The Hound | Oct. 8

Hi there,

It’s Thursday. ICE awarded a $16.7 million no-bid contract for electric shock gloves — devices that work by "overloading the peripheral nerve endings" to cause pain. ICE calls them "distraction and de-escalation devices." Sixteen U.S. senators demanded answers. ICE has not responded. The agency's own statement said only that "officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics."

🖊️ Sign the petition to call on the media to cover ICE's shock glove program not as a law enforcement equipment story, but as what human rights experts and senators are calling it: the deployment of a torture tool by an unaccountable agency against people in its custody.

A tool designed to inflict severe pain to force compliance is not de-escalation. It is a torture instrument. This is an agency that has already killed more than a dozen people this year, operates largely in secret, and has stonewalled congressional oversight at every turn. The public deserves reporting that treats pain inflicted by the government as the moral and legal crisis it is.

In addition, how the death penalty has been resurrected across the country in the Trump era. And, how the administration is backing away from integration goals its historically backed for Americans with disabilities.

Read about these, and more, in today’s stories:

Electric-shock gloves ICE plans to use inflicted intense pain in army study (The Guardian)

The U.S. Military Struggles to Protect Its Bases Amid Failing Iran War (The Intercept)

Are the Blue Wave Polls Too Good to Be True? (The New Republic)

Artificial Goes After Our Silicon Valley Overlords. Just Not Very Well. (Mother Jones)

In Trump’s America, the death penalty has been resurrected (New Statesman)

The federal government is backing away from a decades-old disability rights promise (The 19th News)

New Documents Add to Evidence in Climate Deception Case Against ExxonMobil (Inside Climate News)

Until next time,

Harry from The Hound

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