Lainna Fader

Opinion | ‘This Is What We Were Always Scared of’: DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State DOGE is rapidly assembling a sprawling monitoring system, the foundation of many authoritarian regimes.

Musk and Trump “seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.” www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/o...

So just to recap, the Transportation Secretary is scared shitless of public transport. The Education Secretary is being sued for enabling child sex abuse. The Health Secretary is bringing back measles. And the Defense Secretary is texting classified war plans to the editor in chief of the Atlantic

Something I learned from interviewing survivors of abuse and institutional betrayal is that by being willing to identify a problem, you are often treated as the problem. The institution will try to get rid of you instead of the problem. To me, this also speaks to the way the left is treated broadly

Meanwhile, in the richest nation on Earth, with homelessness at a record high, the Trump administration is looking for ways not to expand but to *eliminate* housing assistance for those who need it most.

The reason billionaires like McMahon are obsessed with student debt is that creating financial precarity makes people more stressed about losing their job. If you’re worried about your job you’re less likely to quit and find work elsewhere. You’re less likely to ask for a raise. It’s pure class war.

lol

MS-13 members are entitled to due process.
School teachers are entitled to due process.
Citizens are entitled to due process.
Migrants are entitled to due process.
Rodeo clowns, serial killers, senators, rapists, vet techs, students, and Scientologists are entitled to due process.

This isn’t hard.

Batya Ungar-Sargon claimed that Trump’s recent tariff offensive proves he is “waging class warfare on Wall Street for the sake of the working class."

I can’t believe someone actually made this blatantly false claim, just wildly laughably incorrect, but here we are www.laborpolitics.com/p/unions-not...

Unions, Not Just Factories, Will Make America Great Factory jobs only become good when workers unionize. And factories for all is a mirage.

Highlights from an excellent column by @ericblanc.bsky.social:
—Trump is pro-factory, not *pro-worker*
—Factory jobs aren’t inherently good jobs and w/o a union can be very dangerous w/ low $
—Any job can be a good job with a union
—Everyone needs a union!!!! www.laborpolitics.com/p/unions-not...

Every newspaper should have the protests as their main image tomorrow.

These protests are the manifestation of the First Amendment, of where the press resides.

The press has to show its citizens what is happening. This is it. You either advocate for democracy thru your stories or you don’t.

I asked the one high ranking policeman I saw on 5th Ave why there were so few police. He said “We did not expect anything like this. Don’t tell anyone but I’ve only got 44 officers out here — and it’s a great crowd, great event, no incidents.”

The reason the IRS has no data-leaking API is not because they don't know how to schedule a "hackathon." Instead it's because the API:

1. Likely violates the Privacy Act of 1974
2. Is not within the IRS's mandate
3. Would be a huge target for attacks against the privacy of all Americans

Man it is really hard to be living in the USA right now and getting news about how South Korea deposed their president for staging a coup and then their Supreme Court just said yup, definitely the right thing to do there.

A reminder of what Trump inherited from Biden.

There is a certain uniqueness to the millennial experience of this though, we grew up in times of relative peace where things were pretty stable and we were sold stories of how everything would continue to only get better and that hard work was plenty to give you a job that provided for you.

The IRS unit that audits ultrawealthy earners has lost 38% of its employees this year.

This will starve the government of revenue by making it easier for the rich to evade taxes — which the top 1% already do to the tune of $163B a year.

See what DOGE is really about?

Jesus Christ can’t you people just let millennials express some entirely deserved outrage and anger over getting hit with yet another major financial crisis without parachuting in to finger wag at us about it

Trump’s tariffs aren’t an economic policy—they’re a protection racket.

He’s turning the US into a mafia state that shakes people down, plunders our tax dollars to enrich his billionaire oligarch friends, and punishes his political opponents.

11/ The tariffs aren’t economic policy. They are political weapons.

But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs.

The people still have the power.

4/ British kings used taxation to reward loyalty and punish dissent.

Our own revolution was spurred by the King’s use of heavy taxation of the colonies to punish our push for self governance.

The King’s message was simple: stop protesting and I’ll stop taxing.

3/ You see, our founders created a President with limited and checked powers. They specifically put the power of spending and taxation in the hands of the legislature.

Why? Because they watched how kings and despots used spending and taxes to control their subjects.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive.

No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.

1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

So this logic means that I, a Jew who believes Palestinians should be free to live their lives like anyone else, am antisemitic.

Nobody should be voting for this clown to be mayor NYC.

NY Times: “The people at the center of Signalgate — the national security adviser, Michael Waltz; the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; to name a few — all know this. They all served in the military. They no doubt heard innumerable lectures from counterintelligence experts about all the different ways an adversary can make off with sensitive data. But this is an administration that actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as the corrupt old guard, the real enemy, the “deep state,” and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness. By that view, the security establishment must be bent to the White House’s will, and if the people at the top don’t have the traditional qualifications for their positions, all the better. This is an administration that makes a weekend Fox News host the leader of the world’s largest military, puts a conspiracy-minded podcaster in charge of the F.B.I., and has at its pinnacle a reality star turned president. Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence.”

“This administration actively, proudly rejects expertise. It casts those who have it as corrupt, the real enemy, the ‘deep state,’ and it touts its own refusal to heed them as proof of its legitimacy and righteousness…Blunders like this are an inevitable consequence” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/o...

Opinion | Foreign Spies to Team Trump: 👊🇺🇸🔥 It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government.

“If you’re running the security directorate of a hostile nation, savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the US. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple? Trump has unlocked the vault, fired half the security guards. Walk right in.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/o...

Today we honor César Chávez, the legendary union organizer, who taught us that the power of working people comes from standing together. His legacy lives on in every worker organizing for dignity, justice, and a better future.

There are trans Americans right now looking out at this world and wondering if anyone is going to stand up for them and for their simple right to exist.

Well, I am. We are. We will.