American Panopticon The Trump administration is pooling data on Americans. Experts fear what comes next.

If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from reporting on the current DOGE collection of govt data, it is that the people who’ve previously spent their careers carefully handling this information believe there is almost no limit to how it could be abused (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Take a minute from your day and read this chilling story about how quickly we've gotten to where we are.

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

Sic transit gloria mundi

Yeah, I think there’s essentially no going back from the damage Trump has done. Even if he were removed tomorrow, America has proven it can be duped into electing a dangerously unstable person, and you can’t really make long term plans centered on an “ally” like that.

important to remember that they have no value they will not betray

Some Thoughts on the Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan - emptywheel Before Kash Patel's FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan based on charges that she corruptly obstructed the immigration arrest of a defendant before her, FBI never bothered to look for proof that she had t...

Some Thoughts on the Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan

www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/27/s...

I don't really care what the "political consequences" are of fighting for the proposition that *everyone* is entitled to due process before they are removed from the United States and sent to a Salvadoran prison.

It's not really a principle if you only adhere to it when it's politically expedient.

Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this document as of February 14, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate, and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.

this page they tacked on the front of the HHS report on trans youth healthcare can go fuck itself

opa.hhs.gov/sites/defaul...

Not sure it makes much difference in this case, but still a visible reflection of the deterioration of trust in the EU-US relationship

hope all the businesses who've been enjoying this month of tariffs also enjoy getting ransomware because they can't prioritize patching efficiently anymore

Pentagon’s ‘SWAT team of nerds’ resigns en masse Employees of a defense tech unit say they were sidelined by DOGE. “Either we die quickly or we die slowly,” says the director.

The entire staff of the Defense Digital Service (DDS), the Pentagon’s decade-old technology development office, is leaving by the start of May, with nearly all individuals resigning, after being sidelined by Musk’s DOGE www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

Republican lawmakers revive effort to give attorney general more power to prosecute election crimes Critics fear increased election prosecutions could intimidate voters and local election officials. Attorney General Ken Paxton has long sought more autonomy over election cases.

the push to further police TX elections and give the AG more power to investigate voting has already remade this state’s highest criminal court (last year Paxton and his supporters ousted three judges who limited his power; 2 more are up for reelection in 2026)

www.texastribune.org/2025/03/21/t...

I did that recently while cutting an apple and it was just like “ffs what an expensive apple.”

Look at my empire dawg we're not gonna survive Great Power Competition therecord.media/hegseth-orde...

Sounds like a pretty big Privacy Act violation to me...

Kash Patel was paid by Russian filmmaker with Kremlin ties, documents show Patel, Trump’s nominee to be FBI director, was paid $25,000 last year by a film company that has promoted anti-Western views advanced by the Kremlin, documents show.

“If Patel is confirmed, the agency responsible for defending against Russian espionage operations inside the United States would be led by someone who months earlier had taken money from a perceived ally of the Kremlin.”

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Come on, Senator. Push through. That’s a Blackwater guy. He’s not going to shoot you; you’re not brown.

Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. ProPublica is attempting to document who is working with him and what they are doing.

"With little information from the White House, ProPublica is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing." My colleagues have published the largest list yet of who is involved in DOGE. #Democracy

Getting to know how our government works (let's go basic civics!) is going to be as key as ever to articulating, advancing, and taking action to combat authoritarianism. I hope this video can be a tool to understand this all a bit more, because it sure helped me a lot.

Begging some hero in the Department of Ed to rename the student loan record file folder "DEI training materials" before unlocking the door for the DOGE bros

Many issues here, but I'd note that many of the largest companies in the world put in their master service agreements a blanket prohibition on feeding any of their data into any AI. They know it's inherently insecure.

Now the DOGE chuds are going to do this across the fed gov't.

The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers, including trials of: malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique treatment for cholera in Bangladesh a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa nutritional support for children in Ethiopia early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa

Trials abandoned due to the stop-work order on USAID-funded research:

Ugh, the Declaration of Independence includes words that would trigger a review by the NSF. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int...

Shout-out to @benjaminwittes.bsky.social for saying on the radio what I was thinking: Guantanamo is the President's choice for detaining immigrants *because* the name is a stain on our nation. Not in spite of the stain.

Thanks to @justsecurity.org for giving me the space to step back from the barrage of daily news & see the bigger picture here on press freedom. As we get sucked into new rabbit holes with breaking news, it gets hard to keep sight of the overall stakes --- which are enormous.

! New account to follow —> @lgbtq.bots.law

This is terrifying. Possible outcomes include illegal impoundment and/or breaching the debt ceiling because these idiots can't manage the flow of money carefully