Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST Heavy morning. A federal court designed to work in the dark heard its first case in thirty years, and we have the record now that it's over.

KELI From our Ground News desk: the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, built in 1996, never used until this summer. Attorney General Todd Blanche filed the first case July fifteenth — the day his confirmation hearings opened. Nazira Haji Zada, forty-seven, a lawful permanent resident in Fort Worth, was the defendant. She was not allowed to read the evidence against her. Her lawyers got classified material she could not challenge, and an unclassified summary her attorney said was barely two paragraphs long. Some of it was already public from her son's Oklahoma case. The court signed a removal order August twentieth. It stayed sealed until September eleventh — the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks. By then, Zada was already back in Afghanistan.

HAST The government proved its case using material the defendant had no right to see and no mechanism to contest. That's the mechanism here. Unlike a criminal defendant, someone in this court cannot challenge how evidence was collected or demand to confront witnesses. The ATRC chief judge, Joan Ericksen, said on the record she was working on the presumption that defense counsel would be able to review classified information. But the record shows that did not happen in a form that could be litigated. Blanche said the court shows how the Department will use every tool at its disposal to protect the country.

KELI The counter-read: newsrooms will frame this as a rare use of a dormant statute and a counterterrorism win. The structural fact is different. A court with no visibility into how it collects or tests evidence, where the defendant cannot read the case against her, where the court's own judge's working assumption was not met in practice — that court now has a precedent. Blanche opened it on his first day in office. The question to watch: how many ATRC applications does DOJ file in the next sixty days, and what happens to the constitutional challenge Zada initially mounted.

HAST Staying with the machinery of power. The Trump administration approved new fuel economy standards that, according to the President, terminate the Biden administration's E-V-focused rules. Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday that the old standards cost Americans tons of money and forced them to buy electric vehicles they never wanted. He took a lap at Pete Buttigieg's expense while he was at it. This reverses an ongoing regulatory fight — the standards have been covered back and forth as administrations change. The new rules take effect this model year for some vehicles.

KELI Different scale, but structural. The Supreme Court continues to move cases through its shadow docket without full briefing or oral argument. ProPublica published a new explainer on how that mechanism works and what it means for the cases that don't get the standard hearing. The shadow docket has become the Court's primary tool for emergency stays and unsigned orders. Most Americans don't see that work happen.

HAST Overseas, the Pentagon is expanding military footprint across the Pacific. The Intercept reported on Guam as a case study: the island hosts a major U.S. base, and residents are living with a legacy of pollution, environmental degradation, and cultural loss. As the U.S. increases military presence in the region — driven by strategic competition with China — other Pacific islands face the same pressure and the same risks.

KELI On a different front: Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich called for war in the occupied West Bank. The statement came as Israeli authorities announced a military closure across the West Bank, citing the Jewish holiday Sukkot. Al Jazeera carried that. In South Africa, police are investigating the deaths of at least ten women found in a single suburb. The BBC reports the killings have sparked national outcry about the scale of violence against women in the country.

HAST Before we close, a history note.

KELI Twenty-seven years ago, over two million people participated in strikes to protest climate change across twenty-four hundred locations worldwide.

HAST That's the Independent News Drop. For bodycam explainers and case law videos, head to our channel. Cards and shirts at inkwell.wiki slash cards, slash bible-shirts, slash art-shirts. Full script at inkwell.wiki slash news. From Inkwell.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. This drop comes from the same workshop as Gil's Intelligent Version — the Bible, re-ordered into the sequence events actually happened, and retranslated from the original languages.

HAST Its rule is simple: no author, only method. The full archive is at inkwell dot wiki, slash giv.