Tennessee, and at 6 pm in Alabama, that state executed Jeremy Williams.

Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, was pronounced dead at 10.13am at the Oklahoma state penitentiary in McAlester. He was sentenced to death for murdering his common-law wife, Olimpia Fisher, in 2003. He had unsuccessfully appealed for mercy, saying he was remorseful and had struggled all his life from mental illness.

Cuesta-Rodriguez’s family and friends issued a statement in the wake of his execution, calling his life one of “extraordinary beauty and tenderness within the darkest of conditions”.

“Through small, unglamorous, consistent acts of kindness, he expressed his humanity year after year,” the statement read.

“He was a different man from the one who committed his horrible crime – remorseful every single day, burdened by the weight of what he had done – but defined by decades of living humbly, gently, and with unwavering love and devotion to his family and to inmates far worse off than himself. His legacy will not be measured by his worst moment, but by the countless moments after – the letters that never failed to arrive, the art he created from behind those walls, and the love and light he poured out consistently and unconditionally, proving that even from a place of such darkness, one person’s kindness and redemption can still ripple into the world.”

The third execution of the day was of Williams, 42, who raped and murdered a five-year-old girl in Georgia in 2021. He pleaded guilty to killing Kamarie Holland and instructed his lawyers not to object to anything prosecutors did during trial, waived sentencing by a jury and did not present any mitigating evidence typically provided during a capital sentencing. He declined to appeal, bringing on his execution at a much faster pace than most death row occupants.

During Williams’s last 24 hours of life, his wife, mother, stepmother, brother and father all visited him, according to the Alabama department of corrections, and he spoke on the phone with his grandmother and aunt.

“I want to thank God for forgiving me for my sins so I can meet him in peace,” Williams said in his final words, according to the Associated Press. The agency reported that Williams rocked his head back-and-forth and smiled and appeared to sing or speak before slowing and becoming still on the gurney.

This is the first time in more than 15 years that there have been three judicial killings in the US on a single day. The one-day surge in death chamber activity was a scheduling coincidence, but it is also a sign of renewed energy among death penalty states.

Last year 47 executions were carried out in the US, a dramatic increase on the previous year’s 25. Much of the increase was generated by one state alone, Florida, which conducted 19 killings under its Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.

All three scheduled executions were due to take place by lethal injection, the procedure that has been the norm in the US since the early 1980s. Alabama had largely switched to a new experimental method, nitrogen gas, but that was halted by a federal judge in June on grounds that it was unconstitutional.

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Tennessee carries out execution of Anthony Darnell Hines

The 20th Execution 2026 

Despite numerous attempts at clemency and reprieve, convicted murderer Anthony Darrell Hines was executed in Nashville on the morning of August 13, 2026.

Hines’ death came through lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at approximately 10 a.m.

Hines was declared dead at 10:43 a.m. He had no last words to offer, initially, but before the injection said, “Tell my son I love him,” according to a witness.

Katherine Dix, Hines’ attorney, released this statement after the execution:

“I’d like to start by saying that I grieve for the family of Catherine Jean Jenkins. May God be with you,” Dix said. “I also grieve the violence the State of Tennessee inflicted on us all today. On Darrell, of course, who was poisoned to death, just moments ago. On those of us required by our jobs to stand passively and watch Darrell be murdered. On the prison guards and officials whose jobs require them to participate. On Darrell’s son, who met Darrell four days ago for the first time and watched him die this morning. What we witnessed here today is not normal, and I urge us all to not become numb or indifferent to the cruelty.”

Dennis Jenkins, the son of Katherine Jean Jenkins, the woman who Hines killed, had a few words for attorneys who defend death row inmates.

“For those of you who may be concerned as to whether or not this animal suffered, let me tell you what he did to my mother 41 years ago,” Dennis said. “...yes, I hope he did suffer. I hope he felt severe pain...to those hot-shot attorneys out there that are trying to make a name for yourselves by defending these cold-blooded murderers...I don’t understand your mentality.”

Thursday’s execution in Nashville moved forward despite numerous attempts by Hines’ legal representation to save his life - the last of which came this week in the form of a request for clemency from the Tennessee governor.

Gov. Bill Lee chose not to intervene in the execution of Darrell Hines, and released this statement on Tuesday:

“After deliberate consideration of Anthony Darrell Hines’ request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene.”

What happened during Carruthers’ execution?

Hines’ execution marks the first in Tennessee since the botched attempt of Tony Carruthers at the end of May.

Attorneys for Hines, as well as dozens of medical professionals, expressed concern that the same doctor who botched the execution of Carruthers will be the one to perform Hines’ lethal injection.

Carruthers was scheduled to die by lethal injection on the morning of May 21 at Riverbend, but the doctor was unable to establish the required “backup line” to accompany the primary injection. The Tennessee Department of Corrections reported that once the procedure failed, “the execution was then called off,” and Carruthers was returned to his cell.

Gov. Lee then granted Carruthers a “temporary reprieve from execution for one year.”

Why was Darrell Hines sentenced to death?

Hines was convicted of first-degree felony murder for the 1985 killing of Catherine Jean Jackson Jenkins.

According to court documents, Jenkins was a maid at the CeBon Motel off Interstate 40 in Kingston Springs when, on March 3, 1985, her body was found wrapped in a sheet in one of the motel rooms. Her clothes had been moved so she was exposed, and her undergarments had been cut and taken off her body.

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DOJ offers millions to cities to 'abandon progressive ideologies on policing'

The Trump administration is offering grants of tens of millions of dollars to cities across the US to create more Memphis-style enforcement surges – on the condition that they abandon progressive ideologies on policing, reported The Guardian.

The US Department of Justice says it will announce up to four finalist cities that will split $300m in grant funding under a federal “Model Cities” policing initiative (MCI) next month, setting the stage for some of the largest federal policing grants ever awarded to individual US cities.

In exchange for the funding, cities are required to comply with federal immigration enforcement requests, enact conservative policies on anti-homelessness rules, and potentially repay millions of dollars in the event of a surge in violent crime or “civil unrest”, according to a grant document.

The document cites Washington DC and Memphis, Tennessee – two cities with national guard troops patrolling the streets – as a model to emulate. The administration has so far defied calls to suspend its controversial taskforce in Memphis, following four officer-involved deaths since its launch last September.

“That’s not a model I’d be looking for,” said Steven Reed, the mayor of Montgomery, Alabama. Reed said he had seen the grant and passed on applying. “Everybody wants a quick fix, and no one wants to invest in the root cause of the issue,” he said.

Despite the significant funding boost on offer, Reed is one of several leaders of large municipalities with Democratic majorities who have signaled they will not even consider applying for the grant.

The justice department has offered policing grants to cities through programs of the office of community oriented policing services (Cops) since 1994, disbursing more than $20bn since then. The Cops office of the justice department offered city governments about $700m this fiscal year to supplement hiring, training and equipment.

The MCI, a product of funding from Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, offers another $300m to two to four municipalities with more than 100,000 residents. Grant funding will last three years under the program.

Unlike most previous grants, awards will seemingly be awarded after evaluation by senior political appointees in the justice department, and not through a more politically neutral recommendation process of peer review, said Amy Solomon, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, who previously served as assistant attorney general of the office of justice programs under Joe Biden.

The grant guidelines require applicants to have documented “buy-in and support” across the local government – mayors, sheriff’s offices, city councils and county commissions – as a condition of approval.

The initiative focuses on reducing violent crime, to “surge substantial, targeted federal funding into select cities”, according to a justice department presentation on the grants. City governments can use the money to hire more police and fund substance abuse recovery programs, prisoner re-entry programs, facilities, training and other initiatives.

A justice department spokesperson claimed jurisdictions have “expressed intense interest” in the initiative.

“Senior department leaders have made themselves available in a variety of formats to answer questions about how cities can submit the most competitive application possible,” a spokesperson replied to emailed questions. “[The justice department] looks forward to reviewing applications from across the country that demonstrate how creative solutions and close teamwork between local and federal partners can achieve the same dramatic gains in public safety seen in Washington DC and Memphis. This is the Make America Safe Again mission in action.”

The department did not answer questions about the repayment provision, and declined to say whether it had yet received eligible applications, or whether city governments would be required to accept the activation of the national guard under the grant program.

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Deployment of National Guard in DC through 2029 will cost taxpayers $1.4 million

The extension of the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C. until January 2029 will cost roughly $1.4 billion, according to a Defense Department estimate provided to Congress, reported The Associated Press.

The figure offers a glimpse of how much taxpayer money will be spent on a deployment that has been criticized by local officials as an infringement of their city’s autonomy and by Democrats who say it has militarized the streets of nation’s capital at the public’s expense.

The cost estimate is for fiscal years 2027-2029 and came in response to questions from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and was provided to The Associated Press.

The deployment began last summer, when President Donald Trump issued an emergency order that launched a law enforcement surge in the city which the administration says was meant to fight crime. Hundreds of armed Guard troops have been deployed to city streets, supporting arrest operations but also helping with snow removal and carrying out beautification projects. This summer, as the city marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, their numbers surged to about 5,000.

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Fines and court costs 'destabilize employment, finances and health'

 U.S. state and local governments impose court fines and fees and use what they collect to fund court operations, law enforcement, and other government services, reported Pew. Between 2018 and 2022, courts in 24 states assessed nearly $14 billion in fines and fees, with rural communities—home to roughly 46 million people—bearing a disproportionate burden compared with urban communities. 

At the same time, a growing body of evidence shows that fines and fees are an unstable and unreliable revenue source, yielding limited and declining net returns for courts. Analyses of New Mexico and Texas found that collected fines and fees averaged 59% of assessed amounts from 2012 to 2018. And in 19 states, median state collection rates fell by 33% from fiscal year 2018 to fiscal 2022, while imposing significant burdens on communities.

For many households, court debt becomes an added bill to pay on top of necessities like rent, transportation, utilities, and groceries. Just as missed rent or utility payments can trigger eviction or shut-offs, missed court payments often trigger cascading punitive sanctions—like driver’s license suspension, repeated court involvement, and arrest—that can destabilize employment, finances, and health. 

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Former U.S. Attorney sue DOJ and AG Blanche over his firing

Less than three hours after a right-wing influencer revealed a blog post critical of Donald Trump, the DOJ fired U.S. Attorney Will Rosenzweig. He received an emailed letter signed by Pam Bondi, then the attorney general, dismissing him from his position as the U.S. attorney for Miami, effective immediately. No reason was provided, reported The New York Times.

Mr. Rosenzweig has now sued the Justice Department along with Todd Blanche, who now runs the department, and Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, asking for financial damages and his job back. In doing so, he joined a growing list of former prosecutors and federal agents who have gone to court in an effort to fight back against the widespread purge of law enforcement officials deemed to be disloyal to the president.

During Mr. Trump’s second term, agents and prosecutors have been fired for any number of reasons. Some were seasoned veterans who lost their jobs while trying to protect subordinates from being dismissed. Others were accused, sometimes incorrectly, of having worked on criminal cases involving the president. Many worked on cases stemming from the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Rosenzweig’s firing was one of several that shared a different twist: right-wing commentators claimed to be behind them. On the morning after he was terminated, Ms. Winters reposted a message from another far-right influencer, Laura Loomer, announcing the news. Ms. Winters’s message, punctuated by a smiley-face emoji, declared: “Got this guy fired.”

Many of Ms. Winters’s posts have since been deleted, but lawyers for Mr. Rosenzweig included screenshots of them in their lawsuit. In the posts, she said that Mr. Rosenzweig had “smeared” Mr. Trump in his writings by calling him “mentally unfit” and a “white supremacist.”

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Tennessee moving forward with death penalty after botched execution

The Tennessee Department of Correction is scheduled to execute Anthony “Darrell” Hines on August 13, 2026, reported WPLN News.

For weeks, more and more people have been calling for a death penalty moratorium. But yet again, Gov. Bill Lee says that’s not going to happen.

“We live in a broken world where people commit horrible and heinous crimes, and victims and their families are devastated,” he said in a media availability this week. “And it’s a very difficult — those are very difficult situations… The people have chosen the death penalty for those most heinous crimes. It’s my responsibility to make sure that law is carried out.”

His statement was noteworthy for two reasons: Several unrelated groups — defense attorneys, faith leaders, doctors and Republican lawmakers — have called for an investigation into a failed execution in May, and say the state shouldn’t put anyone to death until that’s done. Lee’s statements indicate he does not want to heed that call. And Lee has maintained that during that failed attempt, the Tennessee Department of Correction had followed the lethal injection protocol. That’s a widely disputed conclusion.

This all started three months ago, when the agency tried and failed to execute Tony Carruthers. The medical staff tried to place a typical IV and failed. Per the lethal injection protocol, a doctor then tried to place a central line in a deeper vein. He also failed. After an hour, Lee called into the prison and ordered them to stop.

That cast a spotlight on whether Tennessee is finding qualified medical professionals to serve on the IV team and as the on-site physician.

Mounting concerns

First, defense attorneys for death row inmates asked for a moratorium, investigation and protocol rewrite. Then in early July, nearly a dozen Republican state senators made a similar call. Lee made his first “no moratorium” announcement then.

Last week, a group of about 40 doctors and nurses joined the call. They wrote a letter to Lee, arguing that medical ethics, including those laid out by the American Medical Association, bar participation in the death penalty.

“This means that the health care professionals who agree to take part in Tennessee’s executions are those willing to set aside their professional ethics,” the letter reads in part. “The problems that we have seen, such as in Mr. Carruthers’ case, are the predictable result of working with such unscrupulous actors.”

Then Tennessee’s Supreme Court announced it was taking up a different death row case. Next week, it will hold several days of hearings on whether the process will violate the rights of Christa Pike, who is scheduled to undergo the lethal injection on September 30. The court appointed a special master, which is a formal investigator. There’s a long list of constitutional concerns, most of them centering on Pike’s gender and extensive history of sexual trauma.

But the special master will also consider whether Pike is at risk of undergoing a cruel and unusual punishment because of her diagnosis with a blood disorder. The condition, thrombocytosis, means her high blood platelet count increases the risk of blood clotting, which can cause heart attacks and strokes. Pike’s attorneys argue this condition and her compromised veins could make delivering a lethal injection particularly difficult. Which would mean she’d likely need a central line placed, and would need a doctor on site capable of placing one.

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'Slush Fund' or not, Jan. 6 insurrectionists seeking payouts from the federal government

 The Treasury Department is illegally withholding information about who is receiving settlement money from its Judgment Fund, obscuring whether January 6th insurrectionists and Trump political allies are receiving massive payouts from the federal government, according to a lawsuit filed today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The suit seeks to require the government to promptly post required information about Judgment Fund payments, including all payments going back to the start of the current Trump administration, as well as correcting inaccurate descriptions of previous payments. 

In May 2026, President Trump entered into an unprecedented “settlement” with his own Justice Department, which established a $1.776 billion slush fund intended to pay out victims of “weaponization,” including January 6th defendants. The slush fund garnered significant backlash, and the Trump administration declared the fund dead, before formally rescinding the order establishing the fund this weekend under duress from Congress. It remains unclear whether the DOJ can unilaterally rescind the order without agreement from the other litigants involved in the underlying suit, including litigant Trump. With the slush fund in limbo, Trump’s allies, including January 6th defendants, have apparently turned to pursuing payouts through the Federal Tort Claims Act settlement process, seeking millions of dollars in “restitution” for alleged wrongdoings related to their prosecution. 

When the government settles with an individual under the FTCA, the Treasury Department pays that individual from its Judgment Fund. The Treasury Department is legally required to publicly disclose important settlement payment details, such as the names of claimants and their counsel, and a brief statement of facts giving rise to the claims being settled. Treasury, however, has for years adopted an across-the-board policy of noncompliance—omitting names and facts in every case and instead publishing opaque descriptors that are often inaccurate or misleading. The law requiring the disclosure of settlement payments was passed on a bipartisan basis, and was primarily sponsored by Republican Rep. Doug Collins. 

“Taxpayers deserve to know where their money is going and why, especially if it’s going to the president’s cronies,” said CREW President and CEO Donald K. Sherman. “The Trump administration seems hellbent on secretly paying out Trump’s allies, including the violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th. There is a law in place to prevent this secrecy, and the Treasury Department needs to follow it.”

The Trump administration’s misuse of the FTCA claims settlement process is not mere conjecture. For months, the Justice Department has been led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who approved and defended Trump’s initial collusive settlement. Under Blanche’s leadership as Deputy Attorney General and later Acting Attorney General, the DOJ has awarded generous settlements to January 6th participants and other political allies despite obvious defenses the government could have used to challenge the claims they asserted. In one especially egregious example, the Justice Department agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle an FTCA case brought by Trump’s former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, for wrongful prosecution, despite the fact that Flynn had pleaded guilty to his crimes and a district court had already dismissed Flynn’s FTCA case. The Treasury Department has withheld payment information related to these suspect settlements.

“Even if President Trump’s slush fund is nominally dead—something that still remains in doubt despite Acting Attorney General Blanche’s rescission of the DOJ’s order—his administration is apparently ok with using the Judgment Fund in its place,” said Sherman. “The law does not allow the government to spend taxpayer dollars in secret. If the president is paying his cronies, the public is entitled to know.”

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Danner: 'Trumps Constitutional Dictatorship'

 Mark Danner writes in The New York Review:

Amid the tumult and the bluster and the noise, what exactly makes our singular president tick? After revisiting in minute detail the innumerable outrages and atrocities of Donald Trump’s second term we come upon, in the epilogue to Regime Change, the purported answer. The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, having mostly completed their epic chronicle, arrive at the now-gilded Oval Office for their “fact-checking” interview. The president, in an expansive mood, greets them and guides them to their seats in front of the Resolute Desk. “No other president,” he had recently declared with his customary eloquence, “could do some of the shit I’m doing.”

Exactly what shit might he have had in mind? Sending masked ICE agents to seize and deport hundreds of thousands of largely law-abiding people and imprison 60,000 more? Overturning the eighty-year-old world trade system by imposing arbitrary tariffs? Launching a war of choice against Iran with nary a word to Congress or the American people? Firing hundreds of thousands of government workers and gutting USAID, PBS, and the Kennedy Center? Attacking law firms and universities and television networks?

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Blanche grovels for votes from GOP Senate Judiciary Committee holdouts

After a weekslong standoff between senators and the Trump administration, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the parties had reached a deal and that he had issued an order “officially” rescinding a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, reported NBC News.

“My team and I have met with committee members and Senators over the past several weeks and addressed any concerns or outstanding questions,” Blanche wrote on X. “We have enjoyed good faith discussions, and as a result issue the following order and update with regard to the May IRS settlement. The Department always welcomes and appreciates productive engagement with all members of Congress.”

Attached to his post was a signed order that said, “The Attorney General’s May 18, 2026 Order establishing the Anti-Weaponization Fund (‘Fund’) is rescinded and shall have nor force or effect.”

“This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no fund,” the order read.

Blanche’s announcement comes two days before the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on his nomination to be attorney general in a permanent capacity.

The fund was part of a settlement that stemmed from a lawsuit President Donald Trump filed against the IRS, a deal which also shielded the Trump family from tax audits. The fund has been criticized in part because the payouts could extend to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Blanche faced pushback from key GOP Sens. John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, who said their support for him hinged on the administration rescinding its plans for the fund.

Cornyn spokesperson Natalie Yezbick confirmed in a statement that the senator “has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice.”

The department “will be issuing a formal order permanently terminating the anti-weaponization fund and making clear in a binding written document that the scope of the audit settlement is limited to only the plaintiffs, including the President, and the IRS,” Yezbick said.

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Trump threatens Congress: "Todd Blanche was a voice of reason!'

Here is a great idea. President Trump said that he would revive a proposal for a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund that would compensate his supporters if the Senate does not confirm Todd Blanche his nominee for attorney general, reported The New York Times. 

Someone should tell the President that the reason Blanche doesn't have support among GOP senators is because of his willingness to scratch all facets of the so-called "anti-weaponization" proposal. 

The administration had backed off plans to establish such a fund in June as it was criticized as a scheme to reward political allies with taxpayers’ dollars.

But in a social media post, Mr. Trump reacted to skepticism about his nomination of Todd Blanche, his former defense lawyer, to be attorney general, saying that he would keep Mr. Blanche as the acting attorney general if the Senate failed to confirm him, and added that he would “push hard” to pass legislation creating the fund.

“Todd Blanche was a voice of reason! It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

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Former special counsel Jack Smith is not a criminal

Whatever one might think of Jack Smith’s performance as a prosecutor — I’ve got criticisms, and reasonable minds can differ — the guy is no criminal, wrote Elie Honig in New York Magazine.

Sure, congressional Republicans have worked themselves into a retributive frenzy — We’ve got him now! — while Donald Trump shakes pom-poms behind them. “Justice at last???” the president mused on Truth Social, expectantly. But last week’s criminal referral of Smith to the Justice Department by House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan is pure sleight of hand. On close inspection, even Jordan doesn’t quite buy into his own carnival barkery on this one.

Jordan alleges that Smith lied when he testified behind closed doors to the Judiciary Committee in December 2025. Smith was asked whether, during his investigation of Trump for 2020 election subversion, he reviewed documents containing the content of text messages sent or received by members of Congress. The key to understanding Jordan’s gambit is that there are two separate batches of documents at issue. We’re going to get a bit technical here, but we need to be precise to see through the bullshit.

It almost goes without saying at this point because it’s become so common, but this is yet another act in Trump’s political payback tour. The list of names is now familiar and seemingly endless: Letitia James, James Comey, Jerome Powell, Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, E. Jean Carroll, and pretty much anyone else who has ever glanced sideways at the president. Unsurprisingly, all of these efforts at prosecution have failed thus far.

If the Justice Department does somehow ram a charge against Smith through a grand jury, that case will fail too. Before a trial jury can even consider the fact that Smith did not actually commit perjury, he will have a powerful motion to dismiss based on vindictive prosecution. It’s plain that Trump and his DoJ targeted Smith because of lingering political animus over his prior investigations of Trump. In October 2025, Trump claimed that Smith and others “should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!” He reiterated his request in January 2026, citing Smith’s “large-scale perjury.” And Trump openly celebrated just moments after news broke of Jordan’s referral of Smith to the DoJ.

Trump’s Justice Department has made commonplace the (previously) rarely invoked doctrine of vindictive prosecution. One federal judge already dismissed the indictment of Kilmar Ábrego García on that basis. And the cases against James and Comey likely would have gone down the same way, had they not been thrown out first because of other constitutional infirmities.

But it seems neither Trump nor the leaders of his Justice Department care much about their string of losses. As long as they get the sugar high of the investigation and (sometimes) the indictment, they don’t seem at all bothered when these cases inevitably crash and burn.

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Erasing data on your phone at the border could land you in jail

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents want to know what's in your phone—and they won't take no for an answer, reported Reason Magazine. Courts have long held that border cops don't have to respect the Fourth Amendment when searching for contraband, and the CBP claims that this power includes the data stored on travelers' phones. Now, the feds are trying to argue that erasing that data is a form of illegal obstruction.

Samuel Tunick, a participant in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, was returning from a vacation in the Dominican Republic in January 2025 when a CBP Tactical Terrorism Response Team pulled him into a windowless room and asked for his phone password. "Because you're refusing to talk, which is your right, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for," an agent told him.

But instead of giving his real password, Tunick apparently gave the agents a code that would erase all the data on his phone, known as a "duress password." He was using a Google Pixel loaded with GrapheneOS, an operating system known for its nearly airtight security. The feds charged him 11 months later under a rarely used law against "destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure." 

After months of paperwork and delays, the case had its first hearing last week, with Tunick's lawyers arguing that the government obtained the duress password "in violation of his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights," and therefore everything that happened to the phone should be thrown out of court as "fruits of his unlawful interrogation." They also argued that the Fourth Amendment exemption for border searches shouldn't apply to the data on phones.

"Officers were not permitted to disregard all constitutional protections afforded to Mr. Tunick simply because he was at the border," the lawyers wrote in a filing before the hearing.

Several months before the Tunick case, several experts advised Reason that U.S. citizens can protect their data from border searches by wiping their devices before traveling. (It's not so simple for foreigners, since the CBP can turn them away for any reason, including having an empty phone.) An expert told The New York Times that the Tunick case would not necessarily criminalize that tactic, because travelers who erase before traveling would have "a strong argument that they did not act with the specific criminal intent to thwart an imminent search."

But the prosecution is unprecedented, and seems designed to scare people out of even trying to hide their electronic data from the CBP.

The case also highlights an important legal imbalance: The feds have the right to lie to you, but you don't have the right to lie to them. According to FBI emails obtained by Tunick's lawyers, the government was investigating Tunick for terrorism over his involvement in the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. But at the airport, CBP agents told Tunick that they were searching his phone for "child porn."

The reference never came up again in the investigation or case, leading Tunick's lawyers to call it "a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr. Tunick's connections." It may also have been an attempt to bolster the case for searching his phone. In 2019, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers West Coast states) ruled that child sex abuse images are one of the few cases where digital data itself can count as "contraband" for the purposes of border searches.

Defend the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, aims to stop the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a planned campus for police and firefighters in Georgia, both on environmental grounds and because it encourages "police militarization," according to a movement website. Throughout 2022, some protesters physically attacked the construction site and other property with rocks and Molotov cocktails. In January 2023, police shot dead protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán under murky circumstances, alleging that Terán shot at officers during a raid.

The state of Georgia has thrown the book at protesters, hitting them with domestic terrorism and racketeering influenced corrupt organization (RICO) charges. While some defendants were charged with specific violent acts, some of them were charged as co-conspirators for nothing more than "occupy[ing] a tree house" or buying camping equipment. Prosecutors even charged three people with money laundering for running a protester bail fund.

Prosecutors dropped the money laundering charges in September 2024, and a judge threw out all of the RICO charges a year later.

Last year, President Donald Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directs the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to prioritize left-wing domestic terrorism. One of their targets has been Defend the Atlanta Forest. Last month, the Department of Justice brought up two protesters who allegedly committed arson on federal charges, and cited Trump's memorandum in their announcement of the charges. The FBI even internationalized the investigation, leaning on Swiss police to help unmask the owner of the email account for Defend the Atlanta Forest.

"While the government depicts the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement as an 'Anti-Government, Anti-Authority Violent Extremist Group' ('AGAAVE'), it has not put forth evidence that Mr. Tunick was involved in criminal activity in connection with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement," Tunick's lawyers wrote.

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Federal Judge John E. Jones: 'I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this'

Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms, reported ProPublica.

From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what’s called “the presumption of regularity.” It essentially means that judges must presume that the government — whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent — did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.

Until Trump’s second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump’s DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly” or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.

ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.

“Judges simply don’t believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like,” said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.

“I don’t think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we’ve ever seen anything close to this.”

In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors’ conduct — saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts — as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital’s care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn’t communicated with the department.

“The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling,” McElroy wrote. “The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that ‘[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.’”

Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump’s political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president’s political enemies.

In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.

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Florida carries out two executions on the same day for the first time in 62 years

The 18th and 19th Executions of 2026

Florida has put to death two inmates in what's now the state's first double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, reported the USA  Today.

James Duckett, a 68-year-old former police officer convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987, was executed by lethal injection at 1:19 p.m. ET on July 28.

About five hours later, Florida executed Dominick Occhicone at 6:13 p.m. ET for the murder of his ex-fiancée's parents in 1986. At 80 years old, Occhicone became the second-oldest inmate ever executed in the United States and the oldest inmate ever executed in Florida, which is putting more elderly prisoners to death than any other state in the nation.

Tuesday also marks the first time since 1964 that Florida has executed two inmates on the same day, according to an execution database by the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. The last time any state executed two inmates in one day was in 2017 in Arkansas, according to the nonprofit.

Florida's rare double execution comes amid an aggressive push by DeSantis to put more inmates to death than the state ever has before. Of the 66 inmates executed in the United States since January 2025, Florida has carried out 31 of them – 47% – including Duckett's and Occhicone's, according to an analysis by USA TODAY. Since the start of this year, Florida has carried out 63% of the executions in the United States.

 

DeSantis has said he wants to give closure to families who have waited for justice sometimes longer than four decades.

But the Republican's actions are drawing increasing criticism from death penalty opponents and observers who say the governor is being motivated by political ambition ahead of the 2028 presidential election and is "increasingly treating executions as routine instruments of political power," according to a recent statement from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

The governor's office hasn't responded to a request for comment from USA TODAY about the allegations of political motives.

Here's what you need to know about Duckett's and Occhicone's crimes and more about what is going on in Florida.

On May 11, 1987, 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee walked to a local convenience store to buy a pencil at around 10 p.m. in Mascotte, Florida, a rural city just west of Orlando that had fewer than 2,000 residents at the time.

James "Jimmy" Duckett, a 29-year-old rookie cop, was on patrol for the Mascotte Police Department. The married father of two sons was making his regular rounds when he spotted Teresa talking with a 16-year-old boy outside the store, according to court records.

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Duckett has always maintained that he talked to Teresa and the teen, telling each to go home. But the boy and his uncle later said that Duckett put Teresa in his patrol car and drove off.

Teresa's mother arrived at the Circle K around 11 p.m., looking for her daughter. The store clerk told her that Teresa may have gone with Duckett, and the mother began searching the area. When she couldn't find Teresa, she contacted the police and later filed a missing persons report with the only officer on patrol at the time: Duckett.

Killer cop or the wrong man? How DNA halted James Duckett's execution in March

The next morning, less than a mile from the convenience store, a fisherman found Teresa's body in Knight Lake. A medical examiner later found that she had been raped and strangled, and was still alive when her attacker drowned her. Bodily fluid, presumably from the killer, was found on her underwear − DNA that was saved.

Duckett became a suspect when a sheriff's investigator, Sgt. Chuck Johnson, thought the officer was acting nervous at the scene of the body recovery, "was not curious about the death," and told a "rehearsed-sounding story" about his interaction with Teresa and the events of the night before.

Duckett was charged with murder five months later. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

Duckett was supposed to be executed in March but won a rare temporary reprieve from the Florida Supreme Court pending new DNA testing. The tests were inconclusive, Duckett's reprieve expired July 11 and DeSantis rescheduled his execution in a death warrant signed July 14.

It was the last of many decades of delays for Teresa's family.

 

After witnessing Duckett's execution on July 28, Teresa’s mother was able to get out one sentence before she began uncontrollably sobbing.

“I’ve been waiting 40 years to have him dead,” Dorothy Tula said in a quavering voice.

Her sister, Shirly Lancaster, rubbed Tula’s shoulders and continued to speak on behalf of her family, saying that “the state let him live too damn long.”

“She was only 11,” Lancaster said. “We’ve lived all this time without that baby. ... Maybe she’d have been the next doctor. Maybe she’d have been the next president, you never know. But we never got the chance to find that out because this bastard took her away from us.”

What was Dominick Anthony Occhicone Jr. convicted of?

In the early morning hours of June 10, 1986, an angry Dominick Anthony Occhicone Jr. went to the home of his ex-fiancée, Anita Gerrity, in the coastal community of Holiday, Florida, about 30 miles northwest of Tampa, according to court records.

As Occhicone knocked on windows and doors, he was confronted by Gerrity's 66-year-old father, Raymon Artzner. According to court records, Occhicone smiled at Artzner as he shot him dead, then ran into the house and fatally shot Gerrity's 62-year-old mother, Martha Artzner. Gerrity and her 10-year-old daughter were able to escape.

At trial, Occhicone's attorneys argued that he was so drunk and filled with jealousy and rage that night that he was temporarily insane. Later, after Occhicone was found guilty of both murders, his attorneys argued that a life sentence was more appropriate, telling jurors that "prison life is so hard on people, that they don't live until they're 92," according to an archived news report in the Tampa Tribune.

The jury voted 7-5 to sentence him to death and a judge agreed.

In 1997, 11 years after the murders, the son of the victims told the Tribune that he was frustrated with the delays in the execution.

"It's frustrating," Jim Artzner told the paper. "Justice has not been completed. ... It has gone on for so long. When is it going to end?"

That was 31 years ago.

On July 28 after witnessing Occhicone's execution, the Artzners' loved ones told reporters that it was "the end of a long and painful journey."

"The years since June 10, 1986, have been filed with sleepless nights, empty chairs at family gatherings, and those one-on-one conversations that were lost," they said in a statement. "We have missed birthdays, milestones, and simple everyday joys that were stolen from us. The pain and grief is always there, it never goes away."

They went on to say that Occhicone's execution doesn't erase their pain, "but it does close a door and end a chapter in our lives that has just lingered for far too long."

What is happening in Florida?

Since January 2025, Florida has become the busiest state in the nation for executions. So far this year, the Sunshine State has executed more inmates than all other states combined. Florida has put 12 inmates to death, including Duckett. Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona have executed seven inmates combined.

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Kohberger pleaded guilty now claims 'absolute claim of innocence'

The criminology student convicted last year of murdering four University of Idaho students in their home is seeking to abandon his guilty plea and obtain a trial, claiming he is innocent and was misled into confessing to the high-profile killings, reported The New York Times.

In an interview with The New York Times, Bryan Kohberger, who is currently serving four life sentences, said he had filed a petition challenging his conviction, citing concerns about how the plea deal came together.

“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Mr. Kohberger said in a statement provided to The Times on Sunday night. He reiterated in a phone call from prison in Idaho that he had an “absolute claim of innocence.”

Mr. Kohberger had not granted an interview or made public comments before speaking with The Times. He declined to discuss any evidence or other specific details related to his innocence claim, as well as the specific concerns he had about the plea process. It is rare for defendants to win post-conviction challenges.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, said in a statement that Mr. Kohberger was like a “mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.”

“The real tragedy is this: If even a fraction of the energy spent trying to free a guilty man were directed toward honoring the victims, there would be statues of them on every corner, parks bearing their names, and days set aside to remember the lives they lost at the hands of a narcissist,” the statement read.

The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office did not return a call seeking comment. Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador released a statement saying his heart went out to the victims’ families, noting they had “already endured unimaginable loss and now must face today’s deeply painful news.”

“My office stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out,” he said.

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DOJ drops subpoenas for NYT reporters after challenge by judge

The Justice Department is dropping the subpoenas it filed demanding grand jury testimony and phone records from New York Times journalists after sharp questioning Thursday from a federal judge who challenged almost every facet of the government's approach, reported NPR.

The government had insisted that it was acting solely in the interest of national security. It filed subpoenas on July 10, just two days after the Times published the first of two stories about concerns that led to the U.S. Secret Service interceding to prevent President Trump from flying home from Turkey on the new Air Force One jet.

But at the hearing, the presiding judge, U.S. District Court Judge Arun Subramanian, made clear he believed the Trump administration had violated protections given to journalists in black and white to uphold First Amendment principles. He also pointed to several instances of what he considered slipshod legal work and threatened to levy sanctions against federal attorneys for failing to follow the law and misleading the court in signed filings.

The case highlighted the Trump administration's ongoing assault on press rights and the free flow of information to the public. It also provided another glimpse of the White House's eagerness to assert an expansive definition of executive authority, as prosecutors argued the U.S. attorney general has the power to set aside legal protections for journalists when he deems necessary.

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Cut pretextual stops, reduce racial bias by police

A markedly different approach to preventing racial bias and use of force in policing is being implemented to great effect in jurisdictions across the country, reported Inquest. Rather than trying to “fix” policing, this approach demonstrates that the surest way to prevent police violence is to eliminate the occasions to inflict it. Pretext stop policies move beyond failed reforms and take a new approach: Instead of trying to change the way individual officers think, why don’t we restrict their ability to act on their biases?

Pretext traffic stops are one of the most common and consequential ways police officers exercise discretion and act on racial bias. These stops—in which officers pull drivers over for low-level traffic violations, such as expired registration tags, often as an excuse to fish for evidence of unrelated crimes—overwhelmingly target people of color and are regularly escalated by police. According to the New York Times, from 2017 to 2021, police killed more than 400 unarmed civilians in these types of stops—a rate of more than a death a week.

According to findings by Pamambir Dhillon in the Berkeley Public Policy Journal pretext stop restrictions in San Francisco immediately led to large, statistically significant reductions in stops and searches for Black and Latino drivers in the city—all without generating changes in drug, gun, or contraband discoveries. Latino drivers saw a 68 percent reduction in weekly pretext stops immediately after policy implementation, while Black drivers saw a nearly 50 percent decrease. These large reductions reversed the previous trend, which was steady increases in pretext stops across all racial groups and held constant even after accounting for changes in crime rates, police staffing levels, and driving activity in the city.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, at least sixteen cities across the country, including Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Seattle, have implemented comprehensive policies limiting a wide range of non‑safety‑related traffic stops, and Virginia was the first state to do so in 2021. As research continues to emerge, we see that targeting officer discretion can achieve what hundreds of millions of dollars spent on implicit bias training and body-worn cameras have been unable to. Moreover, empirical evidence demonstrates that you cannot meaningfully reform the scale of discriminatory policing—you can only reduce the scale of policing itself. Pretext stop policies are a key component to achieving this reduction, but not the only one: alternative response programs and civilian traffic enforcement are part of the same project, which seeks to replace police encounters rather than refine them.

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America is on track for the lowest annual homicide rate in over a century

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) released a midyear crime trends report which illustrated that homicides in large American cities fell by 18 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, effectively putting the country on track for its lowest annual homicide rate in over a century, reported JURISTnews.

The CCJ analyzed 13 crime categories across 336 cities that have consistently reported monthly crime data for the past nine years. Nine of these offenses declined in the first half of 2026, with carjackings showing the largest decrease at 47 percent. Homicides have dropped 51 percent since their peak in early 2022, and carjackings have decreased 73 percent since their 2023 peak. The report also noted a 13 percent year-over-year reduction in residential burglaries and a 56 percent decline compared to their 2018 peak.

However, not all categories improved. Drug offenses increased by 12 percent compared to the first half of 2025, and domestic violence incidents rose by 8 percent. Shoplifting remains the only offense still elevated above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, up by 5 percent.

Roughly a third of the 36 sample cities recorded an increase in homicides compared to the first half of 2025, including Norfolk, Virginia, which saw a 64 percent rise, and San Francisco, which saw a 55 percent increase.

The CCJ said that there was no single explanation for the broadly declining trends, pointing to a range of possible influences including changes in criminal justice operations, technological advances, alongside broader shifts in society and culture. Commentators have pointed out that this decline could also be attributed to shifts in how people go about their daily lives, with many favouring digital transactions over cash payments, making it less likely for opportunistic thefts and street robberies to occur.

With the end of the pandemic, where millions of people had lost their livelihood, economic security has since stabilized and this inevitably reduced the financial desperation that often motivates survival-driven violence. Additionally, an influx of funding, with hundreds of billions of dollars in federal pandemic recovery funds being channeled into stabilizing local city budgets have allowed for more targeted efforts in identifying youth populations facing the highest risk of violence.

The organization has tracked crime trends since the emergence of the pandemic, which brought a historic surge in homicides before the subsequent decline began in the second half of 2022.

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