#Congress Observer System

[newsliveindia]

Rahul Gandhi Calls Gujarat Key to Congress Revival, Launches 'Sangathan Sirjan Abhiyan'

Ahmedabad: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, during his two-day visit to Gujarat, emphasized that the revival of the Indian National Congress must start from Gujarat, calling it the “ideological battleground” against the BJP-RSS.

 “If Congress wants to defeat BJP-RSS ideologically, it must start with Gujarat” – Rahul Gandhi

While addressing party workers and district leadership, Gandhi underlined the urgent need for grassroots restructuring, launching the ‘Sangathan Sirjan Abhiyan’, a state-wide campaign aimed at revamping Congress’s ground-level organization.

 New Organizational Model: Bottom-to-Top Empowerment

In a direct critique of top-down leadership, Gandhi stated:

“We should not say I run the district from Ahmedabad. The district should run itself from the district.”

He stressed that District Congress Committees (DCCs) must lead decision-making with greater autonomy and reduced centralized control. Delegation and decentralization will form the backbone of Congress’s new strategy in Gujarat.

 “Right Horse in the Right Place” – Gandhi on Role Reassignments

Drawing a vivid analogy, Gandhi said:

“The problem in Gujarat was we were using a racehorse for a wedding and the wedding horse for a race.”

He emphasized that role mismatches have weakened the organization and now efforts will be made to optimize talent placement.

 Key Concerns Raised by Party Workers

Rahul Gandhi’s interface with district and grassroots leaders brought up pressing issues:

Internal rivalries and senior-level infighting

Youth migration from Congress to BJP

Neglected input in candidate selection

Disorder below district-level functioning

He asked workers to submit written suggestions for local-level strategy reforms and committed to acting on practical proposals.

 Observer-Led Evaluation Mechanism Introduced

In line with the CWC and AICC meetings held last week in Ahmedabad, the party will now implement a 5-member observer system, with four local members and one from the center. Observers will file district-specific reports within 10 days—marking a significant shift from the earlier region-based evaluations.

This quick-response monitoring aims to generate measurable improvements in Congress’s visibility and performance across Gujarat.

 The Road Ahead: 2025 Declared 'Year of Organizational Overhaul'

As per Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, 2025 has been designated as the "year of organizational overhaul." With this Gujarat strategy push, Rahul Gandhi aims to reawaken Congress from the ground up—starting where it matters most.

[romchat]

I FINALLY bought a digital copy of Sinners and wanted to highlight a few other cinematography choices I really loved besides that tracking shot of Lisa Chow. The first is the camera language with which the White (and passing) characters are introduced and how it creates a unique sense of racial dread.

In her NYTimes article "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning, poet Claudia Rankine pointedly describes the daily strain of anti-Black racism:

"Anti-black racism is in the culture. It’s in our laws, in our advertisements, in our friendships, in our segregated cities, in our schools, in our Congress, in our scientific experiments, in our language, on the Internet, in our bodies no matter our race, in our communities and, perhaps most devastatingly, in our justice system. The unarmed, slain black bodies in public spaces turn grief into our everyday feeling that something is wrong everywhere and all the time, even if locally things appear normal."

This quiet but unrelenting feeling that something is wrong and could go wrong hovers over Sinners, the movie playing with our (visual) expectations of the many ways racist violence can suddenly strike at the whim of its White characters.

From the establishing shots of Sammie's sharecropper home to the plantation fields to the prison chain gang, we know that this a world where White characters can act without impunity. The violent legacy of slavery continues well beyond its official end, which we can see from the endless white rows of cotton in the foreground and background connecting each scene to the next, the overseers' silhouettes haunting the edge of the frame.

So when a White character physically enters a scene, we immediately feel dread, hyperaware that they could choose to be dangerous and mete out violence at any time just because they can. The introduction of Hogwood and Mary are good examples of this.

As Smoke and Stack wait for Hogwood to arrive to sell them his property, the camera stays trained on a narrow road that snakes behind the bend. There's low visibility because of the use of a wide shot and its duration is a beat too long. The Twins aren't sure how the interaction will go with this White man, and we the audience are forced to sit in that uncomfortable (but routine) tension with them.

And their wariness is justified because look at how Hogwood gets out of the car, his gun front and center. He's a threat on arrival and flaunts that power (e.g., that intentionally placed "boys").

Side Note: I might be stretching but that utility pole is almost cross-like, no? Possible reference to a KKK burning cross?

And despite Mary's deep connection to Stack and the rest of the Black community, she too chooses to be a danger and we can see this based on how she's visually introduced.

Her figure stands in the background, blurred because of the depth of field. There's something ghost-like about her appearance, which I'd interpret as symbolic of how as a White passing woman her past sexual relationship with Stack can still haunt him given the South's anti-miscegenation laws.

The tension of the scene ramps up as Mary approaches, the intimacy of the close-up shots anxiety-inducing. Although she is justified in how upset she is at him, this move is completely reckless given the optics. As @mosaic-briar observes in their analysis of Mary:

"White women have some of the most historically violent relationships to Black men that goes from before Emmitt Till to the data surrounding discipline in schools...Mary's incapability to recognize how much danger she was putting Stack in by yelling about their sex in the middle of the street telegraphed for us everything we'd need to know about how far she had processed her own identity."

This is a meeting between former lovers who care about one another but Mary's White femininity is still lethal even if she doesn't mean it to be. What a smart way to communicate the capricious but destructive power of Whiteness.

[tanadrin]

The recent talk about what would the democrats need to do the next election cycle to undo whatever damage done by Trump is possible to undo, and the observation that the US political system does already have to tools to do it on paper got me thinking, specifically about why this is happening much more than how

The present situation in the US, in a lot of ways, reads like a crisis of political will more than anything to me. But what I can't for the life of me come up with is, why is this will so lacking?

Even right now, a lot of Trump's actions could be halted if the political will existed to do so - not just among the politicians, but the average American person. Fed workers physically blocking DOGE employees, or just all the IT personnel forgetting all the server passwords and having a convenient server outage, hell just actually heated protests instead of some peaceful marches could make a dent. And politicians could of course also do more, all sorts of high ranking figures from illegally fired officials to House and Senate members could for example respond to the "move fast and break things" approach by, themselves defying dubious-but-technically-maybe-legal exercises of executive authority first and waiting for a lawsuit second, instead of the other way around. But that too, of course, needs to rest on an energised base that would appreciate this sort of thing to make the very real personal risk worth it

All of which sort of comes back around to political will - there exist solutions, but there seems to be an utter absence of actual electoral enthusiasm amongst the average American about actually using them - about asserting that this is a big deal and having a fight about it. Enthusiasm from the centre and left of it, anyways - the US right has sort of manifested that exact energy, and is using it exactly to do what they're doing right now

So like, what happened/is happening there with it? Why is the average American that actually participates in political life so apathetic to all if it, even the ridiculous bullshit they express a dislike for every time a poll or vote actually gets them to express an opinion on?

I am hardly an expert on this, but I think a big part of it is 1) the rot in the Republican Party specifically, and 2) the collapse of leadership in Congress generally, and I think these two things are related.

Movement conservatism has been hollowing out the Republican party as a "normal" political force for decades, and it really ramped up during the Bush years, when conservative political leaders and legal figures had to make increasingly contorted arguments for blatantly unconstitutional actions whose real justification was something like might makes right. The victory of Obama in 2008 accelerated the collapse because a certain kind of white American saw a black man get elected president and just kind of went crazy; they had to construct a post-hoc justification that wasn't "I still actually believe in the Jim Crow era racial hierarchy," and they couldn't really.

Movement conservatism also drove polarization in Congress starting in the 90s under Newt Gingrich, and Congress becoming a place for scoring political points rather than enacting policy, plus increasing deadlock (which again, accelerated under Obama, when figures like McConnell decided the play was to be as obstructionist as possible) de facto devolved a lot more responsibility on the executive and judicial branches. But you also saw, for instance, complete dereliction of duty to control and oversee warmaking and surveillance power under Bush--because, you see, that might open you up to some kind of political attack! Congress now is simply terminally afraid of taking a stand on anything, since to do so might endanger individual members' chances of re-election. And now that the Republican party is a Trump personality cult, there's no non-Trump wing of the party to appeal to against Trump's worst excesses; and feckless Democrats, who do not know how to actually demonstrate political leadership anymore, think the only solution to declining popularity is to try to chase the things that Trump does that seem to not be completely unpopular. Of course much of the electorate is zoned out--everything that comes out of any politician's mouths these days (save Trump and AOC and a couple of others) is a stock phrase that's been through a dozen focus-groups. The signal-to-noise ratio is abysmal, most political media does this simpering both-sides thing where they have to somehow act like the dull centrists and the rabid fascists both have valid points, and cynicism/doomerism/conspiracism runs wild on the social media that most people get their political coverage from anyway.

(And it doesn't help that the way American political parties are organized is stupid, and leaves them without any kind of central apparatus that can shape and direct political strategy when they're out of power)

obviously i am flattening out a lot of nuance and detail here for the sake of fitting it all in two paragraphs, but in the most general terms that's what i feel like is going on

[americancitizen2025]

"

Since Trump’s presidency, Don Jr. and Eric have been involved in major cryptocurrency projects,

Trump family STOLE from a children's CANCER charity.

read here

particularly in Dubai and the Middle East. These ventures are not just side hustles; they are multi-million-dollar deals, setting the stage for new financial pipelines that directly benefit the Trump family.

Ahead of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Don Jr. and Eric were already there, locking in agreements for new Trump-branded hotels, golf courses, and resorts across the region. This is not speculation; it’s documented fact. They are using the Trump name and connections to secure massive developments in countries that are simultaneously engaging with Trump on diplomatic terms.

Let’s be clear—before Trump took office, Don Jr. and Eric had never been involved in these types of business ventures. Their meteoric rise in the cryptocurrency market and Middle East real estate sector only began once their father assumed the presidency. Now, they’re moving ahead of him, making deals before Trump even sets foot in these countries.

Don’t forget Following Trump’s time in office, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, run by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This is the same crown prince that Trump saluted at the royal court—breaking presidential protocol—and praised for his “strong leadership.” And the timing of that $2 billion? Right after Trump leaves office.

While the Trump family is busy cashing in, Trump is openly doing favors for Saudi Arabia. From lifting sanctions on Syria to making public displays of loyalty, it’s the kind of quid pro quo that screams corruption. Deals are made, money is exchanged, and Trump’s policies shift accordingly.SubscribeShare

Trump and his family accuse Hunter Biden of profiting from political connections, yet the Trumps themselves are cashing in on every possible opportunity. This isn’t just an accusation—it’s an observation.

While Hunter Biden’s business deals were dragged through congressional hearings and media spectacles, Trump’s family doesn’t even bother to hide their money grabs. It’s as if they know they’re untouchable within their own echo chamber.

I testified in Congress that Hunter Biden was a victim of political manipulation and Russian disinformation. I was there. I saw the lies spun out of whole cloth to tarnish his name. And yet, here we are watching the Trump family do far worse—brazenly and without consequence.

This blatant hypocrisy should offend anyone who claims to care about corruption and cronyism. If you’re genuinely upset about a politician’s family profiting off connections, then be consistent. Condemn Hunter Biden if you must—but spare a thought for Don Jr., Eric, and Donald himself, whose profiteering is right out in the open.

Trump himself has a long history of exploiting political power for personal gain. Whether it’s negotiating real estate deals while in office or leveraging his political brand post-presidency, the strategy is simple: demonize the other side while doing the exact same thing, but louder and with more bravado.

The Trumps accuse Hunter of being shameless. But when you look at what they are doing—raking in cash through business ventures, foreign deals, and media influence—it becomes clear that the entire campaign against Hunter was never about ethics. It was about projection.

We are watching this hypocrisy unfold in real-time. Trump and his family are turning American politics into their personal ATM, exploiting political power for financial gain. They are selling America’s foreign policy to the highest bidder, and they’re not even hiding it anymore.

The only way we can stop this is if we unite and stand together. That’s why I’m calling upon each and every one of you to bring three or four people who want to hear the truth. Re-stack, share this letter far and wide.

ShareSubscribe

If you’re not already a subscriber, join the movement. If you can become a paid subscriber. Contribute to Venmo @lev-parnas. " See your hypocrisy MAGA? YOU need to be screaming about this

All the while daddy is golfing 25% of the time (about $10 million a month) and getting payoffs with dark money ($Trump and his newest coin) from dictators that support terrorism like Qatar. https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/03/donald-trumps-new-golf-tab-for-taxpayers-hits-incredible-milestone.html

Meanwhile DOGE is causing security breaches

https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/whistleblower-org-says-doge-may-have-caused-significant-cyber-breach-us-labor-2025-04-15/

[txttletale]

how do ml's reconcile with lenin going for a bigbrainhaver hierarchy which just so happened to place him at the tippy top? most of the things he's quoted for writing make a kind of sense in that longwinded academic philosopher way, but, like, russia went from having a revolution against monarchy to having a monarchy, essentially, and what folks do tends to align with their desires, yeah? wouldn't that make everything he said, idk, suspicious?

we reconcile with this because none of this is even remotely true. lenin did not 'happen to be placed at the tippy top' but was in fact elected by the soviets, who worked in a very simple electoral system by which workers and peasants would elect representatives to their local soviet, who as well as administering local services would also elect members to higher bodies. the quote unquote bigbrainhaver hierarchy system in question was as follows:

The sovereign body is in every case the Congress of Soviets. Each county sends its delegates. These are elected indirectly by the town and county Soviets which vote in proportion to population, following the ratio observed throughout, by which the voters in the town have five times the voting strength of the inhabitants of the villages, an advantage which may, as we saw, be in reality three to one. The Congress meets, as a rule, once a year, for about ten days. It is not, in the real sense of the word, the legislative body. It debates policy broadly, and passes resolutions which lay down the general principles to be followed in legislation. The atmosphere of its sittings is that of a great public demonstration. The Union Congress, for example, which has some fifteen hundred members, meets in the Moscow Opera House. The stage is occupied by the leaders and the heads of the administration, and speeches are apt to be big oratorical efforts. The real legislative body is the so-called Central Executive Committee (known as the C. I. K. and pronounced "tseek") . It meets more frequently than the Congress to which it is responsible-in the case of the Union, at least three times in the year-passes the Budget, receives the reports of the Commissars (ministers), and discusses international policy. It, in its turn, elects two standing bodies: (1) The Presidium of twenty-one members, which has the right to legislate in the intervals between the sittings of the superior assemblies, and also transacts some administrative work. (2) The Council of Peoples' Commissars. These correspond roughly to the Ministers or Secretaries of State in democratic countries and are the chiefs of the administration. Meeting as a Council, they have larger powers than any Cabinet, for they may pass emergency legislation and issue decrees which have all the force of legislation. Save in cases of urgency, however, their decrees and drafts of legislation must be ratified by the Executive Committee (C.I.K.). In another respect they differ from the European conception of a Minister. Each Commissar is in reality the chairman of a small board of colleagues, who are his advisers. These advisory boards, or collegia, meet very frequently (it may even be daily) to discuss current business, and any member of a board has the right to appeal to the whole Council of Commissars against a decision of the Commissar.

—H.N. Brailsford, How The Soviets Work (1927)

you might notice that the congresses of soviets were not directly elected -- this is because they were elected by local soviets, who were directly elected, in a process that many people have given first hand accounts of:

I have, while working in the Soviet Union, participated in an election. I, too, had a right to vote, as I was a working member of the community, and nationality and citizenship are no bar to electoral rights. The procedure was extremely simple. A general meeting of all the workers in our organisation was called by the trade union committee, candidates were discussed, and a vote was taken by show of hands. Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, and the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party. In considering the claims of the candidates their past activities were discussed, they themselves had to answer questions as to their qualifications, anybody could express an opinion, for or against them, and the basis of all the discussion was: What justification had the candidates to represent their comrades on the local Soviet. As far as the elections in the villages were concerned, these took place at open village meetings, all peasants of voting age, other than those who employed labour, having the right to vote and to stand for election. As in the towns, any organisation or individual could put forward candidates, anyone could ask the candidate questions, and anybody could support or oppose the candidature. It is usual for the Communist Party to put forward a candidate, trade unions and other organisations can also do so, and there is nothing to prevent the Party’s candidate from not being elected, if he has not sufficient prestige among the voters. In the towns the “ electoral district ” has hitherto consisted of a factory, or a group of small factories sufficient to form a constituency. But there was one section of the town population which has always had to vote geographically, since they did not work together in one organisation. This was the housewives. As a result, the housewives met separately in each district, had their own constituencies, and elected their own representatives to the Soviet. Here, too, vital interest has always been shown in the personality of every candidate. Why should this woman be elected ? What right had she to represent her fellow housewives on the local Soviet ? In the district next to my own at the last election the housewife who was elected was well known as an organiser of a communal dining-room in the district. This was the kind of person that the housewives wanted to represent them on the Soviet. Another candidate, a Communist, proposed by the local organisation of the Party, was turned down in her favour.

[...]

The election of delegates to the local Soviet is not the only function of voters in the Soviet Union. It is not a question here of various parties presenting candidates to the electorate, each with his own policy to offer. The Soviet electorate has to select a personality from its midst to represent it, and instruct this person in the policy which is to be followed when elected. At a Soviet election meeting, therefore, as much or more time may be spent on discussion of the instructions to the delegate as is spent on discussing the personality of the candidates. At the last election to the Soviets, in which I personally participated, we must have spent three or four times as much time on the working out of instructions as we did on the selection of our candidate. About three weeks before the election was to take place the trade union secretary in every department of our organisation was told by the committee that it was time to start to prepare our instructions to the delegate. Every worker was asked to make suggestions concerning policy which he felt should be brought to the notice of the new personnel of the Moscow Soviet. As a result, about forty proposals concerning the general government of Moscow were handed in from a group of about twenty people. We then held a meeting in our department at which we discussed the proposals, and adopted some and rejected others. We then handed our list of pro¬ posals to a commission, appointed by the trade union committee, and representing all the workers in our organisation. This Commission co-ordinated the pro¬ posals received, placed them in order according to the various departments of the Soviet, and this co-ordinated list was read at the election meeting itself, again discussed, and adopted in its final form.

—Pat Sloan, Soviet Democracy (1937)

Between the elections of 1931 and 1934, no less than 18 per cent of the city deputies and 37 per cent of village deputies were recalled, of whom only a relatively small number — 4 per cent of the total — were charged with serious abuse of power. The chief reasons for recall were inactivity — 37 per cent — and inefficiency — 21 per cent. If these figures indicate certain lacks in the quality of elected officials, they show considerable activity of the people in improving government. The electorate of the Peasants' Gazette, for example, consisted of some 1,500 employees, entitled to elect one deputy to the Moscow city soviet and two to the ward soviet. For more than a month before the election every department of the newspaper held meetings discussing both candidates and instructions. Forty-three suggested candidates and some 1,400 proposals for the work of the incoming government resulted from these meetings, which also elected committees to boil down and classify the instructions. These committees issued a special four-page newspaper for the 1,500 voters; it contained brief biographies of the forty-three candidates, an analysis of their capacities by the Communist Party organization of the Peasants' Gazette, and the "nakaz," or list of "people's instructions," classified by subject and the branch of government which they concerned. At the final election meeting of the Peasants* Gazette there was literally more than 100 per cent attendance, since some of the staff who for reasons of absence or illness had not been listed as prospective voters returned from sanatoria or from distant assignments to vote. The instructions issued by the electorate in this manner — 1,400 from the Peasants' Gazette and tens of thousands from Moscow citizens — became the first business of the incoming government.

—Anna Louise Strong, The New Soviet Constitution (1937)

does this mean that the soviet project was some utopian perfect system? no. there were flaws in the system like any other. it disenfranchised the rural peasantry (although not, i would like to add, to any extent greater or even equivalent to the extent to which the US electoral system disenfranchises the urban working class) -- the various tiers of indirect selection created a divide between the average worker and the highest tier of the executive -- and various elements of this fledgling system would calcify and bureaucratise over time in ways that obstructed worker's democracy. but saying that it was 'a monarchy' is founded in absolutely nothing except the most hysterical anticommunist propaganda and tedious orwellian liberal truisms.

even brailsford, in an account overall critical of the soviet system, had to admit:

Speaking broadly, the various organs of the system, from the Council of Commissars of the Union down to the sub-committees of a town Soviet, are handling the same problems. Whether one sits in the Kremlin at a meeting of the most august body of the whole Union, the "C.I.K.," or round a table in Vladimir with the working men who constitute its County Executive Committee, one hears exactly the same problems discussed. How, be-fore June arrives, shall we manage to reduce prices by ten percent? What growth can we show in the number of our spindles, or factories, and in the number of workers employed? When and how shall we make our final assault on the last relics of illiteracy? Or when shall we have room in our schools, even in the remotest village, for every child? Was it by good luck or good guidance that the number of typhus cases has dropped in a year by half? And, finally, how can we hasten the raising of clover seed, so that the peasants who, at last, thanks to our propaganda, are clamoring for it, may not be disappointed?

—H.N. Brailsford, How The Soviets Work (1927)

genuinely, i think you should take a moment and think about where you learned about the soviet union. have you read any serious historical work on the topic, even from non-communist or anti-communist sources? because even imperialist propagandists have to make a pretence at engaging with actual facts on the ground, something which you haven't done at all -- and yet you speak with astounding confidence. i recommend you read some serious books instead of animal farm and reflect on why you believe the things you believe and how you know the things you think you know.

[mariacallous]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is auditing Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The probe, which has been ongoing since March, covers DOGE’s handling of data at several cabinet-level agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, the Treasury, and the Social Security Administration, as well as the US DOGE Service (USDS) itself, according to sources and records reviewed by WIRED.

Records show that the GAO—an independent auditing, research, and investigative agency for Congress—appears to be requesting comprehensive information from the agencies in question, including incident reports on “potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data” and documentation of policies and procedures relating to systems DOGE operatives have accessed, as well as documentation of policies for the agency's risk assessments, audit logs, insider threat programs, and more.

Over the last few months, DOGE operatives, many of them with connections to Musk’s companies but little to no government experience, have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies as part of Musk’s plan to push out tens of thousands of government employees. They have also gained initial access to untold amounts of sensitive data, from Treasury payment systems to tax records, and appear to be attempting to connect purposefully disparate data systems.

While a number of Democratic officials have sounded the alarm on DOGE’s activities, this audit is one of the first real signs of possible accountability and oversight.

The GAO’s review is expected to be completed by the end of spring, according to records reviewed by WIRED. Congressional sources say it will yield a report that will be made public.

“GAO has received requests to review actions taken by DOGE across multiple agencies,” Sarah Kaczmarek, a spokesperson for the GAO, tells WIRED. “The first thing GAO does as any work begins is to determine the full scope of what we will cover and the methodology to be used. Until that is done, we cannot provide any additional details or estimates on when the work will be completed.”

The audit, according to records reviewed by WIRED, is broadly centered on DOGE’s adherence to privacy and data protection laws and regulations. More specifically, according to records detailing GAO’s interactions with the Department of Labor (DOL), the agency will conduct a granular review of every system to which DOGE—defined in these records as USDS workers and members of the DOGE teams which an executive order directs every federal agency to establish—has been given access at the agencies it is examining. DOL did not respond to requests for comment.

Notes obtained by WIRED detail a proposed meeting between GAO examiners and DOL representatives to request that DOL officials share records of the system privileges provided to DOGE affiliates, including “any modifications to the accounts,” as well as audit logs showing their activity.

In addition, DOL officials were asked to prepare for an in-person meeting at which GAO officials could observe the security settings on laptops the agency had provided to DOGE operatives and review all the systems that track DOGE’s work at DOL, including a data loss prevention tool and systems used to track cybersecurity and privacy incidents.

Notes from a March 18 meeting, marked “Internal/Confidential,” show that a DOL lawyer presented colleagues with an overview of DOL’s interactions with DOGE. “So far,” the notes read, “they do not have write access. They have asked; we’ve held them at bay. We’ve tried to get them to tell us what they want & then we do it. They only have read access.” DOGE seems primarily interested, according to the notes, in pay systems and grants, and has signed an agreement detailing a “long list of things they won’t do.”

The notes also detail interactions between the GAO and DOL related to DOGE’s work. Included are a specific set of requests GAO gave to DOL representatives:

“Please identify any systems and information for which USDS and/or agency DOGE team staff were provided access. In doing so, please identify all accounts created, including those for any applications, servers, databases, mainframes, and/or network equipment.

“Please describe the type of access that USDS and/or agency DOGE team staff have to agency systems and information (e.g., read, write, execute).

“Please describe how USDS and/or agency DOGE team staff access agency systems and information (e.g., on-premise or remote, agency furnished equipment or other equipment).

“Please describe the safeguards that are in place to determine that USDS and/or agency DOGE team staff protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of agency systems and information consistent with relevant laws and guidance.

“Please describe the processes that the agency has in place to ensure that USDS and DOGE teams are appropriately protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the agency systems and information as required by applicable laws and guidance.”

Concerns about DOGE access to agency systems are not unfounded. In February, WIRED reported that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former X engineer, was granted the ability not only to read the code in the Treasury systems but also to write—or change—it. With that level of access, there were concerns that he could have potentially cut off congressionally authorized payments or caused the systems to simply stop working. “It’s like knowing you have hackers on your network, but nobody lets you do anything about it,” a Treasury employee told WIRED at the time.

Elez, according to the March 18 meeting notes and previous WIRED reporting, also has access to the DOL and has been linked to the Social Security Administration. His and other DOGE affiliates’ access to SSA data is currently restricted due to a court order. Elez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting from WIRED and other outlets since then has continued to expose DOGE’s sweeping attempts to access sensitive data—and the potential consequences. President Donald Trump’s executive order from March 20 directs agencies to begin “eliminating information silos,” purportedly to fight fraud and waste. These actions could also threaten privacy by consolidating personal data housed on different systems into a central repository, WIRED previously reported.

A record detailing an initial request from GAO for DOL documents, due at the end of March, shows that the agency was asked to show how it protected its systems, with the requested documentation covering, among other things, its policies on management of access to system accounts, training, the principles of separation of duties and least privilege, the use of portable storage devices, audit logging, and its insider threat program. These requests reference the National Institute of Standards and Technology publication Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations, which serves as a set of information security guidelines for federal systems not related to national security.

The DOL was also asked to provide records documenting risk assessments and memorandums of understanding pertaining to DOGE; documentation for each system account created for DOGE that shows approval for requests to access the accounts, what access authorization they have, and any subsequent modifications to the accounts; all communications from October 2024 to March 2025 related to DOGE being granted access to agency systems and/or information; and detailed information on the job status of each DOGE affiliate, their relationship to the USDS, and the supervisory structure they’re working under and the security training they’ve undergone. (DOGE’s management structure has been quite opaque, with even DOGE workers not knowing who was technically in charge a month after Donald Trump’s inauguration.)

GAO examiners also sought information including instances of and incident reports related to “potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data,” detailed information on who oversees specific systems and data dictionaries, data architecture records, and interface control documents for specific systems, as well as documentation of the audit logs for each system.

The GAO audit is being carried out in response to requests from congressional leaders.

In a February 6 letter, representative Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and the ranking member of the House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce committee, cited reporting from WIRED and other outlets about DOGE intrusions into federal systems in the course of asking the agency to investigate what he called “a constitutional emergency” related to DOGE access.

On February 24, in a letter obtained by WIRED, representative Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts and the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, requested a review of what DOGE is doing in agencies including the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration.

“Americans expect that when they share personal information with the government, whether for paying taxes or accessing health or Social Security benefits, it will be safeguarded,” Neal tells WIRED. “That is not what’s happened with DOGE, and why, at my request, the Government Accountability Office is working to shed much-needed light on their access to and use of personal and confidential information. It shouldn’t have to come to this—if there’s nothing to hide, DOGE should want the public to understand its work—but this is exactly why accountability measures across the government are so important.”

According to a Congressional aide, who spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to be quoted in the media, the requests followed media reports on DOGE’s incursions into federal systems.

“The federal government, and actually most private companies as well, operate on the principle that data should be protected,” they say. “It should be protected from theft, protected from access by people who do not have a legitimate purpose or reason to be in and to be accessing that data. And so the reports of untrained people rummaging around databases changing code, scraping data—who knows what they’re doing?—were pretty alarming.”

“Has this data been exported outside of the agencies?” they add. “Is it being accessed or used by hackers or private citizens, or maybe it’s being used to train AI models? I don’t know.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

All over DC and NYC today

* * * *

Backstopping the courts!

February 11, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

Here is the topline: Defenders of the rule of law are on a judicial winning streak. At the same time, it appears unclear whether Trump and Musk are complying with existing orders compelling them to cease their unlawful behavior. The ‘overwhelming question’ that confronts our democracy is, “What happens if Trump and Musk refuse to obey court orders?”

Legal analysts and political commentators are focusing on that question and often conclude their analysis with something like, “It will be a constitutional crisis.”

That is a highly unsatisfying and incomplete answer. None of the analysts or commentators mention the role of American citizens in pushing back against the ongoing billionaire coup. Yes, we may indeed end up with a constitutional standoff between the executive and the courts, but to pretend that the people have no say in the outcome is an oversight of profound dimensions.

As I wrote yesterday, a system in which the leaders claim to be exempt from the rule of law contains an inherent instability: If the rule of law does not apply to the leaders, it does not apply to the people. That is not a threat but an observation of how other nations have brought dictators to heel. Trump and Musk should, therefore, stop their lawless spree well short of mass action by citizens fed up with a lawless “government.”

The power of mass protests, strikes, stoppages, and boycotts will be particularly potent in America. The US is the largest economy in the world because its markets are stable, its political climate is (relatively) corruption-free, and the rule of law is enforced.

Business thrives on order, predictability, and risk management. If the rule of law is overthrown, business profits will take a nose-dive. The bond market is acting in an unnatural manner, suggesting a deep-seated suspicion that something bad may be happening. The markets are not worried only about Trump's tariffs increasing inflation. They are beginning to price in a risk premium for political instability. (That is my personal opinion based on reading the financial press; I am not an economist.)

Moreover, the full faith and credit of the US depend entirely on American citizens' belief that their tax dollars are spent under the system established in the Constitution—appropriations made by Congress through legislation, signed into law by the president, and implemented by the executive departments and agencies. If Trump and Musk break that system, it raises the obvious question: “What’s in it for the American taxpayer?”

I raise these points not to frighten anyone but rather to give us confidence by following the logic of the current crisis to its inevitable conclusion: The people will prevail.

Even if Trump and Musk lack the emotional intelligence or self-awareness to intuit that fact, the business community that is providing Trump a free pass at the moment is keenly aware of the consequences of breaking the social compact.

I don’t think the crisis will get that far because I believe those around Trump understand the consequences of “crossing the Rubicon” of disregarding court orders. But if it does get that far, I feel pretty good about the prospects of the American people in a political tug of war with Trump and Musk.

With that background, let’s look at how the major developments fit into the narrative.

Courts continue to enjoin illegal and unconstitutional actions by Trump and Musk

As noted above, those defending democracy and the rule of law are on a winning streak against Trump and Musk. But there is worrisome evidence that Trump and Musk are already disregarding court orders. See NYTimes, Judge Says White House Defied His Ruling, as Showdown with Trump Nears (Accessible to all.)

As explained in the Times article,

A federal judge said on Monday that the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.

The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered administration officials to comply with what the judge called “the plain text” of an ruling he issued on Jan. 29. That order, he wrote, was “clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance.”

The flicker of hope in the above description of the “freeze” lawsuit is that the DOJ is appealing Judge McConnell's ruling. It could have been otherwise; the White House could have simply announced that it was not going to abide by the ruling. The appeal from Judge McConnell's order may be the vehicle that brings the conflict to the Supreme Court.

But, to be absolutely clear, the White House did not say it would comply with Judge McConnell’s order, so the possibility remains that Trump is defying a binding court order as we speak. Time will tell.

Similar cases are trailing behind, including restraining orders or injunctions against executive orders purporting to take the following actions:

Trump's buyout offer to federal workers: USA Today, Judge blocks Trump buyout offer to federal workers.

Trump's massive cuts to healthcare grants (by limiting overhead to 15%). See Politico, Judge temporarily blocks Trump cuts to health research grants.

And new lawsuits are challenging other Trump executive orders:

Public Citizen filed a lawsuit seeking to block the shutdown of foreign aid: Politico, First lawsuit targets Trump’s foreign aid freeze.

A union has sued Trump to prevent the CFPB shutdown. See Axios, Union sues Trump admin over CFPB shutdown attempt and DOGE access

The takeaway is that these legal challenges are headed to the Supreme Court—if we are lucky. Getting to the Supreme Court means that (a) Trump is losing and (b) he recognizes that the courts have a role in resolving the disputes.

Trump expands his campaign of lawlessness and corruption

Trump is pillaging and burning his way through laws and agencies designed to protect consumers from deceitful, misleading, and dishonest practices by American businesses in the US and businessmen making deals abroad.

As noted above, Trump has effectively shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—an agency created and funded by Congress. Trump has no authority to unilaterally shut down an agency created by statute.

The unseemly end for the CFPB is bad for consumers. Very. See NBC, What's at stake for consumers as Trump officials target the CFPB (“Congress granted the CFPB the power to supervise banks with more than $10 billion in assets and to regulate lending by nonbank entities, including mortgage, auto, payday and private student loan issuers.”)

As the result of a CFPB rule, consumers saved $6 billion (not a mistake: $6 billion) in check overdraft fees charged by banks. The House Banking Committee has proposed legislation to eliminate that protection.

Trump has also announced suspension of enforcement of a federal anti-bribery statute that prohibits the use of bribes in securing foreign contracts. See The Independent, Trump orders Justice Department to stop enforcing foreign anti-bribery law.

In a truly stunning talking point on a White House “fact sheet” seen by The Independent, the Trump administration seemed to be giving the green light to bribes as a means of doing business overseas.

Per The Independent:

The fact sheet states the White House view that American corporations are disadvantaged by prohibitions on bribing corrupt foreign officials because such activity is common in international business transactions.

(Expletive deleted!) The American economy thrives partly because its markets are viewed as orderly and (relatively) corruption-free. If doing business in America includes bribing suppliers overseas, guess who will most assuredly lose: American consumers.

Bribing foreign producers will deter market-based behavior that rewards honest competition. Instead, the company most willing to engage in criminal bribery will win the contract. Unbelievable!

Speaking of encouraging bribery, Trump pardoned former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of soliciting bribes to fill Barack Obama’s seat in the Senate when Obama was elected president. See CBS Chicago, President Trump officially pardons former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. (“I didn't know him, other than I believe he was on 'The Apprentice' for a little while," said President Trump).

Even worse, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to dismiss the federal indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. See AP News, Top Justice Department official orders prosecutors to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. (“[I]n a remarkable departure from long-standing norms, [the DOJ argued] that the case was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.”)

But here is a ray of hope amidst the sudden collapse of the legal profession in the Trump administration: The American Bar Association released a statement calling on lawyers to uphold the rule of law! Read the entire statement here: The ABA supports the rule of law.

The statement says, in part,

Moreover, refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress under the euphemism of a pause is a violation of the rule of law and suggests that the executive branch can overrule the other two co-equal branches of government. This is contrary to the constitutional framework and not the way our democracy works. The money appropriated by Congress must be spent in accordance with what Congress has said. It cannot be changed or paused because a newly elected administration desires it. Our elected representatives know this. The lawyers of this country know this. It must stop. [¶¶] We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law. It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less.

Well done and well said! We need other organizations and leaders to follow the example of the ABA!

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

[goingontomorrow]

Update on LGBT Information Removals from U.S. Government Websites

It has been observed that references to "LGBTQIA+" and similar acronyms have been shortened to "LGB" on several U.S. government websites. However, some agencies, such as the National Archives and the National Library of Medicine, appear unaffected.

When government agencies remove web pages, the standard procedure is to use a tool called Pagefreeze, which archives the content while indicating that the page is no longer actively maintained.

Pagefreeze Information: Pagefreeze for Government

Example of a site with Pagefreeze: Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Rule to Strengthen Protections for Youth in the Child Welfare System – HHS

The Children’s Bureau within the Administration for Children & Families has taken the approach of marking pages as archived rather than removing them entirely:

LGBTQIA2S+ Resources – Administration for Children & Families

Pages That Are Still Active

National Archives Title: LGBTQIA+ Research Resources URL: https://www.archives.gov/research/lgbt/lgbtqia

National Library of Medicine Title: The Role of Public Health in Ensuring LGBT+ Health Equity URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4689648/

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Title: Support for the LGBTQI+ Community URL: https://www.samhsa.gov/find-support/how-to-cope/support-for-lgbtqi-community

Library of Congress Title: LGBTQ+ Pride Month Resources URL: https://www.loc.gov/lgbt-pride-month/resources/

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Title: LGBTQ+ Veteran Care URL: https://www.patientcare.va.gov/LGBT/index.asp

National Park Service Title: LGBTQ Heritage Initiative URL: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?parkID=442&projectID=53065

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Title: LGBTQI+ Competency Training Resources URL: https://www.hhs.gov/programs/topic-sites/lgbtqi/enhanced-resources/competency-training/index.html

Pages That Have Been Removed (With User Created Archive Links)

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Title: Protecting the Rights of LGBTQI+ People Removed URL: https://www.hhs.gov/ocr/lgbtqi/index.html Archived Version: Wayback Machine

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Title: LGBTQI+ Health & Well-being Removed URL: https://www.hhs.gov/programs/topic-sites/lgbtqi/index.html Archived Version: Wayback Machine

U.S. Department of State Title: Global Equality Fund Removed URL: https://www.state.gov/global-equality-fund Archived Version: Wayback Machine

Youth.gov Title: LGBT Youth Resources Removed URL: https://youth.gov/federal-links/lgbt-youth-resources Archived Version: Wayback Machine

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Title: HUD LGBTQI+ Resources Removed URL: https://www.hud.gov/lgbtqi Archived Version: Wayback Machine

U.S. Department of Justice Title: LGBTQI+ Working Group Removed URL: https://www.justice.gov/crt/lgbtqi-working-group Archived Version: Wayback Machine

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Title: LGBTQ+ Special Emphasis Program Removed URL: https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/staff-offices/office-assistant-secretary-civil-rights/special-emphasis-programs/lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-and-queer-lgbtq-program Archived Version: Wayback Machine

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Title: Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth Removed URL: https://www.cdc.gov/youth-safe-environments/communication-resources/index.html Archived Version: Wayback Machine

U.S. Census Bureau Title: LGBT Adults Report Anxiety, Depression at All Ages Removed URL: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/lgbt-adults-report-anxiety-depression-at-all-ages.html Archived Version: Wayback Machine

Notable Change in Terminology

The U.S. Department of State has a webpage titled "LGB Travelers", which previously included broader LGBTQ+ information but now only references "LGB."

URL: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/before-you-go/travelers-with-special-considerations/lgb.html

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Samantha Fields

When Charlie McCone got COVID in March 2020 in San Francisco, he was 30, otherwise healthy and fit, not considered high-risk. His doctors told him he’d get better in a couple of weeks. He didn’t.

Eventually, weeks into being sick and with no real answers from his doctors, he turned to that place many of us turn to for medical information: the internet.

“I found a Facebook group with thousands of other people asking what’s going on, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” he said, “‘This is happening to so many other people.’”

It was already becoming clear then, in spring of 2020, that COVID could cause serious, lasting issues, including debilitating fatigue and brain fog, among many other symptoms. Because there was so much attention on COVID at the time, McCone said, “there was a lot of hope about the response to long COVID, I think, the first two years.”

Then in late 2020, Congress allocated over $1 billion to the National Institutes of Health for long COVID research. “There was this feeling that we’re going to have answers here in a few years,” he said.

But now it is a few years later, and that feeling has changed.

McCone is still sick. He’s not working anymore and can’t walk much more than a block. Roughly 20 million people in the U.S. are now estimated to have long COVID, maybe more. And that initial $1.15 billion NIH got for the RECOVER program — which stands for Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery — has yielded few answers and zero approved treatments so far.

“There’s been a lot of disappointment in terms of the program moving slowly and also focusing a lot on the kind of observational side of things,” said Betsy Ladyzhets, co-founder and managing editor of the Sick Times, a nonprofit news site focused on long COVID.

Most of the research money has gone into trying to learn more about what long COVID is — into clinical research, data collection and analysis and studies of electronic health records.

“Rather than what many people in the patient community and also the research community really want, which is focus on treatments, clinical trials,” Ladyzhets said.

There’s good reason for the focus on observational research, according to Dr. Serena Spudich, a neurologist and researcher at Yale who’s working with the RECOVER program.

“There has to be a very, very strong urgency for finding treatments,” she said. “And at the same time, we will only find treatments if we understand the condition properly.”

And understand what���s causing the many different kinds of symptoms people are having.

“Because long COVID is not one condition, it’s a very heterogeneous condition,” Spudich said. “And it’s very, very possible, I would even say likely, that different forms of long COVID — for example, the more neurologic forms versus something like severe shortness of breath or problems with the heart rate — those may actually be due to different types of biologic mechanisms that need different treatments.”

Outside researchers agree that these kinds of observational studies and data collection are critical, but some feel the NIH didn’t need to spend nearly $1 billion on them.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center and chief of the Research and Education Service at the VA St. Louis Health Care System, said his team and others did similar research earlier in the pandemic, “for peanuts, a few hundred thousand dollars that generated evidence much more robustly, faster, years ahead of RECOVER, for a small, small, small, small fraction of the funds.”

At this point, more than four years in, “NIH should be laser-focused, laser-focused on finding treatment for long COVID,” he said.

That will be a bigger focus going forward. NIH got another $515 million this year for RECOVER and plans to put much of it toward clinical trials.

This fall, it held a kickoff meeting for the next phase of the RECOVER program, called RECOVER-TLC, which stands for Treating Long COVID. Now, Joseph Breen at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH said it’s in the process of soliciting ideas for drugs and other treatments to trial.

“We have every intention of getting started as soon as possible,” he said. “In reality, we’re probably into next year.”

David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, has been doing long COVID research since 2020. He said how the clinical trials are designed will be critical.

“What we need to be doing is rapidly testing as many drug targets as possible, rather than taking big swings,” he said. Meaning that instead of putting all the funding into a few big, expensive trials of a couple of drugs, RECOVER could do a bunch of smaller trials.

“For a couple million dollars apiece, they could be testing 100 drugs. And they could be logging the responses of those 100 drugs, and they could be moving into more sophisticated clinical trial strategies,” Putrino said. “That is where I think we should be applying the money.”

Many long COVID patients and advocates are cautiously optimistic about this next phase of research. Charlie McCone, who has become something of an expert in his own illness and now volunteers with the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, was at the kickoff meeting and left feeling a little more hopeful.

“The NIH can do this right, they have to do this right,” he said. “And they need to do it fast, which we know is possible.”

But no matter what comes of this current slate of funding, he said more is going to be needed. “No disease is solved with a one-time investment. And so, just because this first billion dollars didn’t produce much does not mean the next billion and the next billion won’t.”

Some legislators are already pushing for additional funding. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, along with several Democratic senators, introduced the Long COVID Research Moonshot Act in the Senate, and a companion bill has been introduced in the House. The Moonshot Act would provide $1 billion a year for 10 years for long COVID research. It has yet to be brought to the floor for a vote.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Days before Salvador Allende’s confirmation as Chile’s president in 1970, US President Richard Nixon met with a rightwing Chilean media mogul to discuss blocking the socialist leader’s path to the presidency, newly declassified documents have revealed. The documents, published in a new Spanish edition of the Pinochet files by archivist and writer Peter Kornbluh, include Nixon’s agenda for 15 September 1970, which shows a meeting in the Oval Office with Agustín Edwards, the owner of the conservative El Mercurio media group. A day earlier, Edwards had met CIA director Richard Helms. Notes from that conversation detail the media baron’s observations on various members of the military, prompting Nixon to request a “gameplan” for a coup that would prevent Allende’s inauguration. Allende had won a slender victory over rival Jorge Alessandri in presidential elections, but with no clear majority, the electoral system at the time required congress to ratify the candidate who would form a government. In secret, and with the support of President Nixon’s White House, a plan was hatched for the military to seize power, dissolve congress and block Allende’s inauguration. Alongside munitions and payments, Edwards conveyed the military’s demands for “clear and specific guarantees” as well as “assurances they would not be abandoned and ostracized”, according to a memorandum entitled “Conversation with Agustín Edwards, Owner of El Mercurio Chilean Newspaper Chain, 18 September 1970”, which had previously been heavily redacted. “It is incredible that, 50 years later, we’re still learning key details of how the US were trying to block, thwart, undermine and destabilise the first elected socialist president in Chile,” said Kornbluh.

[john-laurens-hamilton]

“I am indebted to you, my dear Hamilton, for two letters; the first from Albany, as masterly a piece of cynicism as ever was penned, the other from Philadelphia, dated the 2d March; in both, you mention a design of retiring, which makes me exceedingly unhappy. I would not wish to have you for a moment withdrawn from the public service; at the same time, my friendship for you, and knowlege of your value to the United States, make me most ardently desire, that you should fill only the first offices of the Republic. I was flattered with an account of your being elected a delegate from N. York, and am much mortified not to hear it confirmed by yourself. I must confess to you, that, at the present state of the War, I shd. prefer your going into Congress, and from thence, becoming a Minister plenipotentiary for peace, to your remaining in the Army, where the dull System of seniority and the Tableau would prevent you from having the important commands to which you are entitled; but at any rate I wd. not have you renounce your rank in the Army, unless you entered the career above-mentioned. Your private affairs cannot require such immediate and close attention; you speak like a pater familias surrounded with a numerous progeny.

I had, in fact, resumed the black project, as you were informed, and urged the matter very strenuously, both to our privy council and legislative body; but I was out-voted, having only reason on my side, and being opposed by a triple-headed monster that shed the baneful influence of Avarice, prejudice, and pusillanimity in all our Assemblies. It was some consolation to me, however, to find that philosophy and truth had made some little progress since my last effort, as I obtained twice as many suffrages as before.”

The rest of this letter has not been found.

I find from this letter three observations, one from Laurens’ affection to Hamilton and two about his mannerisms and interests.

The first one is, as it’s not visible here, where it says “progeny”, what Laurens originally wrote was “family.” It was lazily crossed out and replaced by the latter word. Maybe Laurens didn’t want to accept the fact that Hamilton had found a family, and decided that addressing his children as “progeny” would be more impersonal. It was a common thing they did: in these crossed words, they hid the meaning of their affection, which they both couldn't let die, even after this was written two years after Hamilton’s marriage, about a month before Laurens' death. For example, once Alexander wrote to John writing “and now, my dear Jack…” ultimately replaced the nickname for “one.” Jack was a nickname only his close family called him. And “one” can be a move similar to Hamilon’s comma-after-dearest.

The mannerisms are the way Laurens mentioned his all-black-batallion in every single letter written to Hamilon, as he seemed to trust his friend with his abolitionist ideals more than anybody else, as his family benefited from slave work for decades and he didn't have many other close friends—“friends”—like Hamilton. Second, is how he abbreviates words such as “could”, “should,” and “would” as cd., shd., and wd. It’s just adorable.

(source: https://www.founders.archives.gov, https://john-laurens.tumblr.com/post/160878012808/you-speak-like-a-pater-familias-surrounded-with-a, https://john-laurens.tumblr.com/149243379883/fun-fact-alexander-hamilton-did-use-the-nickname )

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair:

In the past week, Donald Trump has signaled a desire to rule like a strongman rather than a president constrained by constitutional norms. Last Friday, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, scolded democratic NATO allies and met with the leader of Germany’s extreme-right AfD party. On Saturday, Trump declared on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This Tuesday, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the brutal war that was launched by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “You should have never started it,” Trump falsely said of Zelenskyy, when in fact Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The US president then doubled down on the feud Wednesday, calling Zelenskyy a “dictator.” Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, which means the federal courts and congressional Republicans are the only guardrails on Trump’s second term. So far the judicial system seems to be holding—though a Trump-packed Supreme Court is now destined to rule on all manner of alleged overreach in the coming months. (And it’s an open question as to whether Trump will actually abide by rulings that go against him.)

Republicans in Congress, however, have consistently folded—approving all of Trump’s Cabinet picks, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, with only a faint whiff of pushback on some of their boundary-scorching backgrounds. The confirmations predictably short-circuited many Democratic observers, but the rolling headlines of late have even some Republicans decrying the seeming erosion of checks and balances in recent weeks. “These are the heirs of the Greatest Generation, and they turned out to be the worst generation,” says Stuart Stevens, who served as a chief strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has since left the GOP, joining the anti-Trump Lincoln Project as a senior adviser. “It’s tempting to compare Republicans to Prussian aristocrats in 1930s Germany. But Prussian aristocrats were more responsible. They were dealing with civil unrest and the threat of a communist takeover. Republicans today have historically low unemployment, a record stock market. What’s their excuse?”

Political survival is one. Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. “They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me. According to one source with direct knowledge of the events, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about “credible death threats” when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary. Tillis ultimately provided the crucial 50th vote to confirm the former Fox & Friends host to lead the Pentagon. [...]

From the moment Trump descended his golden escalator in June 2015 to announce his first run for president, he injected menace into his political rhetoric. On the campaign trail he talked about wanting to punch protesters in the face. During his first term, he praised Montana’s then representative Greg Gianforte for physically attacking Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017. “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!” Trump said. (Gianforte later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and received a six-month deferred jail sentence.) When protests erupted after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020, Trump called protesters “thugs” and said: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The phrase echoed a remark made in the 1960s by a Miami police chief associated with stoking racial tensions in the city (Trump claimed he wasn’t aware of its origins). In a September 2020 debate against Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist violence and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

January 6 further catalyzed GOP fear of Trump-inspired violence. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins, that an undercurrent of anxiety thwarted Republican efforts to formally punish Trump for his role in inciting the riot. “One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety,” Coppins wrote in his book. “When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.” Former Wyoming representative and prominent anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney told CNN that House GOP members confided to her that they were “afraid for their own security—afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” Representative Jason Crow of Colorado told NBC News after January 6: “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears—saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.”

Republican Peter Meijer, then a Michigan representative, told Atlantic writer Tim Alberta in 2021 that one colleague seemed to nearly have a nervous breakdown over fears of being harmed by MAGA supporters if he were to vote to certify the 2020 election results: “He asked his new colleague if he was okay,” Alberta reported. “The member responded that he was not; that no matter his belief in the legitimacy of the election, he could no longer vote to certify the results, because he feared for his family’s safety. ‘Remember, this wasn’t a hypothetical. You were casting that vote after seeing with your own two eyes what some of these people are capable of,’ Meijer says. ‘If they’re willing to come after you inside the US Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?’” Trump’s mass pardoning of January 6 participants has recentered those events in Republican minds of late.

Gabriel Sherman wrote a solid column in Vanity Fair on how the threat of political violence from far-right MAGA cultists serve to keep Republicans onside in enacting the dangerous Trump agenda.

See Also:

NCRM: Cowardice’: GOP Faces Backlash After Report Suggests Death Threat May Have Swayed Vote

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation.

The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s premiere Earth sciences research centers.

A budget allocation of just over $170 million, down from about $485 million in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades.

“At this funding level, O.A.R. is eliminated as a line office,” the proposal states.

Programs that retained funding, including research into tornado warnings and ocean acidification, would be relocated to the National Weather Service and National Ocean Service offices.

The outline for the 2026 budget passback, which would need to be approved by Congress, suggests “significant reductions to education, grants, research, and climate-related programs within NOAA” and comes after the dismantling of other agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the United States Agency for International Development, and the removal of mentions of climate change from federal websites.

Under the proposal, the total budget for the Commerce Department would be nearly $7.7 billion, a reduction of more than $2.5 billion from 2025 levels. According to the document, the budget would refocus on activities more in line with the Trump administration’s agenda, including enforcing trade laws and collecting scientific observations like ocean and weather data to support forecasting.

“This Administration’s hostility toward research and rejection of climate science will have the consequence of eviscerating the weather forecasting capabilities that this plan claims to preserve,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, the senior Democrat on the House Sciences Committee, said in an emailed statement.

NOAA, which takes up more than half of the Commerce Department budget, would receive just over $4.4 billion, a reduction of $1.6 billion from 2025.

[meret118]

How Americans Are Surveilled During Protests

https://www.wired.com/story/uncanny-valley-podcast-how-americans-are-surveilled-during-protests/

Internet Sleuths Slam Trump for Photoshopping MS-13 Tat on Deported Dad’s Hand

https://www.thedailybeast.com/internet-sleuths-slam-trump-for-photoshopping-ms-13-tat-on-deported-dads-hand/

DOGE Is Just Getting Warmed Up DOGE has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.

But in theory, an API for all IRS data would make it possible for any agency—or any outside party with the right permissions, for that matter—to access the most personal, and valuable, data the US government holds about its citizens. The blurriness of DOGE’s mission begins to gain focus.

Even more, since we know that the IRS is already sharing its data in unprecedented ways: A deal the agency recently signed with the Department of Homeland Security provides sensitive information about undocumented immigrants.

. . .

The Washington Post reported this week that DOGE representatives across government agencies—from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Social Security Administration—are putting data that is normally cordoned off in service of identifying undocumented immigrants. At the Department of Labor, as WIRED reported Friday, DOGE has gained access to sensitive data about immigrants and farm workers. And that’s just the data that stays within the government itself.

This week NPR reported that a whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board claims that staffers observed spikes in data leaving the agency after DOGE got access to its systems, with destinations unknown. The whistleblower further claims that DOGE agents appeared to take steps to “cover their tracks,” switching off or evading the monitoring tools that keep tabs on who’s doing what inside computer systems. (An NLRB spokesperson denied to NPR that DOGE had access to the agency’s systems.)

What could that data be used for? Anything. Everything. A company facing a union complaint at the NLRB could, as NPR notes, get access to “damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors.” There’s no confirmation that it’s been used for those things—but more to the point, there’s also currently no way to know either way.

www.wired.com/story/doge-is-just-getting-warmed-up-data-immigration/

Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections

Now that Trump has installed election deniers throughout his Administration, he has been busy dismantling the guardrails protecting voting and voters.

. . .

As Marc Elias, an elections lawyer who litigates on behalf of Democrats, told me, “When Donald Trump says that he does not believe there should be voting machines, you should believe him. When he says there should only be voting on Election Day, you should believe him.”

. . .

“In claiming to fire a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, the president violates the law, the separation of powers, and generations of Supreme Court precedent.” He added that the F.E.C.’s commissioners “are confirmed by Congress to serve the vital role of protecting the democratic rights of American voters. As the only agency that regulates the president, Congress intentionally did not grant the president the power to fire FEC commissioners.”

Less than two weeks later, Trump issued an executive order that states, “No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law.”

In plain language, this mandate cancels the independence of independent agencies and, in the context of the F.E.C., gives the President the ability to make and adjudicate campaign rules to his advantage. The Democratic National Committee, along with the Democratic Congressional and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees, is now suing Trump and Bondi’s office, on the ground that the order violates federal law, but for now it stands.

More at the link.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/trump-is-still-trying-to-undermine-elections

The Battle For American Thought If Trump can control what ideas are allowed to be discussed, he can reshape American life as we know it.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-control-american-thought_n_6802a7e9e4b0afffe5e780bf

[todaysdocument]

Presidential Message of Abraham Lincoln, transmitting a letter from James W. Nye, Nevada Territorial Governor

Record Group 46: Records of the U.S. SenateSeries: Presidential MessagesFile Unit: Presidential Messages to the 38th Congress Suggesting Legislation or Submitting Specific Information or Documents

[left corner] S. H. Sonegal [?]

[top center page] 1/2

To the Senate of the United States.

In compliance with the Resolution of the Senate of the 27th instant, requesting information in regard to the condition of affairs in the Territory of Nevada, I transmit a copy of a letter of the 25th of last month addressed to the Secretary of State by James W. Nye, the Governor of that Territory.

Abraham Lincoln

Washington,

29th April, 1864.

[top of page] 1

Governor Nye to Mr Seward

[left margin] Gordon.  [right margin] Territory of Nevada

[right margin] Executive Department

[right margin] Carson City, Mar. 25, 1864

Hon. Wm. H Seward

Secretary of State

Washington D.C.

Sir:

This territory since I had the honor last to communicate with you, has been making rapid progress in all things pertaining to moral & material improvement. Churches have been built; schoolhouses erected. In almost every form in the territory, substantial improvements in every brand of industry are made, giving us quite the appearance of an old settled country. Business is becoming thoroughly systemized, & carried on with a rigor I never observed in any other locality. Obstacles that would seem insurmountable in many places, here seem only to quicken the pace & the energies of our people; they fly themselves to their reward with a will absolutely irresistable. Mountains are tunneled; shafts are sunk thousands of feet through solid rock; rivers are turned from their channels; canals are made conducting water for 50 or 60 miles; roads are constructed over our highest mountain peaks with a wonderful facility & rapidity; mines are opened & quartz mills erected as by magic; cities sprung up like the "gourd in the night"; wealth is going out & coming in to the territory with a power of current in its flow, that bears us

[full document and transcription at link]

[dead-generations]

Two separate space source assessments: what do you think of Eric Berger (particularly the SpaceX books), and what do you think of Alexander the Ok on youtube?

hey there!

Eric Berger is one of the goats. he is definitely controversial among some but he has almost always been vindicated. he was maybe the first person brave enough to question NASA and the wisdom of SLS publicly. his access to sources within the industry is unique and so he writes great stories at times. Along with Jeff Foust, he is one of the 2 best space reporters period, and if you do nothing else but pay attention to their tweets and articles you'll be able to follow what's happening in space without being misled. I have not read his books despite them being well reviewed because I just do not have interest in that sort of history, and I am an interest driven person. But they are well reviewed and regarded, and I cannot recommend following Berger enough.

Alexander the OK is someone I am mostly unfamiliar with because I don't really have any interest in historical narrative on spaceflight. Until now I'd only seen his funny tripropellant. I watched (semi skimmed at places) his shuttle video just now and was mostly disappointed. I'm not sure he is a youtuber worth the time if you want to understand spaceflight. I'll explain my issues and at the end I'll link some shuttle videos of a channel I think contrasts to his methods well, and who I like a lot.

I'll start with the general, which hopefully explains why I wouldn't put him on a list of reliable space communicators: not nearly enough technical data and math is shown to the audience, meaning we are forced to take his word for it over and over. There's also no analysis going on, no weights explained to the audience. This is big for me; he doesn't even explain what efficiency means in the context of rocket engines. I don't think the audience is too stupid for that, and not explaining these things is why knowledge of spaceflight is so poor.

There's also a lack of analysis of the design process and the design goals and constraints, which is the other half of what makes a good breakdown of a launch vehicle.

Now to speak in detail, I want to say that I am a shuttle hater and an ISS hater, but I'm really going to make the effort not assess his shuttle video on difference of opinion but just on the quality of the communication. warning: it's long

it's really goofy to have a section on safety and launch escape systems (one I disagree with but which isn't bad) and mention but explicitly decide not to talk about abort modes, especially for shuttle, because shuttle had goofy abort modes which contributed to it not being exactly safe.

I also hate, and I don't like saying this, hate the opening. its ridiculous to nominally talk about the design requirements for shuttle and not discuss the what the who and the why. This is the most important thing to do when discussing an engineering project, you absolutely have to understand these things to make any assessment of the project beyond surface observations. And it's a really inadequate section here.

Why was shuttle so big? how did that affect it? What did the airforce want it to do? Were these realistic goals? Were they met? And he doesn't even mention the role of congress here. You have to talk about the senate when talking about NASA.

Later he even presents the choice of using SRBs as purely technical, which is absurd. It's no accident that they went with SRBs and that the company that made them was based in Utah and Birmingham Alabama, and that they made ICBMs.

He also doesn't do an adequate job explaining the technical benefits for solids, not the least here is my disagreement with him about their effect on the safety of the shuttle. I actually have to be specific here: SRBs are dangerous to crew, extremely dangerous, and the trade offs to performance are just not there. I've avoided making criticisms of his views but this is something I couldn't leave unsaid.

He misses several other things, unless I missed them in the skimming which is possible: the USAF never once used shuttle to do the things they made NASA design for, strange decisions required the shuttle to be crewed for every flight which dramatically raised costs (and is why, ultimately, it was so dangerous and is why columbia specifically killed people). He talks about the shuttle being reusable but does not discuss how successful/costly/timely that was (not/expensive/slow), he talks about ISP as efficiency without explaining it, which means the audience can't understand it (though he does a solid job at explaining why shuttle needed a big first stage), and he mentions that the shuttle was meant to be a cost savings project but I didn't hear a real assesment of its cost in the end. Spoiler: it was very expensive.

Then there's his long sections on Columbia and Challenger. These have been talked about extensively and exhaustively, and frankly if you aren't willing to put in a ton of legwork you have nothing to add to the conversation. Which is fine, not everyone has heard what's been said. But what bothered me was his discussion of the heat shield failure for Columbia.

First, it is cool that he did a segment assessing the various ways that the crew might have been saved. I liked that, I would have preferred a very robust video on that alone. that's probably a 45 minute video. but that was ruined for me by not actually talking about the biggest failure of Columbia - he did not talk about the fact that the foam strike should never have happened. it happened because the underside of the shuttle faced the tank, and because the shuttle was lower than the fuel tank which shook like a leaf. that was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk that was a result of its design.

I've been a ranting Rachael here so I'll show you some really good shuttle videos. some of these might not seem like shuttle videos but they are. the first one is much more important than you might think.

you might guess, but this guy is my favourite and is the shit. this is what YouTube is good for wrt education and communication: diagrams, tables and presentations. Scott Manly also has a TON of great videos, especially the ones where he teaches orbital mechanics 101