Independent News Drop

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

HAST Good morning. Federal courts and federal prison first — a ballistics expert never got into a cell to examine evidence that might have cleared a man now doing a hundred years.

KELI From our Ground News desk: May twentieth, Trump announced the Department of Justice had waived all pending IRS claims against him forever — every audit hang-up from before the settlement, gone. Same gaggle, same day, he said he might release his current tax returns now. The press ran it as a transparency story. The real story is immunity. Both events the same morning. Only one actually ended the decade-old excuse.

HAST That's the mechanics of it. For years the audit hold was the public answer to why no release. The DOJ move killed the legal rationale without Trump having to disclose anything. The press asked about current returns — nice question — but they treated the waiver as a news hook for maybe-transparency instead of a permanent legal shield. The thing you can check: if current returns don't surface in the next sixty days, the media will have covered a non-event while missing the actual power move.

KELI Sticking with federal systems now. The Intercept has an exclusive on Benjamin Song, Prairieland case, one hundred years in prison on attempted murder charges. A ballistics expert was prepared to testify that the bullet wounds could have come from ricochet — would have undermined the prosecutors' core charge. The federal prosecutors denied the expert access to Song in custody. The judge didn't override it. Jurors never heard the theory.

HAST That's a pretrial gatekeeping question. Defense gets to put an expert in the cell, that evidence goes to jury. It didn't happen here. Song's appeal is moving, but the conviction stands while the machinery works.

KELI On a different front, Minneapolis and federal immigration enforcement collided this week. Activists used encrypted group chats to warn community members before ICE operations. Now the feds want to prosecute them. Reason reports a Minnesota attorney saying courts will likely be skeptical of how broad the prosecution is framed — but the case is moving.

HAST That one's testing whether organizing to warn your community of federal action rises to obstruction.

KELI California's Department of Food and Agriculture took almost no enforcement action against an unlicensed farmer who sold raw milk that left a child critically ill. ProPublica on the gap between harm and regulatory consequence — the farmer's still operating, minimal penalty.

HAST The system's reactive, not preventive.

KELI Before we close, a history marker. October third, nineteen sixty-two: Wally Schirra launched from Cape Canaveral in Sigma Seven for a six-orbit flight. Project Mercury was moving fast.

HAST That's the Independent News Drop. For ballistics and justice explainers, hit Lawz bodycam on the channel. Racer.wiki for track tools. 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, something lighter from Inkwell. There's a piece asking what the Beatles songbook keeps reaching for — a world set right, meaning that holds — without pretending the band were secret prophets.

HAST An honest look, and an open door. At inkwell dot wiki, slash beatles.