Brian Root

and for what? not for reform. not to improve lives. not for anything of value. pure destruction.

The thing about Grok isn't just that it's a Nazi, it's that it tells on all the other LLMs. Outsourcing critical parts of your brain/workflows/team to systems tuned in more subtle ways by companies that may not share your values is just as risky as obvious bias or hallucination

The bar has plummeted though. Accountability and standards out the window for the most part. And a lot of that cash will go to tech and surveillance.

It's hard to find sparks of hope here. Whatever they accomplish as they "try" will be devastating. And hard to rollback as you know.

A 21x increase to ICE's budget means:
cranking up mass surveillance to 11
arrests/detention skyrocketing
ICE forces that go beyond immigration enforcement (policing of anti-ICE, i.e. anti-administration, dissent), etc.

And it's not temporary. It will be incredibly difficult to claw this $ back.

With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.

US: Budget Would Benefit Wealthiest at Expense of Rights The budget reconciliation bill passed by the United States Senate today would extend tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the country’s wealthiest families while reducing spending on health and ot...

1/ 🧵 The US Senate just passed a budget that rewards the wealthy while slashing programs essential for human rights

They call it the “One Big Beautiful Bill”
Here’s what they think is “beautiful” 👇

www.hrw.org/news/2025/07...
@hrw.org

Aside from this rate issue, anyone working on policing knows that the bar for what can be labelled as an "assault" on an arresting officer can be very low. The specific incidents likely include many things that are questionable. Law enforcement have a monopoly on force during these actions.

US President Donald Trump's executive order purporting to rewrite citizenship laws by decree raises urgent questions about rights.

It’s unfortunate for the Supreme Court to use this case to focus on procedural points while leaving parents in doubt about their children’s future.

'They're Not Breathing': Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowdin...

NEW: 911 audio and EMS records from ICE detention centers reveal a surge in medical emergencies — including staff sexual assaults, suicide attempts, and head injuries.

Records also show calls over severe pregnancy complications.

Free to read: www.wired.com/story/ice-de...

w/ @dell.bsky.social

You're in town! I'm leaving on a flight otherwise I'd grab a meal. Go on a hike in Redwood park?

🚨 Big news from Geneva: the @ilo.org has agreed to develop binding global standards on decent work in the platform economy. This is a major breakthrough—but the real fight is just beginning.🧵

#ILC2025 #GigWorkersRights www.hrw.org/news/2025/06...

1/ After nearly 3 years of research, our @hrw.org report "The Gig Trap" is finally out. It documents how companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Shipt, Favor, and Amazon Flex created a business model that undermines labor rights & deepens inequality in the US. A 🧵https://hrw.org/node/391214

Thanks @austinkocher.com & @adamjst.bsky.social. It makes good sense to me and certainly strong enough to use as an estimation given lack of transparency.
Assume it is okay to use method and cite to you all?

New Method Uncovers Hidden Population Spikes at Some ICE Detention Centers A new method for analyzing ICE data reveals recent spikes in the number of people held in ICE facilities like Stewart and Moshannon, trends normally obscured by ICE’s year-to-date reporting averages.

New Method Uncovers Hidden Population Spikes at Some ICE Detention Centers

A new method for analyzing ICE data reveals recent spikes in the number of people held in ICE facilities, trends normally obscured by ICE’s year-to-date reporting averages.

austinkocher.substack.com/p/new-method...

Voted for Trump but mad at “the government” is exactly how this will all be memory-holed.

US Customs and Border Protection Quietly Revokes Protections for Pregnant Women and Infants CBP's acting commissioner has rescinded four Biden-era policies that aimed to protect vulnerable people in the agency's custody, including mothers, infants, and the elderly.

CBP quietly revoked protections for at-risk people in custody—including pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and those with serious medical conditions—calling them “misaligned” with enforcement priorities. The rules required basics like diapers, formula, and water.

www.wired.com/story/cbp-re...

It’s weird to live in a time when basic principles like cruelty is wrong, cheating is empty & the idea that curiosity, generosity, originality, the satisfaction of earned accomplishments & loving intimacy are the center of a good life feel like countercultural concepts

Brain drain at Census Bureau has employees warning about the country's statistics Staff departures and survey cuts are roiling the federal agency in charge of producing census results, job numbers and other key statistics as Trump officials continue to slash the U.S. government.

The U.S. Census Bureau has now reached a tipping point.

Its staffing is so low that it's canceling future waves of longstanding surveys such as the Census of Governments. It's inevitable that other surveys are next.

Call your reps to preserve funding for the Bureau!

www.npr.org/2025/04/17/n...

Happy to! But I'm not going to be in NY any time soon.

Wish I could see it!

US: Trump’s First 100 Days an Assault on Rights The Trump administration’s first 100 days in office have been a relentless barrage of actions that violate, threaten, or undermine the human rights of people in the United States and abroad.

The Trump administration’s first 100 days in office have been a relentless barrage of actions that violate, threaten, or undermine human rights.

To illustrate the breadth and depth of damage, HRW has compiled 100 harmful actions during these 100 days ⤵️

DOGE's Growing Reach into Personal Data: What it Means for Human Rights Congress should update the Privacy Act to prevent DOGE from violating U.S. international rights obligations by creating a massive database.

My latest for @justsecurity.org on what Trump's call to eliminate “information silos” within government means for human rights. This dangerous and dystopian move underscores the desperate need for comprehensive privacy and data protection laws in the US @hrw.org
www.justsecurity.org/110133/what-...

US/El Salvador: Venezuelan Deportees Forcibly Disappeared The governments of the United States and El Salvador have subjected more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch, an extremely cautious organization when it comes to international law conclusions, confirms that the people sent to El Salvador have been subjected to enforced disappearance: www.hrw.org/news/2025/04...

Very informative chart from Washington Post

i talk about this with data all the time: if you don’t understand the data fully, you’re likely to find things that you don’t understand. talking to experts can clear these kinds of things up. but you should do that *before* you publicize what you found.

My colleague @mattcconnell.bsky.social likes his charts and graphs 📈 📊📉 about human rights, particularly economic and social rights.

Follow him if you — like me — you do too. 🤓

New global research on health expenditure by @hrw.org

Louisiana v Commerce Department - 2025-04-10 Motion to Intervene of the League of Women Voters

NEW: The League of Women Voters asks to defend the Census Bureau in a currently-paused, Louisiana-led lawsuit seeking to force exclusion of U.S. residents without legal status & those with visas in key #2030Census results that 14th Amendment says must include “whole number of persons in each state“

As the Covid-19 pandemic waned & global inflation surged, public funding for healthcare stalled.

My @hrw.org colleague @mattcconnell.bsky.social analyzed recent @who.int data from 190 countries—finding that many spend more on debt payments than on healthcare. More here: www.hrw.org/news/2025/04...

After the Trump admin admitted it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García to a Salvadoran prison, a judge ordered it to return him back to the US by April 7.

Just hours before that deadline, the Supreme Court paused the order to deliberate, leaving Abrego García at risk. 🧵⤵️

Opinion | Trump’s Gulag Archipelago Trump is seeking to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop his administration from imprisoning anyone it wants, anywhere in the world.

Trump admin "using this case to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop the Trump administration from imprisoning anyone it wants anywhere else in the world."
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/o...