“Ma’am, they should be in jail”
 Hi folks — quick housekeeping note: this newsletter will be off tomorrow, June 25th, but will return to your inbox Monday, June 28th. — Elamin THE BIG STORY
ICE force-fed immigrants who went on hunger strikes to protest poor conditions, a new report says
A new report from the ACLU and Physicians for Human Rights offers a deeper look than previously known into how ICE force-fed detainees and tried to quell hunger strikes by threatening them with deportation, excessive force, or relocation to other facilities.
Court documents obtained by the ACLU show that ICE obtained court orders to force-feed or conduct other involuntary medical procedures on immigrants at least 15 times from August 2015 to August 2017. The report states that it's not known how many of the court orders were executed or if strikers began eating after they were threatened with force-feeding.
Joanna Naples-Mitchell, a US researcher for Physicians for Human Rights and one of the report's lead authors, said it shows the scale of forced feeding inside ICE facilities.
The details in the report are difficult. In addition to force-feeding, ICE has performed other procedures to administer food, nutrients, or fluids to immigrants against their will, the report states.
Among them was forced urinary catheterization in December 2015, Naples-Mitchell said. She added, "It's cruel, degrading treatment, or torture." STAYING ON TOP OF THIS
Britney Spears asked a judge to end the conservatorship that sparked the #FreeBritney movement
Britney Spears has been under a court-mandated conservatorship since 2008 — a legal arrangement that has put her father and a cast of lawyers in control of her life and sparked a movement among fans to #FreeBritney.
On Wednesday, Britney delivered emotional and explosive testimony, speaking in a public court hearing for the first time to ask a judge to give her back control over her affairs.
Spears said the conservatorship has prevented her from living a full life. She'd like to get married and have another child, she said, but under the conservatorship, she hasn't even been able to make a doctor's appointment to remove her IUD. She isn't able to ride in a car if her boyfriend is driving, she said.
"Ma'am, my dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management who played a key role in punishing me — ma'am, they should be in jail," Britney said. Here are all the shocking things she revealed in court.
Stephanie K. Baer reported on how the #FreeBritney fans were right — one told her, "A lot of what we suspected turned out to be true, and the reality was even worse than we expected."  #FreeBritney activists and supporters demonstrate at Los Angeles Grand Park during a conservatorship hearing for Britney Spears on June 23. Rich Fury / Getty Images SNAPSHOTS
A member of the Oath Keepers who stormed the Capitol has pleaded guilty to conspiring to block the certification of the election. Graydon Young, who will cooperate with prosecutors, said he was attempting to intimidate and coerce elected officials when he entered the Capitol with more than a dozen members of the Oath Keepers.
John McAfee was found dead in a Spanish jail hours after a court ruled he'd be extradited to the US. The eccentric tech mogul who made his fortune developing antivirus software, was found dead in a jail cell hours after Spain's National Court ruled that he was to be extradited to face tax evasion charges. He was 75.
A man was arrested after a school board meeting erupted in protests against critical race theory. A fight broke out during a raucous school board meeting in Virginia that was disrupted by parents protesting against critical race theory and a proposed policy for transgender students' rights.
A former NRA president was tricked into speaking at a fake high school graduation. Instead, the 3,044 empty seats represented the students who did not graduate this year because they were killed by gun violence. SLEUTHING PAYS OFF
A scientist tracked down Chinese coronavirus sequences that had disappeared online
Genetic sequences of COVID 19 are isolated from people with the virus. Last year, 13 genetic sequences from the early days of the pandemic in China were mysteriously deleted from an online database last year. They have now been recovered.
Jesse Bloom is a computational biologist and a specialist in viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Bloom found that the sequences had been removed from an online database at the request of scientists in Wuhan, China.
But with some internet sleuthing, he was able to recover copies of the data stored on Google Cloud.
The sequences don't fundamentally change the scientific understanding of COVID-19. Nor do they help answer the fraught question of whether the coronavirus spread naturally from animals to people or escaped in a laboratory accident.
However, their deletion adds to concerns that secrecy from the Chinese government has obstructed international efforts to understand how COVID-19 emerged. SHEAR JOY Please meet TikTok's lesbian sheep-shearing sweetheart
I've always thought there's something so incredibly satisfying about watching the wool be sheared off sheep. I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one who thinks so.
The TikTok account for Right Choice Shearing has over a million followers, and their content regularly goes viral. There, Katie McRose shares videos of herself and her wife, Darian, giving fresh haircuts to sheep, goats, llamas, and alpacas.
You'd think this would be niche content, but the pair have built a large and loyal following of viewers who just can't get enough. We talked to her about the love people have for her content. McRose told us, "I feel like there's almost like a zen to it. Watching that fiber fall gives you like a zen feeling." Extend yourself toward someone who needs your generosity today, Elamin 📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by Elamin Abdelmahmoud and BuzzFeed News. You can always reach us here.
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