Good morning, it's Wednesday, August 26. Court filings reveal DHS agents secretly surveilled churches, libraries, and community meetings in Minnesota — building dossiers on people not accused of any crime.

Also in today's issue: Noncitizen voter numbers deflate, Canada retaliates on tariffs, Measles kills two in Pennsylvania, Graham wins South Carolina runoff, H-1B fees hit six figures.

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If you've ever sat in a meeting at your local library or church — about schools, zoning, anything at all — you probably assumed no one from the federal government was in the room taking notes. In Minnesota this winter, that assumption was wrong.

Court filings unsealed Tuesday in a federal conspiracy case revealed that agents from the Department of Homeland Security conducted months of covert surveillance across the Twin Cities. The scope of what they did, laid out in the government's own documents, is worth sitting with.

Undercover DHS agents secretly recorded meetings at churches, libraries, restaurants, schools, and breweries. They compiled dossiers on attendees of a church gathering — capturing license plates and building profiles with names, home addresses, family details, and employment records on people not accused of any crime. They infiltrated private group chats. They subpoenaed the financial records of national labor unions, including the SEIU and the Communications Workers of America.

Here's why that matters to you directly. The First Amendment protects the right to assemble — to gather and speak freely without the government watching and building files. When federal agents sit in church meetings and library gatherings, recording who shows up and running their license plates, that right doesn't vanish on paper. But it shrinks in practice. People who learn their neighbors were surveilled at a community meeting tend to stop going to community meetings. That's called a chilling effect. It doesn't require a single criminal charge to do real damage to civic life.

And then there's this. At one public library meeting, an undercover agent allegedly told someone he could build items for "direct action" and didn't mind going to jail. Civil liberties lawyers have a word for that — entrapment — when agents push someone toward illegal activity that might not have happened otherwise. A government PowerPoint slide shown to grand jurors mapped 18 organizations under the heading "The Conspiracy." The list included a teachers union, a bicycle repair shop, and the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, called the scope "breathtaking" and compared the tactics to COINTELPRO — the FBI domestic surveillance program that targeted civil rights leaders and anti-war activists from the 1950s through the 1970s. That program is widely regarded as one of the worst abuses in federal law enforcement history. Its exposure led directly to oversight rules meant to prevent this kind of operation.

DHS says it targeted only the defendants in the case and called its methods "standard law enforcement practice." That framing deserves attention. Because if surveilling community meetings and subpoenaing union financial records is standard, then the standard has shifted in ways most Americans haven't been told about.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said the government is "bringing back McCarthyism." That's a political charge. But the question underneath it isn't partisan — it's structural. What limits exist on federal surveillance of lawful community gatherings? If the answer is fewer than you assumed, that's worth knowing before you walk into your next town hall.

This case is in its early stages. Prosecutors have said they hold 20 terabytes of data, as the Minnesota Reformer reported — though not all of it relates directly to the defendants. What comes next depends on how federal judges weigh the evidence and the methods. But for a lot of people in Minnesota, the question of whether their next community meeting is really just a community meeting has already been answered.

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Trump's noncitizen voter claim is shrinking under scrutiny. More than a month after the president told a primetime audience that 250,000 noncitizens were on voter rolls in four states, DHS has acknowledged the number was inflated. In a recorded call obtained by NPR, a DHS official told Nevada election staff the agency's initial flag of roughly 16,000 names was a "ceiling" — then provided just 185 it was confident about. But DHS refused to share the underlying data, leaving the state unable to verify or act. Pennsylvania reported the same problem. California said DHS hasn't responded at all. DHS Secretary Mullin had previously threatened to prosecute officials who didn't respond — to data the agency itself couldn't fully back up.

Canada is hitting back. Ottawa announced retaliatory tariffs on more than 700 U.S. products Tuesday, targeting roughly $20 billion in annual imports effective September 8. Steel and aluminum tariffs double to 50%. New levies of 15% to 25% hit dairy, seafood, appliances, farm equipment, furniture, clothing, and toilet paper. Canada also pledged C$7.5 billion in support for affected workers and businesses. Finance Minister Champagne said the U.S. "asked too much and offered too little." Trump responded by telling Canadian leaders to "fall in line." Canada was the top buyer of U.S. household appliances last year — more than $1 billion worth, CNN reported, most of which now face a 25% tariff. For American manufacturers, that's not a diplomatic story. It's a lost customer.

Two unvaccinated Pennsylvania residents have died from measles — the first U.S. measles deaths in 2026 and the first in the state in 35 years, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Both lived in Lancaster County, which accounts for roughly half the state's 393 confirmed cases this year. Nationwide, 2,777 cases have been reported — the most since 1991 — and about 20% of Pennsylvania's cases required hospitalization. No fully vaccinated person has been among the state's confirmed cases. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed to revise federal vaccine guidelines including for the MMR vaccine, visited Lancaster County in 2021 and made light of his own childhood case. The data here is not ambiguous: vaccination works, and where coverage drops, outbreaks follow.

Sen. Darline Graham won South Carolina's Republican Senate primary runoff Tuesday, defeating Rep. Ralph Norman roughly 52%–48%. Graham, a political newcomer, was appointed to the seat six weeks ago after her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, died of a heart condition at 71 in July. President Trump recruited, endorsed, and rallied for her — holding a rally in Myrtle Beach in the final days. Norman, a House Freedom Caucus member who backed Nikki Haley over Trump in 2024, conceded. The win mattered for Trump: according to NBC News, 10 of his endorsed candidates have lost primaries this cycle, matching his combined total from 2018, 2020, and 2024. Graham faces Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in a state Trump carried by 18 points.

The Trump administration proposed a $103,265 fee on H-1B visa petitions — a new attempt at a six-figure surcharge after a federal judge struck down the previous $100,000 fee in June. The proposed rule, reported by the Washington Post, would apply to all cap-subject H-1B petitions, including those for workers with master's degrees. DHS's own analysis found that 76% of the small businesses it studied would face a "significant economic impact." The revenue would fund immigration courts and enforcement. Economists told Fortune the fee could discourage international students from attending U.S. universities, shrinking a talent pipeline major tech firms rely on. A 30-day public comment period is open — but if finalized, this reshapes how American companies compete for global talent.

That's the number of Nevada voters DHS could confirm as likely noncitizens — down from the 250,000 figure President Trump cited across four states in a primetime address. The correction came quietly, in a recorded call between federal and state officials first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by NPR through a public records request.

P.S. Should federal agents surveil community meetings? Hit Reply — one word is enough.