VOL. I · NO. 8565THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2026
The Daily Buffoon
WHITE HOUSE ✒ EDITORIAL ABSURDITY: 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

US government extensively spied on anti-ICE protesters and leftwing groups, records reveal

Filed 1w ago · Via The Guardian · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
Covert Affair
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Newly disclosed DHS records show the department ran an operation called 'Operation Puppet Master,' launched in January, sending undercover agents to community meetings in Minneapolis and New York, infiltrating Signal chats, and obtaining financial records from unions and nonprofits opposing Trump's immigration crackdown. Nearly 30 internal reports were released as part of a DOJ criminal case against 15 Minneapolis protesters accused of conspiring to impede ICE officers.

The records name major organizations as allegedly connected to the case, including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators, the Democratic Socialists of America, and Showing Up for Racial Justice, though none have been charged with any crime. DHS used administrative subpoenas to obtain wire transfer records from SEIU and asked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for financial data on the Communications Workers of America, along with records tied to the Sunrise Movement.

Undercover agents documented attending a Sunrise Movement training, joining activist Signal groups, recording audio at a church training event, and logging license plates of attendees at an anti-ICE gathering. At one event, agents falsely denied being from ICE when directly asked. The investigations followed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Subpoenaing the bank records of the AFL-CIO and a climate nonprofit under the banner of 'domestic terrorism financing' is the sort of expansive dragnet that used to require at least the pretense of evidence, and here the pretense is a presidential executive order about antifa. Naming major unions and nonprofits in a criminal case without charging any of them is a neat way to smear an organization in court filings while never having to prove anything in front of a jury.
Source: Read the original at The Guardian → Scored: Covert Affair · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0
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