Brian Root

Brazil: Rio de Janeiro Bill Will Encourage Police Shootings The governor of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro should veto provisions in a new bill that would give civil police an economic incentive to kill suspects and would weaken forensic analysis, Human...

Lawmakers in Rio de Janeiro have approved a bonus for police who kill suspects during raids.

Rio police killed almost 2 people per day in 2024—86% of them Black.

The bonus will spur officers to shoot instead of seeking arrests.

The governor should veto it.
www.hrw.org/news/2025/10...

Opinion | What Happened to Human Rights for Palestinians?

The United States is "actively trying to dismantle" today's system of international justice.

@fborello.bsky.social and @agnescallamard.bsky.social discuss how US sanctions against Palestinian rights orgs and ICC and UN officials puts rights at risk globally:

Marc Maron, Human Rights Watch and others slam Saudi comedy festival The participation of big name funnymen, including Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari and Kevin Hart, provoked criticism from fellow comedians and human rights groups.

The participation of big name funnymen, including Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari and Kevin Hart, provoked criticism from fellow comedians and human rights groups.

Justice Dept. Official Pushes Prosecutors to Investigate George Soros’s Foundation

This is, without any exaggeration, exactly how Putin and Orbán proceeded — using antisemitism to discredit the idea of civil society and political opposition, and as an excuse to undo the rule of law.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

If you are okay with this, if you think this is justified, if you think people living on the street have brought this upon themselves, if you think this is good leadership, you may be able to fool yourself that you care about others but you don’t fool me

A dramatic, extremely worrying moment; over 61,000 people held in ICE detention. That is the highest number ever on record in United States history; roughly 6,000 higher than the previous record set under Trump six years ago, and over 21,000 higher than when Trump took office just seven months ago.

Immigration beat journalists should absolutely take a look as should immigration advocates, researchers and activists.

Come work with me and amazing colleagues and let's fight the good fight.

Human Rights Watch is hiring a senior researcher for its U.S. immigrant rights program.

Not many non-newsroom jobs are this similar to the day to day work of journalism. If you’re a journalist and considering getting out, seriously take a look. job-boards.greenhouse.io/humanrightsw...

My feed part of the simulation

What to know about cashless bail after Trump's executive order President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday threatening to withhold federal funding from local and state governments that allow cashless bail, arguing that it is a threat to public safety.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week targeting cashless bail.

Lawmakers should be considering ways to preserve and strengthen pretrial justice reforms, not roll them back.

i’ve made ice cream today 😎

“You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is,” Trump said. “We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore. They’re so, so far gone. We’re not going to let it happen.” Chicago, a city of about 2.7 million people, has had the most homicides in the country in each of the past 13 years, with 573 in 2024. Like D.C. and many other major cities, it had a spike in homicides and other violent crime during the covid pandemic, though rates have come down since.

Dear @washingtonpost.com: these two paragraphs are absolute malpractice. Utterly disgraceful.

You use total counts, not rates … for the THIRD BIGGEST CITY IN THE US. Of COURSE it has a high total.

And rates “have come down” … with a link, but no number.

Down FIFTY PERCENT IN FOUR YEARS.

absolutely absurd. I'm gonna assume it is due to ignorance.

US: Rights Report Mixes Facts, Deception, Political Spin The Trump administration’s omission of key sections and manipulation of certain countries’ rights abuses degrade and politicize the 2025 US State Department human rights report, Human Rights Watch sai...

The US State Department’s new human rights report is in many places an exercise of whitewashing and deception.

Entire categories of abuses have been erased, while serious rights violations by allied governments have been papered over.

Learn more:

The thing about Grok isn't just that it's a Nazi, it's that it tells on all the other LLMs. Outsourcing critical parts of your brain/workflows/team to systems tuned in more subtle ways by companies that may not share your values is just as risky as obvious bias or hallucination

The bar has plummeted though. Accountability and standards out the window for the most part. And a lot of that cash will go to tech and surveillance.

It's hard to find sparks of hope here. Whatever they accomplish as they "try" will be devastating. And hard to rollback as you know.

A 21x increase to ICE's budget means:
cranking up mass surveillance to 11
arrests/detention skyrocketing
ICE forces that go beyond immigration enforcement (policing of anti-ICE, i.e. anti-administration, dissent), etc.

And it's not temporary. It will be incredibly difficult to claw this $ back.

With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.

US: Budget Would Benefit Wealthiest at Expense of Rights The budget reconciliation bill passed by the United States Senate today would extend tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the country’s wealthiest families while reducing spending on health and ot...

1/ 🧵 The US Senate just passed a budget that rewards the wealthy while slashing programs essential for human rights

They call it the “One Big Beautiful Bill”
Here’s what they think is “beautiful” 👇

www.hrw.org/news/2025/07...
@hrw.org

Aside from this rate issue, anyone working on policing knows that the bar for what can be labelled as an "assault" on an arresting officer can be very low. The specific incidents likely include many things that are questionable. Law enforcement have a monopoly on force during these actions.

US President Donald Trump's executive order purporting to rewrite citizenship laws by decree raises urgent questions about rights.

It’s unfortunate for the Supreme Court to use this case to focus on procedural points while leaving parents in doubt about their children’s future.

'They're Not Breathing': Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowdin...

NEW: 911 audio and EMS records from ICE detention centers reveal a surge in medical emergencies — including staff sexual assaults, suicide attempts, and head injuries.

Records also show calls over severe pregnancy complications.

Free to read: www.wired.com/story/ice-de...

w/ @dell.bsky.social

You're in town! I'm leaving on a flight otherwise I'd grab a meal. Go on a hike in Redwood park?

🚨 Big news from Geneva: the @ilo.org has agreed to develop binding global standards on decent work in the platform economy. This is a major breakthrough—but the real fight is just beginning.🧵

#ILC2025 #GigWorkersRights www.hrw.org/news/2025/06...

1/ After nearly 3 years of research, our @hrw.org report "The Gig Trap" is finally out. It documents how companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Shipt, Favor, and Amazon Flex created a business model that undermines labor rights & deepens inequality in the US. A 🧵https://hrw.org/node/391214

Thanks @austinkocher.com & @adamjst.bsky.social. It makes good sense to me and certainly strong enough to use as an estimation given lack of transparency.
Assume it is okay to use method and cite to you all?

New Method Uncovers Hidden Population Spikes at Some ICE Detention Centers A new method for analyzing ICE data reveals recent spikes in the number of people held in ICE facilities like Stewart and Moshannon, trends normally obscured by ICE’s year-to-date reporting averages.

New Method Uncovers Hidden Population Spikes at Some ICE Detention Centers

A new method for analyzing ICE data reveals recent spikes in the number of people held in ICE facilities, trends normally obscured by ICE’s year-to-date reporting averages.

austinkocher.substack.com/p/new-method...

Voted for Trump but mad at “the government” is exactly how this will all be memory-holed.

US Customs and Border Protection Quietly Revokes Protections for Pregnant Women and Infants CBP's acting commissioner has rescinded four Biden-era policies that aimed to protect vulnerable people in the agency's custody, including mothers, infants, and the elderly.

CBP quietly revoked protections for at-risk people in custody—including pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and those with serious medical conditions—calling them “misaligned” with enforcement priorities. The rules required basics like diapers, formula, and water.

www.wired.com/story/cbp-re...