Voiceover by Eleanor Goldfield. Absolutely none of this is done using AI. Because fuck that.
As reported by Governing, though nothing new, inmates in 4 Oklahoma prisons are paid $2/hr to make political calls…for conservative candidates. The Department of Corrections charges $10/hr for this service. One inmate described calls that resemble push-polling, in which the caller masquerades as a pollster but intends to influence voters.
One of the Super PACs that inmates worked for touts its ability to engage in direct voter contact for state legislative candidates.
“We go directly to the voters’ doorsteps, cellphones, and mailboxes to mobilize them to oust RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] and socialist Democrats alike,” reads Make Liberty Win’s mission statement.
In related reporting by Public Justice, poverty isn’t just a crime, they’ll fine you for your own incarceration once you’re locked up. Inmates can be billed for room and board, or medical care, even though the conditions they endure don’t resemble room, board, or certainly medical care.
So-called pay-to-stay fees are becoming more and more common jails and prisons, with 48 states and DC allowing some form of it. Often times the funds made off of inmates will go to staff perks like an ice-cream machine and a shooting range.
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court ruled that the US Constitution does not guarantee the right to clean drinking water. The case was brought by residents of Jackson, Mississippi who alleged that city officials knowingly allowed lead contamination in the water supply.
The judge ruled that the claim that this violated their right to bodily integrity didn’t apply here because water management is “wholly different,” and the Constitution “does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing.”
Just for my fellow Americans and judge fuck stick over there, here’s the exact language of the 1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So uh, actually that’s exactly what the fuck it does.
Oh and by the way, a federal judge in late August ruled that the 1st Amendment does protect an individual’s right to privately possess child sexual abuse content created with AI. USA! USA! USA!
As reported by Unicorn Riot, Enbridge’s aging Line 5 pipeline spilled natural gas liquids in northern Wisconsin just east of the Bad River Reservation on August 25 after an unoccupied semi truck collided with it, according to Enbridge.
The day before, police arrested Unicorn Riot contributor River Akemann, who was documenting the legally contested construction site. Line 5 alone has had roughly 30 on-land releases, totaling around one million gallons of oil.
In a practice that is not that unusual, Enbridge has a secretive deal with Ashland County to reimburse the sheriff’s department to act as private security.
In reporting by the South China Morning Post, a former White House staffer proposed that the US military should launch attacks on China to prevent it from developing advanced AI tech before the US, including state-backed espionage and military strikes on Chinese data centers.
Jacob Stokes, deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), said at an online event on Thursday that various US agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, should begin assessing what intelligence they need to justify taking such actions.
Relatedly, the Intercept reports that the Pentagon asked OpenAI to provide the US military with a special version of its artificial intelligence technology designed to turn down the military commands as infrequently as possible.
Because if anyone needs to hear “no” less frequently, it’s for sure our fucking military.
In reporting by The Intercept, you may be flying with genocidal weaponry under your ass and not even know it! United Airlines has apparently once again started using civilian passenger flights to transport thousands of shipments of military cargo to Israel.
The report, based on open-source data, found that United transported nearly 3,000 loads of military materiel over a seven-month period in 2025 and early 2026. The cargo ranged from critical components for fighter jets and tanks to helmet displays, electronics, and nuts and bolts.
In this week’s episode of Wait, Wait, the Nazis Already Did That! Ahmed Eldin reports that Volkswagen announced last week that its Osnabrück plant will stop building cars and start building weapons for Israel. And before it started making the beloved VW bug, this plant made aircraft parts for Germany during WWII. But wait, it gets worse. They used forced labor during WWII, keeping prisoners in barracks behind barbed wire on the same ground where components for Israel’s air defense will now be assembled.
After the war, VW paid into a fund for forced laborers and pledged financial support to Israeli institutions caring for Holocaust survivors. As Ahmed Eldin notes, that was the shape of German atonement: money flowing toward the genocidal Apartheid state built by the people the Nazis tried to exterminate.
More than eighty years later, the plant that once built parts for Hitler’s air force is now being converted to help build parts for a military that the United Nations says is committing genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people.
And I feel it’s my job as a solutions journalist and organizer to end these ultimately morbid as fuck posts with this: the list of horrors would be far greater were it not for all the folks who have pushed and do push back against the inestimable weight of empire. From data centers never built to ICE warehouses never filled to weapons shipments never sent to a single life saved; from a neighbor who’s at home and not in jail to a kid who knows what community feels like to the seed planted in the ground and in someone’s mind. We cannot know what the future will look like if we fight and build. But we know what it will look like if we don’t.
Take care of each other. Take what you need.
The “News That Didn’t Make the News” series is part of my work for Project Censored and is available in audio and video format via the Project Censored social media pages and wherever you listen to podcasts.
#BoycottUnitedAirlines
#BoycottVolkswagen
#FreePalestine
United States of America will always be a nation of disillusionment of freedom via lies and logical fallacies